OT: Spontaneous combustion

[peter johnson]

Erik --
Did you look at the links from the Fortean Times pages?  SHC predates linoleum and cigarettes and loose fitting flannel pajamas.
If these things genuinely contributed to SHC, then I wonder how come my own father didn't burst into flames on numerous occasions.
There may indeed be a corollary, just as alcoholism may play a part as some suggest.  But all this begs the question of well then, how come the phenomena is so rare if it's so easily "explained away".  Really, by pointing out association one does not determine causality.
As far as the witnessing thing goes, there are, in fact, episodes in the available literature of people who witnessed people starting to smolder & threw them into lakes, etc., with no real idea as to what the causality of the smoldering was.  Maybe all these people are telling fibs.  
You are correct that, no, nobody has apparently stood by and watched someone devoured by flames & done nothing about it, for the sake of being a "witness" or out of curiosity as to what would happen next.
Nobody has ever seen an adult Giant Squid either, but rather infer their existence from available evidence.  There is still debate as to whether anyone has ever really seen "ball lightning", or earth-bound molecular plasma.
Certainly, having numerous eyewitnesses to SHC would be a cool thing, but wouldn't really contribute anything to "proving" or "disproving" SHC.  Numerous people have "witnessed" UFOs, ghosts, lake-monsters, etc., yet these witnesses have done nothing at all to resolve the debate as to the respective phenomena's reality.
I hasten to add that I'm not a "true believer".  I do, however, think that something weird is going on, at least as weird as meteors or frogs falling from a cloudless blue sky.
peter johnson/denny crane

[Eirik]

I can't speak to ancient cases (and they'd have to be DAMN ancient to predate, as you say, smoking and flammable clothing by the way), but evey case I find in which the facts were collected and documented in a scientific manner seems to point to someone (usually a very old someone - another commonality I found) who smoked a lot and wore real flammable clothing being careless with a cigarette (often with matches nearby or in pockets), setting their clothes on fire, being overcome and burning up.  

The fact that an unburned leg or arm is sometimes nearby doesn't impress me - I have seen with my own eyes the same thing with people burned by napalm.  I can't explain the exact science of it, but I know it isn't unusual for a burning body to be totally consumed in some places but not in others.

Do I think there is a preponderance of evidence to support the idea that there at least might be UFOs, bigfoot, or the Loch Ness monster?  Yes I do.  I'll need to see more proof before I believe it, but there seems to be something going on.  I do not feel this way about SHC.  I haven't found one witness account from an era and a culture that isn't otherwise rife with all kinds of myths and folklore.  For instance, myths about werewolves and vampires very possibly were fueled early on as explanations for horrible killings that today we understand and accept as being the work of deranged humans.  The fact that some townspeople attributed a child's grisley murder in 15th century France to a werewolf is not evidence of werewolves.

I also think it's real damning that there's never been a witness.  Other phenomenon you mention that have no witnesses either occur in environments where virtually no human has ever spent any length of time (giant squids) or are things most humans wouldn't know if they saw (earth-bound molecular plasma).  People are very often around other people in homes and they sure as heck would notice if someone burst into flames.

The only possible cases where evidence was actually gathered and documented strongly suggest carelessness with cigarettes as the real reason.  When a non smoker in flame-retardant clothing burns up while moving around somewhere during waking hours (with, dare I hope, a witness around), give me a call.

[peter johnson]

A very cogent reply, Erik, but it still doesn't explain how being old, smoking, & wearing loose clothing creates the mystery.
Most people like that manage to set either the whole house on fire or the whole bed, etc.  The body is recovered.  Granted, they are usually covered with charcoal & burned beyond recognition, but the bones are still intact, and the general shape is still recognizable as human.  Teeth are still in a recognizable skull, etc. etc.
This is simply not the case in the instances wherein SHC is proposed as a possibility.
Bones are reduced to ash.  Skulls shrink to the size of baseballs.  Pretty odd stuff.
Not to be crass, but the Germans modified the furnaces at the camps throughout WW2, and were still never satisfied with the performance of these crematoria.  How is it that their engineering is sometimes surpassed in an open-air situation?
I think it IS a mystery.
peter johnson/denny crane

[Eirik]

I'll allow that a fire that burns someone up would have to be awfully hot to reduce their bones (at least the big bones), but again, I've seen that happen and not in a crematorium.  I'll also allow that a person burning up would very very likely burn the house down too, although I imagine it's possible that it wouldn't, especially in enclosed spaces where oxygen might not be in enough supply or the non human fuel around might be musty or damp.  So if those are the facts of a particular case, careless smoking does seem to be an imperfect but still not impossible explanation.  

