Things that are unanswerable, unknowable and unsolvable fascinate human minds. Until now, we do not have one absolute explanation about the creator of our universe. People have been trying to figure out the genesis of the endless universe but all their attempts to uncover that one mystery become more puzzling and they are more and more lost in a complex labyrinth. Nearly five years ago when I was in my graduation days, a book titled as Mysteries of the Unexplained fall in my hands. This book, a page turner, has a chapter of fourteen pages on Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC). When somebody ignites and burns without the help of any external fire and without flammable things responsible for the burning, the phenomenon is labeled as spontaneous…show more content… Many a writer has referred to this strange phenomenon in their writings as it has captured their attention. Some consider alcohol as responsible for the phenomenon whereas others try to see things from religious point of view by regarding the victims as not morally upright persons and considering it as a desirable punishment. Being a journalist, Victorian novelist Charles Dickens was familiar with the unexplainable cases of SHC. In his Chancery novel Bleak House, you can find a character named Krook who bursts into flames. Krook, an impudent fellow epitomizes the social evils and inequalities that were rampant in nineteenth century England. People have a tendency to offer explanations of puzzling things by mentioning the unseen God responsible for any unfortunate thing that happens to us or the outbreak of a new and strange disease. Herman Melville, Edgar Allen Poe, Thomas De Quincey and Emile Zola have also exposed SHC in their literary works. In Melville’s Red burn, Miguel, the sailor, drinks a lot and his crew members become the witness to his self-burning. Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater has a reference to SHC where De Quincey opines that excessive drinking of alcohol might lead to SHC. Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol who has to his credit a large number of great books hypothesizes in Dead Souls that drunkenness works as a catalyst for
