Spontaneous Human Combustion is often considered an
urban legend of distinctly modern origin. However, there are many historical accounts of mysterious combustion of humans. What follows is not intended to be taken as a complete list.
There are many mentions of something like SHC in medieval literature. One such instance is the combustion of a knight named
Polonus Vorstius sometime during the reign of Queen
Bona Sforza in
Milan (sometime between 1515 and
1557)
[2] In the
Sixteenth Century, the
Academic Senate of Copenhagen was sent a deposition about a person who died after belching flames, and then being consumed from the inside. (
Historiarum Anatomicarum Rariorum by
Thomas Bartholin).
Another case in the 17th Century was that of an elderly woman who was found burned to death in north
Essex,
England. Although the heat must have been intense, nothing else in the cottage (not so much as the bedclothes on which she lay) were even scorched. "No man knoweth what this doth portend" one observer was recorded as saying, hinting darkly at Divine Retribution. In
1731, an account was published about the remains of the
Countess Cornelia di Bandi of
Cesena,
Italy, which were found on the floor of her bedroom. Her body was allegedly ashes but her stockinged legs remained, as did a large portion of her head. However, the first generally accepted claim dates from 1763 when
Jonas Dupont compiled a casebook of SHC cases in a book called
De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis, having been compelled by the
Nicole Millet case.
In
1861,
George Henry Lewes published a sequence of letters between him and Charles Dickens, in which Lewes chided Dickens for propagating the 'myth' of SHC in his novel
Bleak House: "In these accounts it is usually stated that the body entirely disappears down to a greasy stain on the floor and some remains of bones. Everyone knows this to be impossible." Dickens added his own response to the second edition of Bleak House, referring to the case of a German liquor-shop owner in
Columbus, Ohio who mysteriously burst into flames in
1853.
In 1870
[4], the Assistant Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Aberdeen published a paper entitled On Spontaneous Combustion. In it, he wrote that he had found 54 contemporary scientists who had written on the subject of SHC. Of these, 35 expressed definite opinions on the validity of the alleged phenomenon:
Five of these (including
Liebig) were entirely skeptical.
Three (including
Dupuytren) believed that SHC was best accounted for in terms of preternatural combustion (broadly speaking, misidentification theory, discussed
below).
Twenty-seven (including
Devergie and
Orfila) stated their definite belief in the spontaneous ignitability of the human body.
In the late
1950s, a 19-year-old secretary, dancing with her boyfriend in a London
discotheque, was recorded as suddenly bursting into flames. As though driven by an inner storm, fire burst furiously from her back and chest, enveloping her head and igniting her hair, turning her in seconds to a human torch, and was dead before her horrified companion and other people on the dance floor could beat out the flames. Her boyfriend testified at the inquest: "I saw no one smoking on the dance floor. There were no candles on the tables and I did not see her dress catch fire from anything. I know it sounds incredible, but it appeared to me that the flames burst outwards, as if they originated within her body". Other witnesses agreed with him, and the coroner's verdict was eventually 'Death by misadventure, caused by a fire of unknown origin'.
More recently, an English building contractor was driving past one of his construction sites and waved through the car window; a moment later, he allegedly simply burst into flames.
[citation needed] Similarly, a man from
Cheshire, in the north of England, was found totally incinerated in the cab of his truck. The
London Daily Telegraph reported: "Police witnesses testified they had found the petrol(gasoline) tank full and unharmed by fire, the doors of the cab opened easily, but the interior was a 'veritable furnace'. The coroner's jury declared they were unable to determine how the incident occurred."
Reynold's News, a few years later, recorded the tragic death of a west London man who, while walking along the street, 'appeared to explode. His clothes burned fiercely, his hair was burned off, and the rubber-soled boots melted on his feet'.
More on SHC:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_human_combustionVideo:
http://misteryo.multiply.com/video/item/74