But now the main problem I have with the web sites I've seen that support the existence of SHC (sadly, I didn't find one supporting or against that seemed very objective to me) - their depiction of the facts seem to be pretty slipshod, while those sites looking to disprove SHC seem to be pretty thorough.  For example, one site I found talked about a guy from down south who was supposedly a SHC survivor.  He told an author writing a book on the subject that he was asleep in his trailer when he suddenly awoke with painful burns all over his body.  Okay - fair enough.  More searches on the guy led to a documented fact the SHC people conveniently left out.  Around the date he claimed this happened to him, he had filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the hot water heater in his trailer.  He claimed that it stopped working and when he tried to fix it , it burst and scalded him in those same parts of his body he would later claim were touched by SHC.  The case was dismissed because the manufacturer demonstrated he didn't follow the instruction manuel while attempting the repair.  Only then did he contact the author of the book with a story about surviving SHC.  No mystery there, and I see a lot of that kind of unquestioning acceptance of first hand accounts all over the SHC sites.  I've seen far more concrete evidence of UFOs than I have for SHC.

[trekgeezer]

their testimony would be considered anecdotal evidence just like the bagillions of people who have seen ufos, bigfoot, the numerous lake monsters around the world, the chupacabra, leprachauns, and numerous other phenomena.

Unless a scientist can get someone to do the flame-on bit in a lab it will always be unprovable and remain one of those mysteries to be debated on internet forums..

[Eirik]

I'd take an eyewitness account with a grain of salt, no doubt about it, geezer...  But having a witness would at least graduate this phenomenon up to the believability level of UFOs and Scottish Pleiosaurs.  As for now, it isn't even that high.

[peter johnson]

Erik & odin & ulthar -- sounds like an Icelandic Heavy Metal band -- make very good points, which I don't detract from --
HOWEVER -- didn't you know there'd be a "however"? -- the objections raised still don't acutally "explain away" the forensic evidence.  Note that to "explain away" something is not the same thing as really explaining it.
The very reason that SHC exists as a category of general weirdness is that people observed really odd things about very strange deaths by fire.  The people that observed these very odd things were people in the Fire & Rescue & Police professions who, like ulthar, were very experienced individuals who had seen any number of deaths-by-fire, yet found these particular events significant enough to comment upon.
Also, these very odd deaths do, in fact, conform to a pattern of oddity.  Part of that oddity is indeed, as has been repeated here, being old, a smoker, lonely, ignored, wearing loose clothing, being an alcoholic or indulging in drink, etc. etc.
The point would still be that there are thousands of individuals -- more is the pity -- that conform to this "victim model" that are not bursting into flames.  How come, if this is to be put forth as the definitive criteria?
peter johnson/denny crane

[Eirik]

"The point would still be that there are thousands of individuals -- more is the pity -- that conform to this "victim model" that are not bursting into flames. How come, if this is to be put forth as the definitive criteria?"

Could be there are only a few who've been so terribly unlucky...  but the pattern itself is suggestive of a common cause.  I am sure that rescue/fire workers see bizarre stuff all the time, and sometimes stuff they're at a loss to explain.  We all see stuff like that.  

I once a guy fall backwards off a second floor balcony and land flat on his back on concrete.  He got up and was fine (and no, he hadn't been drinking, though the guy who accidentally knocked him off had).  The next day he wasn't even sore.  That fall would have killed some people, paralyzed some people, and caused at the very least some severe pain and injury to almost anybody.  So why did this guy who was average size, in average shape, and not particularly tough, not get hurt?  Sometimes it just happens that way.  I expect it's like that with accidental self-immolation too.

But it is a fair point to say that I cannot disprove the existence of SHC, and I will readily change my position that does not exist should some more evidence (or at least a plausible scientific explanation of how it might happen) surfaces, so I guess we can leave it at that.