Click below to read E-mail from visitors to the X-Files page on the subjects indicated.
SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION E-MAIL
SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION E-MAIL
To: 102617.3604@compuserve.com
From: cas@mail2.cncnet.com (Paddy Sciortino)
Subject: Spontaneous Human Combustion
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 20:48:49 -0700
My biology teacher told me about SHC and I decided to look for it on the internet. He said that when sugars and other such foods are digested, water is added to the molecules to break them down and release energy. He said that rarely, all of the energy from food is released at the same time. This was his explanation of SHC. Sounded better than yours, or at least, more scientific. Just thought you should know.
Charlie
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 96 20:07:20 -0800
From: Wayne Howard <whoward@ns.iconn.net>
To: 102617.3604@compuserve.com
Subject: Spntaneous Human Combustion
Interesting subject. I suggest a spiritual explanation. Read Numbers 11:1, and Job 1:16. The "whale oil" theory is, in my view, untenable. Such a flame would surely burn down the house. Please note that crematoria have difficulty burning bodies as completely as some cases of SHC have shown. And yes, one woman this century was killed my a falling meteorite; this is, as far as I know, the only such case of this.
best, Wayne
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 96 22:56:52 -0800
From: Len Regan <regan@hunterlink.net.au>
To: 102617.3604@compuserve.com
Subject: Spontaneous human combustion
Sorry I don't have any theories - that's what I'm trying to find! I've found human combustion to be an elusive subject on the Net. Could you please e-mail me some addresses of sites with useful information? Yours is the first I've found and I'm very excited!
Thanks,
Fiona Regan
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 18:28:50 -0800
Subject: Re: Ball lightening and spontaneous human combustion
To: 102617.3604@compuserve.com
Dear Sir or Madam:
Larry Arnold, probably THE authority on the subject of spontaneous human combustion spoke last fall at the International Fortean Conference outside of Washington, DC. He has finally published his book, Ablaze, which gives much information about SHC. You would be surprised to learn that a great many SHC cases do not involve alcohol, nor do they necessarily occur near a source of ignition. In many cases part of the body is consumed, the structure under the body is partly burnt and then something else, something strange, for example an item in the refrigerator or on the other side of the house, is also melted or burned. SHC would not be much of a mystery of the victims were all intoxicated and found near a lit stove!
Re: Ball lightening, I have seen photographs of it. I understand from the accounts noted in William Corliss's book on anomalous meterological phenomena that the lightening appears to either come into homes through doors or walls or else originates somewhere in the house. In most cases, though, when the lightening dissipates, it does so with a resounding, shattering boom. You might wish to consult Corliss's books--they are probably listed in Books in Print. These are fascinating compilations of reports of unusual occurrances of all kinds.
Hope this helps. I enjoyed reading your page.
sparky13@ix.netcom.com
Date: Mon, 01 Jul 1996 22:49:28 -0700
From: mquinn@net-star.net (Quinn, Mark S. )
To: 102617.3604@compuserve.com
Subject: Ball Lightning
Intresting stuff this ball lightning. I have heard little of it untill recentily and thought I was a little out of my mind at one point. As a child, (I think I was about 10 or 11) in Culver City, Ca. I saw what I beleive now to be ball lightning pass through 2 rooms of our house.
I was walking towards the front door from the kitchen. Through the sliding glass door in the dining room I cought a glimps of somthing bright "rolling" towards the house. It looked like it would hit the house and I remember expecting a noise. The next thing I know this "ball of light" as I described it to my parents was in the kitchen and heading to the front door (closed). The phone in the hall rang breifly once and the ball seemed to vanish out the closed door. The whole incident lasted probably only 2 or 3 seconds but it seemed like forever. The weather by the way was clear and dry.
My parents heard the phone but saw nothing. (They were in the living room.) I told them what I saw, though not very calmly. They calmed me down and convinced me I had just imagined it. (I knew better on the inside).
It was only about 10 years ago (I'm 41 now) that I heard of ball lightning. Suddenly I knew what I had seen.
