According to Wikipedia, spontaneous human combustion is the belief that a person can simply burst into flame from within, leaving the body burned to ash while the surrounding room barely chars. It is pseudoscience — but the cases behind the legend are real, and they have a grim, ordinary explanation.
Victorian writers blamed drink, noting that nearly all the reported victims were women rumored to live on alcohol. The modern answer is the "wick effect": a small flame, like a dropped cigarette, chars a person's clothing, splits the skin, and releases body fat that soaks into the cloth and burns slowly, the way a candle burns its own wick. The body fuels its own destruction, while a nearby chair or wall stays cool enough not to catch.
The classic case is Mary Reeser, a 67-year-old found in her St. Petersburg, Florida home in 1951, reduced almost entirely to ash while much of the room survived.
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