An article from the newspaper secret power devilish fire. Secret power. Creation of financial systems

Since ancient times, people have been accompanied by strange mystical phenomena. One of these phenomena - "Devil's fire" - spontaneous ignition of a person from the inside. During excavations in Thebes, a papyrus was found describing "the transformation of a priest into a fiery torch." There is evidence of such emergencies from ancient Greek authors and medieval monks. And at the beginning of the 18th century, they began to be registered in police records, and therefore they can be considered quite reliable. In 1731, the whole of Italy was shocked by the case of Countess Carnelia Bundy of Kasina. In the morning the maid found in her mistress's bedroom a heap of ashes, in which lay the head, three fingers and both legs of the countess. This death was never explained, because no traces of the fire were found.

About 5 years later, an English newspaper published an article about the mysterious death of the writer George Temple Johnson. At half past three in the night, he was found dead in his room. The lower part of the body was completely burnt, although there were no traces of fire on the clothes. What happened then? Why didn't the clothes burn? - neither firefighters nor scientists could answer these questions.

Along with the fatalities, there were also the lucky ones who managed to survive from this phenomenon.

A resident of Russia Valentina Fedorovna Aseeva escaped from the "Devil's Fire". One night, Valentina felt severe pain in her heart and fainted. Her husband called an ambulance, but soon the woman was engulfed in flames. The husband began to put out the fire and he succeeded. But the consequences of spontaneous combustion were terrible: the left side of the body was covered with blisters, the hair on the head was singed to the roots. However, the nightgown and the sheet remained intact. The doctors and firefighters who arrived could not explain what had happened.

There were more cases, but it makes no sense to write about them because the outcome was the same. And now we turn to the assumptions of scientists on this score.

In ancient times, these cases were called "Devil's fire". It was believed that the victim sold his soul to the Prince of Darkness (Satan), but then violated a secret agreement, for which he paid.

Paranormal researchers have proposed this hypothesis. SFL (spontaneous combustion of people) as a poltergeist is a manifestation of cosmic energy controlled by someone's will. Like the "dormant force" that accumulates at the base of the spine, the deadly fire "slumbers" in the human body until there is a "short circuit" of his normal bioenergy and cosmic energy. In this regard, one can only object that the "dormant force" controlled by someone, in fact, is no different from the "devil's fire" of the Prince of Darkness and therefore does not explain the physical nature of the "powerful heat flash" leading to the ignition of a living body.

In the 19th century, it was believed that only drunkards, whose bodies were alcoholized to such an extent that they flashed from an accidental spark, for example, from a smoking pipe, became a victim of spontaneous combustion. But this hypothesis did not hold out for a long time. Many victims did not smoke or drink, and this hypothesis does not explain why clothing does not suffer.

The most perfect version is considered to be the assumption of the Russian academician V. Kaznacheev. He believes that unknown phenomena occur in the human body, in which the basics of cellular energy contain thermonuclear reactions, and the cells themselves are real nuclear reactors, and if a malfunction occurs, a nuclear reaction will begin, which leads to spontaneous combustion. Only one thing can be objected to this hypothesis: why don't clothes burn?

Until scientists have unraveled the mystery of the origin of FMF, we can only hope that these cases are very rare and the likelihood of becoming a victim is significantly small.

Pyrokinesis is a psychophysical phenomenon related to psychokinesis, causing the ignition of various objects due to the unconscious spontaneous psi-influence of a person. Pyrokinesis is often observed with poltergeists.

Cases when people suddenly flared up from a fire of unknown origin and burned out in a few seconds, leaving behind only a handful of ashes, have been known since time immemorial. It was found that during spontaneous combustion of human bodies, the flame temperature reached 3000 degrees.

It is curious, however, that flammable materials (such as, for example, bed linen, cotton wool or paper) that were in the vicinity of the victim turned out to be intact, i.e. the man in bed blazed with a bright flame, but the sheets and blanket remained unharmed.

