Spontaneous Human Combustion in Literature: Herman Melville

Herman Melville is best known for his work, Moby Dick.  Like much of Melville's work, Moby Dick was loosely based on a true story.  The same holds for his 1849 book, Redburn.  However, in the latter, Melville employs a popular trope of the time when a drunken, shanghaied sailor falls prey to spontaneous human combustion:

...two threads of greenish fire, like a forked tongue, darted out between the lips and in a moment, the cadaverous face was covered by a swarm of wormlike flames... [the body] burned before us, precisely like a phosphorescent shark in a midnight sea.

While some historians have questioned whether or not Herman Melville actually witnessed a case of spontaneous human combustion, the excerpt proves rather tellingly that he probably did not.  It was a common belief of the time that only drunks could succumb to such a demise, and the meme appears throughout the literature of the era.

© C Harris Lynn, 2011

Olga Stephens' Hot Career

Olga Worth Stephens was a 75-year-old actress from Dallas, Texas.  In October, 1964, witnesses say they saw Stephens burst into flames while sitting in her car.  Ms. Stephens burned to death before anyone could help her.

Olga Stephens' car was not damaged, nor did it contain anything that could have started the fatal blaze.

© C Harris Lynn, 2011

Spontaneous Human Combustion - Baby Seaton

11-month-old Peter Seaton was sleeping in his crib on a January night in 1939. Harold Huxstep said he heard screaming from the child's room and rushed to it to find the baby engulfed in flames. Huxstep, who was visiting the Seaton home, tried to save young Peter Seaton, but the intensity of the flames threw him across the hall.

Firemen put out the fire and investigated the incident, but could find no plausible explanation for the fire. Even more bizarre, the furniture beneath the child was barely damaged. In fact, none of the furniture in the nursery had been burned. Peter Seaton, by all accounts, was a victim of spontaneous human combustion.

© C Harris Lynn, 2011

Waymon Wood and the Warped Windshield

On March 1^st, 1953, Waymon Wood's body was found "crisped black" in the frontseat of his car. While the car, which contained a half a tank of gas, was unaffected, the windshield had bubbled and sagged inward from the intensity of the heat. Almost nothing was left of Wood's body.

The case has never been fully explained.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

Children Don't Smoke - Unless...

The Wick Effect has been forwarded as the answer to all cases of spontaneous combustion, but in order for the Wick Effect to occur, there has to be an actual, external, heat source to set the fire. Usually, the victim is considered to have been a smoker, sitting too close to a fire, or the like. But in the case of four month old Ricky Pruitt of Illinois, there was no discernible source of fire.

The infant died of severe burns in 1959 in his crib. Neither his clothes nor his bedding showed any sign of damage.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

No Flame, No Wick Effect

When investigators examined the charred remains of 52-year old Allen Small, they found the carpet beneath him had been scorched, but there was no sign of fire anywhere else in the small Deer Isle, Maine home.  In fact, the stove lids were all secured, and Small's unlit pipe set on an intact shelf a few yards away from his burned body. 

To this day, the 1949 case of "spontaneous human combustion" has yet to be fully explained.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

Burnin' Up the Dancefloor

Around Midnight on August 27^th, 1938, Phyllis Newcombe was leaving the dancefloor of the Chelmsford Shire Hall when she burst into a bright, blue flame. Though her date tried to beat-out the flames with his hands, Miss Newcombe was fatally burned before the ambulance arrived. Nothing else in the hall was damaged.

Coroners originally thought someone had set her dress alight with a cigarette, but Miss Newcombe's father proved in court that it would have taken an open flame to start it burning, and that a cigarette alone could not have ignited it. All of the witnesses from the dance hall swore no one struck a lighter or match at the time Newcombe went ablaze.

The case remains unsolved.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

Spontaneous Human Combustion in Literature: Mark Twain

Spontaneous human combustion was prolific throughout 19^th-Century literature.  It made appearances in books and stories from major writers, including Dickens, Melville, and (arguably) America's greatest humorist, Mark Twain.

