Spontaneous self-combustion

[Mendeli]

I wonder why nobody joined the challenge claiming the ability to spontaneously self combust yet... oh wait, I see...

Anyways, I just saw an old X-files episode about this very phenomenom... now where would I go on findin information about this? Are there any real cases or is this complete hooplaah? I vaguely remember reading about it years ago in some pseudoscience magazine...

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ah, but how about spontaneous human invisibility? Pretty harmless, and worth $1 million, too.

~~ Paul

[c4ts]

I've heard of this. I don't know much about it, but from what I can tell it's not exactly "spontaneous." Drink a lot of moonshine and wash it down by smoking a pack of cigarettes, then see what happens...

[Spidey13]

I've heard of this. I don't know much about it, but from what I can tell it's not exactly "spontaneous." Drink a lot of moonshine and wash it down by smoking a pack of cigarettes, then see what happens...

Typical Tuesday at my place.

[Bikewer]

Skeptical Inquirer did an article on it a few years ago. Essentially, these are people who have either passed out (or died) due to intoxication or a medical condition, and who were smoking at the time. (or near another heat source.)

Generally overweight as well, the fatty tissues can ignite and do a long, slow, smouldery burn, which does not get hot enough cause other nearby objects to ignite.
It's possible for the bones to be calcined by this process as well.

The morgue or crime-scene photos are particularly gruesome....

[.13.]

Here's (http://www.randi.org/jr/031502.html) something.

[c4ts]

Typical Tuesday at my place.

You pass out and set yourself on fire every Tuesday? Good for you.

[Spidey13]

You pass out and set yourself on fire every Tuesday? Good for you.

Well, you know, the ex has the kid on Tuesdays so, what else am I going to do?

[DevilsAdvocate]

This snopes message board has a lot of links to the related subject: http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=25;t=000933;p=1

[Euromutt]

"Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not really widely reported." - David St. Hubbins

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

[Zep]

Unfortunately most of the wrong people spontaneously combust - the woos who think it's woo are still here!

[Starthinker]

I thought this was shown to be the "Wick Affect". Fatty tissues burn slow and long and produce heat which can melt nearby objects (such as plastic television cases) but it burns cleanly so you don't find soot all over the house. Just a pile of ashes remain with the odd extremety or two. When the fat burns off, usually in a pile of ashes, it doesn't ignite things like carpets because the ashes insulate the small flame from spreading.

There was a police officer who found a body still burning in this manner and also experiments done on pigs that supported this, if I recall correctly.

[Psi Baba]

I wonder why nobody joined the challenge claiming the ability to spontaneously self combust yet... oh wait, I see...

Anyways, I just saw an old X-files episode about this very phenomenom... now where would I go on findin information about this? Are there any real cases or is this complete hooplaah? I vaguely remember reading about it years ago in some pseudoscience magazine...
If you're talking about what is called Spontaneous Human Combustion, this is the best breakdown of the concept I've come across:
http://www.benecke.com/combust.html

[supercorgi]

I thought this was shown to be the "Wick Affect".
You do recall correctly. Essential the body becomes an inside-out candle. The clothes on the outside act as the wick and the fatty tissues on the inside provide the fuel. CSI even had an episode on this where they did the pig wrapped in a blanket experiment. I'm not sure but Myth Busters may have also done an episode on this.

[Cleon]

Huh. I saw this thread under the Dover thread, and wondered if they were related. :D

[Soapy Sam]

Paul- Of course,several adepts out there are in fact invisible. They are unlikely to out themselves by publicly winning a paltry million.

They are doing quite nicely already thanks.

By the way, if you inspect carefully, you will find that the brown stain near the rear left corner of your kitchen floor is in fact soya sauce.
(This constitutes unquestionable proof of paranormal abilities, but I suspect you are one of those ultra-skeptics who will merely claim he always has soya sauce spills on his kitchen floor. There's just nothing to be done for folks like you).;)

[Ed]

There was a Discovery (?) show on this some time ago. They "combusted" a pig. As I recall the fat theory suggests that low fat body bits (hands, feet) will not combust and that is exactly what is found.

More woo crap.

[Azrael 5]

Typical isnt it that-as with all paranormal phenomena-it only occurs to single individuals when they are alone! Never in the supermarket or having a picnic in the park!:p

[case sensitive]

Typical isnt it that-as with all paranormal phenomena-it only occurs to single individuals when they are alone! Never in the supermarket or having a picnic in the park!:p

Not much dematerializing stuff happening on live tv either. No ghosts at the Superbowl and no levitating Asians in the Olympic high jump. Where are those chi/ki guys world records anyway?

[Azrael 5]

Not much dematerializing stuff happening on live tv either. No ghosts at the Superbowl and no levitating Asians in the Olympic high jump. Where are those chi/ki guys world records anyway?

No famous dead people coming through to John Edward.Where's JFK saying who really shot him? Princess Diana letting us know what really went on in the Pont D'Alma?
Nope.Plenty brother/sister/cousin energy witha J name!;)

[delphi_ote]

Joe Nickell did a great investigation of spontaneous human combustion:

http://www.scifidimensions.com/Jul00/jnf_combustion.htm

[treble_head]

I prefer well-planned self-combustion myself. People need to start planning these things.

[Gayle]

As a survivor of spontaneous human combustion, all I can say is .... OW!

Seriously...

My body mass index is 20 (that means I'm slender,) I'm not a smoker, nor do I consume alcoholic beverages. However, 15 years ago I combusted.

It was ten o'clock on a fine June morning. I'd just gotten out of the shower and was dressed in cotton shorts and a loose cotton shirt. My long hair lay wet and freshly washed on my shoulders and down to the middle of my back.

I stepped out on my front porch to admire the garden flowers glimmering in the morning sun. I was facing east, watching the sun come over the mountain, when I said to myself, "That sun feels warm on my back."

One second pause. My back was facing west. It was ten in the morning.

A quick glance over my shoulder showed flames. I ripped the shirt off over my head and ran into the house. I looked at my back in the mirror and saw blue flames shooting out of my body. Horrified, I ran for the shower to douse the flames in cold water.

By this time, my neighbor ladies were in my house calling my name. They helped me, they didn't want me to look in the mirror, they were horrified. I felt strangely calm as I gave orders ... bring me a freshly laundered, extra large, white shirt ... call my doctor ... call my husband ... keep me warm ... don't touch me. Then the pain hit. I looked in the mirror. I was charred from shoulder to hip. Blackened and blistered.

I didn't have to wait in line to get medical treatment.

I had second, third and fourth degree burns on my back. My long wet hair probably saved me from worse injury. I had never heard of fourth degree burns before. That was the area where blue flames had been shooting out of me. Meat burns blue like that on a barbeque sometimes, when the heat is too high. The charred proteins and fat give off a rank stink. That's what I smelled like. It's not a good memory.

I spent the next six weeks laying on my stomach while the burns healed. Mostly, I was left without scars, except where the blue flames burned brightly. The blue flame spots took a full 18 months to heal to the point where I no longer felt any discomfort.

There were many theories about what happened to me. I had not been near an open flame. No candles, no pilot lights, no matches, no irons, no hot burners on the stove.

My personal favorite conspiracy theory was that I had been zapped by a spy plane testing laser technology. I have some weird friends.

My explanation is this: A few days earlier, a hand mirror had been dropped and broken on the porch. It had been swept up ... by a teenager. After the traumatic incident of my spontaneously bursting into flames, we combed over the area and found a small triangle of mirror resting at an angle against a small rock sculpture.

By a weird combination of circumstances, I happened out onto the porch in an old cotton shirt at exactly the moment when the morning sun hit that triangle of mirror. It was a cloudless morning, the first cloudless morning in days. I got zapped. Not by a spy laser or by demons or some paranormal energy ray. I got zapped by sunlight on a piece of mirror on my own front porch. I think. It's the only rational explanation for what happened.

I was not on that porch for more than one minute when I felt the heat on my back. I ripped that shirt off in a matter of seconds (yes, I was naked in front of the astonished eyes of my neighbors) and I was under cold water in another 45 seconds. I still cannot explain how my flesh caught on fire. Or how I developed 4th degree burns in less than 2 minutes.

(For the record, second degree burns hurt like hell and fouth degree burns don't. I guess the nerve endings are fried.)

People who catch on fire tend to flap around in a panic, to run, instead of getting the flames out and the clothes off. If you're on fire, it's not the time to feel modest about exposing the sacred white bosom to the astonished masses.

Weird things happen in this life. Finding an explanation that isn't weird or dismissive or blaming is not so easy. No, I am not fat, I do not smoke, I'm not soaked in alcohol and I don't lounge around against open flames. Can anyone say blame the victim! Sweet Jebus, those explanations annoy me.

After the initial trauma of the incident, it was fun investigating the causes. We spent time catching cotton cloth on fire with a piece of mirror and sunlight. We never did catch meat on fire that way. Maybe the conditions had to be just right ... and they were that morning when I stood on the front porch. I'm just glad my hair was wet.

Now ... be nice. Don't tell me to go torch myself for science. It wouldn't be polite.

[Matilda]

Hi Gayle. Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow! That sounds excruciating.

I spent too much of my childhood waiting to spontaneously combust. I came across the phenomena and was utterly convinced. It wasn't until I was an adult that I stopped believing it might happen.

What did the doctors make of what happened to you?

[Gayle]

Matilda, you must have been under the influence of Stephen King's "Firestarter" as a child. I have friends who think I have hidden abilities I haven't learned to control yet.

Yikes!

When I presented myself for medical treatment and was asked how I caught on fire, I replied with honesty, "I don't know. It just happened." Then they shot me up with morphine and not only did I not know, but I did not care.

As treatment progressed, the doctor who treated me (and knows me as a rational being) thought the sunlight on mirror theory sounded right.

Why did my flesh catch on fire? One possibility is that I had just gotten out of the shower and it's normal for me to apply cologne, which is alcohol based, after I dry myself off with a towel. However, I don't put cologne on my back as a general rule. Did I splash carelessly that morning? Did I lay it on heavy? I just don't remember. Would alcohol on the skin surface cause deep burns into the layers of ... (aak!) ... meat?

My main point in telling this story is to show that weird things can happen. It strikes me as unscientific and illogical to ridicule or dismiss or try to retrofit the weird thing into preconceived notions so that we can attribute a weird thing to a non-weird cause. Okay, a mirror is non-weird. Blue flames shooting out of my flesh remain weird to me, even after all these years.

If anyone has a non-weird explanation, I'm willing to listen. (I've already heard all the weird ones, including Fire Demons.)

I don't think people spontaneously combust from the inside out. But people do catch on fire. Sometimes, inexplicably. If we hadn't found that piece of mirror, there would be no explanation at all. I have a couple woo friends who look at me and my rationality with pity.

