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Spontaneous Human Gallstones?

All accounts of spontaneous human combustion follow the same pattern, and I'm surprised nobody's noticed a simple connection. Here's an experiment. Take a large dinnerplate and place a few small articles on it made of wood, plastic, paper, etc. Place a cocktail sausage in the middle. Now put it in the microwave. The sausage will eventually catch fire leaving a greasy residue around the microwave. Everything else will be unaffected.

The sausage of course represents a human body. OK I hear you ask, but how can this effect be created in the real world? Microwaves are passing through us all the time. The sun is sending out microwaves all day long. They don't harm us because just like light they need to be focused. Inside a microwave oven is a 'lens' made of Gallium Arsenide, which focuses the microwaves to create heat. A friend tells me that human gallstones are made of a similar substance (I need to get proof of this).

So if some old geyser is sitting in an armchair and there's a burst of sunspot activity, his gallstones will catch fire! I would imagine that just sitting in front of the TV could have the same effect. I wonder if it's possible to match dates of incidents with sunspot activity.

Look at the published cases and you'll recognise clear evidence of microwave activity centred round the victim's upper stomach. Sometimes their feet are left untouched, and the bed or chair they are lying on is unburned; papers and glass nearby are unaffected, but certain plastic is melted, liquids are boiled. There's a case of a British fireman finding a victim with blue sparks and flame coming out of his stomach.

I know it's gruesome but it's certainly not unnatural.
 
Is there any factual evidence that sunspot activity can have the same power of a microwave, though?
 
and wouldnt they get up and stumble around rather than sitting there and burning?

if you werent already dead and your stomach set on fire you'd get up and scream and run around, trying to get help by drawing attention to themselves

i think its a good theory but needs a bit of work and has the making of a good ul !!

casio
 
LOL!!

Next time you should try microwaving your granny to see what happens . . .

Carole
 
What makes you think I haven't, my dear? (He he he he he!)
 
My old copy of Rose & Carless' Manual of Surgery gives three types of gall stone:-

1) The cholesterol solitaire, composed of pure cholesterin.

2) Pigment stones, black & shining, theircomposition is not given, but I think it is bilirubin & biliverdin, as with the mixed stones.

3) Calcium carbonate stones.

4) Mixed, layers of calcium salts of bilirubin & biliverdin with some cholesterol around a nucleus of bacteria and mucus.

But no Gallium Arsenide.......Still, I hope this is of some use.
 
lol poor sausage !!!! oops that should have been poor granny lol

heheheh microwaving your granny lol

cas,
 
I read an account of SHC in Ft a while ago and contrary to the 'running around and waving your arms in panic' assumption... It was said that the victim ( an old lady walking across her kitchen with other family members present) just assumed a glazed expression and stopped where she stood.

From what I can remember this victim actually survived and said that the incident had caused her no pain at all.. It would be interesting to know if she suffered from Gallstones though - I wonder if anyone thought to check ?? Probably not !
 
Given the "gripe" I got from my "normal" gall stones, before the surgeon had them out.

I can't belive Granny was just running about.

When my body was trying to pass gall stones, I was in bed, cold clammy & in shock!!!

If they were spontaniously combusting, I dread to think how I would be, even in the short term i.e. the first thirty seconds!!!!!!!
 
i'll second that ive been there when someone has passed gallstone's and its not a pretty sight they are in quite intense pain and while i was there the person barely stayed still either rocking or walking around trying to eliviate some of the pain


cas
 
I had gallstones and didn't know I had them till they blocked the bile duct and started causing it to fill prior to exploding. That was the only time I had any pain and then it needed operating on straight away to remover the whole gall bladder.
 
I remember a "Horizon" programme investigating SHC and coming to the conclusion that the candle wick effect is responsible. Did I imagine that? I was convinced, but then maybe I am the puppet of a corrupt and supressive regime :)
 
no your not imagining it i saw that one too they wrapped a pig in some clothing type matterials and the fat off the pig kept it going for hours and hours and it even gave the same signs of SHC in the way it melted a tv that was high up in the room but didnt burn with big flames and engulf the room

cas
 
I remember stumbling across a webpage some time ago giving info on pathology. Among other things something about how the bodu excretes som juices after death. And looking at what insects live in thse juices you can determine how long the body has been lying there. Made me wonder if perhaps that candlewick effect was something that could only happen to dead bodies. I don't really know much about the candlewick effect. Bit it would still need somehting to light it right? And have the person stand still all the while.
 
