Coroner rules Irish man died of spontaneous combustion

With this heatwave at the moment I keep thinking of this story and worried I will burst out in spontaneous combustion

Why does this only happen when the person is alone? Are there any documented cases of someone combusting infront of other people ? Are we the only species on Earth that spontaneously combusts ........

I couldn't agree more with Willie's comment. But then again they'll argue costs prevent them taking too much time on a case, although there is a need to determine cause (at least for next of kin), as the destruction of the body may not have been the actual cause of death . I assume the authorities were genuinely satisfied that all correct procedures were followed. Still, I can't help but question if this conclusion is dictated by limited resource availability - concerned, some one should be!

A dead body produces lots of gases perhaps they get thrown off balance - if so the combustion would be after death?

'Spontaneous human combustion' was explained over a decade ago. - the amazing bit is that this coroner has apparently never heard of the research. The gist of it is that the victim is out of it - coma, unconscious, deeply asleep in a stupor, dead or whatever. A small fire starts on someone's clothing (cigarette,spark from open fire) and the charred cloth acts as a wick for body fat - you need plenty of body fat. As a result of the wick effect, the fire remains localised i.e. only the body burns. The arms and lower legs don't burn because they have insufficient fat. The bones in the burning part of the body are however calcined. There was a demonstration of it working using the body of a pig. I suspect that the writers of CSI picked up on the research for one of their episodes.

There was a programme on TV several years ago explaining some of the these deaths of so called s p c.

The wick effect is fact! a hiker murdered in Oregon was set on fire and hours later found incinerated in the mid rift. Two guys killed a woman in France and were caught. They set fire to the victim and the wick effect took hold and incinerated the body leaving the rest of the room untouched by fire. True fact is SHC has never ever been witnessed in a #$%$ one scenario ie a person being turned to ash in seconds or even minutes, again the truth is if SHC were real it would of been witnessed. Yes their are odd stories of people catching fire and witnessed but never ever a full incineration. So the wick effect is proven fact SHC at this point is not. As for this coroner to jump to this conclusion is absurd, there are many great fire investigators who could of helped this guy out like De Haan and Pope. Ive studied this so called phenomena for 20 years read all the books by Arnold, Randles and others. As far as im concerned SHC does not exist and please dont tell me it does. I'll wait for headmistress to be doing her morning assembly and going up in a instant epiphany, or a football player bearing down on goal before they go caboom! in the penalty box live on SKY. Again if this thing was real it would of been seen, the phenomena is hundreds of years old and several hundred cases reported, but no one has ever seen anyone reduced to ash in seconds. If it did exist we would be in no doubt about it. Yeah, these stories make great headlines but when you do the research SHC falls flat on its face.

Its indeed irresponsible to rule SHC where there is no scientific evidence to support it. The only evidence was incineration and cause unknown. Judges are plain irresponsible to accept any other explanation without scientific facts. This judgement is invalid.

Fail! Coroner should be sacked. Obvious source of ignition is the fireplace. The guy probably died or had a stroke. All it would take is one small ember or hot ash to land on his clothing. It wouldn't need to ignite, merely smolder for a day or so. This would cause the fat below the skin to slow burn. This causes incredibly high temperatures over time and explains the localized fire damage around the body and damaged ceiling.

So he was found near his fireplace? Was there a fire in there at the time. One ember or spark from a fire can cause a fire. A spark can leap across a small room that is why most people have fireplace screens. What I think probably happened is he had a heart attack or a stroke an fell while tening to the fire.

any thing is possible ,may he rest in peace

There are two problems with all the cases of spontaneous combustion being quoted here - the first is that there are never any witnesses and secondly the body is left in such a state that a post mortem is unable to establish a cause of death.
For a variety of scientific reasons I do not believe spontaneous combustion is possible; I suspect that what is more likely is that the person has died a very sudden death through a stroke or heart attack, something of that nature and an external heat source then causes the body to burn by the wick effect, a well established provable phenomenon.

Read the detail carefully: this article says that there were no clues as to the source of the fire. That does not mean that he was just sitting there and for no apparent reason he burst into flames.

The man was 76. He could have had a heart attack whilst smoking a cigarette. The embers from the burning cigarette could have burned a hole through his clothes and then caused the fat in his body to start burning. The fat in his body would certainly provide enough combustible material to burn all of his main torso and internal organs thereby destroying the evidence of the heart attack.

I am not saying this is what happened, just saying that there are plausible non X Files type explanations which would leave no trace of the source of the fire.

Found dead near an open fire?.......think there might be a clue there.

Problem is to decide if the combustion is ante-mortem or post-mortem. If the latter (as most theories suggest) it cannot be a cause of death.

...they claim a cigarette smoldering in a chair..with the fat of the dead person could burn like a candle...so i.ve heard..

This is a well known although rare cause of death, it's not a mystery humans can sometimes burst into flames, it's happend so many times now that I don't know why people still refuse to believe it.

I think you'll find that this coroner is also the judge in the trial of the Italian scientists who failed to predict the Earthquake and that he is holding witchcraft trials in Salem next weekend if anyone is interested. If spontaeneous combustion turns out to be fact, I think I can solve two of our major problems in one go, namely immigration and the energy crisis.
Irish coroner records spontaneous combustion in September2011......Report that Polonus Vorstius spontaneously combusted in 1470
Italian Siesmologists on trial for failing to predict an Earthquake October 2011............October 22, 2134 BCE in China. According to legend, two astrologers at the time, Hsi and Ho, were executed because they failed to predict this eclipse.
Nothing like progress Folks! Not only do they walk amongst us, some of them are in charge! Frightens the s!*t out of me.

Funny how all these case reports involve people indoors, near fire sources. No spontaneous combustion on the bus, at work,in the church, walking down the street,.....

The Coroner should be 'fired'....