They need a full explanation, so they fill in the blanks with whatever satisfies their emotional need to know. Not knowing makes them uncomfortable. I'd rather not know than fill my mind with nonsense just so I wouldn't have to experience the sense of being a puny human who doesn't have all the answers.

I can explain my shirt catching fire. But not me catching fire. Anyone have some non-weird (and non-ridiculing) ideas to offer?

[Matilda]

I think I got a book from the library. I was small. There were pictures. I was traumatised.

Your explanation does make a lot of sense. I can't think of a better one, but I have little to no knowledge of fire and burns except they're dangerous and painful.

[Mendeli]

I can explain my shirt catching fire. But not me catching fire. Anyone have some non-weird (and non-ridiculing) ideas to offer?

Well, I can only suggest a combination of sun, mirror, cotton and cologne. Anything alcohol based on your skin could potentially be very bad if you caught a minor flame. Having not tested the particular product though, I can't be sure about its properties. But as a general rule anything alcohol based is more or less flammable. Other ingredients play a role too, I suppose.

To summarise, sounds like your case was very unfortunate but scientifically plausible.

[ahoneycutt]

I have long hair, and I tend to put cologne on after I get out of the shower. Here's the thing - sometimes I'll put the cologne on, wipe my face on the towel after a few minutes, say after brushing my teeth. The towel will still be wet. Cologne gets applied to the towel, and what if I were to after wiping my face off, try to dry off my hair a little more? If my hair were still fairly wet, the water and cologne in it would wash down my back.

This setup may be too complicated to be realistic. I wonder how much cologne you would have to wear to get enough on your back to actually catch fire, though. I also wonder if it's possible that this happened if it's possible for some of the cologne to be absorbed into the skin?

[Gayle]

Honeycutt, that scenario does not sound plausible for my conditions. However, it represents a possibility.

I don't even know if I used cologne that day. I couldn't remember at the time. Probably, maybe, likely, but not for sure. I doubt if I've ever used enough cologne for it to drip or run. And it's unlikely I'd put it on while still damp.

Do I remember using cologne that day: No.

Is it likely I used cologne: Yes.

Do I usually soak myself liberally: No.

Could I have soaked myself: Yes.

The unreliability of witness memory is one of the things that complicates weird events.

Memory expert Elizabeth Loftus would have fun with me.

[delphi_ote]

That's a very odd story, Gayle. Could there have been some kind of combustible contaminant in the shower water?

[case sensitive]

Was the shirt investigated? Some shirts are very flammable and if there was something on the shirt that was even more flammable.

[Gayle]

The shirt was about ten years old, manufactured before the days when clothing was supposed to be flameproof, 100% cotton, but it didn't need ironing so the fabric had been treated to prevent wrinkles. It was soft as silk. It had probably been laundered at least 500 times in those ten years. It was my favorite around-the-house shirt.

It was freshly laundered, by me, and I'm fairly certain it hadn't had anything spilled or sprayed on it. That much I remember. The doctor specifically asked about the shirt. He wanted to do a product safety alert.

All that was left was a pile of ashes and a corner of fabric about an inch square, with a shell button attached. It looked like a pile of burned newspapers.

When I pulled it off in flames, I tossed it onto the concrete walkway leading to the porch. It burned on it's own, with no other fuel. The way it burned was surprising to me. The cotton twill shorts I was wearing weren't even singed. They were new and had a tag saying they met clothing flammablity standards.

[Gayle]

Dephi, I missed your question at first glance. Nope, don't see how it could have been the shower water. My wet hair saved me from being burned worse. It didn't combust and the burns on my back did not go higher than the ends of my wet hair. But ... my wet hair was laying on the shirt and the shirt burned like newspaper.

Here's something to add to the mystery...

It was a man's shirt -- big, loose, and long. Female body curving in and curving out at the normal places. Now, use your imaginations. The blue flames (and deepest burns) were located about one inch above my natural waistline. The shirt hangs off my shoulders and down over my rear. It's loose, not tucked in. It wasn't touching my body at the waistline, not when I was standing up.

Where did those blue flames come from? Why in a place not in direct contact with the burning shirt. That's the part I can't explain.

Sun ... mirror ... loose cotton shirt ... normal female curves ... it's a mystery.

I know that before the night's over I'm going to be sloshing cologne over a piece of meat and trying to catch it on fire.

[HeyLeroy]

Ah, but how about spontaneous human invisibility? Pretty harmless, and worth $1 million, too.

~~ Paul
That used to happen to me every time I rode a motorcycle!

[HeyLeroy]

Gayle, I have an easier explanation. God was playing with his new magnifying glass.

[Mery Kitsune]

Gayle, when I had long hair (mind you, it was waist-length), any shirt that long would have been pretty wet to about my butt... about 2 or so inches beyond where my hair ended. I've got thin hair, but ther'es a LOT of it, so it holds water rather well.

That shirt would not have been dry and not hanging on your feminine curves. It would have been wet and plastered to your back.

It could have been that the mirror was at the right angle at the wrong time and caught the lower portion of the shirt on fire, which in turn, continued to combust, despite your wet hair. The worst (as in the hottest) flames would have actually been towards the bottom of the (dry) shirt. As such, your waist would have been the first of your (poor, poor) flesh to get singed by the worst of the flames.

The other tests you did... did the cotton burst into the same type of flames that you had beforehand, or were they yellow? Remember, blue flames are HOT... and therefore would do more damage than say a flame that was hot as a candle flame.

[force_redo]

Gayle, could it be possible that you were already on fire before you got out?
As in: The shirt started burning slowly after you put it on and just startet burning you when you were outside? Maybe some heat source on your way out?

ETA: Or maybe some weired chemical reaction? You don't have sodium in your household somwehere close to where you keep your shirts, do you?

FR

[Zep]

I saw a program on TV about a similar situation: A lady put a wet seashell in her pocket, and on the way home her pocket caught fire, shooting blue flames, etc.

Can I ask, Gayle, did the resulting smoke/fumes have rather an awful or noticeable smell? Not just "cooked meat" smell, I mean.

[Gayle]

The Human Cinder answers some questions...

My hair came to my shoulder blades, not to my waist. It was damp, not dripping, having been wrapped in a towel and the excess moisture squeezed out before I got dressed. So my shirt was not damp and clinging to my body, held down by my damp hair.

I tested that this morning. My hair comes slightly below my shoulder blades. It does not dampen a shirt all the way down or hold the shirt against my waist.

There was no open flame or heat source inside or outside the house that could have ignited me That was one of the first things we investigated. No gas pilot lights, no heaters, no candles or incense, the kitchen stove was not on, no electric curlers and no clothes iron were even plugged in. It was a lovely June day, about 75 degrees F. outside, a few degrees cooler inside.

There were no scortch marks or soot on the shorts at all. Not a mark. The shirt tails hung down over my bottom. There were no ash marks or soot stains on the shorts. Not a speck. Soot and ash do not rub off without leaving a dark mark. When the shirt burned on the walkway, the ashes were black and sooty. I first felt the heat in the center of my back, slightly below my shoulder blades. I think that's where the shirt ignited. Strangely, I never felt heat or pain where the blue flames shot out above my waist -- until later.

I didn't notice any smell other than the smell of incinerated animal flesh, but then I was rather preoccupied at the moment so not noticing doesn't mean it wasn't there. Nobody else mentioned any smell other than the way I smelled.

There's nothing in the closet except clothes, shoes, purses, hats and some cedar filled sachets, along with various clothes hangers, and a wire shoe rack. The enterior hadn't been painted or fumigated or sprayed with anything. The walls are drywall painted white (years ago) and the floor is hardwood oak planking. I sweep and damp mop the closet floors, but I have never polished, oiled or waxed inside the closets. I wouldn't want the odor to permeate the clothes. I have never stored any kind of household chemical or cleaner in a bedroom closet. Sodium of various kinds are in the kitchen cupboards.

When we experimented catching cloth on fire with a mirror and the sun, we succeeded in creating smoke and a smoldering burn, but no flames. Without additional fuel, like bits of dried grass, the fire would go out on its own. That may have been due to chemical treatments of fabrics. I don't know for sure.


This morning as I applied cologne, it became clear that alcohol evaporates. Cologne dries on the skin quickly. I timed how long it took me to splash on cologne, apply lipstick, dress casually, and walk out the front door to the porch, with hair still wet. Five minutes. We need to experiment...

I will buy a chicken. I will cut off the back, leaving the skin in place (to simulate human skin.)

I will warm it to room temperatures, wash it in bath soap, dry it thoroughly, rub it with the lotions and potions I normally use after a bath, douse it liberally in cologne, cover it with several layers of cotton guaze, dash to my neighbor's house, and then, using tongs, I will hold it over the blue burning flame on my neighbor's gas cooking range (or gas barbeque.) I will keep the chicken wrapped in the guaze to simulate the shirt, which was manufactured before clothing flammability standards were made law. The cottom guaze in my bathroom medicine cabinet does not say it has been treated to retard flammability. I doubt that it is. It's used to bandage booboos.

Under normal circumstances, a piece of chicken would NOT catch fire when held over a blue cooking flame. It would cook, but not flame on it's own.

Would this experiment suffice to test the flammability of cologne on skin? Please advise.

Edited to add the "NOT"

[delphi_ote]

Would this experiment suffice to test the flammability of cologne on skin? Please advise.

I certainly think it would test the hypothesis, but I personally doubt the hypothesis and think it might be a waste of chicken. It seems like the alcohol would have evaporated far too quickly to cause such flames.

It seems highly unlikely to me that a thin young female would burn so readily and produce blue flames. My attention is turning more and more to the shirt. I think the fact that you used it around the house so much might be highly relevant. Did you clean house in that shirt?

Maybe you should hear out Zep's idea before you burn an innocent chicken.

ETA Thanks for sharing this with us. It's very interesting.

[Gayle]

The more I think about it, the less likely the idea of cologne igniting sounds. For three reason ... The alcohol evaporates quickly, I don't use all that much cologne, and I don't put cologne on my back. But memory is tricky. What did I do that particular morning? Can say for sure.

Could the shirt have been contaminated by some sort of solvent or oil or household cleaning agent? Yes, it's possible. I wore the shirt around the house, but it was my fave shirt, so if I had some dirty job to do, it's unlikely I would have worn it. But I could have. I simply don't remember. I do remember we talked about it after the incident, but I couldn't remember back then. I am sure it was freshly laundered.

Another factor that makes the shirt seem like an important factor in the mystery is that it burned to ashes within a matter of minutes. By the time I got out of the shower, the shirt was no more. It burned like paper.