Most of those pictures of detached feet in slippers are usually next to a gas fire. And I wonder what proportion of "SHC" victims are smokers.
 
Xanatic, those secretions you describe are products of decomposition & tend only to be found in deceased persons. Gangrene & severe suppuration excepted!!!
 
Hmm, I wasn't clear I guess. What I meant was perhaps the dead pigs would secret those juices, and therefore it wouldn't work for a live human being.

But imagine you were slowly burning, would it perhaps destroy the nerve ends so you wouldn't notice it? Untill the point were you died and just kept on burning. But I honestly don't know that much about SHC.
 
From what I have seen on the net about this program (the Horizon one), they were making the case that the people who were the SHC victims had somehow been rendered incapable of moving - Stroke, Heart Attack, blow to the head when falling, etc - and were unable to move whilst on fire. Pretty dodgy subject, but a lot of science is based on nasty experiments and conjectures - anyway, a lot of the cases I've seen involve either the elderly or people in situations were head trauma could have taken place, so it may be an answer, who knows? If anyone has any atypical cases (e.g 22 year old male, SHC on a Football pitch) I'd love to hear them - the subject has kind of got my interest now!
 
Human combustion

Some friends and I were talking about this the other day and I wondered what everyones opinion of it is? After seeing some pictures in one of the first X factors as well as reading about unsuccessful attempts to recreate it i was wondering what science has to say about it and especially if anyone on the board has any experiance with this?

If this is covered somewhere else then let me know and ill happily post there but I couldnt find anything myself (although i didnt look back to older threads)

Ill will have a look around the net myself when I get the chance but i know how helpful you peeps are :D

Bisto
 
I believe in SHC because I personally know two people who lost relations in just such circumstances.

One was found burnt to a crisp in an armchair in a virtually undamaged room. The other died in hospital after being found in flames in his bed. He was an invalid and was wearing good quality cotton fire-resistant pajamas.

I have spoken to the next of kin of both these elderly men and they told me that both they and the Fire Brigade were at a loss to explain the fires. I'd love them to to talk to psychic investigators about them.
 
Science tends to answer it with the 'Wick Effect' - meaning clothes catch light from some source (cigarette, fire etc) and the fat melting from the body feeds the flame. Problem is it can't be successfully recreated.

The most interesting case I heard about SHC involved twin girls, several years ago (30s or 50s I think). They were about 7 or 8, and had been separated as their parents were splitting up. Each girl lived with a grandmother. One girl burst into flames and died, and when the grandmother was walking to the other house to tell them, she met the other grandmother walking the other way, to tell her the same thing had happened to the other child.

SHC sppears to be a natural phenomena for which there is no adequate explanation as yet. From memory, the most at risk are alcoholic men, usually depressives. It would appear to be some chemical reaction in the body, as quite a few chemicals knocking about our insides are dangerous. Perhaps an imbalance of magnesium? And as depression can be caused by a chemical imbalance, and alcohol is usually the drug of choice for depressives, this just adds to the chemical mixture.

As I recall, SHC is more common than we would like to think. One fireman put it down as a cause of death, but they had to change the verdict as science doesn't recognise SHC, but firemen seem to think that in some cases, there is no other adequate explanation. There have been some witnesses to the phenomena. Victims tend to be in a daze beforehand, and not seem to feel pain from the flames. The flames themselves burn with a green flame, and do not affect any nearby objects, even paper and highly flammable furniture etc.

There's a book called 'The Entrancing Flame' but I can't remember who by. I've lent it out to someone so I can't tell you at the moment, but you could probably search for it.

Apparently, a television programme tried to reproduce the wick effect with pig fat wrapped around a pig bone, covered in cotton. The time lapse photography showed the thing burning, but what they edited out was the time it took to bake the bone to make it brittle and the petrol that had to be added to the material to get it to burn.

Flesh has far too much water in it to burn properly. Even crematoriums don't reduce people to ash as quickly or as completely as SHC, so the temperatures involved must be astronomical.
 
Science tends to answer it with the 'Wick Effect' - meaning clothes catch light from some source (cigarette, fire etc) and the fat melting from the body feeds the flame. Problem is it can't be successfully recreated.
I watched the documentary about that. I must admit the sight of a burning pig carcass wrapped in some cotton material and flickering away, slowly to ash, swung it for me.

