Imagine that you just got home, you turn on your computer and you go to YouTube to watch
a new Draw The Life video by TikTak… and all of a sudden, your body bursts into flames!
If you haven't heard about spontaneous human combustion before, you might be thinking that
we are crazy, but this strange phenomenon has actually been taking place for a long
time, and no scientific explanation of it has yet appeared.
Weird, right?
However, what exactly is spontaneous combustion?
Well, it's a phenomenon in which the body of a human being bursts into flames for no
apparent reason.
In general, when this happens the victim ends up scorched up to the bones, but some of the
limbs, generally the hands and feet, remain intact.
Also, objects near the body that combusted barely show signs of burning.
Over the years several reports about instances of spontaneous combustion have been collected,
and thanks to that it has been possible to determine that there is a series of factors
which occur in every instance: It normally happens to people of old age who are overweight,
smoke, suffer from alcoholism to some degree, and live alone.
Let's review some of the most well-known cases.
Some of them are very interesting!
The first case dates back to 1664 and happened in Paris, France, when a Danish citizen described
the way in which a woman burst into flames on the straw mattress she was sleeping on,
while the mattress remained intact.
In 1765 Cornelia Zandari di Bandi, countess of Cesena, also suffered from spontaneous
combustion.
Her maiden found the countess' body in her room, turned into ashes, although the legs
and head remained relatively intact.
According to the maiden, the bed and other furniture of the countess was not affected
by the fire, although it ended up covered in a greasy layer of soot.
All that was found of John Irving Bentley were his legs, in Pennsylvania, USA on December
1966.
The fire was so intense that it opened a hole in the ground, but there were no signs of
burning or other fires in the rest of the house.
The most known case of spontaneous combustion is probably the case of Mary Reeser, a 67
year old widow from Saint Petersburg, Florida.
She was found by her son on the morning of July 2nd 1951.
He said that the last time he saw her was the previous night, and that she was smoking
and sitting on the chair where her corpse was found.
All that was left of her body was ashes, bone fragments, teeth, and a foot inside her sneaker.
The chair she was sitting on ended up scorched, and there were signs of burning on the floor
and the ceiling.
However, a pile of papers she had by her side remained intact.
Thousands of theories circulated regarding the death of Mary Reeser: Suicide using gasoline,
murder with a flamethrower... among many others.
The FBI closed the case saying that the woman fell asleep while smoking, and that her clothes
were set on fire because her cigarette fell on them.
Dr. Wilton Krogman, specialist in deaths by fire, said that the Mary Reeser case was the
most unsettling case he had ever participated in.
He even said: "If we were living in the Middle Ages, I would say this is a result of dark
magic".
If you are interested in learning about more cases of spontaneous combustion you can read
about them in the book titled "Spontaneous Human Combustion", where Jenny Randels and
Peter Hough gathered around 111 instances of this phenomenon.
The most widely accepted explanation regarding spontaneous human combustion is the Wick Effect
Theory.
This is the name given to the partial destruction of the human body due to fire when the clothes
of the victim get impregnated with his or her own body fat, thus acting as the wick
of a candle.
A clothed human body works like an "inverse candle": The body fat works as fuel while
the clothes work as a wick, so that if the body combusts, the body fat works as a continuous
source of fuel.
This is why the fire produced by a spontaneous combustion can last for several hours.
Although the Wick Effect is the most rational theory, no conclusive evidence has appeared
which demonstrates that this is the true reason why spontaneous combustion occurs.
Some people talk about divine interventions or even unknown subatomic particles which
can ignite within human bodies.
What do you believe is the cause of spontaneous combustion?