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Spontaneous self-combustion

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.
 
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.
 
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?
 
casebro said:
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?
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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.
 
Gayle said:
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.
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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?
 
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.
 
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.
 
Beady said:
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.
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Well, either that or Gayle is hotter than self-described.
 
Way hotter than ... than ... other elder goddesses

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
 
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?
 
Gayle said:
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.
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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:

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.
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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?
 
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...
 
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Jeff Wagg said:
Now..here's the interesting part. Occam's razor says that you're either lying or mistaken. And I don't believe that.
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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 :).
 
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
 
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:
 
Jeff Wagg said:
Ok, I'm completely fascinated with Gayle's story.
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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!
 
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