Devil's fire, or pyrokinesis, is not a figment of fantasy, but a real fact, however, from the point of view of physics and chemistry, such a phenomenon is impossible. It is known that the human body consists of two-thirds of water and that combustion requires a significant amount of energy, which is not in a living organism. Even to burn a deceased in a crematorium, a temperature of two thousand degrees and a time of at least four hours are required. Even under such conditions, in any case, it is necessary to additionally crush the charred bones of the skeleton in order to turn them into ash.

Researchers have noted two types of fires. Turning the victim to ash and sintering him into a charred mass. In some cases, some part of the body is not affected by the fire.

Some try to relate the inflammation of people to their internal state. It was noted that many of the victims were in deep stress. Other scientists believe that a mysterious phenomenon appears in connection with the impact of ball lightning appearing near the victim. Its energy penetrates the human biofield, which leads to instant ignition.

Relatively recently, a scientist, Japanese Harugi Ito, also put forward one hypothesis. In his opinion, the cause of pyrokinesis is a change in the passage of time. In the normal state, the human body generates and radiates into space a certain amount of heat, but if inside our body, for some reason, the processes occurring in nature suddenly slow down sharply physical processes(including the movement of atoms), and on the surface of the skin their speed remains constant, then the generated heat simply does not have time to be radiated into space and incinerates a person.

V Lately a number of researchers generally adhere to a fantastic point of view. The source of energy in a living cell is supposedly a thermonuclear reaction. They believe that under certain conditions unknown energy processes appear in the cells of the body, similar to those that occur during an explosion. atomic bomb, which are not reflected on the molecules of neighboring matter (for example, on clothes or upholstery of a car).

Spontaneous combustion is extremely rare. In the twentieth century, 19 similar phenomena were recorded.

In the 18th century, the mysterious death of Countess Bundy of Kasena took place. All that was left of her was her head, three toes, and both feet in a heap of ash four feet from the bed. At the same time, neither the floor nor the bed kept any traces of fire.

On August 1, 1869, there was also one similar incident, documented. In a report by a certain Dr. Bertholl to the "Medical and Surgical Society", one can find a report about a woman who was burned to death in her own apartment. According to an eyewitness, the body looked like it had been in a smelting furnace. But everything around was intact, only the floor burned out a little - just in the place where the corpse lay. The author of the report is surprised that the victim did not utter a single cry, did not call for help - the residents of the neighboring apartments did not hear anything ...

In the late 1950s, 19-year-old Mabel Andrews was dancing with her friend Billy Clifford in a London discotheque and suddenly caught fire. However, Clifford and other people who were nearby tried to help her, she died on the way to the hospital. According to Billy, he did not see the sources of fire near, and it seemed to him that the fire was coming out directly from her body.

In 1950, a Mexican court considered an outstanding criminal case. Mario Orozco, the husband of the innkeeper, was tried, accused of having burned his wife Manola alive in the presence of many people. Mario was facing the death penalty.

That evening, as a rule, clients (soldiers of the local garrison, passing merchants) dined in a hall on the first floor of the hotel, dimly lit by two lamps and reflections of a fire from a fireplace, where an appetizing goose was roasting. The hostess's husband slowly rotated the spit so that not a drop of fat was wasted, and the carcass was evenly covered with a crispy crust. A young maid served dishes and bottles, smiling at the mustachioed military and deftly dodging daring slaps on her round ass. The hostess herself, observing the order, was sitting in a massive armchair.

Suddenly the peaceful idyll was broken by a heart-rending cry. The hostess twitched in the chair, bulging her eyes and opening her mouth, and tongues of fire ran over her body. A moment later, Aunt Manola was gone, and her clothes, sprinkled with ashes, were lying on an intact armchair. The police who broke into the hotel immediately arrested her husband and took him to jail.

However, the bodies of victims of pyrokinesis do not always burn to the ground. Last year in Mongolia, a local shepherd, Arzhanda, was hit by a fire on a country road. The "black mannequin" was found in a seated position. His whole body, head and hands were sintered into a solid resinous mass. But what is most striking is that the clothes of the deceased did not suffer from the fire. They also did not find any traces of flame around, and the air temperature was 15 degrees below zero.

