If you're hooked on the new BBC adaptation of Bleak House, then prepare yourself for tonight's explosive episode. In it Krook, the hard-drinking landlord, dies after spontaneously combusting.When Charles Dickens wrote his novel in 1852 it caused a sensation. Never before had the idea of spontaneous human combustion (SHC) entered the mainstream. George Henry Lewes, a philosopher and critic, harangued Dickens for perpetuating a ridiculous superstition. Dickens fought back arguing that he had researched the subject and knew of about 30 such deaths.SHC - where a person is burnt to ashes with no obvious trigger - has been, and still is, a contentious phenomenon. In the past 300 years only 200 cases have been documented and whilst science strives to "prove" a rational explanation, there are many who remain convinced that there is more to it than meets the eye.When Sir David Brewster listed it in his 1832 book Letters on Natural Magic addressed to Sir Walter Scott, he described the death of Grace Pett, the pipe-smoking wife of an Ipswich fisherman who spontaneously combusted in 1744.

Brewster wrote that Pett retired to bed having "drunk plentiful gin". When her daughter opened the kitchen door the next morning, she walked in to a hellish scene:"The trunk of the unfortunate woman was almost burned to ashes and appeared like a heap of charcoal," wrote Brewster. "There was no fire in the grate and a paper screen on the other side were untouched."Pett's death epitomises the circumstances of SHC. It often involves drink and no obvious source for the fire, with nearby combustible items left untouched. Furthermore, like all SHC cases, the body had been incinerated and body fat was present around the room.

View: Full Article | Source: The Scotsman

...oh my...what an interesting name for the article...*snickers*

yeah, so what exactly causes spontaneous human combustion??

its frightening at this late hour

I don't think that there is anything paranormal to SHC, working as a Firefighter I get to see all kinds of gruesome stuff, as well as the investigations that follow. One of the things that I have seen is that peoples flesh/fat does burn rather well, abeit slowly, similar to a candle.

Fires that occur inside closed rooms that are relatively air tight generally do not generate enough heat to breach walls as there is not enough oxygen to sustain continued combustion for long enough to get anywhere beyond the general area that the fire started; they generally burn themselves out over time and may smoulder for hours before dying completely.

I have never studied each and every case, but what I have seen and read about involved folks that either smoked or used candles, and that is enough to start a small fire. One of the products of fire is carbon monoxide, which has some very nasty effects on the human body, namely that it puts a person in deeper and deeper sleep with relatively small quatinities of smoke. Within a couple minutes of breathing toxic smoke, a coma is easily induced especially in someone who already has a challanged respiratory system (i.e smokers)

In a coma, a person can be on fire without the ability to wake up. Once the fire breaches whatever clothing they are wearing and starts melting the fat, they basically become a big gooey candle that burns, but rather slowly. If there is not enough material nearby to catch fire from the radient heat of the candleperson, then the fire will be isolated to their chair, or whatever they are seated on.

I did see one photo of a woman who had burned completely except for her legs that appeared untouched, but that stands to reason that heat and fire travel upward; if the fire were to start in the middle of the chair as in a dropped cigarette, they fire would burn the upper portion of hear body, as the tendons and skin in her thigh and knee melted through, her legs would drop and be unburnburned.

As i said, I have not seen or read every story, but everything I have seen has been explainable with a common understanding of what fire does in different situations.

Thanks Fluffybunny, SHC has intrigued me a bit over the years, and Ive watched quite a few documentaries on the subject, but none that quite explained in the way you just have.
As in the closed room stifling the fire and the way the womans legs seperated from the burning corpse.

Not that it was a human body, but in example just a couple of months ago we had a person in our town who went on vacation for a week. When they got back home they went into their bedroom to unpack and the recliner was burned to the metal frame, and other than soot, there was no other damage to anything else in the room.

The guy was a smoker and had often left his ashtray on the arm of his chair while reading. Somewhere along the line before they left for vacation the ashtray spilled into the chair between the arm and the cushion. He thought he had cleaned it up and pulled everything out, but that was not the case.

The room was closed up, and being a newer home it was very air tight. The room had enough air to burn the fabric and padding of the chair, but nothing else; it smouldered itself out and cooled off before any oxygen got to it.

Conversly if oxygen hits the fuel rich smoke that is starved for air(i.e. the door is opened while the fire is smouldering) you get what is called a backdraft; and all hell breaks loose and people get hurt.

It is referred to as the "Whoosh Factor". If you open the door and you hear a whoosh of air go past you into the room, you know you are likely to die.

If we come up to that kind of a situation where we see rich black smoke with a yellow tinge on the windows (Smoke that is just waiting to rapidly burn given the chance), we climb up on the roof and cut a hole in the ceiling to let the smoke and heat out of the room before we go in to spray water.

I dont drink , but I do smoke and am very overweight. So I not letting my wife read THIS Tread! I am well Insured and she's greedy!