Spontaneous human combustion is when a person's body automatically catches fire without contact with external fire. This phenomenon has rich historical records. Some victims suffered only minor burns, while others were reduced to ashes. The strangest thing is that the chair the victim is sitting on, the bed he is sleeping on, and even the clothes he is wearing are sometimes not burned. What's more, although some people's whole bodies were burned, one foot, leg or some fingers were still intact.
Instances of spontaneous human combustion were first seen in medical reports in the 17th century. In the 20th century, relevant documents were even more detailed. More than 200 incidents occurred during this period.
At first, it was generally believed that this kind of bad luck mostly happened to women who were alcoholic, obese and living alone. Almost all of them spontaneously combust on winter nights, with the bodies next to burning stoves. Needless to say, no witnesses were present at the time of the incident. According to the wisdom of the time, this was God's punishment.
The modern scientific and medical circles deny the idea of ??spontaneous combustion in the human body. Although some people have proposed some theories, there is currently no reasonable physiological argument that is sufficient to explain how the human body can spontaneously ignite or even turn into ashes, because all human tissues and bones must be burned, which is only possible in high-pressure crematoriums with temperatures exceeding 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. possible. As for the charred corpses with undamaged clothing or intact body parts, that is even more mysterious.
One of the earliest well-documented incidents of spontaneous human combustion was recorded by Bartolin in 1673. A poor woman in Paris was mysteriously burned to death. The woman was addicted to strong liquor, and her addiction was so severe that she did not eat any food for three years. One night, after she went to bed, she spontaneously combusted and died. The next morning, only her head and fingers were left, while the rest of her body was burned to ashes. The person who reported this was the Frenchman Rey, who finally published the first paper on spontaneous combustion in the human body in 800.
An unusually vivid and detailed report of the mysterious spontaneous combustion of the human body was provided by a man named Ligart. Ligarte was an intern doctor in the Lemus district of France and was staying in a local hotel at the time of the incident. Miller, the hotel owner, has a nagging wife who gets drunk every day. On the evening of February 19, 1725, the hotel was fully booked as many people came to attend the grand trade fair the next day. Miller and his wife went to bed early. Mrs. Miller could not sleep and went downstairs alone. She usually went to the kitchen and drank until she was drunk in front of the lighted stove. Miller had fallen asleep at this time, but at about two o'clock in the morning, he suddenly woke up. He smelled the smoke and hurried downstairs, banging on the door to wake up the guests. When the panicked residents walked to the large kitchen, they saw that it was not the kitchen that was on fire, but Mrs. Miller. She lay near the stove. The whole body was almost burned, leaving only part of the head, limbs and a few spines. Except for slight burn marks on the floor beneath the body and the chair she was sitting on, the rest of the items in the kitchen were undamaged.
At this time, a police officer and two gendarmes happened to be patrolling nearby. They heard the crowd in the hotel and went inside to inquire. After they saw Mrs. Miller's smoking body, they immediately arrested Miller, suspecting him of being the murderer. The people in the town already knew that Mrs. Miller was not only a drunkard, but also a shrew. Therefore, they suspected that the troubled Miller deliberately killed his wife in order to sleep with a maid in the hotel. The prosecution alleged that Miller poured the remaining liquor from the bottle on his wife when she was drunk, then set her on fire and arranged the incident to make people believe it was an accident.
It is said that the young doctor Ligart also ran downstairs when the incident occurred and saw Mrs. Miller's burnt body with his own eyes. He testified for Miller during the trial, saying that the victim's body was completely burned, but the head and the end of the limbs were left, and nearby objects were not affected at all. This was obviously not caused by human factors. The debate in court was fierce, with the prosecution insisting that Miller was the murderer. Miller was found guilty and sentenced to death. However, Ligart continued to argue, pointing out that this incident could never be an ordinary arson and murder case, but a "punishment from God." As a result, the court reversed the verdict and acquitted Miller. However, poor Miller also lost his life. After that blow, he became extremely mentally depressed and spent the rest of his life in the hospital.
