Review
What kind of fire leaves a human body utterly incinerated bones reduced to ash while combustibles only inches away, and far more ignitable than human flesh, remains undestroyed, or even unscorched? That, in a nutshell, is the baffling mystery of spontaneous human combustion(SHC).
For more than 20 years, Fortean investigator and scholar Larry Arnold has been smoking out cases of SHC, historic and modern, searching for answers to a mystery that has fascinated and bewildered generations. In ABLAZE! Arnold presents his findings, and the result is a breathtaking production. Solidly researched, every page riveting, ABLAZE! is a five-alarm Fortean classic.
Arnold thoroughly researches and investigates the best-known cases of SHC such as the fiery death of Dr. Irving Bentley in Coudersport, Pennsylvania, in 1966, and the SHC survival of Jack Angel in Georgia in 1974 as well as numerous obscure human burnings that defy understanding. Thankfully, SHC is an extraordinarily rare phenomenon only some 300 cases are known over the past four centuries but Arnold suspects that hundreds, possibly thousands, of other cases have occurred whose true nature was either unrecognized, or recognized by misrepresented for fear of ridicule.
And SHC does have its ridiculers, notably author Joe Nickell, who claims that SHC is impossible. With the patience of a kind schoolteacher, Arnold exposes the fallacies of Nickell's arguments and the limits of his research. Joe Nickell is to Larry Arnold what Inspector Lestrade was to Sherlock Holmes, and not even a Niagara of debunkers will put out the flames of ABLAZE!
My favorite chapter of ABLAZE! is the one devoted to the mysterious fire death of Mrs. Mary Reeser in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1951. Investigators were baffled by the near-total annihilation of Mrs. Reeser's body in an apartment fire that left more easily-combustible objects beside her unscathed. Dr. Wilton Krogman, a renowned forensic pathologist who investigated the case and published his own findings, was baffled by the evidence and unable to explain the woman's death. Eager to know what Dr. Krogman thought of the case in later years, Arnold interviewed him. What Dr. Krogman 'revealed' about Mrs. Reeser's bizarre immolation left Arnold flabbergasted and you will be too. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.
ABLAZE! is a feast for the mind if not for the stomach; the book's accompany photographs of SHC victims will have you pushing your chair away from the dinner table in a hurry! An old SHC victim-profile, which indicated that paupers were more likely to "go up in smoke" than professionals for some reason is one that Arnold's research flatly contradicts. The poor are no more likely to burn than the rich. If anything, I would have though the rich had a better chance of burning.
So, what is SHC? With honesty and humility, Arnold admits that after his many years of research he doesn't have a theory to explain the phenomenon. In fact, he doubts if there is a single answer to the mystery, suspecting a complex interaction of forces both environmental and biological. ...
It is worth noting that in ABLAZE! Arnold avoids a common mistake of Fortean authors: assuming a mystery's strangeness is reason enough for the reader to keep turning the pages. It isn't. Good story-telling technique is required. Arnold's prose is crisp, lively, exciting, his dramatic sense keen, and his humor sharp and sardonic. Fittingly, a chapter of ABLAZE! honors examples of SHC found in the writings of classic novelists, among them Washington Irving, Herman Melville, and Honore de Balzac. Fortean scholarship and story-telling craft do make a powerful team, as ABLAZE! brilliantly
Pay rent if you have to, buy groceries if you must, but get a copy of ABLAZE! at all costs. You will never read a more fascinating book. --Review by Dwight Whalen in INFO Journal (Autumn 1996)
About the Author
Larry E. Arnold redirected a background in engineering to explore the Unconventional. Recognized internationally for his pioneering research in forteana (phenomena that challenge orthodoxy), he is regarded as the leading authority about Spontaneous Human Combustion. His investigation of SHC spans a quarter-century and several continents. The author of three books, he has been featured on hundreds of radio shows and many television programs in the USA, Canada, Great Britain, France, Japan and South Korea.
