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Post by paul on Sept 23, 2011 19:45:36 GMT 9.5
An Irish coroner has just concluded: "West Galway coroner Dr Ciaran McLoughlin said it was the first time in 25 years of investigating deaths that he had returned such a verdict. ....... Forensic experts found a fire in the fireplace of the sitting room where the badly burnt body was found had not been the cause of the blaze that killed Mr Faherty. The court was told that no trace of an accelerant had been found and there had been nothing to suggest foul play. The court heard Mr Faherty had been found lying on his back with his head closest to an open fireplace. The fire had been confined to the sitting room. The only damage was to the body, which was totally burnt, the ceiling above him and the floor underneath him. ...... He said Professor Bernard Knight, in his book on forensic pathology, had written about spontaneous combustion and noted that such reported cases were almost always near an open fireplace or chimney. "This fire was thoroughly investigated and I'm left with the conclusion that this fits into the category of spontaneous human combustion, for which there is no adequate explanation," he said." www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15032614There have been some cases in which the fire has been put out. One person had their legs on fire with a low colour flame. Later that person was very thirsty. Often there is a small pile of ash and bone fragments with only very localised fire damage.
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Post by LorrB on Sept 26, 2011 9:17:08 GMT 9.5
On May 18, 1957, Anna Martin, 68, of West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was found incinerated, leaving only her shoes and a portion of her torso. The medical examiner estimated that temperatures must have reached 1,700 to 2,000 degrees, yet newspapers two feet away were found intact. On December 5, 1966, the ashes of Dr. J. Irving Bentley, 92, of Coudersport, Pennsylvania, were discovered by a meter reader. Dr. Bentley's body apparently ignited while he was in the bathroom and burned a 2-1/2-by-3-foot hole through the flooring, with only a portion of one leg remaining intact. Nearby paint was unscorched.
July 1, 1951 -- Perhaps the most famous case occurred in St. Petersburg, Florida. Mary Hardy Reeser, a 67-year-old widow, spontaneously combusted while sitting in her easy chair. The next morning, her next door neighbor tried the doorknob, found it hot to the touch and went for help. She returned to find Mrs. Reeser, or what was left of her, in a blackened circle four feet in diameter. All that remained of the 175-pound woman and her chair was a few blackened seat springs, a section of her backbone, a shrunken skull the size of a baseball, and one foot encased in a black stain slipper just beyond the four-foot circle. Plus about 10 pounds of ashes. The police report declared that Mrs. Reeser went up in smoke when her highly flammable rayon-acetate nightgown caught fire, perhaps because of a dropped cigarette. But one medical examiner stated that the 3,000-degree heat required to destroy the body should have destroyed the apartment as well. In fact, damage was minimal - the ceiling and upper walls were covered with soot. No chemical accelerants, incidentally, were found.
In 1944 Peter Jones, survived this experience and reported that there was no sensation of heat nor sighting of flames He just saw smoke. He stated that he felt no pain.
www.crystalinks.com/shc.html
I also remember reading about a young girl who was dancing in a nightclub in London spontaneously combusting. The flames started coming from her back. Curious indeed.
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Post by tamrin on Sept 26, 2011 21:04:12 GMT 9.5
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Post by paul on Sept 27, 2011 5:39:47 GMT 9.5
It is remarkable how easily coroners can be led astray by evidence.
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Post by tamrin on Sept 27, 2011 6:57:50 GMT 9.5
As cases not infrequently show, coroners too are fallible. I suggest readers click on the link and decide for themselves.
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Post by paul on Sept 27, 2011 7:55:54 GMT 9.5
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Post by paul on Sept 27, 2011 7:58:23 GMT 9.5
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Post by cwhite on Sept 27, 2011 9:36:30 GMT 9.5
Mutated Mitochondrian Malfunction?
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Post by paul on Sept 27, 2011 9:47:38 GMT 9.5
Given the self-sustaining nature of the fire (and the thirst of some survivors) I conjecture that some process is decomposing water into hydrogen and oxygen that may then be ignited at the surface of the body producing great localised heat.
I am not sure that such a source would be sufficient to consume bone.
The photos indicate that the primary site is the trunk of the body with lower legs commonly surviving untouched
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Post by paul on Sept 27, 2011 9:56:38 GMT 9.5
"At 5:21am on 13 September 1967, an unnamed member of a group of female office workers phoned the London Fire Brigade. While waiting for their bus to work, they had noticed flickering blue flames visible through an upper window of 49 Auckland Street, Lambeth, London. They presumed it was burning gas. The first fireman to the scene said: “When I got in through the window I found the body of a tramp named Bailey laying at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the second floor. He was lying partly on his left side. There was a four-inch (102 mm) slit in his abdomen from which was issuing, at force, a blue flame. The flame was beginning to burn the wooden stairs. We extinguished the flames by playing a hose into the abdominal cavity. Bailey was alive when he started burning. He must have been in terrible pain. His teeth were sunk into the mahogany newel post of the staircase. I had to prise his jaws apart to release the body. The fire was coming from within the abdomen of his body. [...] There’s no doubt whatsoever, that fire began inside the body. That’s the only place it could have begun, inside that body.”" www.slackers.co.za/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=15059Note the blue flame (low carbon) "at force" and the abdomen as the site
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Post by paul on Sept 27, 2011 10:05:54 GMT 9.5
Here is Bailey after the fire was put out
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Post by cwhite on Sept 27, 2011 10:26:50 GMT 9.5
Rapid oxidation from mutated mitochodria?
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Post by paul on Sept 27, 2011 10:41:34 GMT 9.5
In the Bailey case, being a tramp, I might wonder about excess consumption of cheap alcohol. Then I might wonder if some bacteria commonly in the human gut, under abnormal conditions, could switch to another metabolic pathway - perhaps producing hydrogen. Here hydrogen in the human breath is used to test for bacterial overgrowth www.metsol.com/sibo-breath-testHydrogen, being a very small molecule, when under pressure might easily pass through the intestinal wall and thence out through the pores in the skin. Smokers beware!
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Post by tamrin on Sept 27, 2011 12:55:02 GMT 9.5
So bodies burn!? Big deal, even the inquisition knew that. The question here is whether it is “spontaneous combustion” or simply a phenomenon easily accounted for according to mundane physics. Click on the “**** Alert!” link and read for yourselves.
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Post by paul on Sept 27, 2011 13:08:14 GMT 9.5
So bodies burn!? Big deal,....
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Post by paul on Sept 27, 2011 13:11:13 GMT 9.5
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Post by tamrin on Sept 27, 2011 13:17:05 GMT 9.5
What is your point?
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Post by paul on Sept 27, 2011 13:32:16 GMT 9.5
I thought you did not believe in the existence of SHC - having quoted "no one has ever witnessed SHC"
But then you say that it might well be a phenomenon "easily accounted for according to mundane physics"
Do you have a preferred position?
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Post by tamrin on Sept 27, 2011 16:55:18 GMT 9.5
The physical difficulty here is in the "S" for "spontaneous."
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Post by paul on Sept 27, 2011 17:35:58 GMT 9.5
It seems that some cases exist where the person was not near an open flame at the time.
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