Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC)

I kept my eyes peeled on the TV when I came across National Geographic's "Is it Real?" show featuring SHC. Is it real? I don't know. Maybe. It falls under the category of the paranormal, like crop circles and big foot. I remember seeing an episode of CSI where Grissom and Sara tried to determine whether a woman's unexplained death was caused by SHC. The woman was found burned into ashes while sitting on a living room couch. Nothing else inside the room was burned and no trace of accelerant was found. In the end, they found out that the woman fell asleep with a lit cigarette and was ignited possibly through the 'wick effect.'

Alternative Science says that the 'wick effect' proposes that in certain rare circumstances the human being can burn like a candle: a clothed human body is like an inside-out candle where the fat, or fuel source, is inside and the wick is outside. Once burning begins, the melted fat seeps into the clothing and burns like a wick, slowly over a period of many hours. The fire is usually caused by a match or cigarette (watch out chubby smokers....never sleep with a lit cigarette!). You can check out the article written by Dr. Mark Benecke (he's a funny guy), the forensic biologist featured in the Natinal Geographic program...it has somewhat gory black and white images. For now, spontaneous human combustion remains to be a mystery.