The Paranormal

Spontaneous Human Combustion in Folkestone

Reg Gower pushed the door tentatively and when into the room, sniffing for smoke. After all, he was the landlord and his tenant might have left something burning on the oven top. Best to be sure. He might even be asleep. though that was unlikely at 10.30 in the morning. But now he was inside there was a powerful smell of smoke, and perhaps it was then, or perhaps a little later the Mr Gower noticed the thin layer of greasy moisture on the windows and the flat surfaces of the room. The polystyrene kitchen tiles were slightly charred as was a small plastic air vent. But there was little sign of serious fire damage. On the gas ring, still lit, a kettle, half full, was boiling. There was little else of note if one discounted the polythene brush and dustpan, both totally undamaged, which were no more than a few inches away from a pile of ashes that were once the body of Barry Soudaine. All else that remained of Mr Gower's tenant was one foot and a trainer.

Only two days after Christmas 1987, it was a particularly bad time, and extraordinarily sad time, for such a lonely, ugly death. Barry Soudaine, a bachelor who worked in the bakery below his flat in Canterbury Road as a cleaner and general handyman, was only forty four years of age after all, and his end was horrific. His body had been consumed in fire of elemental ferocity, yet it had been so localised that the room in which he was found was scarcely touched.

The police, not unnatuarally, considered the possibility of murder. Had Soudaine been done to death elsewhere, they wondered, his body burned, and then transferred to his flat at the baker's shop in the centre of Folkestone? But that was preposterous for the body was so profoundly burnt that it could no have been lifted. It would have disintegrated completely, so that even its present vague human shape could not have been maintained. In that event the police had to determine whether someone had broken into the flat and murdered the victim. But there was no sign of any break-in. Murder, as a possibility, was out. And so was suicide, for there was no evidence anywhere in the flat of petrol or any other fire accelerant.

Clearly, the police decided, the dead man had had a heart attack and as he fell, he had stumbled against the lit gas stove. He had caught fire with obviously disastrous consequences. He had burnt to death, his body consumed over the space of perhaps fifteen hours. He had been seen the previous evening at about 7.30. It must have been shortly after that time that he had his tragic fall. At least, this was the police view. Unsurprisingly, from the outset they had rejected the notion of spontaneous human combustion (SHC). Just as, over the years, many fire officers and medical men and coroners have turned their backs on such an absurd suggestion.

Yet the Home Office pathologist, Dr Heath, did not dismiss the possibility of SHC out of hand, saying at the post mortem that further investigations were necessary. And at the Coroner's Court a verdict of accidental death was rejected. The destruction of the rest of the body was so complete that it was impossible to say how the man had died. There was no medical history of heart disease and along with the remainder of the organs, with the exception of the lungs, the heart had been destroyed. An open verdict, rare on these occasions, was recorded.

Jenny Randles and Peter Hough are serious professional researchers into matters which might be described as the supernatural and the paranormal. They bring to their work a tireless doggedness and a critical scientific approach. They are not out to support crackbrained flimflam, but at the same time they do not dismiss out of hand what many may describe as cranky notions. The objectivity of scientific method has been a feature of their work over several years. When Barry Soudaine died in December 1987 they had already been investigating SHC for five years. Although there had been many claims for it, the evidence somehow was never totally convincing. How could it be accepted, this curious notion that people, without warning and without interference, suddenly burst into flames. But if absolute proof had been hard to come by, the Soudaine case at last seemed to present compelling evidence that the phenomenon, which for well over a hundred years had been the subject of spasmodic debate in some quarters, ought to be taken seriously.

After the inquest the two researchers asked to see the police photographs of the scene at the Folkestone flat, but their request was refused. They were told that the pictures were 'pornographic' with their hideous detail of the incinerated corpse. They did, however, have more success with the Coroner who presided at the inquest. He said that he could not rule out SHC as the cause of Soudaine's death. it was a possibility, but of course the more or less total destruction of the body could not permit him to reach such a verdict.

But Randles and Hough have brought the Soudaine case positively into the debating chamber for there were a number of factors which needed to be considered. Take the kettle on the gas ring when Mr Gower entered the room, and which was still there when the police arrived. Who half-filled the kettle? Who lit the gas? Who, at some point shifted the kettle so that only half of it was on the ring? The answer is Barry Soudaine, and that has never been in dispute.

