Have you ever pondered what the most painful way to die might be? It’s a morbid curiosity that’s perfectly natural and most of us have wondered it at one time or another. It’s also probably very hard to answer that question for any number of reasons.
There are all kinds of terrible ways to die, and in the end you can never ask somebody how much it hurts, anyway. Safe to say that there are some ways that, from the outside looking in, are less appealing than others. Burning to death is one of those unappealing things and you can rest assured it would be painful.
But being burned to death can mean a number of things. You might die in a house fire or a car accident. Some people choose self-immolation as a very dramatic means of ending their own lives. And then there is the obscure and unusual phenomenon known as spontaneous human combustion. This is the spontaneous ignition of a living, human body without any external interference. So you’re not covered in gasoline, you’re not playing with something that sparks, and you’re definitely not juggling flaming bowling pins. But is it even real?
The Burn in History
The first recorded account of spontaneous human combustion dates back to 1641. Thomas Bartholin, a Danish doctor, proposed the idea to explain the death of Italian knight Polonus Vorstius.
It was said, according to witnesses, that Vorstius had more than his fair share of strong wine and when he burped it ignited. Unfortunately Vorstius, not being a dragon, could not withstand the flames that erupted from within and he burst into flames and died.
The phenomenon is not stuck in the Dark Ages, though. In 2010, Ireland logged its first-ever case of spontaneous human combustion when 74-year-old Michael Faherty died. Spontaneous human combustion was the official cause of death listed by the coroner. It was the only time in 25 years that the coroner had ever come to that conclusion.
The investigation into Faherty’s death could find no external cause. There was no accelerant present, the fire from the fireplace had not been the cause, and no reason to suspect foul place. The body was burned, as was the floor below and the ceiling above, but nothing else in the room.
In 1885, Matilda Rooney was said to have died by SHC and the only part of her left was her feet. The rest of her was reduced to ash and a few bone fragments but nothing else burned.
There have been a handful of cases reported over the years, some more convincing than others. The idea of it as a real thing was given its biggest boost in history by Charles Dickens. Dickens had a character die by spontaneous combustion in one of his novels called Bleak House in the 19th century, which brought the concept into popular culture. After the book’s publication, some people complained that this was not a real way people died.
Despite several apparent cases over the years, spontaneous human combustion is still not recognized as a real way people die. It’s often met with skepticism and, in most cases, a secondary explanation is offered. You’ll rarely come across a case such as that of Mr. Faherty in Ireland when it’s the accepted, scientific explanation.
But suppose spontaneous human combustion is a real thing. There has to be a reason for it, right? There has to be some mechanism that allows it to happen otherwise we’d all be bursting in the flame all the time. Lucky for us some theories have been put forth to explain what could make someone burst into flames without an external source of ignition.
Acetone Buildup
Research into the apparent victims of spontaneous human combustion has revealed some similarities. These are not true of every victim, but many fall into several of these categories. Many of them are alcoholics. Many of them are smokers. Many of them are overweight. Many of them were either older or in some way disabled. One thing that all of them had in common according to researcher Brian Ford was that they were all in poor health.
Ford proposed a theory that all of these ill people suffered from poor blood glycogen levels. When this happens, as in the case with alcoholics, for instance, cells cannot get energy through traditional means, and body fat cells are then used to provide energy. This process can make, as a byproduct, acetone.
The body normally produces acetone, but in these cases, the idea is that it would overproduce because it’s trying to find an alternative energy source for these ill individuals. Acetone would permeate every cell in the body, and it would be excreted through breath and sweat as well. That would mean a victim’s clothing would be saturated as well as the flesh.
Acetone vapor is extremely flammable. If a person had produced an excess of acetone in their body and something were to spark it, which could be as simple as static electricity, that could start a fire. The body saturated in acetone would be the fuel.
Acetone burns with a blue fire and, in many cases, those who are said to have burst into flames spontaneously burn with a blue flame.
While it’s an interesting theory, it has not been proven. Also, strictly speaking, this would also refute the idea of spontaneous combustion. It’s not spontaneous and requires both a fuel (acetone) and an external source of ignition to make it work.
Static!
Have you ever heard that static electricity can cause your car to explode when you are fueling up at a gas station? It sounds vaguely preposterous, but there are cases of it actually happening. If you get the right conditions, you can reach for the pump and set off a spark that ignites the fumes coming out of your tank and causes the gas to explode.
A shock from static electricity can reach 5,000 volts. Static does have enough energy to potentially spark a flame in the right conditions. If it can ignite fumes from gasoline, it could potentially do so with other flammable materials as well. As unlikely as it may be, it can’t be considered impossible.
