Is Spontaneous Combustion a real thing?

Eeeek!

Grandma was lit!

Nice legs.

I think spontaneous cumbustion is also known as "nocturnal emissions."

it's a misnomer in common usage to refer to cases with an unknown or undiscovered source(s).

It gained traction in what we might deem as early "just say no" campaigns, in addition to other moral crusades, as an act of g-d against the wicked. Or in some cultures, a higher power being bestowed upon a lowly mortal for a righteous act of protest. . . a reflection upon why self immolation to suicide bombers capture such esteem from some groups . . . more than a burning bush.

Now there are factors that can lead to spot burning and death but usually the sources are well determined in those cases and don't qualify under the definition of s.c.

So we can't just randomly burst into flames, R5?

It's why I've always been afraid to do that frat boy thing where you light your farts on fire. I was afraid I'd have so much gas in me that I'd just explode.

[quote]Is Spontaneous Combustion a real thing?

Oh please, Oh please, Oh please, Oh please, Oh please,

Oh please, Oh please, Oh please, Oh please, Oh please,

Oh please, Oh please, Oh please, Oh please, Oh please

A character in Bleak House by Charles Dickens spontaneously combusted. He was an alcoholic and highly flammable.

I read about spontaneous combustion as a child reading my grandfather's True, The Man's Magazine. True was one of those mags full of adventure and weird stuff. I assumed that it was a real thing that's hard to explain. I never worried about bursting into flames myself.

There was supposedly a very famous case in Johnstown, Pennsylvania and I had a friend from college who knew the family and said it happened. But then again lots of weird ghostly shit happens in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

Jack London was building a huge beautiful mansion to house all his mementos from traveling around the world in a wooded area of Sonoma nearby where some early pioneers had died and were buried. The house, called Wolf House, and was almost finished, they had not moved in yet, and it was engulfed in flames and burned down completely.

London, who was never in good health to begin with was a completely broken man at the loss, especially because he believed that someone he knew must have been an arsonist since only a handful of people even knew about the house. His physical health declined precipitously and he was dead within two years, even through they had started to rebuild the house on a smaller scale at another location.

Many decades later forensic scientists came to the conclusion that when some of the floors were being finished and treated with linseed oil, the workers who were lazy, or unknowing, had left the oil soaked rags laying in a pile and they must of spontaneously combusted, as they are known to do, and burnt down the house. Even when you learn to paint with oils, you are always reminded to be very careful with linseed oil soaked rags. So there are always possibilities that this is a source of some of those spontaneous combustion episodes.

Dataloungers are quite used to bursting into flames.

Repo Man is intense.

No, but stigmata definitely is.

Well to be honest and from personal experience ....

When I was growing up, it happened to two kids in my neighborhood. One was playing dodgeball on the blacktop at our elementary school. I was nearby and didn't see him combust but saw him running around burning to death.

The other was this fat kid who was getting out of a swimming pool. I wasn't there but some friends were. They said he fell down on the water, floating around while burning, and leaving a lot of grease floating on the water.

Other than that, the only time I ever heard of it was when, a few years ago, a fellow in my apartment complex burst into flame while walking his dog. Luckily, the dog was okay.

Dickens’ description in Bleak House is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read.

R16, where in the fuck do you live where people are just lighting on fire all around you?

That's what happens when you have a diet too rich in magnesium

Lol R16.

Is your name, by any chance..... DAMIEN???

There are one or two well documented cases

....

My Aunt Shelly's body combusted in her coffin at the funeral home. It started with a little blue flame under her arm and flashed a few times like a phosphorus fire and just rolled over her body. They had the bottom of the coffin closed and she started cooking from about just lower than her waist on down. It smelled like Carolina pork with a very sour mop. Horrible. And the stink of the casket plastic melting and the smoke.

People ran out of the parlor screaming, knocking over chairs and each other. I had run to the back to help get my great uncle back into his wheel chair and my brother got him out. His hip had broken and he died about three weeks later. I just stood in the back with a handkerchief over my face while the funeral director and the organist were spraying fire extinguishers. It was like in Godzilla movies where they think they're destroyed the monster but it keeps reappearing through the fog and mist. The flame stayed low but you could feel the heat from across the big parlor.

Aunt Shelly's body burned through her neck and her burnt head rolled back with her wig coming off. (She had cancer.) Then it all went out.

Her dress was polyester (I had nothing to do with the arrangements.) and had melted into her chest and stomach, but otherwise it was like her top part and bottom part all burned to chunks of gunk and ash. I didn't see her legs but I was told they were completely gone, but the shoes were fine with her feet in them.

It ruined the funeral and left Uncle Robert dead. Aunt Shelly's children were mostly outside smoking so they missed the worst of it. But my mother and her two sisters still are traumatized. They think they're going to "catch fire." For me the worst of it is the sound and smell stuck in my head. The police and hazmat people investigated for two weeks, there were legal issues with the funeral home damage. Her children eventually had a gravesite ceremony but my stupid cousin Fred stood there with a kitchen fire extinguisher. "Just in case," he said.

