Spontaneous human self-ignition

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Spontaneous human combustion (Engl. Spontaneous combustion human , SHC ) is the name for a modern myth , according to the human body without any cause catch fire. This myth is based on the existence of corpses, parts of which were burned, including bones, while the objects nearby remained intact. There are different theories that are used to explain the phenomenon. No confirmed eyewitness reports exist for “spontaneous” burning or “spontaneous combustion”, nor is there any other evidence for the existence of the phenomenon. Scientific studies show ways in which, under certain circumstances, it can be possible that body parts burn in the form described.

Cases before the 20th century

Early supporters of the SHC hypothesis named victims from the Bible who were burned to death by divine visitation. In the Middle Ages, alcohol consumption was considered the most likely cause of such cases. A story from this time is about the knight Polonus Vorstius, who is said to have gone up in flames in Milan in 1470 after excessive alcohol consumption.

The forensic biologist Mark Benecke names an alleged victim from Paris who is noted in the Acta Medica et Philosophica of 1671/1672. When the French Nicole Millet from Reims burned to death on Whit Monday 1725, her husband, who was accused of murder, was able to convince the court of spontaneous human spontaneous combustion and thus avoid conviction.

The phenomenon of the burned corpses in unburned surroundings was compiled by Jonas Dupont in his work Dissertatio inauguralis de Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis , published in Leiden in 1763 .

Recent cases

The most famous case from the 20th century is the death of Mary Reeser. The (dt. As "Cinder Lady" "Ashes Lady" ) has become known woman from Florida died on the night of 1st to 2nd July 1951 after she became unconscious due to the consumption of sleeping pills during smoking. The FBI suspected the wick effect as the cause of death.

On the night of December 4-5, 1966, the physically challenged John Irving Bentley died in Pennsylvania . According to Joe Nickell's investigations , he is believed to have set the linoleum floor of his bathroom on fire with his clothes on fire from glowing pipe tobacco , which intensified the fire.

The death of Robert Francis Bailey on September 13, 1967 in London was attributed to his alcohol consumption. John E. Heymer was on duty in Wales in 1980 when Henry Thomas's body was found.

In the case of the cremation of the mentally handicapped Jeannie Saffin, which is said to have taken place in London on September 15, 1982 in front of her relatives, SHC was ruled out as the cause of death by the responsible medical examiner.

On September 23, 2011, The Telegraph reported that a medical examiner in Ireland found SHC as the cause of death following the fire death of a 76-year-old pensioner. Traces of the fire were only visible on the ceiling and on the floor. The BBC also reported on it.

Attempts at explanations and myths

alcohol

Reports from the 17th and 18th centuries in particular suspect excessive consumption of alcohol as the cause of spontaneous human self-ignition. It was believed that excessive drinking of flammable spirits made the human body itself flammable. However, a person would die of alcohol poisoning before reaching the required concentration of alcohol. As early as 1850, the chemist Justus von Liebig showed that a tissue soaked with diluted alcohol would not burn to ashes even in the presence of an external flame.

electricity

An alternative theory based on the findings of the New York electrical engineer Robin Beach explains spontaneous human self-ignition with an electrostatic discharge . According to this, people with particularly dry skin should be able to generate up to 30,000 volts , while values ​​of up to 20,000 volts can be achieved with average people. Under certain circumstances, this electricity is supposed to create a fire that is sufficient to burn the body almost completely. However, this theory was able to demonstrate clear shortcomings, among other things because it does not explain why the fire came from within in many of the alleged victims.

Chemical reaction

In 1996 criminal investigator John E. Heymer published his book The Entrancing Flame . He investigated cases where the victims were mentally unstable due to loneliness. Heymer derives a psychosomatic process from this. In a chain reaction, hydrogen and oxygen are supposed to be released in the body and cause explosions in the mitochondria . However, the two elements would have to be present in the cells as gases, which contradicts scientific knowledge. The mechanical engineer Larry Arnold presented a similar theory, who ascribes a devastating effect to the pyroton, a supposedly previously undiscovered subatomic particle .

Ball lightning

Various scientists consider ball lightning to be the cause of spontaneous self-ignition. It is believed that contact with a ball lightning suddenly releases the energy stored inside, which then triggers a combustion. However, this has not been confirmed and remains a speculation.