Made me feel a lot better.
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 20:12:00 -0400
From: Delbert Cope <dc95828@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu>
Organization: University of Central Florida
To: 102617.3604@compuserve.com
Subject: ball lightning
I don't know much about ball lightning and I have never seen it except in pictures, I just started looking for information about it a few days ago. I looked it up in (http://www.altavista.digital.com/), Alta Vista. I found that some physicists make artificial ball lightning, or plasmoids, that are composed of plasma. There are some pictures and more information of one of the artificial ball lightning things in this URL (http://webster.skypoint.net/members/jlogajan/ . I hope this helps any of you out there looking for information on this interesting subject, it helped me. If you want to E-mail and ask any questions this is my address (duvanc@aol.com). Delbert is my brother and I was using his account when I sent this, that is why his name or the dc95828 is in the from thing.
Duvan
Date: Fri, 03 May 1996 17:10:11 -0400
To: 102617.3604@compuserve.com
From: <kmb19@cornell.edu>
Subject: Ball Lightning
On some TLC show a little while back (and if you watch that channel enough everything reruns eventually) some scientist created mini-ball lightning by zapping metal to create flamable gas. I believe that this is the most popular current theory for the phenomena.
Tue, 23 Apr 1996 14:12:45 -0400
From: <buckshot@empnet.com>
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 11:15:06 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Ball Lightning
To: 102617.3604@compuserve.com
To J.Z. Ponder
I have a story about ball lightning that you will not believe. But as Ripley would say, here is my story "believe it or not."
In August 1978, I some ball lightning in Avaino, Italy that makes all other stories I have read sound silly. Aviano sits at the foot of the Italian Alps and at the time, there was a thunderstorm going on. I had driven from Pordenone (about 15 kilometers southwest) watching the lightning the entire way and was glad when I noticed the friends I was meeting had a gotten a table with a view outside. I enjoy watching lightning and have several good photos of it taken in Texas and other places.
As I sat waiting for the waitress and talking with my friends, I noticed a bright light out of the corner of my eye. Looking towards the source, I was amazed to see ball lightning...not your garden variety ball lightning, but real ball lightning.
I first noticed it about 300 feet above the ground. It was slowly falling towards earth. I say "it," but maybe I should say "they." After all, there were three of them. Now this is the part that is hard to believe. There were two balls about the same size and the third was twice their size. From where I was sitting, the lightning was about a mile away and maybe 500 feet up the side of Dolomite Mountains. When the balls landed on the ground, they bounced a couple of times and then sat there. Next to them, about thirty feet away, was a house and next to it, a small Fiat car. By comparing the car and house with the size of the lightning, I estimated the size of the two smaller ones to be about seven feet in diameter. The larger one was easily 15 feet in diameter.
At this point, I pointed the phenomena out to my friends, who looked at it for a moment and then continued talking. I continued staring at it amazed at what I was seeing. All three balls of lightning were white with a slight blue color to them...exactly like a stroke of lightning. But they weren't a solid ball. They looked more like a stroke of lightning that had been rolled into a ball. They were crackling which was a sound I was hearing but couldn't pinpoint until the balls disappeared. The strands of lightning inside the balls were moving around looking similar to a wad of earthworms crawling around inside a bait cup. The whole area (to about 150-200 feet) around the balls was light up in a way a stroke of lightning lights its general area. Then, suddenly, the lightning was gone in a flash and a clap of thunder. The whole time from when I first noticed the balls to their disappearence was no more than 30 seconds...maybe 25 seconds.
After the balls disappeared, I could smell ozone (is that corrent?) in the air quite readily. I was also speakless. I know I wasn't the only person to see the balls. Other than my friends, there were people driving up and down highway the restaurant is on and when you head towards the mountains, you would have had the balls of lightning directly in front of you. But, I never heard anyone mention it conversation or anything like that. The following day, I contacted the people at the Weather Station on Avaino AB and none of them saw it, nor was it mentioned in the logs from the night before.
A couple of days after the sighting, I was contemplating what I saw and formulated the following hypothesis.