While praying, the body of Italian priest Bedoli suddenly caught fire. He is one of the few victims of spontaneous combustion who survives for several days. This incident was reported by Dr. Battaglia, who had treated him, and appeared in a Florentine journal in October 1776.
During the incident, Bedoli was traveling across the country. One night he arrived at his brother-in-law's house and was led to a room where he was staying temporarily. Since the shirt he was wearing was made of horse hair, which made it uncomfortable to shave his shoulders, he asked for a handrail as soon as he entered the room to separate the master from the back. Then he stayed alone in his room and prayed.
After a few minutes, the priest's cry of pain came from the room, and everyone in the house rushed into his room. They saw Bedoli lying on the ground, his whole body surrounded by a small flame, but when they came forward to look at it, the flame gradually subsided and finally went out. The next morning, Bedoli was examined by Dr. Battaglia. He found that the skin of the injured man's right arm was almost completely separated from the muscles and hung on the bones. The same damage was done to the skin from the shoulders to the thighs. The most severely burned part was the right hand, which had begun to rot. Although Dr. Battaglia provided immediate treatment, the condition of the injured continued to deteriorate. He kept saying that he was thirsty and wanted to drink water, and his whole body was convulsing in surprising ways. The chair he sat on was said to be filled with "rotten and disgusting matter." Bedoli continued to have fever, fell into a state of delirium, and continued to vomit. He died in a coma on the fourth day.
Dr. Battaglia could not find any signs of the disease in Bedoli. The most horrifying thing was that before his death, his body had emitted a stench like rotting flesh. Dr. Battaglia also said he saw bugs crawling from Bedoli's body onto the bed and that his fingernails fell off.
Battaglia remembered that when Bedoli first judged him, his right hand seemed to have been beaten with a stick, and there were "swaying flames" on his shirt. He quickly removed the shirt Burnt to ashes, the subsidy port is intact. And strangely enough, the hand placed between the shirt and the shoulder was not burned, and the pants were intact. Although not a single hair on his head was singed, the hat was completely incinerated. There were no signs of fire in the room. But an oil lamp that was originally full of oil was completely exhausted and the wick was burned to ashes.
Dr. Overton published an article in the "Journal of the Tennessee Medical Association" describing the injury suffered by Hamilton, a mathematics professor at the University of Nashville in that state, due to "local spontaneous combustion." On January 5, 1835, Professor Hamilton returned home from college. The weather was very cold that day, and the thermometer recorded only 8 degrees Fahrenheit.
Suddenly, he felt a burning pain in his left leg, as if he had been stung by a wasp. He looked down and saw that there was a flame several inches high on his leg, the diameter of which was the size of a silver coin, and the top was flat. He immediately slapped it with his hands, but was unable to extinguish the flames. Fortunately, Professor Hamilton remained calm and remembered that the flame would automatically extinguish if there was no oxygen supply, so he cupped his hands to cover the burning area, and the fire was indeed extinguished.
However, he still felt severe pain. After entering the house, he immediately took off his trousers and underwear to check the wound. He saw that the wound was about 1 inch wide and 3 inches long, dry, black in color, and stretched diagonally under the left leg. He checked his underwear again and found that the area directly opposite the wound had been burned through, but there were no signs of burning around the hole. The strangest thing is that the trousers are intact, but there is a lot of dark yellow fluff on the bottom near the area where the underwear has been burned, which can be scraped off with a knife.
Although the wound was different from ordinary wounds in some places, the doctor who diagnosed Hamilton still treated it as an ordinary burn after examination. The wound was so deep that it took a full 32 days to heal. After healing, the muscles around the wound still ached for a long time, and the scar showed an unusual bluish-black color.
A strange fire broke out in a countryside near Southampton, England, claiming the lives of the Keeley couple. On the morning of February 26, 1905, neighbors heard screaming coming from Keeley's home, and when they entered, they found that the house was on fire.