Scientific investigations

Investigations by Mark Benecke

The idea of ​​self-ignition and extremely rapid, complete combustion of a person contradicts physical and chemical principles. The German forensic biologist Mark Benecke refutes the theory of spontaneous human spontaneous combustion with forensic facts in his articles . Since the human body consists for the most part of water and contains no flammable components other than fat and methane , such spontaneous combustion is almost impossible. In order for a body to burn, it must be heated to a temperature of at least 870 ° C for around two hours. The official reports of cases of alleged spontaneous spontaneous combustion indicate that the victims were mostly near a source of fire (fireplace) or held one in their hand (cigarette, pipe). Since the fire requires a regular supply of oxygen and combustible material and spreads faster vertically than horizontally, it can also be explained why the surroundings around the victim are not or only slightly affected. A temperature gradient is responsible for the fact that the extremities and internal organs in particular often remain intact. Benecke also suspects that supporters of the SHC theory often use photos as evidence that were only taken after part of the cremated corpse had already been removed.

Explanation by the wick effect

The widespread explanation of the condition of corpses without spontaneous spontaneous combustion is the wick effect. Accordingly, an open flame, for example from a cigarette, sets the victim's clothing or other textiles on fire. If the fire burns long enough and hot enough under certain circumstances, the heat liquefies the fatty tissue located directly below the skin . Like a candle flame feeds on wax, the fat burns without damaging the environment. In the cases examined, it is assumed that the victims were already dead or unconscious when the fire broke out.

On August 26, 1998 BBC One broadcast a documentary from the QED series entitled "The Burning Question", in which this theory of the wick effect was to be reinforced with the help of an experiment. For this purpose, a dead pig was wrapped in a blanket and set on fire. As assumed in theory, the pig's fat burned for a long time without harming the surroundings. The BBC scientists explained that in one of the investigated deaths in the room a television just melted under the ceiling, with a convection flow of the rising hot air.

In 2008, the Discovery Channel broadcast the case of George Mott, who caused an alleged spontaneous combustion by smoking in bed with the valve of his oxygen device open, which burned his body down to the limbs.

Burns on Tutenchamun's body from embalming

A British study from 2013 has the thesis that in Tutankhamun "an unbelievable reaction" of Balsamierungsöle for shortly after his funeral spontaneous combustion had led in the sarcophagus. It is conceivable that textile fabric, which contains hardened oil and is agglomerated and thermally insulated in sufficient quantities, heats up after a certain time to inflammation temperature and begins to smolder, smolder or burn with flame and thus the corpse to a certain extent scorch or even burn or burn.

Cases in literature and film

Charles Dickens used the phenomenon of spontaneous human ignition in connection with alcohol in his 1852 novel Bleak House . In Frederick Marryat's 1834 novel Jacob Faithful, the hero's mother dies in a similar manner. The Russian writer Nikolai Wassiljewitsch Gogol uses the SHC in three of his stories. In 1878, Jules Verne set an African king up in flames through the influence of alcohol in A Captain of Fifteen . In his novel Doctor Pascal (1893), Émile Zola describes a case of human spontaneous combustion as a result of decades of massive alcohol abuse, where the victim is said to have been completely burned to ashes with the exception of a small residue of body fat. In the 2004 novel Burn Case by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child , the murders are staged as spontaneous human self-ignition. The perpetrator uses a weapon that works with microwaves. In Heinz Strunk's novel Jürgen (2017) , the subject of self-ignition also plays a role. The siblings of one of the main characters die independently of each other through spontaneous combustion.

Tobe Hooper dedicated his horror film Spontaneous Combustion (German distribution title: Fire Syndrome ) to the phenomenon in 1990 . In the fictional report This Is Spinal Tap from 1984, drummers of a band repeatedly explode on stage, with another band member referring to spontaneous human self-ignition in an interview and linking this to a conspiracy theory ("Every year dozens of people spontaneously ignite, it is just not reported much about it. ”). Allusions can also be found in each episode of the television series Picket Fences , Dead Like Me , The X-Files - The uncanny cases of the FBI , CSI: On the trail of the perpetrators , Fringe - Borderline cases of the FBI (season 4 episode 21), Grey's Anatomy , Numbers - The Logic of Crime , South Park , Water Rats - Die Hafencops , Navy CIS , The Mentalist and Bones - Die Bone Hunters as well as in joking form in the film Con Air . In the PSI Factor series, too , spontaneous human self-ignition is treated in several episodes. The animated series South Park dedicated to the topic of the second episode of the third season ( Spontaneous Combustion , English Spontaneous Combustion ). Burn in the Inspector Barnaby episode ! burn several people through apparent spontaneous combustion, which, however, can be attributed to the manipulation of clothing with dissolved phosphorus .

