Spontaneous Emotional Combustion
The only way I can describe it is it’s like you see everything all at once. A person’s brain contains millions of pieces of information: memories, experiences, facts, thoughts, feelings, actions, inactions. The only way we can function is that our brains can parse out these millions of pieces of information.
When I was younger, I got into a car accident and got a pretty serious concussion. The aftereffects of the concussion were that my brain had a hard time parsing. When I went out anywhere public, the sheer amount of data rushing around and through me was too much. I had a limit of thirty minutes until exhaustion and an acute sense of, well, just feeling everything all at once. It was overwhelming.
At any one moment, our brains are making lightning speed decisions as to what is important and what is not. So, the only way I can describe is it’s like all these bits and pieces flying around in your brain all fuse together at the same time and you see the entirety of your life all at once. All the bad things, good things, every person you’ve encountered, every word said. And you see it for what it is, not how you present yourself to the world, not as the kind of person you think you are, but the person you are truly. I was present at the first case and I was the person who coined the term. I think I was still in a bit of shock while talking to the people on the scene, but it’s right there, right on camera talking to a reporter. It just popped into my head-
“- Spontaneous Emotional Combustion,” I said. The reporter asked me to clarify. “Well, I work as a therapist and my patient, he was sitting there talking, telling me about a recent experience. And this look came over his face. I remember I noticed he stopped blinking, which is a weird detail to notice about a person. It wasn’t a glazed over look, but almost like the opposite, like a thoughtful look. He started to look around the room, as though he was engulfed in some kind of tableau or mural or something. Just his attention had left the room but seemed to also not. And then, and this is the part that I can’t explain yet, but he just disappeared. All that was left was a pile of ash in the shape of a triangle. And that’s what it felt like to me, like he spontaneously combusted after seeing or understanding something.”
The reporter thanked me, the investigators interviewed me, but the whole thing went nowhere. Sometimes people are good at explaining things in such a way that makes sense to them. Almost like they have to just believe it to make it so. I took some time off, there were some follow-ups, and the whole thing faded away. Until the second case.
Several weeks later, a police detective from London appeared on my doorstep. It seems a shopkeeper was checking out a customer when to quote from the official report: “He looked around as though he saw a painting or piece of art that emotionally resonated with him. One moment he was there, the next he had disappeared. All that remained was a pile of ash on the floor in the shape of a triangle.” The obvious coincidences between these two cases were something that could not be ignored. Besides, my dad always told me that there are no coincidences.
The British detective and I just didn’t know what to do. Sure, something was going on here, but what exactly? Over the next few months, the cases kept piling up: Brazil, New Zealand, Japan, Russia, Estonia, South Africa. The British detective and I put this all together long before the media of the world. But they all came back to my original interview and soon it was an unstoppable epidemic and it had a name: Spontaneous Emotional Combustion.
The other thing that all these cases had in common is something almost indecipherable. Beyond the thoughtful gaze and triangle of ashes, we discovered there was something else linking all these people. Within one hour of each incident, there was a power outage. These outages were for any number of reasons - weather, animals, a blown fuse. From what we could tell, they were simply accidents and include nothing intentional or nefarious. The connection is that it broke the addictive need to be distracted. All of these people had a solid hour of sitting with their thoughts. And if I am correct, this allowed all those millions of pieces of information to fuse, to see everything. To see it all in its glory or pain or sadness or joy. This is so emotionally overwhelming that our minds and physical forms can’t take it and self-destruct.
I decided to try an experiment, one that if I am right, I wouldn’t be returning from. I packed a small bag and drove out to a remote lake. Far away from anything and anyone. I started walking. I tried different things - to clear my mind and then to try and think about lots of things - but nothing happened. I sat on a rock by the lake to think. Took out my phone, thought about it for a second, and smashed it on a rock beside me. I sat there for a long time, day turned into night. I was tired, but I saw what I can only describe as a falling star. I watched it cross the sky and it slammed into another star and kept moving until it hit another one and another one. The stars started drawing memories from my childhood, but they were fused with other more recent memories. I only know I stopped blinking because my eyes were drying out, but it was not painful. The stars drew this giant mural with different sections and patches each representing something different, but all coming together.
It was hauntingly beauti-