The partner of the deceased was detained and charged with premeditated murder. When the investigator came to the prison, instead of the suspect, he found a pile of charred bones with partially preserved pieces of meat. It was not possible to find an explanation for the tragedy that happened ...

On a country road near Pickville, Kentucky, in November 1960, the burned bodies of five men were found sitting in free positions in a car parked by the side of the road. The investigator claims that there were no traces of the victims' attempts to get out of the car.

Dara Metzel in 1969 was sitting in her car on one of the streets of Luxembourg and, suddenly ignited, burned to the ground in a matter of seconds. Several people tried to help her, but to no avail. When it was all over, it turned out that the interior lining and seats of the car were not damaged.

Around the same time, Texas resident Michael Lifshin was found dead in his car. His face and hands were burned, but for some reason the fire did not touch his hair and eyebrows. Since his car was in the garage, the police decided that the unfortunate man had committed suicide by poisoning himself with the exhaust gases. However, the body was so hot that it burned your fingers.

An absolutely fantastic case occurred in the Canadian province of Alberta, when two daughters of the Melby spouses broke out at the same instant, being in different parts of the city, at a distance of a kilometer from each other.

No less mysterious incident occurred in 1989 near Munich. 13-year-old Utah was playing the accordion when her dad, Werner Rothke, heard the girl's desperate screams. He rushed to her and saw her, engulfed in flames, rushed about the room. Utah had about 30 percent of his skin burned, and Werner himself received second-degree burns. Later, the girl explained that as soon as she began to play the instrument, she was engulfed in fire from all sides.

In the spring of 1993, residents of the small Peruvian town of Orellano, gathered in church for Sunday service, witnessed a spectacle that shook them to the core. The priest preaching the sermon was in shock. His angry emotional speech, dedicated to hopeless sinners, who await Gehenna of fire, caused the believers to tremble, and they earnestly crossed themselves with the sign of the cross, offering prayers for this cup to pass. Suddenly the sermon was interrupted by an inhuman cry. The priest shouted, frozen in an unnatural posture with his hands raised to the sky.

Literally a moment later, the parishioners, numb with horror, saw a tongue of flame burst from his chest, and he himself turned into a pillar of fire. People rushed out of the church, crushing each other in the doorway, and none of them saw what the investigators later found. On the ambo lay the whole and unharmed clothes of the priest, inside which a handful of ashes darkened - all that remained of the servant of God.

Spontaneous combustion of a person is a rare phenomenon and, perhaps, therefore, has not yet been studied. The point is not even that this phenomenon is based on some process unknown to science. Rather, on the contrary - everything seems to be clear and known for a long time ... The human body contains combustible materials, such as fat. It sounds, of course, not very pleasant, but human fat burns well. We all know well the rite of cremation, which is probably as old as mankind itself. But this article is about spontaneous combustion. Why is it happening?

Forensic scientists shrug their shoulders

In the world of forensic science, there are many cases when firefighters and police officers discovered the remains of people who were burned to death under unexplained circumstances. For example, in the middle of the room lies a burnt body, and furniture and interior items are almost untouched by the fire. And the body was burned in a strange way. Where the body was, there is a pile of ash, and the arms and legs, sometimes the head, are intact. More often than not, a burned-out person was the victim of violence. He was first killed and then burned to fake an accident. But sometimes the crime was completely ruled out, but the half-burnt corpse was there, and the criminologists threw up their hands in bewilderment. It was believed that ignition can be caused by high temperatures arising from internal chemical reactions that can occur at the atomic level. The combustion process itself in this case is supported by human fat, which slowly melts. However, many victims of spontaneous combustion were elderly people who abused alcohol and nicotine, and were significantly thin ...