Mr. Keeley lay on the ground, completely reduced to ashes. Mrs. Keely sat in an easy chair, "blackened but still recognizable".
Police found an overturned table and an oil lamp on the floor in the house, but they didn't understand how an oil lamp could have caused the disaster. The strangest thing was that the easy chair in which Mrs. Keeley sat was not burned out.
In 1907, two patrolmen in Mannar village near Dinapore, India discovered the burnt body of a woman. They sent the body, which had no damage to its clothes but was still smoldering, to the magistrate. According to patrol officers, there were no signs of fire in the room when the body was found.
In Whiteley Bay, near Blythe, England, there is a pair of sisters surnamed Duol, who are retired school teachers. The elder sister's name is Margaret, and the younger sister's name is Wilhelmina. On the evening of March 22, 1908, Margaret ran to her neighbor's house and panicked to tell her that her sister had been burned to death. Neighbors entered her home to see Wilhelmina's charred body lying on the bed. There were no signs of fire on the bed and bedding, and there were no signs of fire anywhere in the house.
At the death inquest, Margaret repeatedly swore that she found her sister's body lying on the bed in the same condition as her neighbors had seen. However, the coroner believed that it was absurd to believe that the bed was intact but the person lying on it was burned to ashes. He accused Margaret of lying, threatened to prosecute her, and was temporarily detained during the coronial inquest.
Neighbors and public opinion did not believe Margaret's confession. Margaret was under pressure and admitted to perjury when the trial was reopened. She said that she actually saw Wilhelmina's body on fire downstairs at home, but she still survived: after the fire was extinguished, she helped her sister upstairs and placed her on the bed, but her sister died soon after.
Although there were no signs of fire downstairs, the coroner believed that this statement was more reasonable than Margaret's original confession.
The coroner announced that the cause of Wilhelmina's death was "accidental burning." However, he later said that this case was one of the most bizarre cases he had ever investigated.
On March 1, 1953, Mr. Wood of Edgetown, South Carolina, was found burned to black charcoal in the front seat of his car with the doors and windows closed. His car was parked on the side of Route 291 with half a tank of gas in the tank. Apart from the windshield being blistered and dented due to heat, there was no damage to the entire vehicle.
The 78-year-old disabled man Yang Xijin lived at 1130 Mauna Kea Street in Honolulu. In December 1956, his neighbors found him surrounded by blue flames. When firefighters arrived 15 minutes later, his body and chair had been reduced to ashes. However, the feet resting on the wheelchair opposite were intact, and even the surrounding furniture and curtains were not damaged.
Victims of spontaneous human combustion are rarely children, but Pruitt of Rockfort, Illinois, is an exception. The four-month-old baby died of severe burns in the spring of 1959, but there were no signs of burns on his clothes and the bedding on his bed was not damaged.
One night in October 1950, 19-year-old Miss Andrews danced with her boyfriend Clifford in a London nightclub. Suddenly, her chest and back caught fire, instantly burning her hair. Clifford and the other guests managed to put out the fire, but were unable to save her life. Clifford testified in court:
No one was smoking on the dance floor. There were no candles on the table, and I saw nothing on her clothes that was on fire. I know it's hard to believe, but I actually felt like the fire was coming from her body.
Other witnesses agreed with what he said. As a result, the court ruled that Miss Andrews "died from a fire of unknown cause." Peterson, a 30-year-old autoworker from Pontiac, Michigan, had been depressed for months due to poor health. At 7:45 pm on December 13, 1959, he was found dead in his car. It appeared to be a suicide. At that time, the seat beside the driver's seat was still smoking, and the exhaust pipe had been twisted and extended into the car with six closed windows. After examining his body, doctors announced that he died of carbon monoxide poisoning, which was consistent with the theory of suicide. However, they could not explain why Peterson suffered third-degree burns on his back, thighs and arms, or why his nose, throat and lungs were burned. The strangest thing is that his clothes and even underwear were not damaged at all, and the burnt flesh still had unburned body hair standing up.
