
Originally Posted by
LadyGaia
Recently, I came across a news article about a man by the name of Frank Baker, who says he survived SHC. His witness is his friend, Willey. He also claims that he went to a doctor, and that this doctor called him back, saying he had burnt from the inside out. I also recall the case in India, of a baby named Rahul, whose family claimed that he had spontaneously combusted four times, and required hospital intervention.
Enzymes in the body break down chemicals to produce heat, so I'm wondering...
I have learnt not to rely on anecdotes, so I went to Google Scholar to see if there were papers about SHC.
It seems that reports of SHC go back to at least the 17th century (Thierry, W. et al., 2011), although there is sufficient reason to assume that these cases were being exaggerated by the witnesses and the media. The latter is stated in this paper (Adelson, L., 1952):
"The cases in the literature are readily explained as accidents or (rarely) as homicides. The severe generalized destruction of the body formerly considered to be at variance with the ordinary effect of fire is known now to be quite possible. It is not improbable that the degree of burning was exaggerated by writers and sensation seekers to help emphasize a point, a feature of news reporting not unknown today."
Anyway, I find it highly unlikely that enzyme activity would produce so much heat that the body would start to burn.
SHC seems to me as the ignition of body fat by an external source (e.g. matches).
From (Gromb, S. et al., 2000):
"It is now accepted that under certain circumstances, a body can burn by combustion of its own fat with little or no damage to the close surroundings, and that such combustion is never ‘spontaneous’, but is instead ignited by an external source of flame. (...) The external source which started the fire may disappear during the combustion process, which explains the absence of heat source when the corpse is discovered."