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Spontaneous self-combustion

Would Gayle Burn Like a Pig?

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
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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.
 
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
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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.
 
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.
 
Long post ... a plausible explanation for the shirt....

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
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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!
 
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.
 
Gayle said:
Maybe we clutched at the mirror because in our tramatized state we needed a rational explanation.
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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?
 
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.
 
Gayle said:
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.
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I dunno, maybe I'm just a geek, but that last statement makes you sound sound way hot in my book :)
 
El_Spectre said:
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?
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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.
 
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!
 
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Kell said:
Given the topic of discussion, that attempt at flattery could be considered rather tactless :P
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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 ?
 
Morwen said:
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.
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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?
 
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
 
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Matilda said:
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.
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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.
 
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