this has always fascinated me. but rather frightened me as a kid. What are peoples thoughts, is it an accident, an hoax, due to aliens, natural phenomenon?

Well, when I get a menopausal flush, I reckon I could explode sometimes

I'm really not sure. It kinda fascinates me too.
I saw a documentary about it a few years ago, and they came up with scientific reasons for it. I forget what exactly but I remember them talking about the "wick effect"
I'm very open minded as to what it can be. The logical side of me says it's probably a natural phenomena that we dont fully understand yet, but I( really am not sure.
What do you think Samhain?

yeah I agreed with the wick effect I'll have to find some stuff about that and post it

here is a link to the wick effect, reading not for the faint hearted!
It makes the most sense to me I have to say!

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when I was a kid Sandi Toksvig presented a kids humourous magazine program and they actually covered this. As part of this story she said to this celebrity (can't remember which) do you think you can do it then?
and the celebrity said 'hmmm give me a dark shed, packet of digestives and a soap opera'

then at the end Sandis manager phoned up and said she'd be in trouble if anyone exploded on the show and she went running to the shed just as the celebrity blew up to the sound of eastenders ending.

At the end the actress that 'blew up' made an appearnce saying 'I wasn't in it much' just to let us all know she was ok!

I remember my science teacher from a few years ago talking to my class about spontaneous human combustion, but since he's sort of nuts, I wasn't sure if I believed him or not.

I was also frightened when I first heard of this. My brother would often say that it would happen to be because I'm such a hothead. Then I watched the Discovery Channel documentary on it and was sort of relieved that it is not due to being a hothead.