All fired up ... Dr Chen became interested in spontaneous combustion after seeing gruesome pictures of cases in a book. Photo - John Selkirk.
Spontaneous combustion has fired many imaginations, including Charles Dickens’s. Yvonne Martin reports.
THE DOMINION - Wednesday November 4 1998, p13.
If there is one great myth facing burnout before the new mlllenmum, it is spontaneous human combustion. That is because scientists all over the world are pouring cold water on the human fireball phenomenon faster than advocates can come up with new cases. The latest academic to scotch the myth is a New Zealander, Xiao Dong Chen, an Associate Professor at Auckland University's Chemical and Materials Engineering Department and an expert on spontaneous combustion. He says that in each alleged case of spontaneous human combustion, there is a rational and chemical explanation, if all the circumstances are known. In the past six weeks, Dr Chen has been giving lectures at universities in Auckland, Adelaide and Sydney on the improbability that humans can ignite from within, as coal piles and haystacks are known to do.
"It comes down to common sense. Could you or I sit there, without doing anything about it, if our bodies were on fire?" asks Beijing-born Dr Chen.
"You have to be somehow dead or unconscious or in some kind of a trance to stand that sort of process. And if you sit down and think about it, where is the fire's start point? There isn't one."
The concept of spontaneous human combustion was first made famous by Charles Dickens's horrific description of the death of Krook, the rag dealer in Bleak House.
Believers allege that victims have been reduced to piles of ash in seconds, leaving just lower limbs or feet, while the rest of the room remains untouched.
Much of the skeleton disappears, though it would be resistant to burning even at such temperatures. Explanations have included ball lightning, vampires, psychic suicide, magnetic storms and the wrath of God.
Dr Chen's conclusions back a study of 200 alleged cases, presented to the Edinburgh International Science Festival earlier this year.
David Pescod, biologist and librarian at the Linnean Society of London, says the cases invariably involve a careless cigarette and a human wearing flammable clothing.
One photo showing only a pair of legs left in a chair, from which advocates argued that the rest of the skeleton had mysteriously burned, was taken after scientists had removed the rest of the bones for investigation.
A group of United States scientists went a step further for a BBC television programme, conducting an experiment in which they torched a dead pig wrapped in blankets and doused in petrol to prove that a carcass can sustain an intense fire for long periods. They believed that they had proved the so-called "wick effect", in which the person's clothes catch fire accidentally and act like a candle wick, heating the body to temperatures where fat melts, and feeding the fire for hours. Within two minutes, the petrol poured over the pig had burned off, but the fire continued to burn. Three hours later, the fire was still burning, and temperatures of more than 800 degrees celsius were measured. After five hours, the classic signs of spontaneous human combustion began to emerge: the bones began to turn to ash, while the rest of the room was relatively untouched.
Dr Chen says the experiment proves that fat is a fuel, "But everyone knows that anyway". He says what it did not, and could not show was how a body caught fire without a source of ignition. "The pig experiment is very subjective. Fires need fuel, a source of ignition and oxygen. "In this experiment, all the materials were there. In spontaneous human combustion, most people are mystified by the fact that they didn't know what caused it."
Dr Chen first became interested in human combustion as an engineering student completing a PhD at Canterbury University in the late 1980s, when he was shown a book about cases. The gruesome images infiltrated his dreams at night and fuelled his curiosity in the fiery phenomenon. Now the only "mystery" for Dr Chen is what the reports of alleged cases omit, like what the so-called victims were doing before or during the blaze. Usually there is a chemical, rather than paranormal, explanation, he says.
For example, the person may have consumed or smothered themselves in large quantities of alcohol or some other fuel. "If you drink a lot of alcohol or, say, petrol, the channels and pipelines in your body will be full of combustible gas. A flick of a lighter, say if the person smokes, could cause fire."
Take the case of Gerda Heiser, a 28year-old German tourist who was sunning herself on a beach in the Caribbean when she reportedly burst into flames and burned to a crisp. Dr Chen says it is possible that the suntan lotion she doused herself in had a high alcohol content and acted as fuel once she was on fire.
That still does not explain the source of ignition, but Dr Chen says children's experiments using a magnify ing glass show that it is possible to concentrate the sun's rays to cause fire.
Just as mysterious is the case of a fire-and-brimstone preacher, Franz Lueger, who, according to Austrian news reports, exploded in flames after warning followers that they were heading for the blazing inferno of hell. The reports said that though the evangelist was consumed by the intense fire-storm, the Bible he clutched in his hand was not harmed. "Again he could have done something to himself involving chemicals on the inside or externally. "Just because there seems to be no cause doesn't mean there isn't one," says Dr Chen.
But in a third case, the cause is more obvious. In 1996, an elderly man was apparently "consumed" along with his mattress. An oxygen canister by his bed was switched on, and the man was a heavy smoker and drinker. There is evidence that he lit a cigarette, which Dr Chen says would burn furiously in oxygen.
The Fire Service has no recorded cases of spontaneous human combustion in New Zealand. Dave Noble, regional fire investigator in Auckland, has investigated more than 500 fires and does not know of any. "The closest I've come to a case that looked like one was a woman who fell over a heater. The heater was plugged in and it was on," he says. "Personally, I don't think it [spontaneous human combustion] can possibly happen." He says the latest literature from the International Association of Arson Investigators in the United States also refutes the phenomenon.
Denis Dutton, a Canterbury University philosopher and Skeptics Society spokesman, says our language is littered with fiery metaphors about passion and anger - having "a soul on fire" or "being hot about a colour". "It's just a fantasy leap from that normal language to the idea that the human body itself could catch on fire," he says. "It seems to have an intuitive plausibility. Something weird, uncanny and grisly is always going to have an attraction for people, and that's how stories like this get started."
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