Simon Beckett takes up the subject in his crime novel Kalte Asche , which is set in the Outer Hebrides .

In India , spontaneous self-immolation has a religious undertone. A very well-known myth begins with it. Shiva's first wife Sati is said to have gone up in flames when she and Shiva were not invited to her father's feast, Daksha . Shiva avenged her, destroyed the festival and afterwards wandered around in India with Sati's corpse in mourning until it fell apart. Temples of the goddess mark the places where a part of the body fell to the earth. Calcutta , for example, is the place where Sati's little toe was left lying (i.e. the lowest part that is easiest for humans to reach). Sati's self-immolation was the model for the widow burnings , which are also called Sati (= loyalty).

The manga Fire Force by Atsushi Ōkubo also covers this topic.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Benecke, M. (1998) Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC) - Thoughts of a forensic biologist. Skeptical Inquirer 22 (March / April), pp. 47-51
  2. ↑ Article on Doctor's Review. Retrieved January 4, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Spontaneous Human Combustion - FBI investigation report into the case of Mary Hardy Reeser ( Memento of January 14, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ FBI Debunks Spontaneous Human Combustion FBI Debunks Spontaneous Human Combustion
  5. ↑ Dr. John Irving Bentley's Fiery Death (English)
  6. ↑ Database entry on the Robert Francis Bailey case (English)
  7. ↑ Does spontaneous human combustion exist? . BBC UK News Magazine (online) November 21, 2005.
  8. ↑ Josie Ensor: Irish pensioner 'died of spontaneous human combustion' . In: The Telegraph (online). September 23, 2011.
  9. ^ 'First Irish case' of death by spontaneous combustion . In: BBC News Europe (online). September 23, 2011.
  10. ^ Hazel Muir: Ball lightning scientists remain in the dark , December 20, 2001
  11. ↑ QED Episodes (English)
  12. ↑ BBC: UK - New light on human torch mystery (English)
  13. ^ SHC: Spontaneous Human Combustion . In: askwhy.co.uk (English).
  14. ↑ DMAX Knowledge: Human Torches ( Memento from October 31, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ↑ How Stuff works: How Spontaneous Human Combustion Works (English)
  16. ↑ New study on the cause of death: Tutankhamun died in a car accident. In: Spiegel Online . November 9, 2013, accessed March 3, 2014 .

literature

  • L. Arnold: Ablaze! New York 1995, M. Evans & Co.
  • M. Benecke: Spontaneous self-ignition from humans (SHC): Refutation of a chapter from popular belief. 6th Spring Conference of the German Society for Forensic Medicine, Humboldt University, Berlin 1997, p. 82.
  • F. Bschor: Findings in burned corpses and their evaluation. Archiv für Kriminologie 136, 1965, pp. 30-38; 93-105.
  • JE Heymer: The Entracing Flame. London 1996, Little, Brown & Co.
  • FL Hünefeld: To explain the self-immolation or the expressiveness of the human body. Archives for medical experiences (Horn's, Nasse's and Wagner's archives) July / August 1830, pp. 718–742.
  • A. Irwing: The theory of spontaneous human combustion goes up in flames. Daily Telegraph, Apr 17, 1998, p. 3.
  • H. Merkel: Diagnostic possibilities for determining burned and charred human corpses. German journal for all of forensic medicine 18, 1932, pp. 233–249.
  • NF Richards: Fire Investigation - Destruction of Corpses. Medicine, Science and the Law 17, 1977, pp. 79-82.
  • B. Teige, J. Lundevall, E. Fleischer: Carboxyhemoglobin concentrations in fire victims and in cases if total carbon monoxide poisoning. Zeitschrift für Rechtsmedizin 80, 1977, pp. 17-21.

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