Nicole Millet case

It is interesting that information about spontaneous combustion of people reaches us from ancient times. In the Middle Ages, it was believed that a person who caught fire for no reason and burned out sold his soul to the devil, for which he paid the bills. Since the 17th century, publications have appeared on cases of spontaneous combustion in Italy and England. And in 1763, Jean Dupont's book "Natural ignition of the human body" was published. The idea of ​​writing the book came to the Frenchman when he learned about the case of Nicole Millet, whose death was blamed on her husband. However, forensic examination determined that the victim caught fire on its own, and in the end, the unfortunate husband was acquitted. Later, this story made such a strong impression on Charles Dickens that he “burned” one of his characters in Bleak House, for which, however, he later had to fight off critic George Henry Lewis, who accused the author of a perverse fantasy. Similar cases of spontaneous combustion are described in the books of Emile Zola, Jules Verne and Herman Melville. Be that as it may, so far spontaneous combustion has not been recognized by science and can only breed numerous rumors and disputes.

Explain the unexplained

Let's try to figure it all out with scientific point vision. Our body is about seventy percent water. The only thing that burns well, as already mentioned, is fat, as well as gas - methane, which can be found in the intestines. In all known cases, the victims burned out almost completely, which in principle is impossible, since this requires a very high temperature, which can only be obtained in special conditions, for example, in a crematorium oven or on a ritual fire, when the body is wrapped in cloth and covered with wood. But even there, the corpse burns for hours, and the remaining bones in the crematorium are ground in special chambers. It takes a lot of energy for a chemical reaction to ignite in the human body. And where does it come from? Scientists do not understand this. The most plausible of the theories about the reasons for the complete destruction of the body by fire is considered to be the "candle effect". If the body somehow caught fire, then in order for it to burn completely, the flame must be sustained. This role is played by human fat. Roughly speaking, the victim's clothing becomes saturated with fat during burning and further acts as a wick. In the late 1980s, California Institute of Forensic Science professor John de Haan put forward an interesting experience. He wrapped the pig's carcass in a woolen blanket, doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. The carcass burned for five hours, and as a result, nothing remained of it. At the same time, the furniture in the room remained practically intact. In its composition, pig fat is very similar to human fat, so the scientist suggested that in cases of spontaneous combustion of a person, the result was the same precisely due to the presence of clothing. True, a few years later, National Geographic journalists tried to repeat the experiment, but failed. They forgot to close front door, a draft fanned the fire, causing severe damage to the room. There is a version that the floor material, which prevents the absorption of fat, as well as the sitting position of the victim, when the flames rose vertically up the body, contribute to the complete combustion of the body. There were attempts to explain the described phenomenon by the influence of a mythical cosmic particle - a pyroton, which has the ability to pass through matter and release atomic energy, causing the substance to ignite. The theory put forward by a professor at Brooklyn University, Robin Beecham, is also considered plausible. He suggested that accumulated static electricity was the cause of spontaneous combustion. This has happened more than once, for example, at gas stations. It also accumulates on human clothing, which can lead to an electrical discharge. Thanks to this, in dry cold weather, a person can flash like a candle.

Spontaneous Combustion Martyrology

Over the past three hundred years, about two hundred cases of spontaneous human combustion have been described. Almost all of them ended in the death of the victim. Here are some of them. On April 9, 1744, the remains of 60-year-old alcoholic Grace Pett from the town of Ipswich in England were found by her daughter. According to the testimony of her daughter, nothing remained of her mother - "she looked like a heap of coals and ashes from a burnt bundle of firewood." The clothes scattered around the remains were untouched by the fire. On July 1, 1951, Mary Reiser, a resident of St. Petersburg (Florida, USA), was found by a neighbor in her house burned to the ground, with the exception of a part of the skull and a completely intact left leg. From the chair in which the unfortunate woman was sitting, only a few springs remained. Even if a woman caught fire from a poorly extinguished cigarette, this does not explain the fact that her body, according to the conclusion of the forensic medical examination, burned at a temperature of several thousand degrees. This tragedy inspired the American writer Michael Harrison to create the novel Fire from Heaven, published in 1976. Mary Reeser's case has become the most frequently cited evidence of spontaneous combustion. On May 18, 1957, the charred corpse of Anna Martin, a 68-year-old American woman from Pennsylvania, was discovered. Only part of the torso remained of her. Forensic experts have established that the body was burnt at a monstrous temperature of about 2000 ° C. However, the things that were next to the remains, including slippers and even a couple of newspapers, were not touched by the fire. In December 1966, the remains of 92-year-old Dr. John Irving Bentley were found at his home in Coudersport, Pennsylvania. An employee of the energy company, who came to take the readings of the electric meter, found a pile of ash in the room, from which part of the foot was sticking out. The rest of the doctor's body was completely burned. The house remained practically intact, only in the bathroom, where Bentley died, a burnt-out area with a diameter of about a meter gaped in the floor. The list goes on. But no matter what reasons they try to explain the phenomenon, all these cases have one thing in common - the victims did not have the slightest chance of salvation.