If Zep has some ideas, it might save me from marinating a chicken in my favorite cologne.

[Matilda]

My (very) limited scientific understanding = the colour of a flame is dictated by the chemical composition of what's burning. So your looking for something that burns blue.

I have no idea if people/meat burn blue (I'm a vegetarian :) ) If not, then the blue flames were caused, I think, by something on you that was burning.

[casebro]

Gayle, do ALL of your neighbors love you? Could some punk have squirted you with bleach? or lye? , or furniture oil? Did a friend help do your laundry?

My slight experience with non-human spontaneous combustion is that all of the above can combust, under the proper conditions. Like the chemical decomposing in a wadded up rag that would be exposed to more oxygen when opened up and put on? While showering, where was the shirt? Any freshly polished furniture you could have bumped in to on the way out to the porch?

Was the mirror in question one of those magnifying mirrors? Did you actualy start some cotton on fire with a mirror?

[delphi_ote]

Gayle, do ALL of your neighbors love you? Could some punk have squirted you with bleach? or lye? , or furniture oil? Did a friend help do your laundry?

I think this being the result of something malicious is highly unlikely. It is just too subtle and coincidental. There are a lot of very bright people on this board, but nobody has thought yet of way to reproduce this effect. If we don't even have a reasonable hypothesis yet as to how this happened, there's no way for us to come to the conclusion that it was done on purpose.

Please, let's be sensitive here. I'm sure this was a very traumatic experience for Gayle, and it seems her neighbors really helped her out. Let's not cast suspicion on her friends without due cause.

[delphi_ote]

The more I think about it, the less likely the idea of cologne igniting sounds. For three reason ... The alcohol evaporates quickly, I don't use all that much cologne, and I don't put cologne on my back. But memory is tricky. What did I do that particular morning? Can say for sure.

Could the shirt have been contaminated by some sort of solvent or oil or household cleaning agent? Yes, it's possible. I wore the shirt around the house, but it was my fave shirt, so if I had some dirty job to do, it's unlikely I would have worn it. But I could have. I simply don't remember. I do remember we talked about it after the incident, but I couldn't remember back then. I am sure it was freshly laundered.

Another factor that makes the shirt seem like an important factor in the mystery is that it burned to ashes within a matter of minutes. By the time I got out of the shower, the shirt was no more. It burned like paper.

If Zep has some ideas, it might save me from marinating a chicken in my favorite cologne.

Your thinking is absolutely logical there, Gayle. I'll try to do some reading about old cotton fabrics and see if I can learn anything. If you don't mind being pestered for more information, can you describe the shirt a little more?

[Mercutio]

Gayle--do you use a hair gel of any sort?

Hair gel and chlorine (if the shirt was bleached?) will react exothermically, enough to ignite the alcohol in the cologne.

Just thinking...

(hair gel and pool chlorine are the ingredients to a delayed-action fuse for use with petrol, in Ecotage: a field guide to monkeywrenching.

[Beady]

Excuse me for butting in here but(!), if I read you correctly, your story is essentially the same as all other spontaneous human combustion stories, in that there was a possible ignition source in the general area. Correct?

I'm not necessarilly drawing an inference, just mentioning to a data point which seems consistent with all other cases.

[Mercutio]

Excuse me for butting in here but(!), if I read you correctly, your story is essentially the same as all other spontaneous human combustion stories, in that there was a possible ignition source in the general area. Correct?

I'm not necessarilly drawing an inference, just mentioning to a data point which seems consistent with all other cases.
Well, either that or Gayle is hotter than self-described.

[Beady]

Well, either that or Gayle is hotter than self-described.

I'd like to find out.

Gayle?

[Gayle]

Asking whether malicious behavior could have been behind the fire is not really out of line if we want to look at the event scientifically.

I've already said I wasn't obese or a smoker or soaked in booze or leaning against open flames. The question of malicious mischief needs to be asked. I'm pretty sure no one had it in for me.

By comparison, there is poltergiest activity, where the family members who've had things thrown at them may feel completely traumatized ... perhaps by a teenager in their own family. Mischief is always a possibility whenever something of a "paranormal" nature is reported.

So it's okay to ask if anyone had it in for me, for example a jealous rival in a love triangle, an angry child or teenager, a crazy neighbor, someone I put in jail or someone I got out of jail (work-related.) Those are all legitimate questions, which a good investigation cannot ignore.

My answer: No love triangles. No feuds. No recent fight or simmering resentment with my husband. No kids or teenagers angry at me. No crazy people about. No recent death threats or promises of revenge. No one who showed a pattern of creating crises so they could be an heroic caretaker (Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy.) None of that.

Beady is correct. There was a probable external ignition source -- the piece of mirror and sunlight. The mirror that was broken was double-sided, one side being a magnifying mirror. It's possible that the piece of mirror in question was a magnifyer. That explains the shirt catching fire. It does not explain me bursting in to flame.

That's the real mystery of so-called spontaneous human combustion. How do people catch on fire and burn like tallow candles if their clothes ignite, while the surrounding area does not incinerate?

As to the other questions: I am pretty sure no one kindly offered to help me with the laundry. Such an unusual state of affairs would probably have been easily remembered as out of the ordinary!

Did I rub up against polished furniture? I simply don't remember. It would be unlikely considering the way the furniture was/is arranged and my direct route out the front door and onto the front porch. I still live in the same house. There's different furniture now, but it's arranged in much the same way. I've reinacted the event several time in the past day.

When I first had my own furniture to polish, I remember being taught to decide on oil or wax or spray and then sticking with it, otherwise you'll make a mess for yourself. I went the easiest route and I usually us Pledge spray on the furniture, but even then, I don't use it every time -- maybe once a month. I dust with a cleaning rag, which is dampened under the fawcet and then wrung out. I have a whole set of ragged old towels that I use as cleaning rags. They are washed separately because cleaning rags get gunky.

I like fine fabrics and I tend to buy high quality items that I take good care of, making sure a soft shirt isn't laundered with a pair of jeans. I seldom use bleach. The shirt was yellow and blue. There's no way I would have bleached it. If something had been purposely or accidentally spilled on the shirt, I'd like to think I'd notice an unusual odor, stain or stiffness. But I can't make any guarantees.

So here's this shirt that burned like newspaper and here's me, shooting blue flames out of my waist in the back.

It's also all right to ask if I really saw blue flames coming out of me, was my body really burning? Where's the evidence?

Naturally, I didn't wait around to get a witness to this really interesting phenomenon. I jumped in the shower under cold water. I didn't bother to take off the shorts I was wearing ... white, Eddie Bauer cotton twill, pull-on shorts. No burn marks on the white fabric.

The only evidence at this point is the scars. I have two scars at the waistline in back, which are obvious burn scars, and a small scar halfway up my back, about the size and shape of a cigarette burn and a couple other little ... imperfections ... as a result of the fire.

That's the only evidence I have.

As to burning cotton fabric with a mirror. We ignited it, made it smoke and smolder. But we did not succeed in getting flames unless we added other fuel. And then it was regular yellow/gold flames. We softened and warmed beef fat, but didn't get it to burn or blacken or flame.

No hair gel or chemicals applied except hairspray and that's not until the hair is dried and "done."

Signed:
Could Give Rebecca Lessons in Hotness

[casebro]

How about bath oils or lotions?

Facing the sun, heat on back, means a reflective source. Some other possibilities, in rough order of likelyhood: overlooked reflectors or prisms: car parts (headlights are reflectors with lenses), car rearview mirrirs ('items in mirror are closer than they seem' are magnifying), random shiny car parts, crystals hangin in windows, crystal balls, prisms in leaded windows, clear bottles of water, aquarium, light fixtures even if not 'on', your blow dryer (you said wet hair...), another mirror to replace the broken one in it's use, sattelite dish, 'diesel' compression of wringing your hair, tin foil lining a hat lying on porch, Fire ants?. Some women just have a glow about them- you were not pregnant were you?

How about a newly discovered zero point energy? Maybe Quantum vibes, focused by any of the above?

[delphi_ote]

As to burning cotton fabric with a mirror. We ignited it, made it smoke and smolder. But we did not succeed in getting flames unless we added other fuel. And then it was regular yellow/gold flames. We softened and warmed beef fat, but didn't get it to burn or blacken or flame.

First of all, I really admire your investigative attitude with this. It's great that you're so willing to answer questions and think. My earlier comments about foul play were not intended to rule out the possibility, just that I didn't think we should try to infer something like that unless we had a better understanding of just what happened. If there was someone in your life you didn't get along with, I see no point in irrationally triggering suspicion. Now if foul play was the most logical explaination (like your poltregeist example) then obviously I think that should be the first hypothesis out of anyone's mouth.

Your experiment seems in line with my intuition. It just seems like there would need to be some kind of highly flammable substance in or on your shirt to get the effect you describe. Then everything would make sense. The mirror and sun started the fire, and it burned hotter than usual because there was an unusually combustible substance present.

As for humans burning so completely as they do in the SHC cases, Joe Nickell has some insight:

[B]ody fat is combustible. In the forensic literature there's something known as the "wick effect" or "candle effect". It's sort of like a candle inside-out, where the wick is on the outside; for example, clothing. Once a person catches on fire, their body fat may begin to melt and be absorbed - I know this is gruesome to even consider - into the stuffing of a chair or into the clothing, or into the rug or carpet beneath the body. And this burns very well, and attacks more of the body, melting even more body fat, so that the body provides the means for its own destruction. One can, with a little imagination, see how this could happen, that a body could be burning, and burning, and re-burning - burning very thoroughly. The "resources" are being made very good use of - there's little competition for the fire. The fire is being well-fed, and the flammable part of the body is being used to attack the less flammable part of the body, with the water being driven off as steam. Now, this is highly controversial (or was, until some years ago) because SHC proponents just didn't want to hear this. They wanted to point out that there wasn't any strong forensic experimental support for this, except small tests. Our society frowns on coroners burning bodies in experiments - but fairly recently a researcher used the carcass of a pig (and dressed it up pretty nicely) and showed that, in fact, once the fire is well-started it will progress via the wick effect.

[Jeff Wagg]

Ok, I'm completely fascinated with Gayle's story.

First, I'm very happy that you were wearing a button down shirt..so you could get it off without pulling it over your head.

Now..here's the interesting part. Occam's razor says that you're either lying or mistaken. And I don't believe that.

So, I don't know what to do. I have a great respect for Gayle based on her posts, but what I've seen of the world tells me that this kind of thing doesn't happen.

No matter what, I'm wrong. And that's kind of exciting. :) But what do I do now?

[El_Spectre]

This is very interesting... but I have a question about the mirror hypothesis... how would it work? I curved/parabolic mirror would of course concentrate light, but not an (I'm assuming) flat shard of mirror, right?

