bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

SCMP Reporter

There is a defensive tone about John Heymer's book on spontaneous human combustion (SHC), that strange phenomenon where people appear to burst into flames and burn to death.

  It is clear that in his attempts to 'get to the facts' of this mysterious happening, the retired British policeman has been occasionally ridiculed and often dismissed as ill-qualified for such an investigation.

  But his broad and naturally pragmatic approach has produced logical answers when others, in their more specialised, narrow fields, have failed to do so. This will not have been well received in the competitive world of science.

  This defensiveness does not, however, detract from what is an erudite and logical account of the 'facts'. His aim, as he points out more than once, was not to prove or disprove the existence of SHC but to find answers for occurrences he could not explain according to traditional or rational thinking.

  Far from wanting to prove the 'supernatural' aspects of SHC, Heymer's intention was to bring it into the realms of the real world, to show it is a rare but natural event.

  Heymer was a forensically-trained, scenes-of-crime officer in the Gwent police force in 1980 when he was called to a house to witness a death which he later determined was a result of SHC.

  'Lying on the carpet between the ashes and the shoes was a pair of male human feet clothed in socks. The undamaged feet protruded from short lengths of trouser-leg bottoms. From the upper, burned edges of the trouser legs emerged blackened leg bones which progressed to white calcined bones disintegrating at mid-thigh,' he writes.

  'The collapsed powdery bones merged into an amorphous mass of ash where the torso should have been. The remains of the trouser legs had a thin, charred edge as if cut by a laser beam. The transition from undamaged cloth to ash was immediate, with only the thinnest line of scorching to show the trousers had been burned. Beyond the burn line on the trousers the remaining material was in perfect condition. At the opposite end of the ashes lay a blackened, featureless skull, which appeared to have been shrunken.'   The remains of 73-year-old Henry Thomas would, Heymer later discovered, fit perfectly his theory of SHC. As well as the effect of fire on the body, it was the impact on the room that shocked him. Nothing apart from the wooden chair the old man had been sitting on and the carpet beneath his remains had burned, not even the loose covers on the sofa just two feet from the ashes.

   While most of his colleagues dismissed the case as a tragic accident - Thomas had fallen into the fire and burned to death - Heymer could not rationalise the circumstances.

  How, in a room that had sealed windows thus limiting the supply of oxygen, could a human body (which is mainly water) burn so violently that it was reduced to a pile of ashes while the rest of the room was virtually untouched?   Experts such as crematorium superintendents and manufacturers specify operating temperatures of 800 to 900 degrees centigrade to burn bodies. That, however, does not reduce the remains to calcified, white bones and certainly not to ashes.

  Many scientists and opponents of SHC believe the 'candle' or 'wick effect' can produce such devastating results.

  The candle effect assumes that an external source of ignition, such as a cigarette, falls on to a person's clothing.

  The clothing bursts into flames and forms what is effectively an external wick. The clothing melts the fat of the person which is absorbed into the clothing and burned, thus allowing the entire length of the body to be consumed.

  Heymer does not accept such rationale for a variety of reasons in the Thomas and other SHC cases, though he does accept there is evidence in some instances where this could be the explanation.

  Few fabrics are so combustible that when the smouldering end of a cigarette is applied they burst into flames. But if someone had dropped a cigarette and their clothing caught alight, would they not throw off their clothing, in the majority of cases, Heymer suggests?   Given that a person is unconscious or incapacitated, tests - admittedly on everything but humans - show the heat produced from such an effect fails to reduce bones to ashes or to calcify them.

  On the basis of Thomas and other examples, some witnessed, Heymer believes victims produce the fire themselves from within, that SHC is the result of some reaction within the human body that produces a chemical inferno.

  The person is still alive and conscious when the fire starts consuming them - usually from their abdomen - and is emitted like a blow torch. This was witnessed in the dead body of a tramp called Bailey who was found in a derelict house with a 10-centimetre slit in his abdomen from which was issuing, at force, a blue flame. It was extinguished by firemen putting a hose in the slit.

  Such a fierce fire can burn in a room with a limited oxygen supply as the oxygen comes from the chemical reaction from the human.

  The burning stops at the extremities, Heymer suggest, when the chain reaction loses momentum. The remainder of the room is little affected because the fire is contained within the victim.

  Heymer does not elaborate on why certain people become victims of SHC but he suggests they have one obvious thing in common - they were all lonely.

  Many will dismiss his suggestions but they push forward analysis and explanation of this thoroughly mysterious phenomenon.

  As Heymer says, the possibility of flight was dismissed when all around us birds were hovering.



Hot on the trail of human combustion