I had paperback about it, years ago, Fire From Heaven, couldn't sleep for weeks after reading it. Didn't quite get to the bucket of water by the bed bit though.

I remember the story about the girl bursting into flame on the dance floor though. Giving out a blue flame, like a bunsen burner, to start off with. Scary.
 
Yes, I remember the story of the girl on the dance floor. Or queuing for a nightclub, something like that. The flames were seen to emanate from inside her. Witnesses to SHC say the flames generally emanate from the abdomen, although some have had arms and legs spontaneously combust. And the flames do not recede on application of water, or rolling around on the floor, or any of the normal methods of killing a fire. Although I think one person managed to put their arm out with a fire extinguisher, although other cases haven't responded to that either.

Strange thing, the human body.
 
The wick effect closed it for me, but some people don't appear to agree. I vaguely recall that SHC afficionado Larry "Ablaze!" Arnold postulated that ley lines could have something to do with it. :eek:
 
I have to admit that I side with the wick effect, but there is one element that seems to be missing from the explanations above.

The documentary (I assume it was the same one, it was a British show I believe) with the pig carcasse was able to reproduce the effects of SHC by wrapping the pig in a blanket (not intentional, I swear), and pouring an accelerant on the cloth, then setting light to it. It seems the accelerant was the missing ingredient from previous failed attempts to reproduce it.

As I recall, the accelerant didn't have to be anything especially flammable (although, obviously, the more so the better), and could have been beer or (more likely) spirits the victim had spilt on themselves (one reason the victims tended to be drunk at the time, the other was that people who are sober were unlikely to let themselves heat up enough to catch fire).

The way the researchers came to this conclusion was the investigation of a known arson-murder (someone killed by being set light to, if you know a better term, please let me know) in which the victim had had perfume (containing a lot of alcohol) tipped over her, and was then set alight. The resulting fire was almost exactly the same as those attributed to SHC. Only the victim was significantly burned, and she had been burnt to a cinder. (There were probably more scorch marks than normal, as she was, I believe, concious throughout. Ick.)

Does this mean all instances of SHC involve this mechanism? (Unconcious, drunk, overweight victim falls asleep in front of fire, heats up until spilt booze catches fire, sub-cutaneous fat ignites, and burns victim to a crisp.) I don't know, but it does provide a plausible explanation. It's a difficult thing to prove, as there are a lot of stories out there, and not all of them a verifiable, and with most of them, it's too late to check for the accelerants (if there were any left).

(BTW: I apologise for A: the long-windedness of this article with all its paranthetic inclusions and whatnot; and B: the somewhat unpleasant nature of some of the concepts above, particularly the details of the arson-murder, such as they are.)
 
escargot said:
...The other died in hospital after being found in flames in his bed. He was an invalid and was wearing good quality cotton fire-resistant pajamas.


.

Did the hospital have an investigation into the fire? I'd be interested to hear what they put the cause down to.

Lutz
 
Being off work all week and being a radio 4 freek I know just about every show they are doing in the next weeek or so. And I 'm sure I heard something about a programme coming up about SHC but I can't remember what it was. I'll try to find out.
 
The invalid chap was a neighbour of my ex in-laws'.
There was a power cut and the house was being lit by candles. The man was upstairs in bed and in fact was unable to get up by himself. His wife lit a candle for him and placed it across the room well out of his reach and went downstairs as he was ready to go to sleep.

Shortly afterwards she happened to go back into the room to find him lying in bed with the covers pulled back and his abdomen on fire. The candle was still burning across the room. She got help- there were other people in the house- and the fire brigade and paramedics came. The man died some hours later in hospital. He had not cried out when on fire and could not give any account of the incident.

The man was wearing cotton pajamas from the respectable British Home Stores which were flameproof, as was all the bedding. The candle was untouched and the man was unable to reach it anyway. I spoke to his wife a few weeks ago and gently questioned her about her husband's death. She was baffled, as were the fire brigade. There was no drink or lighter fluid in the room and no way that anyone could see that he'd caught light.

There was a report in the local paper which mentioned the power cut and candle but called the death 'mysterious'.

I will try searching that newspaper's archive on the 'net but don't hold your breath!
 
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