Hundreds of years ago some scientists were convinced that static electricity inside our bodies was a fire just waiting to be set loose. They believed we would be burned if not for the natural moistness of our beings.
In our earlier example involving acetone, it would be something like static electricity that could set those fumes ablaze and cause the initial fire.
Methane!
It’s true that humans do produce flammable gasses inside of our guts. If you look around on the internet long enough, or if you have a certain kind of friend, you could have seen someone already use a lighter to bend over and give a demonstration of how this works. Methane gas is flammable and you can easily light it on fire.
Because we do produce methane in our gut, it has been proposed that an abundance of methane could lead to an internal explosion or some kind of leak which then ignites and is the source of spontaneous human combustion.
One explanation is that the bacteria that naturally occur in your gut produce phosphine gas. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that phosphine gas converts to diphosphine gas. If that were to happen, there could be a chemical reaction between the diphosphine gas and the methane and hydrogen in your gut that would then cause an explosive reaction.
The reaction we are describing is what happens in swamps which creates swap lights, or Will-o’-the-wisp as some people know them. These gasses are caused by decomposing matter, they mingle, and they ignite.
The main problem with this theory is that getting phosphine gas to become diphosphine gas is not the easiest process in the world, And it’s going to be much harder to do inside the human body.
Also, if this was a potential cause of internal explosions, it would probably happen to cows far more often than it does to humans. Cows produce a lot more methane than us, but you rarely ever hear of a cow exploding.
There are some more plausible explanations that science has put forth that are worth taking a look at as well. The most notable is the Wick Effect.
The Wick Effect
In trying to refute the idea of spontaneous human combustion the idea of something called the Wick Effect comes up. This was an idea proposed in the 20th century to account for how a body could burn so severely, reaching temperatures high enough to burn it to ash but also not burn anything around it.
According to the Wick Effect, a burning human can essentially act like a burning candle in the right circumstances. Melting fat can soak into the clothing of the victim and create a wick, like in a candle, that continues to burn for a long period. Instead of burning out quickly or spreading, the body smolders and the fire remains essentially contained to the victim.
Experiments have shown that the Wick Effect does happen and creates results very similar to what happens in cases of spontaneous human combustion. In this case, a pig carcass wrapped in a blanket was set aflame to see what would happen. The body is reduced to almost nothing, but the fire remains isolated and doesn’t spread. Like a candle, the flame burns slowly and also very discreetly. The flame may not even be visible, but it can burn everything including bone.
We said earlier that many of the victims of spontaneous human combustion are overweight. It’s believed that excess body fat greatly assists the Wick Effect in working and is what allows it to completely burn a body away so badly.
This still leaves one question to be answered – how did they ignite in the first place? If this is the true explanation, then there can still easily be an external source of ignition. A cigarette, a spark, or any kind of external heat source. The evidence itself of the ignition would be lost in the burning of the body which is why it baffles investigators trying to find something. Because no accelerant is present, since it wasn’t needed, determining the origin of the fire becomes impossible.
External Reasons Plus Misrepresentation
Most cases that are assumed to be spontaneous human combustion are investigated more deeply and deemed to be something else. Part of the problem is the snowball effect of a good story. Take the case of Jeannie Saffin, for instance. In the most popular versions of the story, this 61-year-old woman was burned in her kitchen despite there being no source of flame. Her 82-year-old father tried to save her, and paramedics were baffled about the lack of damage to the rest of the kitchen or how she could have burned when her clothing was untouched.
Original witness statements do not make these outlandish claims. Jeannie’s clothing was badly burned and everyone saw it. Other details also falter under scrutiny. Her father had a pipe, the pilot light for the stove was on, and there were several possibilities for what could have sparked her clothing and set her on fire.
Mary Reeser died in 1951. Her case was considered baffling and is often cited as SHC. But it’s also been noted that she took sleeping pills, smoked in bed, and her nightgown was made of extremely flammable material.
Danny Vanzandt was thought to have died of SHC until further investigation concluded he likely died of a heart attack while smoking and the cigarette caused him to ignite.
Joe Nickell and a forensic examiner spent years studying 30 cases of spontaneous human combustion and found no credible evidence of it being the cause of any of the deaths. As Nickell points out, lacking a definitive cause for a fire does not prove SHC is the cause.
Most cases of spontaneous human combustion can be explained through other means. More significantly, if it can’t be explained through other, non-spontaneous means, that doesn’t mean spontaneous human combustion is the only solution left.
The lack of any explanation is not an explanation of something else. Science can’t work that way, and it’s disingenuous to approach a problem from that position. There needs to be evidence that spontaneous human combustion is the cause beyond the lack of explanation of some other cause. Until that happens, it seems to just be a paranormal pipe dream.