by the way

It is interesting that sometimes, after complete combustion of the body, small balls are found in the ashes - sharira, or relics. Of course, in Europe or America it is not customary to delve into the remains of the dead unnecessarily. But in Asia, this is a common thing. There, the sharira of famous religious figures are cherished in memory of the deceased authority. There is even a sarira of the Buddha himself, which is kept in Elista in the Buddhist temple "The Golden Abode of Buddha Shakyamuni." Sharira are believed to be kidney stones or Bladder deceased or melted bones. Although they also found sharira, which consisted of the remains of hair, fat and blood.

Since ancient times, cases of devil fire (pyrokinesis) have been known, when a person suddenly ignited spontaneously, from a fire of unknown origin, and people burned out in a matter of seconds, leaving behind only a handful of ashes. It was found that when a person ignites spontaneously, the flame temperature reaches 3,000 degrees. Interestingly, flammable materials that are near the victim (such as bed linen, clothes or paper) remain intact, that is, the person lying in bed burned with a bright flame, but the sheets and blanket remained intact. This is exactly what happened in 1992 to Sydney firefighter Ron Priest, who was completely burned to death in his bed. It is amazing that the linen and pillows were not damaged at all, and the matches that were a meter away from the hellish flame did not flare up.

1950 - a court in Mexico considered an extraordinary criminal case. Mario Orozco, the husband of the innkeeper, was tried and accused of the murder of his wife Manola. It was suspected that he burned his wife alive in the presence of a large number of people. Mario was facing the death penalty.

Everything was the same that evening. Customers (soldiers of the local garrison and passing merchants) dined in a hall on the first floor of the hotel, dimly lit by two lamps and reflections of fire from a fireplace, where they roasted an appetizing goose. The husband of the hostess slowly rotated the spit so that not a drop of fat was wasted, and the carcass was evenly covered with a crispy crust. A young maid brought food and bottles, smiling at the mustachioed military man and with dexterity dodging daring slaps on her round ass. The hostess herself, who was observing the order, was sitting in a massive leather armchair. Suddenly, the peaceful idyll was broken by a heart-rending cry. The hostess twitched in the chair, her eyes bulging and her mouth wide open, and tongues of fire ran all over her body. A moment later, Aunt Manola was gone, and her clothes, sprinkled with ashes, lay on an intact armchair. The police who arrived at the hotel immediately arrested her husband and took him to prison.

But the bodies of the victims of pyrokinesis do not always burn to the ground. Not so long ago, a local shepherd, Arzhanda, suffered a fire on a country road in Mongolia. The "black dummy" was found in a sitting position. His whole body, head and hands were sintered into a solid resinous mass. But what was most striking was that the clothes of the deceased did not suffer from the fire. There were no traces of flame around either, and the air temperature was 15 degrees below zero. Curious details were told by the partner of the deceased shepherd:

- I drove part of the herd forward. When I returned to Arzhande, I found him squatting by the road with his pants down. He relieved himself. Coming closer, I saw that he was black as coal. I ran to the nearest village for help. Arzhanda's relatives wanted to put him on a wooden stretcher, but they began to smoke. When his body was removed, it turned out that the boards were charred. I had to wait a little while Arzanda cools down.

The partner of the deceased was arrested and charged with premeditated murder. When the investigator came to the shepherd in prison, instead of the suspect, he found a pile of charred bones with partially preserved pieces of meat. It was not possible to explain what happened ...

