Body Disposal-Spontaneous Human Combustion
April 29th, 2011 | by Peter Saint-Clair
I had the idea of using spontaneous human combustion as a means for body disposal when I watched an episode of National Geographic’s show Is It Real?
Spontaneous human combustion, or SHC, is essentially what happens when a person bursts into flames for no clear reason, usually while sleeping. Upon further investigation no external heat source can be found, nor is there any evidence of an accelerant. The grisly scene afterwards is somewhat puzzling and is characterized by a noticeable lack of fire or smoke damage outside the small vicinity of the victim. The body itself, is usually reduced to mere bone fragments and ashes (with the exception of the feet and legs in cases where the victim was sitting in a chair).
There are many theories as to how this happens including the paranormal as well as natural phenomenon that is unknown to us.
What does this mean for the mystery writer looking for a way to dispose of a body?
The Wick Effect is one theory for SHC, which is the slow destruction of a body via the victim’s clothing and body fat. What that means is that the clothing, or bed sheets, acts as a wick and the body fat acts as a candle. Due to the long strings of hydrocarbons in fat cells, there is actually a lot of potential energy stored there, but it does need an external heat source to start, though. A match or a cigarette is usually enough to start this reaction. The flames during the wick effect are very hot and intense, but stay very close to the body, thus preventing a larger scale fire.
This effect has been tested and verified under lab circumstances using pigs as analogues and produces almost the same things you’d expect to see in an SHC case. It should be noted, however, that taking a match to someone’s clothing doesn’t always have a contained burn area. Occasionally during experiments, the fire would roar way out of control and consume the room or building it was being conducted in.
I presume that if one were trying to cover up a murder, short of totally cremating a body, this would work in a pinch to get rid of evidence, including the match and/or the cigarette used to start the fire. Because this effect can take a day or two to fully destroy a body, make sure your killer has enough time in a secluded area to dispose of the body in this fashion.
The name's Chris writing under the nom de plume 
Peter Saint-Clair April 29th, 2011 at 9:18 am
lol…I’d read about it, too when I was younger, but even then it didn’t seem like something serious. IMO, the wick effect is probably how those people are getting burned in the unusual way they do in cases like this. Thanks for stopping by, Scott!