Summary: Spontaneous Human Combustion: detested, disdained, denied, debunked by nearly all academicians and forensic professionals as simply "Impossible! The human body does not burn this way! These are hoaxes! There is no way; no way, period." But what if the overwhelming consensus against SHC is wrong? Part of a human limb extends from a pile of ash at an otherwise nearly pristine fire scene, proving a person has somehow been incinerated more thoroughly than by a crematory retort. It's made many first-responders uncomfortable when they find themselves for the first time confronting what education, training and experience has clearly not prepared them. If it makes you uncomfortable, do not buy this book. However: if this makes you inquisitive, curious, and eager to know more about the most extreme of combustion conundrums and whether the idea of what history as called SHC deserves to be ridiculed, reviled, rebuked and rejected, or embraced as a preternatural puzzle awaiting a solution ABLAZE! will make for a satisfying, if disconcerting, read. What is the evidence for The Fire Within? How do firemen react to mounds of human ashes found inside unburned rooms, even inside uncharred clothing? Are these mere "smoking mishaps" as coroners quickly claim, or deaths far less easily explained away? Why do fire scenes crying out for answers meet with misrepresentation, even suppression, of evidence? Why the cover-ups? ABLAZE! represents two decades of international research that discovered many baffling blazes heretofore lost in dust-covered obscure medical tomes; discloses publicly dramatic new cases of fantastic fires for the first time; presents rare photographs of astonishingly localized incinerations attributed to "clever camera angles" (you decide); and grapples with testimony from eye-witnesses to the "impossible" and of survivors who say they experienced limited SHC and lived to tell the tale. ABLAZE! argues the case that if no other explanation can resolve this fantastic fires, then SHC must be added to medical lexicon. Is ABLAZE! a work of fiction? Non-fiction? Medicine? Science? To classify this book is, like its subject, challenging and depends largely on what (who) the reader chooses to or can believe. Shortly before publication of this book, Arthur C. Clarke remarked: "Some cases still seem to defy explanation, and leave me with a creepy and very unscientific feeling. If there's anything more to SHC, I simply don't want to know." ABLAZE! is about a phenomenon that has remained a hidden malady for over one hundred years; is hotly debated; scientifically confounding; fascinating to ponder.