Also, any chance you had something in your hair (I dunno... some conditioner?) that was highly combustible?

And one more... is there another way light could have become focused... maybe some unusual windows in the house... that could produce the needed heat?

I'm not making light of your injury... but it is confounding...

[Matilda]

Now..here's the interesting part. Occam's razor says that you're either lying or mistaken. And I don't believe that.



Occam's razor is a useful tool, but it's not an infallible indicator of the truth.

We know that freak accidents do occur, and it sounds to me like that's what happened to Gayle.

I'm fascinated too :).

[Dave_46]

My (very) limited scientific understanding = the colour of a flame is dictated by the chemical composition of what's burning. So your looking for something that burns blue.



The Oxygen level available can also affect the colour of the flame.

Dave

[Matilda]

The Oxygen level available can also affect the colour of the flame.

Dave

Thank you :).

[force_redo]

Some guesses:
Probably it wasn't your body that was on fire, but some residues of the burning shirt? It might be possible that what you saw when you looked at your back in the mirror was something like burning/smouldering plastic. This could be also the reason why the pain came a bit later. (Which could also be because of the shock, of course)
I think that if you burn a plastic bag or an old tyre (no, don't do it, it's not healthy) it could look pretty much like what you described.
Secondly, if the flames were coming "out of your body" there would be any holes left, maybe?
Since you said the shirt was burning down really quickly, I guess it was either made from some plastic or it was (accidentally) treated with something. I think the "wick effect" is not a good explaination because it wouldn't have made the entire shirt burn up that quickly, but rather only the part that was covering your back.

This doesn't explain what ignited the shirt in the first place, though. Maybe some "sun-through-water-droplet-magnifying-glass" effect... But that's a long shot...

And thanks a lot for sharing!

FR

[DevilsAdvocate]

I don't know much about fabics, but perhaps the shirt was not 100% cotton. You described the shirt as not wrinkling, or having some type of wrinkle protection, and that it felt like silk. Maybe it was a synthetic fabric or synthetic blend. If you are sure that it was labled as 100% cotton, it woul dbe at least plausible that the manufacturer mislabeled it--perhaps even to get around flammable fabric laws that would have been fairly strict by 1980.

Rayon would burn rapidly with ablue flame. There are probably some other highly flamable synthetics that would as well. Some types of synthetics would melt. If the shirt were a synthetic fabric, it could have been highly flamable, burned with a blue flame, partially melted onto your skin, and continued burning causing the severe burns. :con2:

[Mercutio]

Ok, I'm completely fascinated with Gayle's story.

seconded...

The "mythbuster" in my wants to examine the remains of that shirt, and to see how it chemically reacts with each of the hair/cleaning/etc. products in your bathroom.

Frankly, such an investigation, if it turns anything up, is step one in a product liability lawsuit. If there is a reaction caused by some common chemical, first off it caused you serious harm, and secondly, it could do the same to someone else!

[Gayle]

Yes, the situation is confounding. That's why it's worth talking about. I'm going to go play for a while, but I'll leave a few facts for folks who are stuck inside to ponder...

1. I'm a weight lifter. I've been lifting weights long before it was popular for women. At the time of the fire, my body fat had been measured at 13.5%. That is very low for a women. It's common for women with nice figures to have body fat as high as 30%. Fifty percent is more common still. A person with 50% body fat might burn like a pig. I don't believe I would.

2. The shirt was lightweight, thin fabric. Not heavy. I was not swaddled in fuel. The shirt was loose and not touching me at the waist. It was labeled 100% cotton, permanent press fabric. I know fabric. It wasn't rayon or nylon or polyester. It was soft as silk because it had been washed at least once a week for ten years. Quality cotton gets softer with use.

3. I wasn't wearing a bra. Those usually have elastic or stretch fabric in the band that would have melted into the skin. That didn't happen. However, some of the shirt was embedded in my flesh near the shoulder blades. The doctor removed it on the third day. Gulp! The shirt did not melt like plastic. It burned like paper. I doubt if it was treated with flame retardants. Or if it ever had been, perhaps all those washings rid the fabric of the chemicals.

4. The places where I saw the flames are the places where I had the fourth degree burns. That's the area where I did not feel pain until the healing process was underway. The second degree burns hurt the worst. Here's a definition of fourth degree burns:


Fourth Degree Burns

A fourth degree burn goes through all the layers of the skin and down into the muscle and the bone. It looks like a third degree burn and does great harm to the body structure. Since the nerves are burnt there is little pain in this burn.

http://www.burn-victim-center.com/types.html


My body was on fire. The muscles were burned, but not the bone. My body continued to burn after I tore the shirt off. I didn't bother to unbutton the shirt ... I ripped it off over my head and wet hair and tossed it on the sidewalk. My hair and face were not burned at all.

When a person's clothes ignite, we're supposed to "Stop, Drop, and Roll!" Put the flames out.

When I glanced over my shoulder and saw flames, I jumped off the porch with the intention of dropping onto the lush lawn and rolling on my back. I jumped and I saw a pile of doggie doo on the grass.

Now I ask you ... would you drop and roll under such circumstances?

I ripped that shirt off, tossed it on the ground and ran into the house. If I had rolled, according to my first impulse, I would probably have smothered the flames coming out of my body. If I'd jumped into the shower without stopping to look into the mirror, I would have doused the flames without seeing them.

But I didn't roll and I did look. My thin, muscular, low-fat body was on fire. The only fuel had been a thin cotton shirt ... and me.

Maybe be need to go back to experimenting with a chicken body. Warm it up to room temp, lay some guaze and paper toweling over it, and catch it on fire. Then see if the chicken burns on its own. It doesn't seem likely, but we won't know if we don't try.

I read Joe Nickell's article when it first came out. Maybe I'm just being stubborn, but I don't think I'd burn like a pig. Just don't think so. That leaves those blue flames and fourth degree burns unexplained.

[Lisa Simpson]

Gayle--I have two questions.

In a previous post you said (speaking of testing with a chicken):

I will warm it to room temperatures, wash it in bath soap, dry it thoroughly, rub it with the lotions and potions I normally use after a bath

Do you recall using lotion that day?

My other question is: Do you recall if you used anti-static dryer sheets on your shirt when it was laundered?

I have no idea if either of these two things would contribute to the flames, but they came to my mind and I thought I'd ask.

[rebecca]

Signed:
Could Give Rebecca Lessons in Hotness

I get brought up in the oddest conversations.

[Dragonrock]

Okay, I have a smidge of info I can offer.

I had a cheap wal-mart 100% cotton shirt that I wore as a comfy work shirt. It had dried paint, stains, spots, and GTITS knows what else on it.

One day I took my wife's old fry grandpappy out to the garage while I figured out how to throw it away as it was still filled with oil. I set it next to the washing machine and somehow the lid got knocked off. Several days later I was going to wash my work clothes when I dropped my shirt in the fry grandpappy without noticing. I didn't realize that it was sitting in the frier soaking up oil until I took everything out of the drier to put them away. I found the shirt completely saturated with cooking oil. As it was my favorite work shirt I decided to try to save it. I washed it by itself and it seemed to come clean.

Fast forward several months.

I'm about to put my work clothes in the washer when I decide to read the instructions written on the inside of the washer lid. It says to not wash things that were soiled in oil as the oil won't all wash out. This causes me a bit of concern and the shirt is falling apart so I decide to try an experiment. After removing the shirt from the dryer I take it out to the driveway and drop it in an old 18 quart cooking pot and throw in a lit match. The first couple went out, but eventually the shirt started smoldering. Then the shirt caught fire and within 15 seconds most of the shirt was burning. As I was watching it, I could see that the flames would come out of an area for several seconds before the cloth began to char. Within a minute the shirt was burnt to ashes and I was a bit shaken. Then shirt had been washed at least a dozen times since the oil spill and it still went up like a torch.

My point is, perhaps the old shirt had gotten oil on it in the past and once it started smoldering that was all it took.

[Gayle]

Dragonrock, thanks for your story. I do think there was some property in my shirt that caused it to catch fire and burn like blazes, just like your shirt. It wasn't normal. I accept that.

Hearing your story, I will be ever more vigilent to make sure my family members don't toss an oily cleaning rag in with the rest of the laundry. (More work for me!) I would not wish combustion on anyone.

I feel like the only appropriate thing to say here is, "Okay, important safety tip. Do not cross the streams."

I hope we can all agree that humans do not spontaneously combust. I did not spontaneously combust. The only rational explanation is that it had to be the sunlight on the mirror. Somehow -- still unexplained completely -- that piece of broken mirror tilted at an angle zapped me and my shirt was ready to go up in flames. It did. It hurt like hell.

I didn't feel the deep fourth degree burns -- the places where flames glowed out of holes in my flesh and where I have scars -- but I felt the areas all around those holes. The fourth degree burn was surrounded by a third degee burn and that burn was surrounded by second degree burns. You'd have to be pretty damn drunk to sleep through that.

Deep sigh ...

I'm not satisfied with Joe Nickell's burning pig explanation. It's a good explanation as far as it goes. But I don't think it goes far enough. It's good enough to explain that self-combustion doesn't happen ... but we all agree to that. Right? There's an external source of ignition.

But here we have a survivor of wrongly-called spontaneous human combustion -- one who doesn't believe it was internally spontaneous because that's crazy -- but who wonders why she was such a good wick that day. That's the mystery to me. Why do I have fourth degree burns ... so fast ... so deep?

The shirt burned fast, but I didn't. When I looked in the mirror, it kind of looked like the flame you see from Sterno Canned Heat. I've called the flames blue, but they were blue only in the center, surrounded by the kind of golden yellow your see in a candle flame. Oh, gosh, I'm kind of getting the creeps.

People would have to be completely whacked, completely knocked out to stay unconscious while they burned. Say you're wicking like mad and the nerve endings are killed and you don't feel the burn ... but the burn spreads along the edges. That hurts. Believe me, it hurts.

Right now, I have a couple of white scars on my lower back. Not big. One on the left side of the spine above the waist and the other clear around on the right, near the side, but still above the waist. That's the only visible sign of the burn. But for the first six months, my skin was an angry red all along the waist, from one side to the other, with a couple of deep purple areas. It was discolored all the way up to my shoulder blades. The burn stopped where my wet hair began. It was a year before all the red disappeared. The purple slowly changed to the white scars I have now.

The pig Joe Nickell talked about was already dead when it burned. He said, "In fact, once the fire is well-started it will progress via the wick effect."

How did I get so well started in just a few minutes and ...

Poor pig ... if it had been alive and well soused on booze, would it have just laid there and burned without being roused by the pain? What would it have done if it was ignited while alive and awake? That would be unethical to test unless humans were exploding left and right like Fouth of July fire fountains. And they're not.