1969 - Dara Metzel was sitting in her car on one of the Luxembourg streets and, suddenly ignited, burned to the ground in a matter of seconds. Several people tried to help her, but to no avail. When it was all over, they found out that the interior trim and seats of the car were not damaged. Around the same time, Texan Michael Lifshitz was found dead in his car. His face and hands were burned, but for some reason the fire did not touch his hair and eyebrows. Because his car was in the garage, the police decided that the unfortunate man had committed suicide by poisoning himself with exhaust gases. But the body was so hot it burned my fingers.

And a completely fantastic case occurred in the province of Alberta, Canada, where two daughters of the Melby spouses broke out at the same time, being in different parts of the city, located a kilometer from each other.

1991 - Dijon resident Charles Duteillet, who worked in a hardware store owned by the Verneuil couple, celebrated Christmas with the owners. After drinking wine, he went to sleep upstairs to his room, and in the morning he found master dead... The floor of the lower floor was covered with a thick layer of soot. The acrid, unpleasant odor caught my breath. The police found the remains of Madame Verneuil next to the kitchen table - charred bones and ash. No other traces of fire were found in the house.

No less unexplained case occurred in 1989 near Munich. Utah, 13, was playing the accordion when her father, Werner Rothke, heard the girl's desperate screams. He rushed to her and saw her, engulfed in flames, rushing about the room. Utah had 30% of his skin burned, and Werner himself received second-degree burns. Later, the girl explained that as soon as she began to play the instrument, she was engulfed in fire from all sides.

1993, spring - the inhabitants of the small Peruvian town of Orellano, gathered in the church for Sunday service, witnessed the spectacle that shocked them. The priest preaching the sermon was in shock.

His angry emotional speech, dedicated to hopeless sinners, who await Gehenna of fire, drove the believers to trembling, and they earnestly crossed themselves with the sign of the cross, offering prayers so that this cup would pass from them. Suddenly the sermon was interrupted by an inhuman cry. The priest shouted, frozen in an unnatural posture with upraised hands. Literally a moment later, the parishioners, numb with horror, saw a tongue of flame burst out of his chest, and he himself turned into a pillar of fire. People rushed out of the church, crushing each other in the doorway, and none of them saw what the investigators subsequently discovered. On the pulpit lay the whole and unharmed clothes of the priest, inside which a handful of ashes darkened - all that remained of the priest.

This incident caused a wave of rumors and speculation. The believers did not doubt that the Lord punished the holy father for grave sins. Some assured that the priest, who took a vow of celibacy, indulged in vice, secretly viewing porno tapes. Others were sure he was. A third even put forward a "hypothesis" that instead of a priest, Satan himself was preaching a sermon in disguise. After questioning witnesses, the police closed the case.

Devil's fire, or pyrokinesis, is not a figment of the imagination, but a real fact, although from the point of view of physics and chemistry, such a phenomenon is impossible. As you know, the human body is 2/3 of water and its combustion requires a significant amount of energy, which is not in a living organism. Even to burn a deceased in a crematorium, a temperature of 2,000 degrees and a time of at least 4 hours are required. But even under such conditions, it is required to additionally crush the charred bones of the skeleton in order to turn them into ash. Cases of spontaneous combustion are extremely rare.

Nevertheless, 19 such phenomena have been recorded in our century. There are different opinions among scientists on their account. Some people try to relate inflammation in people to their internal state. It was noted that many of the victims were gripped by deep stress. Other researchers believe that a mysterious phenomenon arises in connection with the impact of ball lightning appearing near the victim, when its energy penetrates the human biofield, which leads to instant ignition.

Scientists have noted two types of fires. Turning the victim to ash and sintering him into a charred mass. In some cases, some part of the body is not affected by the fire.

Even in the last century, a version appeared that the victims of spontaneous combustion are chronic alcoholics, whose bodies are soaked through and through with alcohol, and therefore flare up from an accidental spark, especially if the deceased smoked.

Swiss scientist Ludwig Schumacher offered his own explanation for spontaneous combustion.