My dad gave me these books by a man named Frank Edwards when I was an extremely impressionable kids. One called "Stranger than Science" which had stories of SC in it..OMG I was scared to death that I ,as a ten yr old, would burst into flames and all they would find were a small pile off ashes in a chair

@r22, Is that one of those Jewish lasers I've heard so much about?

As with most hard to believe events, spontaneous human combustion is pretty much BS. most of these people probably were near a fire source and either passed out from alcohol or drugs or died of natural causes and simply caught on fire from whatever source of flame they were close to.

It’s a particularly western phenomenon.

It’s therefore a cultural construction

Spontaneous Combustion - the movie

This thread is better than the movie of the week!

There is an explanation for it. I can't look it up right now, but it has to do with what R11 says, an outside source providing the spark and then the body turning essentially into a candle as the fat and other tissue melts and burns.

The NAZIs found that the human body was incredibly difficult to burn, at least many of them at once, and at a kiln temperature that was not extremely wasteful of fuel. They had a modicum of success stacking the obese bodies on top of the pile, and letting the body fat run down into the interior of the mound. Large aircraft engine fans were also used to "pump" fresh air into the burning chamber to increase combustion. Combustion must have three things: Oxygen, Heat, and Fuel, take any one of them away and you don't have a fire. They finally gave up and decided that they would have to use HUGE amounts of gasoline and kerosene to increase the burning temperature to make the process as efficient as they needed. (Massively efficient). The high command was furious about having to divert such massive stores of fuel away from the front, to fuel the ovens. Himmler himself had to give the order. He did. The rest is history. The point is: if the Germans had this much trouble burning bodies, something else must be going on in the photos above.........indeed, even in a modern, present-day crematorium, the temperature has to be up around 2000F to get a complete burn down to ashes.........I see no evidence of a 2000F fire in the above photos.........most of the rooms above would be obliterated if there had been that kind of fire.

It’s not for nothing that the bodies are always *the* hardest item to get rid of, physically, in murders and crimes

I would read about spontaneous combustion in Reader's Digest as a kid in the 70s - that and quicksand terrified me.

R23 wins!

*faints*

R33 There are multiple comics who do routines about how terrifying quicksand was as a child and how it turned out to be such a nonentity as an adult.

^ This^ I'm still deathly afraid of quicksand even though I've never seen it nor do I have any idea as to what it really is

When I was growing up, my neighborhood was adjacent to a state park. A few hundred feet in was a quicksand bog, which many of my neighbors. would use to dispose of unwanted visitors. It was kind of silly, because the bodies would never completely sink, which meant having to return to fetch the body, wrap it up in plastic and dispose of it at the landfill down the road.

Sometimes, it can be hard to tell the difference between spontaneous combustion and a routine grease fire.

Readers Digest has a lot to answer for. Quicksand. That pirate’s treasure on Oak Island. OTOH, I have an extensive vocabulary.

“Spontaneous combustion, Dolores, can sometimes be an unhappy women’s best friend.”

[quote] Sometimes, it can be hard to tell the difference between spontaneous combustion and a routine grease fire.

Especially on Datalounge, where so many are condemned to burn in grease fires.

"Die in a Grease fire" sounds so much more bitchy than, "May you spontaneously combust!"

It only happens to women wearing skirts and high heels.

Gives a new, twisted meaning to Gay Flamers.

Rofl R43.

Based on photographic "evidence" from the 1970's, it would seem so.

Apparently only old white women wearing heels and stockings, will spontaneously combust.

Another old woman in heels burst into flames!

So real there’s even a song about it!

And another...

Oh, dear!

One more!

If you’ve ever taken Dexedrine during the dog days of summer, you’ll believe in it.

R 33, R35, R36 I just watched some YouTube video a couple of days ago that explained the cultural phenomenon of the prevalence of quicksand. Quicksand exists, but it's quite rare. It was, however, a special effect that was intuitively impressive and also feasible in early movies until the 80s, up to a point where kind of every adventure movie had a quicksand scene for drama.

That combusto gal shown in r49 is the fakest thing ever.

DLers combust in greasefires.

[quote] That combusto gal shown in R49 is the fakest thing ever.

I love her heels!

Where can I get a pair?

The human body doesn’t burn easily, as someone mentioned before. Especially not alone without the entire house in flames. It’s a freak occurrence that can’t be explained by something as simple as leaving a lit cigarette and falling asleep—only the clothes and outside skin would burn, not the entire internal organs and bones.

How does science explain it?

I do believe the phenomenon exists. Why I do is that it would incredibly complicated to stage. In the above pictures, you would have to kill a person, saw off limbs, cremate the torso and then cart it all back and singe the floor without leaving an obvious residue. Is any case known that didn't affect a human but an animal?