Maybe I just wicked. I don't know.

To answer some of the other questions about that day ...

There were no crystals or ornaments or cars nearby. There were no flame or heat sources nearby. The only thing that could possibly have caused the shirt to combust was the mirror. It was a freak accident. I'm pretty sure of that.

Something could have been spilled on the shirt at some time, washed out, and then forgotten ... while it lingered in the fibers. That makes sense.

Lisa asked about lotion. I use lotion on my arms and legs daily. Over time, some could have gotten into the fibers of the shirt. I prefer oily lotions like Nivea. My entire wardrobe could be saturated by invisible body lotion oils. The oils would be emulsified by detergent in the washing machine and evening mixed on the fabric, including the backs of shirts. So, eventhough I don't put lotion on my back, the shirt could have invisible oils within the fibers in the back of the shirt.

I think we have a plausible explanation for that shirt going up in flames like it did. Progress! Does that sound reasonable to people?

Merc's question about product liability is valid. That's why I ran out to retrieve the shirt from the walkway after I got out the shower. I ran outside with a towel clutched to my front, still wearing the shorts. I wanted to sue someone! I did. I was charred and in pain. I also did not have medical insurance at the time.

The shirt was gone. No label. I wasn't even sure where I'd purchased it. I tend to seek out one-of-a-kind or unusual items. The label was an unfamiliar brand ... not like Eddie Bauer or Doc Martens or Liz Claiborne ... names I would remember. It was something like Hot Boyz ChaCha. Like that.

There were two shops in my town that specialized in such things. Both went out of business when the Big Box stores came to town. So I had no label and no store and no lawsuit.

I can name some of the products, lotions and potions I used that day because I used them for years. It was probably in this order.

1. City water for the shower ... no recent plumbing work or work in the street lines.

2. Clairol Herbal Essence Shampoo ... the old green kind they had before they made a dozen variations on the the theme. No hair conditioner.

3. Clinique Extra Strength Soap.

4. Out of the shower, dry off with a towel. Clinique Exfoliating Lotion #3, followed by Clinique Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion -- on face.

5. Dry off some more and slap on cologne under my arms and here and there. Prepare yourself ... it's Old Spice Men's After Shave Lotion. I like it and it's cheap.

6. Walk nekked down the hall to the bedroom and apply lotion to arms, hands, legs and feet. Could be any brand, whatever was unscented and reasonably priced. They're all about the same, except for the scent. Wave arms around a bit and rub lotion in until it's absorbed.

7. Take undies and shorts from dresser and shirt from closet, put them on, walk down hall, across living room, out the door onto the front porch barefoot, stand there a few seconds admiring the morning, catch on fire.


I accept that people do not burst into flame from the inside out. If I thought they did, can you imagine what it would be like? I'd have to walk around with a fire extinguisher under my arm. I'd be terrified all the time that I might combust for no reason. It would be hell.

But it's not. I don't expect to combust. I just don't accept the skeptical explanations for SHC as explaining what happened to me.

And it is all about me ... or at least it feels like it when you're on fire ... and about Rebecca. Hi, Rebecca. You're mentioned in the oddest places because your belong everywhere.


Gayle

[Jeff Wagg]

Gayle, we've been discussing this in the chat room.

Have you considered that someone may have done this maliciously? Some sort of parabolic mirror or telescope or something like that?

I admit this is grasping at straws..but that's all I have.

[Gayle]

Jeff, I have friends who suggested such things and discussed it in much detail. But I was standing on a porch with my back to a wooden screen door and the porch had a roof.

How would "They" aim the FireRay at my back?

How hard would it be for someone to do as you suggest? There were teenage boys in the neighborhood who shot BB guns at everyone until I told their grandfather and he took the BB guns away. Could teenage boys go form BB guns to parabolic mirrors with relative ease? These were not the brainiest kids on the block.

Taking away the BB guns sounds like a motive for revenge. But my intervention with Grandpa kept the kids from being arrested and they knew it. I was the lesser of adult evils. They liked me. If they did fry me, it would have been mischief, but not with the intention of burning me to a crisp. I'm pretty sure. And ... hmmm ... they wouldn't have been able to keep their mouths shut about it. So ... hmmmm ...

Could they, or anyone, have started my back on fire when my back was facing a solid wooden structure? I was approximately four feet from the front door when I ignited. The door had a double-pane window, but it had a screen door in front of it.

I'm willing to entertain any notion that's possible, even if it seems outlandish at first.

[Jeff Wagg]

But..how could the mirror do it under the conditions you just described?

Please don't think I'm doubting you...I'm just insatiably curious.

In fact, one of the more famous SHC cases happend at the exact minute I was born..so I've been following this stuff for awhile.

[Gayle]

There was a small rattan chest on the porch, pushed up against the front of the house, but all the way over to south side of the porch. The house faces directly east.

On the chest were some interesting rocks, petrified wood, some black volcanic glass (is that a possible?) and the piece of mirror resting at an angle against the rocks. There was nothing else on the porch. There were flowers on the right and left and on the front sides. Lots of lush foliage.

The day after the incident we tried to figure out what happened. The sun was flashing in that piece of mirror in the morning and at a certain angle for a few minutes you could feel some heat. Not HELLFIRE! heat, but some heat.

The only rational explanation that we could come up with is that the sun and mirror and my body were all aligned exactly right for the FireRay to zap me.

I don't feel like you're doubting me at all. Rather, you're asking the right questions. A weird thing happened. Maybe we clutched at the mirror because in our tramatized state we needed a rational explanation. In the process of clutching at the first rational explanation, we could have ignored other rational explanations.

It is, without a doubt, one of the most bizarre things that has ever happened to me or around me. It has never been fully explained.

Edited to add: Who burned up at the moment of your birth? Just gotta know!

[delphi_ote]

Really busy. Shouldn't be posting or reading.

Just a note: Joe Nickell isn't propsing the wick concept as what STARTS the fire. He's proposing it as an explaination for why the burning is so thorough. In the SHC cases, there is a big deal made about how complete the burning is. Joe is proposing the wick effect for why in some cases there's just nothing left of these people but ash.

[El_Spectre]

Maybe we clutched at the mirror because in our tramatized state we needed a rational explanation.

It's a decent theory, but I still fail to see how a non-concentrating piece of mirror could direct enough energy to cause something (even something with a low burning point) to ignite. Seems to me that we'd have people catching fire walking by mirror-fronted buildings all the time, ya know?

[Gayle]

After talking about this for a couple days, I feel less inclined to blame the mirror. As El Spectre says, people would be bursting into flames all the time if a little bit of mirror in sunlight could do it. But I have no other likely suspect for what caused the shirt to ignite.

The super-flammability of the shirt may have been due to repeatedly being exposed to oil-based body lotions and potions or some other exposure to oil that I don't remember.

The super-flammability of Gayle remains the biggest mystery.

I'd rather be confounded by facts I can't reconcile than clinging to false, but comforting, notions.

G.

[El_Spectre]

The super-flammability of Gayle remains the biggest mystery.

I'd rather be confounded by facts I can't reconcile than clinging to false, but comforting, notions.

I dunno, maybe I'm just a geek, but that last statement makes you sound sound way hot in my book :)

[Kell]

but that last statement makes you sound way hot in my book

Given the topic of discussion, that attempt at flattery could be considered rather tactless :P

[Morwen]

It's a decent theory, but I still fail to see how a non-concentrating piece of mirror could direct enough energy to cause something (even something with a low burning point) to ignite. Seems to me that we'd have people catching fire walking by mirror-fronted buildings all the time, ya know?

Could there maybe be dew or droplets of water on the mirror? I have no idea whether this would concentrate reflected sunlight, but dewdrops do cause a pretty noticeable lens effect. If on top of a reflective surface, maybe the interior of the drop would act as a concave mirror and reflect part of the -bright- sunshine as a concentrated ray... Maybe not. I'm kind of waving my hands here. It's just that this problem is so fascinating.

Gayle, thanks for your patience for discussing this with us and your clear and very rational way of looking at what was doubtless a horrifying experience. Minds like you are very rare and it's a privilege to have one here in this forum.

[Matilda]

Were there any electrical storms in the area at the time? Not overhead of you, they could have been miles away. Lightning strikes can reach miles outside of a storm. And then there are ground surges. Hmm, I know I'm reaching. But I was wondering if electricity in some form could have been a source of ignition if it wasn't the mirror? I'll go and look at lightning strikes. I'm so gonna have nightmares.

I think something flammable on the shirt makes the most sense as to why you burned the way you did. Though I love the smell of Old Spice. It never occurred to me just to wear it rather than surreptitiously sniffing men. Thanks Gayle!

[El_Spectre]

Given the topic of discussion, that attempt at flattery could be considered rather tactless :P

True, but I feel safe given someone else has already gone for the thermal/attractive gag :)

What do I keep hearing about that calendar? Smart is Sexy ?

[El_Spectre]

Could there maybe be dew or droplets of water on the mirror? I have no idea whether this would concentrate reflected sunlight, but dewdrops do cause a pretty noticeable lens effect.

They do, but I'm thinking the focal length would be really short. I can't back this up, it's been years since I took physics, but I can't imagine a drop of water having a focus point more than a few times its own diameter away, ya know?

[Matilda]

Apparently lightning often goes over the surface of the body, setting fire to clothes, and not burning the body directly. But I'm pretty sure Gayle would have noticed if she was struck.

Apparently:
Lightning can travel up to 10 km and come out of clear blue sky.
Lightning can travel along the ground, go up one leg and down another.:eye-poppi

http://www.uic.edu/labs/lightninginjury/ltnfacts.htm

But lightning also typically leaves burns at the entry and exit marks:

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/essd18jun99_1.htm

[El_Spectre]

Apparently lightning often goes over the surface of the body, setting fire to clothes, and not burning the body directly. But I'm pretty sure Gayle would have noticed if she was struck.

Perhaps it's a matter of scale... static shocks can be fairly high voltage, perhaps something metal on the door (knob, other decorations) zapped the shirt in passing?

Edited to fix spelling and vagueify my claim.

[Jeff Wagg]

Perhaps it's a matter of scale... static shocks can be fairly high voltage, perhaps something metal on the door (knob, other decorations) zapped the shirt in passing?

Edited to fix spelling and vagueify my claim.

That's my new pet theory. Somehow, Gayle built up a MASSIVE electrical potential in her body. Poorly grounded shower drain, lots of hair combing..whatever.

She's out on the porch, and her shirt brushes the door..hits a metal door knob, perhaps a metal screen.

It makes a small noise, but it's masked by sounds of the street. Her shirt starts burning, but she doesn't notice as soon as she might have because she had just come out of a hot shower and her skin was somewhat desensitized.

