One of the subjects that has long been of intrest to me, is that of spontanious human combusting. SHC as it is called for short, is the phenomona of a person bursting into flame for no apparent reason. The flames burn very hot and are very localized. They destroy most of the body but leave objects in close proximity to the person relatively unburned.

There are theories on this occurance but no one is sure how or why it happens. It does happen even without scientific explanation. One theory is ball lightning which would produce similar results, but many of these instances seem to rule out this possibility just by the location of the death. A majority of these deaths have the opposite characteristics that one would see if a person was burned to death, such as the shrinking of the skull.

Crematorium Specialist have viewed photos of combustion victims and say they cannot duplicate the complete destruction of bones in such a short period of time. They find it even harder to believe that this could happen so completely in ordinary rooms such as living rooms, bathrooms, etc. There are over 100 unexplained fire deaths a year just in England. If just ten of these deaths are spontaneous combustion, then the number world could be well over 100.

Does the body have chemical reactions that science has yet to discover ? It seems that an internal reaction of some kind is the most likely explanation for these deaths, but what triggers it ? Can it be detected ? Avoided ?

One compiled database states the following statistics on possible reported cases:

1950's - 11 cases

1960's - 7 cases

1970's - 13 cases

1980's - 22 cases