Spontaneous Burning in People: The True Facts Behind the Mystery

By Stephanie Weaver · 1,050 words

Over the years, individuals have related experiences of spontaneous human combustion in many locations. But can that really happen?

Michael Faherty, 76, was found dead at his home in Galway, Ireland, on December 22, 2010. His body was badly burned. The investigators discovered no gasoline around him or any sign that someone had harmed him. They also denied that the adjoining fireplace was to blame. The only evidence were Faherty's burned corpse and the damage to the ceiling and floor.

After much thought, a doctor concluded that Faherty died because his body caught fire for no apparent reason. This choice sparked much discussion, with some being inquisitive and concerned, wondering whether it might actually happen.

Who is Spontaneous Burning?

Long ago, back in the 18th century, a smart person named Paul Rolli from London's Royal Society, which is like a big club for scientists, talked about something called "spontaneous combustion." He said it's when a person's body suddenly catches fire without any obvious reason from outside heat.

This concept gained popularity, particularly in Victorian England. They believed it was common for persons who drank excessively to experience this. Even the well-known author Charles Dickens included it in his novel "Bleak House." In the narrative, there's a man called Krook who drinks a lot and then bursts into flames and dies.

However, several individuals disliked Dickens' discussion of spontaneous combustion since science did not fully support it. They said there was insufficient evidence. Yet, some folks were so convinced they saw it happen with their own eyes!

Not much time passed before other writers like Mark Twain and Herman Melville also started adding the idea of sudden human fires in their stories. Their fans supported them by saying there were many real cases like this.

However, scientists continue to have reservations about it. They're skeptical about the approximately 200 instances reported from throughout the globe.

Reported Cases of Deadly Human Combustion

A long time ago, in the late 1400s, there was a strange event in Milan. Polonus Vorstius, a hero, caught fire all of a sudden in front of his parents. According to some, he drank strong wine and then burped fire!

In 1745, in Cesena, something similar happened to Countess Cornelia Zangari de Bandi. She went to bed early one summer night and the next morning, her chambermaid found her in a pile of ashes. Only her head and legs with stockings remained, even though there were two candles in the room that were untouched.

Over the next few hundred years, there were more fires in places like Pakistan and Florida. The deaths couldn't be explained by anything else, and there were some things that were the same in all of them.

Firstly, the fire mostly stayed around the person and where they were. Also, often there were burns and smoke marks just above and below the person's body, but nowhere else around. Lastly, usually only the arms and legs were left after the fire, with the body turning to ash.

But scientists say there's a logical explanation for these cases, despite how strange they may seem.

Even though the police couldn't find another reason for the death, scientists don't think that people really just spontaneously catch fire because of something inside their bodies.

First, the strange way that fire harm generally only affects the person and the area around them isn't so strange after all. Lots of fires naturally stop when they run out of fuel, like the fat in a person's body in this case.

It's also not strange to find a badly burned body in a room where everything else looks fine, since fires usually burn up, not out. Most of the time, fires don't move sideways when there is no wind or air to push them.

One interesting thing that explains why the room nearby doesn't get damaged much in a fire is called the wick effect. It's like how a candle burns because of the wax around the wick. The wick effect shows how our bodies are similar to candles. Clothes or hair act like the candle's wick, and body fat is like the wax that burns.

There is fat under the skin that melts and gets on the person's clothes when fire hits them. The flames get very hot as more fat is added, like adding fuel to a fire, until everything is burned up and the fire goes out. Then, all that's left is a heap of ashes, similar to what's found after cases of supposed sudden human combustion.

How do the fires begin, though? Scientists also know the answer to that. A lot of the time, old people who catch fire out of the blue are alone and sitting or sleeping near something that can start a fire. Many of these people are found near a fireplace or with a burning cigarette nearby, and quite a few were last seen drinking alcohol.

A long time ago, people thought that booze, which can easily catch fire, might be making the stomach react chemically in a way that causes rapid fires (or maybe even making God mad). Now, though, it looks like a lot of the people who caught fire were probably not awake.

It's possible that this is why old people often catch fire: they're more likely to have a heart attack or stroke. They could drop a cigarette or something else that could start a fire by mistake. That means the people who were burned were either dead or couldn't move.

Almost every time someone catches fire without any witnesses, it's because they were probably drunk or asleep, and nobody saw it happen. Since there's no one else around to put out the fire, the thing that started the fire keeps burning. And then, the ashes are left behind, making it all seem very strange. Numerous guesses have been made about what happened, but the thought of spontaneous human burning is ultimately just talk with no real proof.

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