OK, now here's my problem. Given the above fairly rational explanation, I would expect Gayle to have 2nd degree burns, maybe third. But fourth? In more than one place? Is the burning temperature of cotton enough to burn through layers of epidermis and actually ignite subcutaneous fat in a matter of seconds?

Something is misssing. Could someone get me a dozen cadavers and meet me at Gayle's house? Thanks.

[Jeff Wagg]

It seems that cotton burns at 450F. With linseed oil, it can burn at 800F.

Have a look at this experiment:

http://trackertrail.com/survival/fire/spontaneouscombustion/rbjul05/

And this one is very interesting:

http://www.tis-gdv.de/tis_e/ware/fasern/baumwoll/baumwoll.htm#selbsterhitzung

[casebro]

Re: oils and spontaneous combustion- Linseed oil often has 'driers' added, if so, it's labled "boiled linseed oil". These driers are actually oxidizers that promote polymerization of the oils by catalyzing the chemical process. VERY condusive to SC. On the other hand, lube oils are loooaded with anti- oxidants. I know personally of a couple cases of linseed based products heating up, but with twenty years of exposure in auto and machine shops, never even heard of SC in lube oils. Web searchs don't show any either....

[Gayle]

It was a clear day, no clouds. I don't know about lightening. I live in a valley, at the very bottom of the eastern mountain. It's called a mountain, but it's actually a high hill that rises abruptly from about 660 feet above sea level to 3000 feet. The hills are forested. We have one or two lightening storms a year.

The doorknob is metal. The screen in the wooden screendoor is wire mesh, not nylon mesh. I could easily have touched the metal. The porch was concrete with a roof that was supported by wooden uprights. It has since been replaced by a wooden veranda.

Most of the body lotions I use contain mineral or vegetable oil. I have two different lotions here and they both contain soy oil. I'm allergic to linseed/flax oil. If a product contained it, I would use it once or twice and realize the problem and I'd dump or give away the product. I have no idea what body lotion products I might have been using prior to the incident.

I like Dragonrock's idea about oil in a freshly laundered shirt. I'm sure I never dropped a shirt into a tub of oil, but I can see repeated exposure to oil-based body lotions as having a similar impact on hidden oils in the fibers of the shirt.

Stand on porch ... feel heat on back ... see flames ... jump off porch ... see doggie doo on lawn ... rip shirt off over my head ... run into house ... look in mirror ... EEEEEEEKKKKKK! ... jump in shower.

It sounds like a lot, but it all happened in moments. I would swear I was on the porch for less than a minute when I felt the heat. One step off porch, see, rip, run. It didn't take long.

But, then, we know that eyewitnesses are totally unreliable.

[Dave_46]

Self heating of oil impregnated rags/cloth happens in bulk, when they are crumpled, so that the heat generated cannot escape properly. I don't think that this would be the case with a shirt being worn, the heat from self heating would dissipate,

Dave

[Beady]

I get brought up in the oddest conversations.

That's just the kind of girl you are.

[kevin]

You do recall correctly. Essential the body becomes an inside-out candle. The clothes on the outside act as the wick and the fatty tissues on the inside provide the fuel. CSI even had an episode on this where they did the pig wrapped in a blanket experiment. I'm not sure but Myth Busters may have also done an episode on this.

Not any of the Mythbuster's I've seen (pretty sure I've seen them all, except maybe the most recent ones). They have done several disgusting things with dead pigs though. I can't rewatch the one with the dead pig in the corvette. too gross.

The CSI episode on this was pretty neat.

[Beady]

Gayle, excuse the impertinence, but there's one area I haven't seen covered. So, just for thoroughness' sake, how err... "hirsuite" are/were you?

[Gayle]

Beady, and all, it's okay to ask questions that might seem rude in ordinary conversation. I've offered myself up here as a survivor of (falsely-named) spontaneous human combustion, so none of these questions strike me as offensive.

I have very little body hair, except in the usual places. What body hair I do have is invisible to the naked eye. Even looking with a magnifying glass, it's sparse and very fine. Not much fuel for a fire.

I'm thinking of an experiment.

I have an old pillowcase that has tatting (fine crocheting) around the edges, done by a great-grandmother. The pillow case is basically a rag, but the tatting has sentimental value. I'm going to remove the tatting and pour some oily body lotion on the pillow case. The fabric is from the 1920s, so it's natural fiber and not chemically treated with flame retardants. It's also about the same weight as the shirt was. I'll let it set for a few days soaking up the body lotion, just as a dirty shirt would in the laundry hamper. Then I'll wash it by itself in the washing machine, dry it, and let it hang in the closet for a day or two.

I'll buy a chicken, warm it to room temperature, and then soak it for a while in hot water -- shower temperature. That'll warm up the chicken's body. I'll dry it thoroughly, using toweling and a hairdryer to make sure there's no excess moisture in the body folds and cavity. Then I'll rub the wings and legs with soy oil to simulate rubbing myself down with body lotion.

I'm as hairless as a plucked chicken, and my back is no more fat than a chicken's back ... maybe less so. A chicken's back has two nice little chucks of meat (muscle) which would nicely simulate the amount of muscle on my back. My skin isn't as thick as a chicken's skin, and I don't think I have as much subcutaneous fat as a chicken does. But it's the best I can come up with.

I will heat the house to around 75 degrees F, which was about the temp on that fine June morning. I'll spash some Old Spice into my hands and rub it on me in the usual manner and then dry my hands on the pillowcase.

The chicken will go inside the pillowcase, just as I went inside the large, loose, shirt. I'll use a tool of some kind to set the chicken upright, so it's simulating a human standing on two legs. Those kitchen tools can be bought for less than ten dollars and I've wanted one anyway.

The dressed chicken will go into a cast iron frying pan and the pan will go inside the fireplace. Safety first.

I'll then try various methods of lighting the pillowcase on fire. I'll do my best to set that pillow case aflame. Then we'll see if the chicken catches fire or gets some serious burns. I'll time the whole thing.

At the end of the experiment, if the chicken is not burned to cinders, I'll wash it in salt water, cook it and feed it to some poor unsuspecting person who will wonder what that wonderful marinade is.

A pig in a blanket would have more chance of catching on fire, I think. The blanket offers more external fuel than a thin shirt and pigs have a thick layer of fat. They do. I don't. I have body fat in the usual female places. The lower back is not one of those places.

Any comments or suggestions to improve the chicken in the pillowcase experiment?

It's snowing here today so it will be a long time before I can play with mirrors and summer sunlight again. As you can probably tell, I'm less concerned about how the shirt caught on fire than I am about how I went up in flames.

However, both issues remain unresolved in my mind right now.

[Jeff Wagg]

Gayle is a forum treasure. :)

[delphi_ote]

Any comments or suggestions to improve the chicken in the pillowcase experiment?

Trying to find some way to see just how much heat you need to catch the pillow case on fire might be useful to test some hypotheses as to just what started the fire in the first place.

If you have a digital camera, you might take some pictures to document the method and results. You might also try video taping things so you can watch what happens a few times and slow it down if necessary.

I shouldn't be posting here (PhD student at the end of the semester,) but you're just too awesome, Gayle. If I could hold up one example of what skepticism is all about to the people who don't understand, it would be this thread.

[Dragonrock]

Rather than just throwing a match on the pillow case, try lighting it with something hot but not flaming, like a soldering iron. That would better simulate the hear from focused light.

[Beady]

Gayle, before you go to a lot of trouble you don't need to, have you considered approaching a high school or college science teacher with the problem? They have both knowledge and equipment that you don't.

For that matter, where's Mercutio when we need him?

[Gayle]

Thank you for the kind words. I've asked a Forest Service scientist who has expertise in fire to help with the experiment. I have a firm maybe.

Beady, was there some other ideas you had regarding knowledge or equipment that might be available through a science teacher? I do know one. Plenty of knowledge. I don't know about equipment. Did you have anything in particular in mind?

Dragonrock, we're thinking along the same lines. Holding a match to a piece of cotton fabric is not likely to cause it to flame. Kitchen towels will smolder if they touch a hot burner on the stove. I've never had one go up in flames, but they may be treated with flame retardant.

Before I attempt to immolate the chicken, I'm going to attempt to catch some woven cotton clothe on fire. I've pulled out some old cleaning rags. They're clean, look just fine, as far as rags go. But one of them was thoroughly soaked in oil at one time ... just like your shirt. I'm going to see how that burns.

I want to test various methods of catching fabric on fire before I dress up the chicken in the pillowcase. It's not so easy to find fabrics these days that are not treated with flame retardants. I'm sure the pillowcase is too old for that. It's large enough to simulate the kindling power of the shirt. Once it's gone, it's gone ... no more shirt-size pieces of fabric that haven't been treated. The cleaning rags are small.

I'm also trying to work up my courage to go on up the road to the fire station to ask the fire chief or fire marshall for some advice. Nice guys. I've worked with them on land use issues and I'll probably work with them again. Maybe we could turn this into a story on what to do if your clothes catch fire. That would be a nice newspaper story for the holiday season, with all the candles people have going.

Any other suggestions before I have the fire guys rolling on the floor laughing? (Note to self: must take cookies to fire guys.)

[YoPopa]

Facinating story Gayle. Thank you for sharing.

I have some experience with rags + oil which I use to make torches to ignite piles of brush to dispose of them in the winter (proper permits obtained in season). I have even used old Hawaiian Tropic sun tan oil for the purpose. My wife buys the #4 stuff and I want her to use #25 so the #4 is considered waste oil to me. :)

Of all the lotions you mentioned I don't remember you mentioning sun tan oil so I would ask if you used that on your back in years past, then wore the shirt. The shirt sounds like the kind of thing my wife uses as a beach cover up which is why I ask.

One possibility occurs to me about how the shirt burned. Perhaps a large section of the back of the shirt separated itself from the rest of the shirt. When you tore the shirt off you were only tearing off the front half of the shirt. That might explain why there was so little of it left on the side walk later. The back portion of the shirt collapsed on itself and landed on the small of your back where it bunched up with the flames on the inside of the bunch and in contact with your skin. This provided a lot more fuel than you would expect other wise. The ashes from the back of the shirt were still burning when you looked in the mirror. Perhaps there was a tiny corner of the shirt wedged into the waistband of the shorts you were wearing. When you got back in the shower the last bit of unburned shirt and the ashes were washed down the drain. This doesn't explain your flesh catching fire but it does explain a greater heat source.

RE. initial ignition: In your first post you said "We spent time catching cotton cloth on fire with a piece of mirror and sunlight." It sounds like you proved the possibility. Did you do this with the small broken bit or some different mirror?

