A True Story.

L

Lon

Well-known Member
Location
Central California
SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION by A, J. Tanner (aka Lon)

I am sure most of us have read stories about this particular phenomenon and once I get my thoughts together I will share with you a personal experience that took place in Northern California 1964.

It was a Sunday morning and I had just arrived at the Mortuary after breakfast with my wife & daughter. Working as a Embalmer/Funeral Director and ON Call for the weekend. I had just settled down in the lounge to watch a NFL game on TV with the San Francisco 49ers playing ?? Our business was on call to receive any Coroner type deaths that might occur during the weekend. I answered the phone on the first ring and the caller told me that there had been a fire at a home on Mt Pleasant Road and they suspected that some one had died in the fire. The Mortuary owner was at church with his wife so I took the Removal Car and drove the 20 minutes to the fire address. Driving by the house I fully expected to see damage or smoke, but the house looked fine. The home was situated on 20 acres that had apple trees. I pulled into the driveway and parked, got out of the car and went to the front door. .
The front door was not locked and what I was about to see had been seen earlier by the person that phoned me at the Mortuary. The caller was a prominent OBGYN physician in the nearby community.
As I opened the door it was apparent that there had been a fire because some residue smoke still hung in the room. Directly in front of the opened door I was able to see a TV that was on and flickering with no picture and a lounge chair beside the TV. I then stepped into what appeared to be one end of a living room. Off to one side of the chair and TV was a charred hole in the tongue and grove hardwood floor. The hole was about 3 ft in diameter and had partially burned parts of the Sunday newspapers around the periphery of the hole. On a small table next to the chair there was a bottle of half full Johnnie Walker Scotch and a empty can of Coor's beer. I went back to the Removal car and got some rubber gloves and a flashlight. Walking back into the living room I noticed a large cracked, smoke stained picture window at the other end and miscellaneous furniture. I took a slow walk through the house. It was a two bedroom two bath home with one bedroom apparently being used by someone. I noticed that all the windows were cracked and all items made of plastic were missshapened and the plastic door chime in the hallway looked melted.. It became quite obvious that extreme heat caused all of this, but if so, why the hell didn't the whole house catch fire and burn down? I walked back and looked down into the hole in the floor shinning the flashlight into the darkness. What I saw laying on the ground below the sub flooring was a pile of indistinguishable remains except for a clearly observable foot with ankle and toes. I went back to the Removal car and got a rubber body bag. I eased myself down into the hole in the floor with the body bag, put on the rubber gloves and slowly placed each of the charred pieces including the foot into the body bag. I judged the weight to be 9 or ten pounds. It was later confirmed by investgators that the remains were 12 pounds. I got up out of the hole and went with the body bag to where I had earlier seen a phone. I picked up the phone and there was a dial tone. It was now past noon and I was sure that my boss would be back from church.
I called his home and when he answered I said. Dick, you are not going to believe this but you had better get out here.
　
(to be continued)
 

A True Story

SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION by A, J. Tanner (aka Lon)

I am sure most of us have read stories about this particular phenomenon and once I get my thoughts together I will share with you a personal experience that took place in Northern California 1964.

It was a Sunday morning and I had just arrived at the Mortuary after breakfast with my wife & daughter. Working as a Embalmer/Funeral Director and ON Call for the weekend. I had just settled down in the lounge to watch a NFL game with the San Francisco 49ers playing ?? Our business was on call to receive any Coroner type deaths that might occur during the weekend. I answered the phone on the first ring and the caller told me that there had been a fire at a home on Mt Pleasant Road and they suspected that some one had died in the fire. The Mortuary owner was at church with his wife so I took the Removal Car and drove the 20 minutes to the fire address. Driving by the house I fully expected to see damage or smoke, but the house looked fine. The home was situated on 20 acres that had apple trees. I pulled into the driveway and parked, got out of the car and went to the front door.

The front door was not locked and what I was about to see had been seen earlier by the person that phoned me at the Mortuary. The caller was a prominent OBGYN physician in the nearby community.

