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| "AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HUMOR"TM
SHOWCASE
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December 2005 / January 2006 Contest Results |
Off The Back
Burner
By Mark Hawthorne
Rohnert Park, CA
After a protracted
absence, spontaneous human combustion has returned to the headlines.
Until recently, the last genuine report of anyone inexplicably bursting
into flames was in 1952, when firefighters discovered Mrs. Dora Fleming
-- or at least a pile of her smoldering ashes, which were later
positively identified by Mr. Fleming.
In truth, these
mysterious incidents have never abated, and the plethora of modern news
outlets, coupled with the human brain’s inability to grasp more than
three important facts at any one time, could explain the apparent
ellipsis of these accounts.
But with the
description of a shopper suddenly cremated while sniffing cantaloupes at
a Florida Piggly Wiggly recently, spontaneous human combustion, or SHC,
is back in the media, and everyone seems to be talking about it.
Before we scoff
at these reports, however, we must scrutinize this peculiar phenomenon
under the harsh light of modern criticism and advanced scientific
techniques.
Scholars trace tales of ordinary folk self-igniting back to ancient
Egypt, where it was known as "The Wrath of Ra" and was probably caused
by looking up at the sun through a large magnifying glass. During the
Middle Ages, the Church feared that spontaneous human combustion was the
work of the devil and decreed that anyone caught erupting into a
fireball without a pious explanation would be declared a heretic and
burned at the stake.
A thousand years
later, SHC truly captured the public’s attention with the publication of
Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House, in which a character abruptly and
dramatically self-ignites; the author even attributed the internal
combustion to an excessive intake of spirituous liquors, which
temperance crusaders had long blamed for every societal ill from fallen
women to fallen arches.
Dickens may have been ahead of his time in
linking human conflagration with stomach contents. Modern forensic
scientists studying SHC events postulate that self-ignition is possible
if the victim has eaten a certain combination of foods such as, say, a
bale of hay followed by several pints of kerosene and a lit candle.
While there has been no shortage of incendiary incidents in the last
half century -- some deadly, some superficial -- authentic examples of
SHC are rare. The naysayers contend that much of this anecdotal evidence
does not hold up to cogent scrutiny. For example,
certain organized crime figures told authorities in Chicago last year
that SHC had tragically claimed the life of a rival crime boss, though
police became suspicious when they found a gas can and half a road flare
near his remains.
Since skeptics
of alternate realities demand verifiable eyewitnesses and reproducible
results, researchers working under controlled conditions at the Brooklyn
Pyrotechnic Institute are endeavoring to duplicate the ideal environment
for spontaneous human combustion; unfortunately, they have so far only
succeeded in making smoke come from a man’s ears -- and this might have
been a parlor trick involving an ice pick and cigar.
Lack of scientific evidence has prompted critics to dismiss all but a
few cases of SHC. These disputants attribute fires to natural causes,
citing the principle of Occam’s razor, which says the simplest answer to
a problem tends to be the correct one. Yet, can we really apply Occam’s
razor to incinerated humans, especially without a good moisturizer?
Regardless, skeptics claim reports of human infernos are grossly
exaggerated, though even the gravest cynics agree it caused Atlantis to
sink and probably accounts for Don King’s hair.
One detractor,
an illusionist named the Amazing Presto who fancies himself a debunker
of paranormal activity, even attempted to demonstrate before a live
audience how easy it is to make a person appear to spontaneously
combust. The display called for Presto to torch his leggy assistant, but
a magic-wand malfunction inadvertently set the magician’s ascot ablaze,
and a quick-thinking stagehand doused him with a spray of seltzer water,
although Presto’s eyebrows had to be replaced with a set of quotation
marks from one of his own reviews the next morning.
In the final analysis, what we can agree on is that for those suffering
from spontaneous human combustion, these sudden flaming bouts must truly
be a curse. As much as they’d like to, they cannot control the pain and
embarrassment of their unpredictable blazing. It’s sort of like a fiery
Tourette’s Syndrome.
Predictably,
television executives plan to capitalize on the popularity of this topic
with a reality program in which a SHC bachelor chooses a companion from
among thirty female SHC survivors. Producers hope to have Burning
Love on the fall lineup.
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