P.S. I've had a number of small burns from burning ashes which landed on my shirt from the burning brush piles. I'll be a lot more careful from now on!!

[Gayle]

YoPapa, I may have used suntan lotion, not oil, in the decade I owned that shirt before the fire. I remember lots of outdoor activities, but when it comes to suntan lotion, my memory is a blank.

In thinking about the possibility of the back of the shirt separating from the rest of the shirt ... It's possible. I don't know.

I have to go back to the white shorts. They were new white shorts and we were truly surprised there were no ash marks or scortched areas on the back of the shorts. It was especially lucky for me because they were pull-on shorts with an elastic waistband. Elastic melts. That would have created very painful second and third degree burns.

Thinking about all this, I think I'm in danger of suffering witness suggestibility. Or witness stubbornness. I'm trying to avoid both.

I'm no longer convinced the fire was started by the mirror. We played at starting fires with mirrors later, after I felt up to it, but not with the mirror. I tossed it in the trash immediately after we found it. I was emotional, as you might guess, and I focussed my anger at the mirror. I swore at it, called it names and threw it away. It did wonders for my mood.

If the mirror didn't start the fire, then the mystery is bigger.

I do think it's likely the shirt poofed up into flame because it had oils embedded in the fibers. It could have been very hot. The means the mystery of me catching on fire might not be quite as mysterious as I thought.

My next task is to burn some cotton rags and come back and report. I need an oven thermometer. They're cheap, they withstand heat and measure temps up to 550 degrees F. Above that, I don't know how to measure how hot the cloth burns.

[Dave_46]

My next task is to burn some cotton rags and come back and report. I need an oven thermometer. They're cheap, they withstand heat and measure temps up to 550 degrees F. Above that, I don't know how to measure how hot the cloth burns.

Please remember that any thermometer will only give you the temperature of the thermometer. It will need a lot of care to ensure that this temperature is related to the temperature you want to measure.

Also, as a general rule visible (luminous) flames usually have a temperature around 800-900 deg C.

Dave

[Beady]

Beady, was there some other ideas you had regarding knowledge or equipment that might be available through a science teacher? I do know one. Plenty of knowledge. I don't know about equipment. Did you have anything in particular in mind?

No, nothing in particular. The thought just struck me that, if you're looking for a scientific explanation, it may be an idea to go to a scientist. He would have an entire lab with all kinds of toys, and could try out various scenarios.

Dragonrock, we're thinking along the same lines. Holding a match to a piece of cotton fabric is not likely to cause it to flame. Kitchen towels will smolder if they touch a hot burner on the stove. I've never had one go up in flames, but they may be treated with flame retardant.

I once had Mrs Beady go up in flames. She was leaning back against the stove with one hand on the kitchen counter, when her sleeve caught on the pilot light. The sleeve started to burn like a torch. Luckily, I was standing a couple of feet away, facing her, and the sink was between us, off to the side.

I love my wife, but she has absolutely no sense of either safety or security.

Before I attempt to immolate the chicken, I'm going to attempt to catch some woven cotton clothe on fire. I've pulled out some old cleaning rags. They're clean, look just fine, as far as rags go. But one of them was thoroughly soaked in oil at one time ... just like your shirt. I'm going to see how that burns.

Now, this is one reason I suggested a science teacher and his equipment. We're entering the "Don't try this at home" realm, and seem to be in the early stages of shooting one of those Vonage "People do stupid things" commercials.

Have you been talking to my wife?

[Gayle]

Beady, I don't live in a university town. We do have a community college and high schools. But science teachers do not have labs full of equipment they can use for anything except teaching their classroom assignments. Such personal use could cause them big trouble.

The forest service scientist who I've asked for assistance teaches forest fire crews how not to get burned, how not to do stupid things, and how not to die. Seeing that these crews are made up of young men who drop into fires from helicopters and such like, it seems that we're already dealing with daredevils. My "assistant" will have no trouble on insisting on safety first.

So ... WARNING TO VIEWERS ... do not try these stunts at home without proper supervision from fire experts. Your stuntwoman is not properly trained, and she knows it.

Honest, I promise I will not do anything stupid. Or if I do, I'll have experts present to stop me. Catching on fire once was enough!

[Hellbound]

Just a thought, haven't seen anyone mention it but I may have misssed it...

Did you put on cologne (or anything alcohol based) before or after you put on the shirt, and what was the time difference?

You've said it was a high-quality shirt, meaning a high thread count, and thus might be somewhat effective at holding a vapor. Would there be a possibility that the shirrt might have held vapors from the alcohol close to your body? This would explain why more severe burns might be in areas where the shirt hung away from your body (more vapor gathers there), as well as the blue flame (most alcohols I've seen burn blue).

Any ideas on the feasibility of this idea?

[schplurg]

To those who say that a flat piece of mirror could not concentrate the necessary heat to ignite the shirt, you are probably correct. But if you read the entire thread, according to Gayle:
The mirror that was broken was double-sided, one side being a magnifying mirror. It's possible that the piece of mirror in question was a magnifyer.
This case may actually fuel the arguements for the Spontaneous Combustion crowd, in their eyes anyways. Playing Devil's Advocate, I could say that the possibility of sunlight and a shard of mirror catching a shirt on fire is extremely unlikely for a variety of reasons...not that SHC is more likely of course. And as previously stated, people aren't bursting into flames every day. What about people who work with glass? In fact how often is something like this blamed for causing a normal house fire? Ever? I've searched the web a little and found nothing (but certainly this has occurred?).

Even if we do accept that the sun and mirror could have ignited your shirt, then how do we explain the deep 4th degree burns?

Perhaps this is a case of "weak" Spontaneous Combustion that was extinguished in the nick of time!!!?? Your 4th degree burns are the kind of thing the SHC crowd will grasp at.

No, I do not believe you spontaneously combusted, but so far that explanation isn't tooooo much crazier (or freakish) than any others I've yet heard. It would actually "explain" both the cause of the fire, and the mysterious burns. Um...I guess...

Now, I do like the "shirt had some kind of oil/chemical buildup and was ignited by something electrical, perhaps even before going outside" arguement. Or maybe an ember from a neighbors chimney floated down onto your porch. I know I know...warm summer morning. Static electricity from the freshly washed shirt? You said you welcomed any ideas no matter how outlandish.

Fascinating discussion.

[Gayle]

Huntsman, we did spend time discussing cologne. I used it. But there was time for the alcohol to evaporate before I dressed.

After experimenting tonight, I'm convinced my favorite shirt was actually an oil saturated rag, eventhough it looked and smelled perfectly clean and fresh.

But first my arguments for believers in SHC is: OW! Burns hurt, ya dang fools. They hurt badly. Very badly. The fourth degree burns didn't hurt, that's true. Someone said I should have holes in me and, indeed, I did. The scars -- after years of healing and fading and some cosmetic scar removal treatment -- are not all that big. But at the time, the entire area around them was burned and discolored, from waist to shoulder blade and from side to side.

Second and third degree burns hurt like HELLFIRE! I speak with authority on this subject.

For a living person to burn to cinders, with their own body fat and meat as fuel, they would have to be so drunk that they were as good a dead anyway. Drugged. Knocked on the head. Something. Otherwise the pain would have them flapping around, rolling on the ground, doing anything to stop the pain.


Gayle Plays With Fire

I experimented tonight. Safely. But this is as far as I go until my fire expert helps me burn a chicken, or maybe a 20 lb turkey, which would offer more fuel. Here's my first experiment. It consisted of burning 4 inch squares of paper and fabric.

We have a fireplace with an insert. The insert is similar to a cast iron stove. It sits in the fireplace and out onto a stone platform. It has a glass door. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just think of a cast iron stove that burns wood.

I let the fire burn down to glowing embers. I raked them smooth in the bottom of the stove. Think of charcoal for a barbeque, with the charcoal glowing red.

Supplies include burnables, tongs, metal bowl half full of water, fire extinguisher last approved in 2002, one Plucky Female Scientist, kind of like the one who wore high heels in the desert sand in THEM! or the one who showed a bit of shoulder and got the truth out of the sailor about the Giant Octopus in IT! Came from Beneath the Sea. Who says girls didn't have role models?

My four inch burnable squares include ...

--a piece of newspaper

--a piece of typing paper.

--a shiny paper cash register receipt that's made out of some sort of coated stock

--a scrap of brand new cotton fabric from a sewing project (never worn or used, washed in cold water, no detergent, and dried in the dryer on hot)

--a clean rag that had been oil-soaked at one time. The rag looks and smells perfectly clean and I would wipe my face on it without hesitation.

I opened the stove door and waited for the embers to glow red from the air flow and then I laid the piece of newspaper on the coals. It slowly turned brown, the edged curled, a hole appeared in the center, and it lazily caught fire and burned to ashes in about 90 seconds. The flames were low and slow moving. I closed the stove door and waited for the ashes to disappear, which took another three minutes.

I repeated the performance with the typing paper and got almost identical results, give or take a few seconds.

I repeated the performance with the cash register receipt. POOF! The paper exploded in the firebox before I could even lower my eyes to the watch. I looked at the watch, looked at the fire, looked at the watch and by then there was no visible sign of the receipt. From POOF to ashes took maybe one second and from ashes to disintegrating particles up the chimney took maybe two seconds.

I burn paper in the firebox all the time and I've never seen anything like that before. I'm nervous now.

Using the tongs, I place the 4 inch square of never used or worn, but washed and dried, cotton into the fire box. It lays there for 83 seconds and then begins to smoke. At 192 seconds it bursts into flames with a whooshing sound, the flames immediately die down and the fabric burns for 24 seconds, then goes out although it's still on the coal bed. It remains mostly intact. After a total of five minutes, I lift out the remains and place them in a metal bowl filled with water. It smokes as it's lifted, but little hiss or steam is produced when it is placed in water. Boring.

Again using tongs, I place the freshly washed and clean smelling, but formerly oily, rag on the coals. POOF! It immediately bursts into high flames, it burns fast and hot for 5 seconds and then slows a bit, flaming for 63 seconds. The flames dies out, but the cloth is still intact and it smolders and continues burning with red sparks throughout, retaining it's shape, but folding in on itself at the edges as it turns to black ashes. After a total of five minutes I attempt to lift it out of the fire box with tongs and it disintegrates into particles when touched. Within another minute, there's no trace of it.

At this point, I feel creeped out. Those black ashes look and smell all too familiar. They're the right color, the right shade of black, the right shape and consistency. I felt a burst of heat on my face as the fabric POOFed and burned. That wasn't true with the other burnables, even the receipt that POOFed and disintegrated.

This may be fanciful, but the ashes looked oily. They looked the way my back looked after the fire and before I jumped in the shower.

