Spontaneous Human Combustion - Characteristics

Characteristics

The spontaneous combustion of people (i.e. death from a fire originating within the victim’s body without a direct external cause) is a theoretical explanation for a number of unexplained cases, some of which are well-documented but many of which are not. The more intriguing cases share the following characteristics:

• The body is completely or almost completely incinerated, while nearby furniture exposed to high temperatures remains intact. Damage is limited to the victim’s body and clothing, to the area of the floor or furniture on which he or she died and to the ceiling above the corpse.
• The torso is the focus of the fire and if remains are found these are of the extremities, such as the feet.
• There are no traces of fire accelerant and the fire does not have an evident external cause.
• Often the combustion seems to happen simultaneously at many parts of the body, usually without any obvious points of origin.
• The victim is typically alone at the time of death and is thought to have been alive when the fire started, despite showing little sign of having struggled.