Smoldering Body Found Inside Unscorched Clothes

Authorities in Manner, India carried the still smoldering body of a woman to the district magistrate's office in 1907. The amazing thing about this case is that the woman's clothes were not even singed! The press reported the officers had not seen any sign of fire in the room in which the body had been discovered, either.

"The Wick Effect" has been established as probable cause for most cases of "spontaneous human combustion," but cases such as this one still leave some perplexed. It is certainly possible that the fire which consumed the woman was not hot enough to scorch her clothes, but to not even burn them - at all? According to "The Wick Effect," which has been demonstrated under controlled conditions on numerous occasions, it is certainly possible for upholstery, carpeting, and even wallpaper close to the victim to remain largely untouched, but the very clothes the deceased was wearing?

© C Harris Lynn, 2010