Right now, I'm thinking of all the fabrics that touch my skin after I apply body lotion. My entire wardrobe of fine cotton, silk, cashmere, and a few dead polyesters is probably nothing more than a heap of oily rags waiting to combust.

After seeing the way that rag burned, first the POOF and then the way it stayed intact, I can see how and why I was burned so badly, so quickly. Yes, it remains weird that my body burned, but it no longer seem extraordinarily weird to me.

How did my clothes catch on fire? That's just an ordinary mystery. My shirt caught fire somehow, eventhough I swear there was no open flame or heat source nearby.

Witnesses make mistakes. All the time. They swear on stacks of bibles, they say they believe their own eyes and ears. I don't.

Maybe there was some ... something ... that I failed to notice that ignited my shirt. Just because I didn't notice it, it doesn't mean it wasn't there. It was just something unknown at this time.

I do know this ... that four inch square burned like hellfire. I won't be lighting that pillowcase inside my house, not even in the firebox. We're going to have to wait for the rain to stop. Then we'll do it outside, with full fire protection designed by a pro. I'm betting the chicken will glow with blue flames. Wouldn't surprise me at all.

Is anyone still skeptical on the idea of a freshly laundered -- but soaked with hidden oil -- shirt acting as a torch? Dragonrock gets the credit for that one! I'm convinced.

Just wish I knew what ignited me.

[schplurg]

Wonderful! This is perhaps my favorite thread ever...a mystery, proposed solutions, experiments...I love it! Of course I realize you suffered great pain in the process. Thank you for sharing this story.

[El_Spectre]

Wonderful! This is perhaps my favorite thread ever...a mystery, proposed solutions, experiments...I love it! Of course I realize you suffered great pain in the process. Thank you for sharing this story.

I wanna second that. No one is taking disagreements personally, nor jumping to conclusions... just looking for the truth and enjoying the search.

THIS is why I love skeptics (you buncha grumpy old cynics you)

[Kell]

or the one who showed a bit of shoulder and got the truth out of the sailor about the Giant Octopus in IT! Came from Beneath the Sea.

I think it was a bit of leg she showed. And a stethoscope. Do you have a stethoscope? Ok, I'll shut up :blush:


I wanna second that.

Thirded. I wonder if this thread should perhaps be moved under the Forum Spotlight...?

THIS is why I love skeptics (you buncha grumpy old cynics you)

They're not grumpy cynics, they're curmudgeons :randi:


Kudos to Gayle for such a thorough contribution :thumbsup:

[delphi_ote]

Witnesses make mistakes. All the time. They swear on stacks of bibles, they say they believe their own eyes and ears. I don't.

Your experiment and conclusions you drew from it are awesome, but that little bit of text right there makes you my hero.

[Dragonrock]

Gayle, I'm actually glad you got results like that from your experiment. I only had one incident to draw from, so it's nice to get some confirmation.

Still, it sucks that this discussion only came about because you got badly burned.

[Gayle]

This conversation has been enormously meaningful and helpful to me.

Last night, I suffered the heebie-jeebies for a couple hours, but by this morning I had things back in perspective. The incinerated chicken will have to wait until the weather outside permits testing in a safe manner. That little 4 inch square of rag POOFed and flamed hotly. I'm glad I didn't try with a whole pillowcase right off the bat. I'd have more than heebie-jeebies after that!

Right now, I'm looking at the lotions and potions I use on a regular basis. Oil-free skin hydrating products are available, but they cost more. I'm thinking they might be well-worth the extra expense. I'll put some on another small scrap of brand new cotton cloth, let it set and then toss it on some hot coals to see if it really is worth the money.

If the local fire department is interested, I'd like to get them involved in testing and reporting on the hidden dangers of oily residue in clean clothes. It might be good enough for a feature story in the local newspaper. I'll leave spontaneous human combustion out of it, thank you. I know the reporters and the editor and they are a pragmatic bunch. Keeping a child or two from getting burned is more in accord with their idea of a feature story.

This File is still open because there's no explanation for how the shirt caught fire. But that's minor. The X-File portion -- Gayle's SHC-- I hereby marked closed ... for me, anyway. It's still open for anyone who wants to keep looking at it.

I want to thank everyone who posted here, asked questions or offered suggestions. It was all helpful and fun.

I'd like to see some Challenge application self-tests go like this, but I suppose that really is fanciful thinking. When I was young (before age 20) I believed in the paranormal. More accurately, I wanted to believe. I wanted explanations for weird experiences and strange phenomenon. My science education was severely lacking.

Critical thinking was actively discouraged except by a few renegade English Lit & Comp teachers. I stumbled across an article about Ray Hyman, psych prof at the University of Oregon, and my eyes were suddenly opened. Finally, when I was a junior in college, some critical thinking was finally introduced. But not much. Whatever thinking skills I have were developed on my own, outside of school.

I then found a teacher in psychologist Dr. Albert Ellis, who urges people to use the scientific method to think about themselves, other people and life conditions.

It's unfortunate that instead of learning critical thinking skills and the scientific method in science classes, I got it from English teachers and psychologists. But at least I got it.

The truth is out there ... and it's rational. Let's keep spreading the word.


Gayle

[YoPopa]

My appreciation to you Gayle as well, for some great raw science with attitude, the right stuff for sure! The fact that you recognized the smell is convincing by itself that you (and Dragonrock) figured out why the heat was so intense.

The question of why Gayle makes such a good torch as well as a great SkepChick may be the way to think about the last part of the problem. Perhaps it had something to do with the great shape you were in. We know that fat can burn but perhaps lean can be just as good a fuel source with the right conditions.

What would these conditions be?

Lots of near skin surface capillary blood flow as a result of the recent shower and the body acting to cool itself down?
The blood being hyperoxygenated because of Gayles good athletic condition?
A relatively high ratio of hyperoxygenated blood to tissue due to a much lower fat content than average? In this situation more fat might have slowed things down by acting as an insulator.
An optimum concentration of electrolytes, again the result of an above average athletic condition?


I don't think an experiment is going to answer any of these questions. (ethical issues) The questions may all be the result of an above average ratio of fat to grey matter between my ears anyway. The people most likely to have relevant experience would probably be front line medics or doctors. If anyone has seen healthy, prime of life flesh burning in a sustained way it would be medics.

I feel creepy and incredibly sad just thinking that all through. :(

ETA.. While I was posting this Gayle was announcing "Gayle's SHC-- I hereby marked closed" That is certainly more than good enough for me.
Thanks again Gayle

[Beady]

Gayle,

Have you considered emailing an account of this to Adam and Jamie?

[Matilda]

Gayle, wow. I think you've done an amazing job at analysing this. And I think that if the fire brigade will look at it, that would be a very good thing. You don't appear to be the only one this has happened to, though the descriptions are often odd, narratives almost designed to point to the paranormal as the only solution:
(under "Survivors of static flash fires/events")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_human_combustion

I'm sure some would be happier with a grounded, reasonable explanation for what happened to them.




Right now, I'm thinking of all the fabrics that touch my skin after I apply body lotion. My entire wardrobe of fine cotton, silk, cashmere, and a few dead polyesters is probably nothing more than a heap of oily rags waiting to combust.


That's got me pondering. I use a lot of oil-based products because my skin dries out quickly without them. I had always assumed any that got on my clothes would wash out.

And your approach has also made me want to go back over some of my own weird experiences, though none are as traumatic as yours. I've never thought of them as paranormal, and the realisation that seeing, for me, truly isn't believing made me more of a skeptic than I'd previously been. Although I know there were rational explanations and I came up with some possibilities, I want to narrow it down further. Thank you.

I think maybe scepticism really comes into its own not simply when challenging the damaging claims of psychics etc. but in helping people understand their weird experiences. Most of those I know who strongly believe in the paranormal do so because of experiences like mine happening to themselves or friends and family, but they quite often don't seem to have thought another explanation is remotely possible. It’s not the experience itself, I think, but what tools you have to understand it.

[Gayle]

I had to google "Adam and Jamie" to find out who they are. Mythbusters! No, I never considered it. I don't watch the show and don't know how it works.

I think we're all agreed I didn't self-combust. The shirt combusted. The shirt had been exposed to oils repeatedly throughout the years, then washed with other clothing that were similarly exposed. The detergent would act as an emulsifyer. The oil particles would be evenly distributed throughout the wash.

The piece of rag that poofed up in the stove had been washed many times since being exposed to oil. It did not appear oily in any way. It burned fast and hot and in a way that I'd call vaporous. It flamed differently than the other fabric and the newspaper and typing paper. The coated grocery receipt flamed vaporously, too. Poof, it was gone.

I don't use dryer sheets. I'm going to get some and put them on a bed of coals. Fresh ones and used ones and maybe some that have been washed. Maybe I'll expose some scraps of fabric that have never been near oil to the dryer sheets and see what happens to those scaps in the fire.

Science marches on.

[Dragonrock]

Gayle, I've never found you sexier than I do right now.

[Beady]

Gayle, I've never found you sexier than I do right now.

Get a room.

[Soapy Sam]

There was black volcanic glass on the shelf. Any quartz crystals?
Ten am, June, sun just appearing over a mountain. Forest Service. Obsidian.
I'm guessing Oregon or Washington?

75 deg F and enough sunlight from a shard of mirror to ignite a light coloured cotton shirt within seconds?

No. I can't believe that. We need another ignition source.

What of the two witnesses? The neighbour ladies? They were on the scene in seconds so must have seen what happened outside. What did (do?) they have to say about it?

[Gayle]

Oregon. No quartz crystals.

My neighbors didn't see me ignite. Their attention was captured by the spectacle of a bare naked lady screaming and dashing around the front yard like a lunatic. They didn't know what had happened, just that it had to be something to get such an extreme reaction out of me.

There are no witnesses to the actual ignition, not even me. I felt the heat, but I didn't see a thing.

[Soapy Sam]

Gayle, did your neighbours see the remnant of the shirt which you had left outside? Was it still burning when they arrived?
If so, did they try to put it out?

[Gayle]

The neighbors may have glanced at the ashes on the front walk. I know I did as soon as I got out of the shower and made sure I was no longer on fire. But I don't know what they did. It was too hectic and emotional. It's precisely the kind of situation that makes eye witness reports less than reliable.

My own memory has to be viewed as less than reliable. I was in pain, bathed in adrenaline and then shot up with painkillers. I say I'm sure I looked at the ashes as soon as I got out of the shower. That memory is as clear as a bell. I even remember which towel I was holding in front of me as I went out to view the shirt. I can see it clearly in my mind's eye. Trouble is, the towel I clearly see me holding over my chest ... it's only a few years old. The fire took place more than a decade and a half ago. So much for witness recall of traumatic events.