So when did he put it there? The matter of timing is crucial. The police were of the view that it must have taken at least fifteen hours to reduce the body to the state in which they found it. Hence, the kettle must have been placed on the stove at least fifteen hours before he was found. But how long would it take a kettle on a gas ring to run dry? How long would it take to burn through the bottom? Can there be any doubt that if the kettle had been on the ring for fifteen hours it would have boiled dry and the bottom would have been holed? Randles and Hough believe that the kettle must have been placed on the gas ring no more than an hour or two before. What they say in effect is that the body of Barry Soudaine was reduced to ashes in a very short space of time.

The condition of the body must next be considered. Jenny Randles and Peter Hough consulted a crematorium superintendent who found it difficult to accept that a mere house fire could have wreaked such havoc on a body. She had seen a BBC programme which attempted to debunk the idea of SHC but which did not include photographs of the remains of some victims. They were so reduced; there was in effect nothing left, no skeletal remains. There was for the most part nothing but ash. The superintendent told the two researchers how corpses are cremated in heat of up to nearly one thousand degrees for one and a half hours. But some bones always remain. Pelvis and thigh bones, ball and socket joints, are not converted into ash. They subsequently have to be ground down after the cremation process is complete.

The question was: could such a fire, of such intensity occur in the house? Most house fires leave something recognisable. Even in the worst kinds of motor accidents when the engine explodes and it is impossible to rescue the occupants there are remains of bones, and sometimes flesh. What kind of fire was this that could so degrade a body, so eat it up, and yet not seriously damage the surroundings? Mrs Valerie Bennett, that experienced superintendent to whom the researchers had addressed themselves was to say: 'I cannot see how a human body could generate sufficient heat to turn a room into a cremator.' And an expert fire officer expressed the opinion that the 'amount of heat required to degrade these bones would be so intense that surrounding areas should ignite.'

So here is a mystery. Did Barry Soudaine really meet his death by SHC, just by bursting into flames, without warning, without any external source to ignite him? But what is it that causes such an outrageous phenomenon? The trouble is that while cases appear to go back to the 17th century there is so little hard evidence. Often there are no witnesses and there have been few survivors. What few witnesses there are attest to a bluish flame coming from the abdominal area. The fire begins inside the body and works its way out. It goes on to consume the body, to reduce it to the finest ash, and yet the fire does not spread to the surroundings. Some body fat, moisturised, is found on window glass and on flat surfaces, but otherwise the effects of the burning are not seen much beyond the body.

But what is the cause of this internal fire, and this fierce raging inferno inside the abdomen? Is it something quite beyond the normal and the natural? One witness, a doctor, said of the visible effects of SHC: 'Were I living in the Middle Ages, I'd mutter something about black magic'. For how can our innards cause such an eruption? Is it something supernatural, something paranormal? One example from beyond Kent may suggest that it is. In January 1899 two sisters, Alice, five years old, and Amy Kirby, 4, were living in different houses at Sowerby Bridge, near Halifax. Because their parents had separated, Alice went to live with her father and grandmother while Amy stayed with her mother in a house a mile away.

At eleven o'clock on the 5th January Amy's mother went out of the house to get water from the nearby well. She was away from the house no more than two minutes. When she returned she found Amy screaming, engulfed in flames. At that identical moment, one mile away, Alice was found with flames three feet high coming out of her head. It is difficult to seek and accept some rational and scientific answer in view of what happened to these little girls. At the inquest the coroner used words like 'strange', 'remarkable', and 'shocking coincidence' but made no reference to SHC. In the same way, the police dismissed any suggestion of it in the case of Barry Soudaine.

There are many other examples of SHC though perhaps none exemplifies the possibility of paranormal causes in quite the way the case of the Kirby girls does. And Barry Soudaine's death does does seem to indicate the speedy ferocity of such a fire that reduces its victims to ash and cinder. Some have suggested poltergeist activity for this is often associated with outbreaks of fire but that, however, would be to deny the internal origin of the flames.

The classic features of SHC, those elements noticed in so many instances, were present when Barry Soudaine died. There was intense heat, little damage to the near surroundings and the massive destruction of the body. Some will produce theories about combustible gases in the digestive system; other will claim surges of excess electrical energy in the body. But some will claim more sinister though inexplicable causes. In the paranormal, in the supernatural, will lie the cause for these people.