Have you wondered about or worried about the horror stories you have heard about Spontaneous Human Combustion(SHC_?)
Or have you never heard of it? Over the past 300 years, there have been more than 200 reports of persons burning to a crisp for no apparent reason.
The first known account of spontaneous human combustion came from the Danish anatomist Thomas Bartholin in 1663, who described how a woman in Paris "went up in ashes and smoke" while she was sleeping. The straw mattress on which she slept was unmarred by the fire. In 1673, a Frenchman named Jonas Dupont published a collection of spontaneous combustion cases in his work "De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis."
Not all spontaneous human combustion victims simply burst into flames. Some develop strange burns on their body which have no obvious source, or emanate smoke from their body when no fire is present.
And not every person who has caught fire has died -- a small percentage of people have actually survived what has been called their spontaneous combustion.
On April 9, 1744, Grace Pett, 60, an alcoholic residing in Ipswich England, was found on the floor by her daughter like "a log of wood consumed by a fire, without apparent flame." Nearby clothing was undamaged.
In December 1966, the body of 92-year-old Dr. J. Irving Bentley was discovered in his Pennsylvania home by a meter reader. Actually, only part of Dr. Bentley's leg and slippered foot were found. The rest of his body had been burned to ashes. A hole in the bathroom floor was the only evidence of the fire that had killed him; the rest of the house remained perfectly intact.
How could a man catch fire -- with no apparent source of a spark or flame -- and then burn so completely without igniting anything around him? Dr. Bentley's case and several hundred others like it have been labeled "spontaneous human combustion" (SHC). Although he and other victims of the phenomenon burned almost completely, their surroundings, and even sometimes their clothes, remained virtually untouched.
Some theories are presented about the causes, but no one really knows.
This source was used and will tell you more if interested,also Wikipedia.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/shc.htm
6 comments:
When I was young and first heard about this, it terrified me! I thought I could be sitting at home watching t.v. and suddenly burst into flames for no reason!
Wow! Interesting read!! Now i'm going to be paranoid haha!
Awsome. I've always loved reading about topics like this.
Here's a trivia question for you: which Charles Dickens novel had a character die of spontaneous combustion?
That is one scary photo....
Thank you for your comments.As it goes contra I read it when preparing this but do not remember that Dickens character..what is the answer?
I remember the first time I heard of this and how incredible I thought it was. It blows the mind
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