As I opened the door it was apparent that there had been a fire because some residue smoke still hung in the room. Directly in front of the opened door I was able to see a TV that was on and flickering with no picture and a lounge chair beside the TV. I then stepped into what appeared to be one end of a living room. Off to one side of the chair and TV was a charred hole in the tongue and grove hardwood floor. The hole was about 3 ft in diameter and had partially burned parts of the Sunday newspapers around the periphery of the hole. On a small table next to the chair there was a bottle of half full Johnnie Walker Scotch and a empty can of Coor's beer. I went back to the Removal car and got some rubber gloves and a flashlight. Walking back into the living room I noticed a large cracked, smoke stained picture window at the other end and miscellaneous furniture. I took a slow walk through the house. It was a two bedroom two bath home with one bedroom apparently being used by someone. I noticed that all the windows were cracked and all items made of plastic were missshapened and the plastic door chime in the hallway looked melted.. It became quite obvious that extreme heat caused all of this, but if so, why the hell didn't the whole house catch fire and burn down? I walked back and looked down into the hole in the floor shinning the flashlight into the darkness. What I saw laying on the ground below the sub flooring was a pile of indistinguishable remains except for a clearly observable foot with ankle and toes. I went back to the Removal car and got a rubber body bag. I eased myself down into the hole in the floor with the body bag, put on the rubber gloves and slowly placed each of the charred pieces including the foot into the body bag. I judged the weight to be 9 or ten pounds. It was later confirmed by investgators that the remains were 12 pounds. I got up out of the hole and went with the body bag to where I had earlier seen a phone. I picked up the phone and there was a dial tone. It was now past noon and I was sure that my boss would be back from church.
and called his home and when he answered I said. Dick, you are not going to believe this but you had better get out here.
　
(to be continued)
 
Incredible that you experienced this Lon, I've heard of this phenomenon before....very interesting, waiting to hear more!
 
Dick arrived and filled me in on the doctor that called at the Mortuary that morning. The house was a retreat for his father who had a drinking problem and was estranged from his wife. His father was a VP in San Francisco for a nationally known Insurance Company.and described his father as being 6 ft tall and at least 200 lbs.The doctor had come out to the house very early that Sunday morning to check on his father and saw the same thing that I did. He used the same phone that I used to call the Mortuary and report the accident.
We then called the Sherrifs 0ffice to report the accident and they in turn called the fire department.
Dick and I stayed at the house all that day and evening as investigators, fire people, sherrifs investigator and even a retired FBI agent went through the entire sceen shaking their heads in disbelief. It was late the following Morning that Dick and I took the body bag with the remains back to the Mortuary for further study and to confirm positive identification that this was indeed the doctor's father. The doctor was a OBGYN and not a Forensic Pathologist but was able to make ID of his father from the one foot, ankle and toes.The father had apparently broken his ankle skiing sometime in the past.and this was recognizable to the doctor.
Although the deceased had a substantial amount of life insurance which went to the estranged wife and his doctor son, murder and suicide was ruled out as was the use of any
combustibles.
This episode haunted me for many years because like so many people I was not able to understand how something like this could happen.
Finally in the early 1980's when I was using a computer on a reguar basis I did some online searches on this unexplained phenomenon. I discovered that there were many such instances that had occured world wide and that the most plausible explanation was
THE WICK EFFECT
The wick effect is the name given to the partial destruction of a human body by fire, when the clothing of the victim soaks up melted human fat and acts like the wick of a candle. The wick effect is a phenomenon that is found to occur under certain conditions, and has been thoroughly observed. It is one commonly offered explanation for the alleged phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion (SHC).
　
 
That was really interesting. I have some questions - If the clothing of the victim soaks up melted human fat, what starts the fire to begin with? Does the fire burn slowly like a candle or is it fast? Why didn't anything else burn, such as the newspaper?
How was the plastic melted in the other rooms but nothing else burned, such as the curtains, or cloth on the furniture or even the ceiling catching fire.

I read years ago of other instances where that sort of death has occurred and I remember in one case, the person was supposably sitting in cloth covered chair and the chair didn't burn.

All so very strange. I wonder if the man being an alcoholic had an bearing on the combustion?

Thanks for sharing your story, Lon!
 
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