Death has many faces, but the nightmarish phenomenon of spontaneous human fires stands apart. Judge for yourself: a person flares up for no reason, and literally in seconds only a handful of ash remains from him. Such cases are extremely rare, but have been known since ancient times. Even in the papyri, found during excavations in Thebes (the capital of Upper Egypt), it is described how the priests turned into flaming torches. For a long time such a terrible death was considered a deserved punishment from above for the numerous sins of the dead.
Inner fire
But how is this possible? The human body, as we all know, is about two-thirds water. This fact seems implausible and difficult to realize, since it contradicts our ideas about ourselves. Recall that the body of each of us consists of 70% of water, 24% of organic and 6% of inorganic substances.
Agree that such a "set" is not easy to burn even with the help of external sources of fire. What can we say about the emergence of an inner flame? In order for it to flare up, a lot of energy is required, which seems to have nowhere to come from in a living organism. Nevertheless, during spontaneous combustion, people's bodies burn like gunpowder.
Tragic incidents
Around the middle of the 16th century, the Italian knight Polonius Vortius, having pretty much taken it on his chest, began to spew flame in front of his relatives, then flared up and burned to ashes in minutes. It was believed that the unfortunate was incinerated by Satan.
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In 1936, a resident of London M. Andreves danced in a bar. Flames suddenly burst from her chest and back, and she died, despite the attempts of those present in the hall to extinguish the fire.
In 1950, in Mexico, in front of her husband, a servant and many clients, the hostess of the hotel M. Orozco, sitting calmly in an armchair, turned to ashes. The police arrested her husband, accusing him of premeditated murder of his wife.
In 1969, a resident of Luxembourg D. Metzel, who was sitting in her car, burned down in a few seconds. The people around her tried to help her, but everything happened almost instantly. But the fire did not even touch the seat upholstery and interior trim.
On May 12, 1980, a physician from the Institute of Medical Science and Technology of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology B. H. Hartwell in the park rushed to the aid of a young woman, fire streaming through her body. But neither he, nor the other people who rushed to help, could do nothing. The woman burned down, and the grass under her remained green and untouched by fire!
In 1990, on November 11, on the border of the Saratov and Volgograd regions of Russia, the shepherd Bisen Mamaev died. An autopsy revealed that his internal organs were burned by fire. But the skin was only slightly charred. Clothes and shoes were not damaged at all.
In 1993 in Peru, in the church of the town of Orellano, a priest at a Sunday sermon with enthusiasm scolded unrepentant sinners, calling them to a righteous life. Suddenly he screamed loudly, burst out of his chest and engulfed his entire body in a column of flame. The believers present in horror, crushing each other, rushed to the exit. Only a handful of ashes and the priest's clothing untouched by fire at the place where he delivered his fiery speech appeared to the eyes of the police officers who soon arrived in the church building.
In the village of Tomilino, Moscow Region, in April 2004, 25-year-old Vladimir Yakovlev, who was descending alone in an elevator car, caught fire with an invisible internal fire. When the elevator doors opened on the ground floor, people, startled by the picture that opened, called an ambulance. Vladimir was taken to the A. V. Ukhtomsky, and then to the burn center of the A. V. Vishnevsky. In the hospital, he could not utter a word and did not answer questions. The man's legs were badly burned, and his socks, shoes and clothes were intact. A few days later, Yakovlev died.
In Mongolia, a shepherd recently found his companion Arzhan dead. He kind of melted while sitting on the grass. His body, head and hands were entwined together and were so hot that the relatives of the deceased, who came running to the screams of their partner, had to wait for the body to cool down. The clothes on Arzhan were not damaged. The shepherd who found the body was detained, accused of murder and imprisoned. Once, when the investigator came to the prison for another interrogation, only his burned bones were found on the floor of the cell in which the accused was sitting. Nobody knows how to explain such cases.
On December 22, 2010, Michael Fogerty, an old man of 76 years, was burned to death in Ireland. The experts suffered for a whole year, investigating this case, and wrote in the conclusion that the cause of Fogerty's death was spontaneous combustion.
Unexplained phenomenon
No one knows why in some cases a person burns out completely, in others partially, and sometimes it seems to melt. At the same time, there are no traces of soot and there is no smell of smoke. It is impossible to understand how intense combustion does not cause an extensive fire. Even combustible and rapidly flammable objects located next to the dead do not ignite, although a fire of such strength should inevitably destroy the entire room and the environment in it. For some reason, the flame does not touch them, despite the high, up to 3000 ° C, temperature of the bodies of victims of spontaneous combustion! It is impossible to explain this fact from the standpoint of modern science.
Sometimes people burn out without witnesses, leaving behind a pile of ashes, but whole household items. What happens in all these cases? In 1992 in Sydney, firefighter Ron Priest burned down in his own apartment in his own apartment. The bed linen and even the matches lying next to him remained intact and untouched by the fire.
There were cases when two people, usually relatives, located in different places, spontaneously ignited at the same time. In Canada, the Melby sisters, located at a distance of about a kilometer from each other, simultaneously caught fire. In England, too, for inexplicable reasons, two twins instantly broke out. The distance between them was even greater.
Versions and hypotheses
At one time it was believed that only drunkards are subject to spontaneous combustion. They say they are so saturated with alcohol that they flare up from an accidental spark. But teetotalers also burn well. Later, a version was put forward that spontaneous combustion is characteristic of people prone to obesity.
Then the tragedies began to be associated with the internal state of people. It turned out that many of those who died such a death were in a state of depression or fear. It is believed that psychosomatic disorder in people suffering from depression can lead to the release of oxygen and hydrogen from the body and the beginning of a chain reaction of mitochondrial microexplosions.
The American researcher Ludwig Schumacher suggested that radiation unknown to science exists in nature. The beams of this radiation interact with the human biofield, and it burns out.
Dr. Hirachi Ito from Japan believes that spontaneous combustion is associated with a change in the flow of time on the surface and inside the body.
Other scientists believe that thermonuclear reactions take place in a living cell, which provide the body with energy, and conditions can arise in them like in the explosion of an atomic bomb. But all mechanisms sooner or later fail. At some point, a chain reaction occurs, and this process is accompanied by the release of a huge amount of energy, turning cells into ash.
There is a hypothesis that in case of glucose deficiency, a chain of biochemical reactions causes the breakdown of fat cells and the release of so-called ketones - special flammable substances. They accumulate in the body and lead to tragedy. It is not clear only what serves as a spark that ignites the hellish flame.
Soviet physicist Nikolai Kozyrev argued that oxidation reactions in the human body are similar to reactions when burning a fire. They differ only in time and flow rate. Changes in the human body cannot happen without a reason. It turned out that most cases of spontaneous combustion occur when the intensity of the Earth's magnetic field increases.
Many other various assumptions have been put forward, trying to explain the phenomenon of spontaneous spontaneous combustion of people, up to the most fantastic, but none of them has received general recognition and does not explain all the features of the process of terrible death of unfortunate victims.
The phenomenon of spontaneous combustion of a person contradicts all the laws of physics and chemistry known to us, is inexplicable, but nevertheless exists.
Valery KUKARENKO