What is spontaneous human combustion, and is it real?

According to Boing Boing, the idea of spontaneous human combustion — a person suddenly bursting into flame from the inside, reduced to ash while the room around them barely scorches — is pure pseudoscience. But the strange cases that gave rise to the legend are genuine. The explanation, Boing Boing notes, is far more ordinary and grim than any inner fire: something known as the wick effect, in which a body can smolder slowly like a candle burning in reverse.

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