Spontaneous human combustion (SHC)

Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) is a term encompassing reported cases of the combustion of a living (or very recently deceased) human body without an apparent external source of ignition. In addition to reported cases, examples of SHC appear in literature, and both types have been observed to share common characteristics regarding circumstances and remains of the victim.

Forensic investigations have attempted to analyze reported instances of SHC and have resulted in hypotheses regarding potential causes and mechanisms, including victim behavior and habits, alcohol consumption and proximity to potential sources of ignition, as well as the behavior of fires that consume melted fats. Natural explanations, as well as unverified natural phenomena, have been proposed to explain reports of SHC.

Spontaneous human combustion" refers to the death from a fire originating without an apparent external source of ignition; the fire is believed to start within the body of the victim. This idea and the term 'spontaneous human combustion' were first both proposed in 1746 by Paul Rolli in an article published in the Philosophical Transactions.^[1] Writing in the British Medical Journal, coroner Gavin Thurston describes the phenomenon as having "attracted the attention not only of the medical profession but of the laity" as early as 1834 (more than one hundred years prior to Thurston's 1938 article).^[2] In his 1995 book Ablaze!, Larry E. Arnold wrote that there had been about 200 cited reports of spontaneous human combustion worldwide over a period of around 300 years.The topic received coverage in the British Medical Journal in 1938. An article by L. A. Parry cited an 1823-published book Medical Jurisprudence, which stated that commonalities among recorded cases of spontaneous human combustion included the following characteristics:

the recorded cases have these things in common:

1. the victims are chronic alcoholics;
2. they are usually elderly females;
3. the body has not burned spontaneously, but some lighted substance has come into contact with it;
4. the hands and feet usually fall off;
5. the fire has caused very little damage to combustible things in contact with the body;
6. the combustion of the body has left a residue of greasy and fetid ashes, very offensive in odour."

Alcoholism is a common theme in early SHC literary references, in part because some Victorian era physicians and writers believed spontaneous human combustion was the result of alcoholism

Some hypotheses attempt to explain how SHC might occur without an external flame source, while other hypotheses suggest incidents that might appear as spontaneouscombustion actually had an external source of ignition – and that the likelihood of spontaneous human combustion without an external ignition source is quite low. Benjamin Radford, science writer and deputy editor of the science magazine Skeptical Inquirer, casts doubt on the plausibility of spontaneous human combustion, "If SHC is a real phenomenon (and not the result of an elderly or infirm person being too close to a flame source), why doesn't it happen more often? There are 5 billion [The world's population reached 5 billion in 1987] people in the world, and yet we don't see reports of people bursting into flame while walking down the street, attending football games, or sipping a coffee at a local Starbucks." Paranormal researcher Brian Dunning states that SHC stories "are simply the rare cases where a natural death in isolation has been followed by a slow combustion from some nearby source of ignition." He further suggested that reports of people suddenly aflame should be called "Unsolved deaths by fire", stating that an unknown cause did not necessarily imply that the fire lacked an external ignition source.