Irishman's Death Ruled "Spontaneous Human Combustion"

Irishman's Death Ruled "Spontaneous Human Combustion"

A coroner in Ireland has officially ruled a man's death as being caused by spontaneous human combustion. 76 year-old Galway resident Michael Faherty was found "lying on his back in a small sitting room, with his head closest to an open fireplace" in which a fire was burning. Although the room was undamaged (except for the part directly below and directly above Mr. Faherty's body), "the body had been totally burned."
This is the classic Spontaneous Human Combustion scenario: a person alone in their home is discovered, charred almost beyond recognition, with the rest of the room being largely undisturbed. In many cases the victims are known to be smokers and drinkers. I wasn't able to find that information about Mr. Faherty.
One thing you notice about cases of Spontaneous Human Combustion is that they invariably follow that pattern. You never hear about people just walking down the street and bursting into flames, or sitting in their office. "I came back from lunch break, and he was just a pile of charcoal!" It's always isolated people alone in their homes who suffer from this problem.
Unfortunately, the possibility of doing a meaningful autopsy on a body in this situation is almost nil. A very slow fire can cause a tremendous amount of damage to the material being burned, all at low temperatures which don't damage the surrounding area. (Just ask my aunt and uncle's house, which experienced a slow, low-temperature fire in the floor between two levels… extremely destructive.)
The most likely scenario here is that Mr. Faherty suffered a heart attack or stroke, fell to the floor and died, and then his body caught fire. The fireplace was burning nearby, and could easily have sent a spark out that kindled Mr. Faherty's clothing. From that point forward, the wick effect would take care of the rest.
Although the least interesting of SHC's possible explanations, the wick effect remains the most likely. In the wick effect, slow-burning clothing gradually renders the fat in the body, similar to the way a candle's wick burns. Experiments conducted with the bodies of pigs wrapped in people clothing have produced results identical to those found in cases of Spontaneous Human Combustion.
However, many other theories have been proposed over the years:
  • Alcohol in the bloodstream spontaneously igniting in an internal fireball
  • A massive charge of static electricity discharging at once
  • Angry ghosts enacting revenge
  • Ball lightning

In the absence of any solid evidence (like CCTV footage), we may never know for sure.