One of the things I saw in balls was the fact that the strands seemed to squirm around rather than just move. The squirming resembled the repelling force of magnets. My thought a few days later was that the balls were a cohesive unit of both positive and negative charges of rain. These droplets were so actively charged that they were creating lightning. The lightning created an ozone layer around itself (the charged rain particles) which helped it maintain its cohesion. I never noticed and don't remember if the balls flattened out on the ground (I would think they would a little), but their ball shape would only come natural as a raindrop falling attempts to maintain a circular shape only being pushed into the classic teardrop shape by air resistance. These balls fell slowly enough to maintain a round, ball shape all the way down. When the balls finally dispersed, they did so in normal fashion -- a flash and bang. I believe this happened after the droplets lost their charge and couldn't maintain the integrity of unit.
That is what I thought at the time. I wrote it down and recently found the paper I originally wrote. Now, a little about me. First, I was in Italy as a member of the US Air Force. My job was that of newspaper editor for the base newspaper there. I was trained in factual writing and observing what was happening around me. I am also an amateur astronomer, a avid nasty weather watcher (though in my present location of Central Oregon there aren't many storms to watch) and am still very interested in the physical sciences.
I know this doesn't fit the "mold" of ball lightning. It is neither small and colored. Nor did it move freely through the air. I believe that form of ball lightning is nothing more than St. Elmo's Fire, which I think is just a charged plasma field. I have seen St. Elmo's Fire. It also was during a thunderstorm in central Illinois. At one point, my grandfather pointed out tongues of blue flame on the tops of the trees outside. He called it St. Elmo's Fire. But, what I saw in Italy had no relation to, nor any comparsion at all, to what I saw in Illinois.
As I said at the top of this letter, believe it or not. I know what I saw.
L. Sobkoviak
Date: Sun, 07 Apr 96 11:03:08 -0700
From: Connie Poquette <wildiris@PBINET.com>
To: 102617.3604@compuserve.com
Subject: ball lightening
I know that ball lightening does exist. My cousin was killed by a freak accident in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, years ago. The small spot of light was seen skipping down the railway tracks and where the tracks took a turn the ball bounced off the tracks & up through a second story window, hitting my cousin and killing her on the spot. You may want to check into the history of the phenomenon which was and probably still is quite evident in the iron ore rich areas of the upper Great Lakes.
Lightening accidents are much more common in that part of the country. My girlfriend is deaf in one ear due to lightening striking a near-by tree. Cows were often electricuted when near trees got zapped. I and my 2 brothers, sister, our dog and several friends remember being blown to our knees due to a lightling wave that bounced off a metal tractor that had just been parked in the driveway when the rain was about to hit one summer afternoon. I respect lightning and do not ever under estimate what power Mother Nature has.
Hope this helps.
Connie
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 1996 05:13:12 -0400
From: .@dub-mail-svc-1.compuserve.com, @compuserve.com@compuserve.com
To: 102617.3604@compuserve.com
Subject: ball lighting
Ball lightning?
No, I have no idea. Sorry. My mother says she saw BL in germany as a kid in the '30's. I have no reason to doubt her. Says it came in the window of the one room school house and then went out the door. COOOOL! I, as an avid, or rabid, storm chaser of 18 years, have only seen beaded lightning. It started out as a normal lightning channel, perhaps 500-1000 yards away. Then it broke into serveral segments, evenly spaced. Then each line segment rolled into itself, forming a bead! These beads lasted perhaps 3 seconds, slowly fading out. Slowly as far as lightning goes. It was totally cool. For the life of me I can't swear whether they rolled up or down, but I think down. Perhaps BL is just beaded lighting where a bead gets into a sustained state by the ambeint charges around it.
I remember a show on Discovery Channel or PBS in which a Japanese PHd had recreated BL no that I think about it! It started from the base of a cathode or anaode, an propigated up through a cermaic dish. They said it went through the dish, but it apeared to be to go around the edges.
Sorry, brain can't think of the name of the show, let alone the guys name.