We are on average 60% water (even our bones are 31% water) so how is it possible?

^the rest is grease

This is not a real thing.

Neither are those wand things that find gold.

Neither is the tooth fairy.

People are so stupid anymore.

[quote][R33] There are multiple comics who do routines about how terrifying quicksand was as a child and how it turned out to be such a nonentity as an adult.

For "multiple comics" and "nonentity" (this about quicksand), OH, FUCKING DEAR.

ESL and/or pre-drunk/drunk/post-drunk posting?

[quote]R59: People are so stupid anymore.

Yes, dear. "They" certainly are.

Flamers are real.

[quote] People are so stupid anymore.

Ironyproof.

Yes. It is a real thing. Unusual, but does occur.

Associated with those (who rarely witness it), a blue flame emanating from “within” the human body and occasionally observed via orifices or charred exteriors. [A poster described this above.] Blue flames - as we know - are of a much higher intensity and initiated - and sustained - via the corporeal system burn rapidly, and hence, do not impact exterior objects as a rule.

Thus, the mystifying remains of ashes on chairs, beds, linens and even clothes untouched. This is an event that truly begins “innerly” and is the human equivalent of evaporation of the human body in a manner akin to that of the workings of a microwave. Consciousness chooses to vapourize the physical elements of the human form: quickly.

You are so full of it, R64.

The ladies were probably drenched in Youth Dew, and their bodies protested.

R23: your story would’ve been perfect for 6 Feet Under.

Don't forget that spontaneous combustion is a real phenomenon. Spontaneous HUMAN combustion is another thing.

R55 et al.,

[quote]The scientific consensus is that incidents which might appear as spontaneous combustion did in fact have an external source of ignition, and that spontaneous human combustion without an external ignition source is extremely implausible. Pseudoscientific hypotheses have been presented which attempt to explain how SHC might occur without an external flame source.

... [quote]Almost all postulated cases of SHC involve people with low mobility due to advanced age or obesity, along with poor health. Victims show a high likelihood of having died in their sleep, or of having been unable to move once they had caught fire.

[quote]Cigarettes are often seen as the source of fire, as the improper disposal of smoking materials causes one in every four fire deaths in the United States. Natural causes such as heart attacks may lead to the victim dying, subsequently dropping the cigarette, which after a period of smouldering can ignite the victim's clothes.

[quote]The "wick effect" hypothesis suggests that a small external flame source, such as a burning cigarette, chars the clothing of the victim at a location, splitting the skin and releasing subcutaneous fat, which is in turn absorbed into the burned clothing, acting as a wick. This combustion can continue for as long as the fuel is available. This hypothesis has been successfully tested with pig tissue and is consistent with evidence recovered from cases of human combustion. The human body typically has enough stored energy in fat and other chemical stores to fully combust the body; even lean people have several pounds of fat in their tissues. This fat, once heated by the burning clothing, wicks into the clothing much as candle wax is drawn into a lit candle wick, providing the fuel needed to keep the wick burning. The protein in the body also burns, but provides less energy than fat, with the water in the body being the main impediment to combustion. However, slow combustion, lasting hours, gives the water time to evaporate slowly. In an enclosed area, such as a house, this moisture will recondense nearby, possibly on windows. Feet don't typically burn because they often have the least fat; hands also have little fat, but may burn if resting on the abdomen, which provides all of the necessary fat for combustion.

[quote]Scalding can cause burn-like injuries, sometimes leading to death, without setting fire to clothing. Although not applicable in cases where the body is charred and burnt, this has been suggested as a cause in at least one claimed SHC-like event.

[quote]Brian J. Ford has suggested that ketosis, possibly caused by alcoholism or low-carb dieting, produces acetone, which is highly flammable and could therefore lead to apparently spontaneous combustion.

[quote]Brian J. Ford has suggested that ketosis, possibly caused by...(...)... low-carb dieting, produces acetone, which is highly flammable and could therefore lead to apparently spontaneous combustion.

OMG!

I had a book called Unsolved Mysteries by Colin and Damien Wilson. Pretty sure they had a picture in there allegedly about some woman who combusted. Like her foot or something. It is one of the stranger books.

Hahaha R69.

Looks like all those Keto-Diet Gym Meatheads are going to burn in their own grease fires!!

Gurls, bye!

R68 I mean, if that won’t convince you to stop eating an extremely low carb diet and/or lay off the booze, I guess you’re just asking to die in a fire of your own grease.

Haha! I knew that portion of the article would resonate here.

YOU CAN ALL BURN IN GREASE FIRES!!!

That funeral story is something else….have been laughing all afternoon every time it comes to mind!

R23 that is an incredible story!!!! Is it true? If so what was the explanation for her combustion?! Tell us more please!!!!!

Bump

I wonder if Erna spontaneously combusted?