spontaneous human combustion
Sign in to saveAlso known as human spontaneous combustion, SHC
term encompassing reported cases of the combustion of a human body without an apparent external source of ignition
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- paranormal
- Subclass of
- cause of death
- Image
- Strange Scene Death of John Irving Bentley.jpg
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- different from
- spontaneous combustion
- Commons category
- Spontaneous human combustion
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Encyclopedic overview
Depiction of spontaneous combustion from the Charles Dickens novel Bleak House by Hablot Knight Browne
Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) is the pseudoscientific concept of the spontaneous combustion of a living (or recently deceased) human body without an external source of ignition on the body. In addition to reported cases, descriptions of the alleged phenomenon appear in literature, and both types have been observed to share common characteristics in terms of circumstances and the remains of the victim.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “spontaneous human combustion” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.