In Life on the Mississippi, Twain details the death of one Jimmy Finn, a drunken sot.  This excerpt is from the book, published in 1883 (now in the public domain):

Jimmy Finn was not burned in the calaboose, but died a natural death in a tan vat, of a combination of delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion.  When I say natural death, it was a natural death for Jimmy Finn.

Obviously humorous, this account still includes spontaneous human combustion almost as an afterthought. While Twain was not a noted phenomenalist, he was -- and he remains -- a great intellectual; it seems Twain, like many of his day, believed whole-heartedly in spontaneous human combustion and associated such a death with alcoholics.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

'Engulfed in Flames'

While The Wick Effect has been demonstrated under controlled conditions many times, and is thought to explain the majority of cases involving "spontaneous human combustion," some cases remain inexplicable. Such is the case of Mary Carpenter, who was "engulfed in flames and reduced to a charred corpse" in mere minutes.

In full view of her husband and children!

This event occurred in England, off the coast of Norfolk on a cabin cruiser on July 29^th, 1938. The investigating officer "suppose[d] her clothes caught fire," but admitted he could not explain how this happened, nor why she burned so quickly. Also inexplicable: None of the family were injured, and the boat was not burned.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

The Human Torch

I do my best to classify these stories by tags, because I really want to make this information available to researchers, phenomenalists, and armchair paranormalists, but some stories defy the categories, no matter how well-crafted or numerous. This is one such story:

A woman from Antigua in August of 1929 began experiencing troublesome fires about her person: Her clothes and bedding repeatedly caught fire and were scorched when she awoke each morning, yet she herself remained unburned. Neighbors who helped the woman replace her wardrobe and bedding corroborated her unusual story.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

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

Poltergeist or ESP? Binbrook, Lincolnshire, England

At the turn of the last century, the Reverend A.C. Custance said bizarre things started happening at the rectory in Binbrook, Lincolnshire, England. In December of 1904, the Reverend reported objects began moving of their own accord -- some even caught fire. But it was in January of 1905 that a farmer in Binbrook walked into his kitchen to discover the servant girl sweeping the kitchen, unaware of the flames leaping from her back. He rushed to her aid and smothered the fire, but she was badly burned.

These cases seem to suggest Dæmonic activity, as poltergeists are generally associated with a specific place or person. Poltergeists are also rarely associated with fire but often associated with girls -- specifically, adolescents. Could it be that the servant girl mentioned in the account, recorded by famed Phenomenalist, Charles Fort, also worked, or attended services at, the local rectory and was the source of all the associated phenomenon the small village of Binbrook experienced in the early 1900s? Or was Binbrook perhaps host to a Supernatural entity?

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

The Weird, Blue Flames

Though not spontaneous, this case deserves mention due to the... just plain weirdness of it! Again, this is not literally a case of "spontaneous human combustion," which has largely been explained-away by the "wick effect" theory, but an incredible case, nonetheless:

According to Dr. De Brus in the March, 1829 edition of the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, a patient's hands sporadically burned with a blue flame for several hours after the subject had helped his brother, whose clothes had caught fire. The account states the blue fire continued to "flicker" over the patient's hands for hours and only constant submersion in water extinguished it.

The account does not detail the nature of the fire which ignited the subject's brother's clothes, but the specific detail of "blue" flame seems to suggest it was different from the fire he'd helped extinguish. However, this sounds a lot like a case of an alcohol-based (ethanol, maybe?) fire. Blue flames only occur in the hottest fires, and alcohol is known to produce such an effect. It can also stay on the skin and surface of materials for a long time.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010

Police Baffled by Victim's Burns

Knoxville, TN police have no idea how a 56-year old victim suffered 2^nd and 3^rd -degree burns to his hands and face when only a single candle was found to be burning in his bathroom.  The OddBlog does: The man burned his hands and face with a candle.

Knoxville police remain stumped.

© C Harris Lynn, 2008