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We tackle one of the grand old traditions in weirdness--spontaneous human combustion (SHC), the phenomenon wherein your loved one goes POOF so quickly and inexplicably that little is left of them but a pile of ash and some extremities. Ben discusses the heyday of these strange deaths, and what they all had in common. We go over some purported cases and some folkloric trails of fabrication, and Celestia looks up some nineteenth-century skirts to see why fashion may have played a part in the cultural memories that solidified into SHC.
By Ben Radford, Celestia Ward and Pascual Romero4.8
9191 ratings
We tackle one of the grand old traditions in weirdness--spontaneous human combustion (SHC), the phenomenon wherein your loved one goes POOF so quickly and inexplicably that little is left of them but a pile of ash and some extremities. Ben discusses the heyday of these strange deaths, and what they all had in common. We go over some purported cases and some folkloric trails of fabrication, and Celestia looks up some nineteenth-century skirts to see why fashion may have played a part in the cultural memories that solidified into SHC.

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