“Why not assume,” he said, “that there are still unknowns to science radiation, the beams of which exist next to us. Under certain conditions, the interaction of such energy with the body's biofield causes a powerful energy outbreak - a kind of explosion that leads to spontaneous combustion of a living body. The resulting energy beam is strictly limited in space and acts selectively. Parts of the victim's body that have not come into the radiation sphere remain intact.

Not so long ago, another scientist, the Japanese Harugi Ito, put forward his own hypothesis, different from others. In his opinion, the change in the passage of time is the cause of pyrokinesis. In the normal state, the human body generates and radiates into space a certain amount of heat, but if inside the human body, for some reason, the physical processes occurring in nature (including the movement of atoms) suddenly slow down sharply, and on the surface of the skin their speed remains constant, then the generated heat simply does not have time to radiate into space and incinerates a person.

Recently, a number of scientists generally adhere to a fantastic point of view. They believe that the source of energy in a living cell is a thermonuclear reaction. In their opinion, under certain conditions unknown energy processes arise in the cells of the body, similar to those that occur during the explosion of an atomic bomb, which are not reflected on the molecules of neighboring matter (for example, on clothes or upholstery of a car) ...

Spontaneous combustion of a person is a rare phenomenon and, perhaps, therefore, has not yet been studied. The point is not even that this phenomenon is based on some process unknown to science. Rather, on the contrary - everything seems to be clear and has been known for a long time ...
The human body contains combustible materials such as fat. It sounds, of course, not very pleasant, but human fat burns well. We all know well the rite of cremation, which is probably as old as mankind itself. But this article is about spontaneous combustion. Why is it happening?

Forensic scientists shrug their shoulders

In the world of forensic science, there are many cases when firefighters and police officers discovered the remains of people who were burned to death under unexplained circumstances. For example, in the middle of the room lies a burnt body, and furniture and interior items are almost untouched by the fire. And the body was burned in a strange way. Where the body was, there is a pile of ash, and the arms and legs, sometimes the head, are intact.
More often than not, a burned-out person was the victim of violence. He was first killed and then burned to fake an accident. But sometimes the crime was completely ruled out, but the half-burnt corpse was there, and the criminologists threw up their hands in bewilderment. It was believed that ignition can be caused by high temperatures arising from internal chemical reactions that can occur at the atomic level. The combustion process itself in this case is supported by human fat, which slowly melts. However, many victims of spontaneous combustion were elderly people who abused alcohol and nicotine, and were significantly thin ...

Nicole Millet case

It is interesting that information about spontaneous combustion of people reaches us from ancient times. In the Middle Ages, it was believed that a person who caught fire for no reason and burned out sold his soul to the devil, for which he paid the bills.
Since the 17th century, publications have appeared on cases of spontaneous combustion in Italy and England. And in 1763, Jean Dupont's book "Natural ignition of the human body" was published. The idea of ​​writing the book came to the Frenchman when he learned about the case of Nicole Millet, whose death was blamed on her husband. However, forensic examination determined that the victim caught fire on its own, and in the end, the unfortunate husband was acquitted.
Later, this story made such a strong impression on Charles Dickens that he “burned” one of his characters in Bleak House, for which, however, he later had to fight off critic George Henry Lewis, who accused the author of a perverse fantasy.
Similar cases of spontaneous combustion are described in the books of Emile Zola, Jules Verne and Herman Melville. Be that as it may, so far spontaneous combustion has not been recognized by science and can only breed numerous rumors and disputes.