Investigators initially thought the car's exhaust smoke might contain heat, and later suspected foul play, but neither could explain the circumstances of Peterson's death.
In an incident of spontaneous human combustion, there were not only one victim, but six. The following is the report of the Nigeria Herald on the incident on December 27, 1976: The incident in which six members of a family of seven in Lagos City were burned to death...has become the most difficult mystery to solve.
According to yesterday's on-site investigation, everything in the wooden house was intact, and even the two quilts were still neatly laid out on the two iron beds... The fire that killed six people had a huge impact on the entire The room seemed to be intact...but judging from the serious condition of the deceased's additional fire, the objects in the room, including the wooden walls and the iron sheets on the roof, should have been lost.
Although it was earlier rumored that someone poured gasoline from the window while the family was asleep and then set it on fire, yesterday's investigation has proved that this statement is untrue.
The phenomenon of spontaneous combustion in the human body was not recognized by the scientific community in the 20th century. It was neither included in the "International Classification of Diseases" compiled by the World Health Organization, nor was it recognized by the United States or the National Library of Medicine. with an entry in the Medical Book Index. Despite the evidence from police, firefighters, arson experts, coroners and pathologists, most doctors and scientists still believe that seemingly indisputable cases have not been thoroughly investigated. However, not all generations have rejected this skeptical attitude. In the 17th and 18th centuries, spontaneous combustion of the human body, especially among drunkards, was generally regarded as a punishment from God. By the 19th century, advances in biology and chemistry allowed researchers to look at the causes of these elusive fires from a non-religious perspective. They suggest many more possibilities, including one or a combination of several listed below.
* Gas ??in the intestines can easily burn.
* Corpses produce flammable gases.
* The heat generated by haystacks and manure piles is enough to cause spontaneous combustion.
* Certain elements or mixtures will spontaneously catch fire once exposed to air, such as phosphorus, one of the human elements.
* Some chemicals are not reactive on their own but can cause explosions when mixed with other items.
* The glow of certain insects and fish indicates that there may be internal fire.
* The large amount of fat contained in the human body is an excellent fuel.
* Static electricity can cause sparks, which may cause a human body to catch fire under certain circumstances.
However, more and more facts prove that none of the above assumptions are the real causes of spontaneous combustion in the human body. By 1815, a German chemist had already pointed out that people who drank large amounts of brandy would not catch fire even if they were close to it. Later, in the late 19th century, several doctors claimed that they did not understand why the human body, which contained so much water and so little fat, could catch fire. On April 22, 1905, the magazine "American Medicine" gave a head-on blow to those who believed in spontaneous human combustion, pointing out that "almost half of all published incidents of spontaneous human combustion come from France, a neurotic country."
In order to test the claim that alcohol can make the human body highly flammable, scientists first soaked mice in alcohol for a year and then set them on fire. As a result, the mouse's outer skin burst into flames and the outer muscles under the skin were scorched, but the internal tissues and organs remained intact. They later tested museum specimens that had been soaked in alcohol for a longer period of time, and the results were the same.
It is true that flammable gases produced by the digestive system may accumulate in the human body and cause danger. A British priest was warned not to blow out the altar candles to prevent the breath from catching fire.
Static electricity may also be a cause. According to the Fire Protection Manual of the American Fire Protection Association, the electrostatic load accumulated on the human body can reach thousands of volts and can be discharged through the hair. Generally, it will not cause harm, but in some special situations, such as in factories where flammable materials are manufactured or where gas anesthetics are used. In a hospital operating room, such a person may cause an explosion, but there has never been any precedent of a person being burned to ashes without any damage to the equipment.
In addition, some people have proposed other natural factors, including meteors, lightning, atomic explosions in the body, laser beams, microwave radiation, commercial frequency audio, geomagnetic flux, etc., but how these factors work remains unclear. No explanation. In short, the phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion remains a mystery until now.
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