Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. At a loss for an alternate explanation, the coroner chalked Faherty’s death up to spontaneous combustion. Lynn has researched and published on the spontaneous combustion trend that emerged in his study region and era. Depiction of spontaneous combustion from the Charles Dickens 1895 novel Bleak House by Hablot Knight Browne. There’s also never been a report in any other animal species, he notes–it’s a strictly human phenomenon.