Explain the unexplained

Let's try to understand all this from a scientific point of view. Our body is about seventy percent water. The only thing that burns well, as already mentioned, is fat, as well as gas - methane, which can be found in the intestines.
In all known cases, the victims were burned almost completely, which in principle is impossible, since this requires a very high temperature, which can only be obtained under special conditions, for example, in a crematorium oven or on a ritual fire, when the body is wrapped in cloth and covered with wood. But even there, the corpse burns for hours, and the remaining bones in the crematorium are ground in special chambers.
It takes a lot of energy for a chemical reaction to ignite in the human body. And where does it come from? Scientists do not understand this.
The most plausible of the theories about the reasons for the complete destruction of the body by fire is considered to be the "candle effect". If the body somehow caught fire, then in order for it to burn completely, the flame must be sustained. This role is played by human fat. Roughly speaking, the victim's clothing becomes saturated with fat during burning and further acts as a wick.
In the late 1980s, California Institute of Forensic Science professor John de Haan put forward an interesting experience. He wrapped the pig's carcass in a woolen blanket, doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. The carcass burned for five hours, and as a result, nothing remained of it. At the same time, the furniture in the room remained practically intact. In its composition, pig fat is very similar to human fat, so the scientist suggested that in cases of spontaneous combustion of a person, the result was the same precisely due to the presence of clothing.
True, a few years later, National Geographic journalists tried to repeat the experiment, but failed. They forgot to close the front door, the draft fanned the fire, causing serious damage to the room.
There is a version that the floor material, which prevents the absorption of fat, as well as the sitting position of the victim, when the flames rose vertically up the body, contribute to the complete combustion of the body.
There were attempts to explain the described phenomenon by the influence of a mythical cosmic particle - a pyroton, which has the ability to pass through matter and release atomic energy, causing the substance to ignite.
The theory put forward by a professor at Brooklyn University, Robin Beecham, is also considered plausible. He suggested that accumulated static electricity was the cause of spontaneous combustion. This has happened more than once, for example, at gas stations. It also accumulates on human clothing, which can lead to an electrical discharge. Thanks to this, in dry cold weather, a person can flash like a candle.

Spontaneous Combustion Martyrology

Over the past three hundred years, about two hundred cases of spontaneous human combustion have been described. Almost all of them ended in the death of the victim. Here are some of them.
On April 9, 1744, the remains of 60-year-old alcoholic Grace Pett from the town of Ipswich in England were found by her daughter. According to the testimony of her daughter, nothing remained of her mother - "she looked like a heap of coals and ashes from a burnt bundle of firewood." The clothes scattered around the remains were untouched by the fire.
On July 1, 1951, Mary Reiser, a resident of St. Petersburg (Florida, USA), was found by a neighbor in her house burned to the ground, with the exception of a part of the skull and a completely intact left leg. From the chair in which the unfortunate woman was sitting, only a few springs remained. Even if a woman caught fire from a poorly extinguished cigarette, this does not explain the fact that her body, according to the conclusion of the forensic medical examination, burned at a temperature of several thousand degrees.
This tragedy inspired the American writer Michael Harrison to create the novel Fire from Heaven, published in 1976. Mary Reeser's case has become the most frequently cited evidence of spontaneous combustion.
On May 18, 1957, the charred corpse of Anna Martin, a 68-year-old American woman from Pennsylvania, was discovered. Only part of the torso remained of her. Forensic scientists have established that the body was burned at a monstrous temperature of about 2000 ºС. However, the things that were next to the remains, including slippers and even a couple of newspapers, were not touched by the fire.
In December 1966, the remains of 92-year-old Dr. John Irving Bentley were found at his home in Coudersport, Pennsylvania. An employee of the energy company, who came to take the readings of the electric meter, found a pile of ash in the room, from which part of the foot was sticking out. The rest of the doctor's body was completely burned. The house remained practically intact, only in the bathroom, where Bentley died, a burnt-out area with a diameter of about a meter gaped in the floor.
The list goes on. But no matter what reasons they try to explain the phenomenon, all these cases have one thing in common - the victims did not have the slightest chance of salvation.

by the way

It is interesting that sometimes, after complete combustion of the body, small balls are found in the ashes - sharira, or relics. Of course, in Europe or America it is not customary to delve into the remains of the dead unnecessarily. But in Asia, this is a common thing. There, the sharira of famous religious figures are cherished in memory of the deceased authority. There is even a sarira of the Buddha himself, which is kept in Elista in the Buddhist temple "The Golden Abode of Buddha Shakyamuni."
Sharira are believed to be stones from the kidney or bladder of the deceased, or melted bones. Although they also found sharira, which consisted of the remains of hair, fat and blood.