Causes
There are many hypothesized explanations which account for the various cases of human spontaneous combustion. These generally fall into one of three groups: paranormal explanations (e.g. a ghost or alien caused it), natural explanations that credit some unknown and otherwise unobserved phenomenon (e.g. the production of abnormally concentrated gas or raised levels of blood alcohol cause spontaneous ignition), and natural explanations that involve an external source of ignition (e.g. the victim dropped a cigarette).
Objections to natural explanations usually revolve around the degree of burning of the body with respect to its surroundings. Indeed, one of the common markers of a case of SHC is that the body — or part of it — has suffered an extraordinarily large degree of burning, with surroundings or lower limbs comparatively undamaged.
Suggested explanations
Many hypotheses have attempted to explain how SHC might occur, but those which rely on current scientific understanding say that with instances mistaken for spontaneouscombustion, there was an external source of ignition, and that the likelihood that true spontaneous human combustion actually takes place within the body is quite low.
Unverified natural phenomena
- Since every human body contains varying strengths of electrical field and the human body also contains flammable gases (mainly methane in the intestines), an electrical discharge could ignite these gases.
- SHC victims are sometimes described as lonely people who fall into a trance immediately before their incineration. Heymer suggests that a psychosomatic process in such emotionally-distressed people can trigger off a chain reaction by reacting nitrogen within the body and setting off a chain reaction of mitochondrial explosions. This theory has been criticized on the basis that Heymer "seems to be under the illusion that nitrogen exist as gases in the blood and are thus vulnerable to ignition, which is, in fact, not the case."(Mitochondria are organelles found within cells.) The theory also fails to take into account the fact that nitrogen is an inert, non-flammable gas.
- Another theory suggests high-energy particles or gamma rays coupled with susceptibilities in the potential victim (e.g. increased alcohol in the blood) triggers the initial reaction. This process may use no external oxygen to spread throughout the body, since it may not be an oxidation-reduction reaction. However, no reaction mechanism has been proposed, nor has a source for the high-energy particles.
- The victim is an alcoholic and has been smoking while drinking or shortly after drinking a strong spirit. There are claims that this raises the blood alcohol level to a point where it ignites; however, this theory is implausible, since ethanol typically burns only if the concentration is greater than about 23%, whereas a fatally toxic level is about 1%. However, this does introduce the probability that the victim will fall asleep while holding a lit cigarette.
- A suggested possibility is that both clothing and the person are caused to burn by a discharge of static electricity. A person walking across a carpet can build up sufficient charge and voltage to create a spark. It is unlikely that this could start a clothing fire, as although the voltage can be high (several thousand volts), the stored energy is very low (typically less than a joule).
- The controversial phenomenon of ball lightning has also been proposed as one of the causes of spontaneous combustion.
Natural explanation
- Cigarettes are often implicated as the source of ignition. Usually, the victim is alone at the time of death, and it is thought that natural causes such as heart attacks may lead to the victim dying, subsequently dropping the cigarette. Embers from cigarettes and pipes may also ignite clothes. Additionally, cigarettes smoulder at a temperature too low to trigger a flare up of most otherwise combustible materials. Typically if a person drops a lit cigarette on an article of clothing, it will create a burn-hole, but not ignite into an open flame and spread.
- The "wick effect" hypothesis suggests that a small external flame source, such as a burning cigarette, chars the clothing of the victim at a location, splitting the skin and releasing subcutaneous fat, which is in turn absorbed into the burned clothing, acting as a wick. This combustion can continue for as long as the fuel is available. This hypothesis has been successfully tested with animal tissue (pig) and is consistent with evidence recovered from cases of human combustion.
- Scalding can cause burn-like injuries, including death, without setting fire to clothing. Although not applicable in cases where the body is charred and burnt, this has been suggested as a cause in at least one claimed SHC-like event.
Possible cases
Deaths
Some cited cases include:
1. Robert Francis Bailey was a homeless person who allegedly died by spontaneous human combustion.
At 5:21am on 13 September 1967, an unnamed member of a group of female office workers phoned the London Fire Brigade. While waiting for a bus, they had noticed flickering blue flames visible through an upper window of 49 Auckland Street, Lambeth, London. They presumed it was burning gas. 49 Auckland Street was a derelict council house owned by Lambeth Borough Council, and was disconnected from gas and electricity supplies.
At 5:26am, Station Officer Jack Stacey and his crew arrived. Stacey was first up the ladder and through the window.:
"When I got in through the window I found the body of a tramp named Bailey laying at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the second floor. He was lying partly on his left side. There was a four-inch (10 cm) slit in his abdomen from which was issuing, at force, a blue flame. The flame was beginning to burn the wooden stairs. We extinguished the flames by placing a hose into the abdominal cavity. Bailey was alive when he started burning. He must have been in terrible pain. His teeth were sunk into the mahogany newel post of the staircase. I had to prise his jaws apart to release the body. The fire was coming from within the abdomen of his body."
In 1986, Stacey was interviewed on BBC television's Newsnight programme, and went into detail:
"The flame itself was coming from the abdomen. There was a slit of about four inches in the abdomen and the flame was coming through there at force, like a blowlamp - a bluish flame, which would indicate that there was some kind of spirit involved in it. There's no doubt whatsoever, that fire began inside the body. That's the only place it could have begun, inside that body."
The flames had scorched an area of floor measuring approximately six square feet and totally incinerated Bailey's right hand. Stacey does not believe in the paranormal, in which category he includes SHC, explaining: "Bailey was an alcoholic, addicted to meths drinking, and had drunk too much of it. The meths had erupted through his abdomen and somehow exploded into flame."
However, Heymer has written that Stacey's account contains a number of problems:
- If Bailey was indeed conscious enough to respond to pain by sinking his teeth deep into a mahogany post, why did he not cry out, or indeed move at all?
- Can a person really drink enough meths to ignite and burn to death?
- Can enough gas at sufficient pressure to provide a blowlamp-like flame really be sustained from the contents of a stomach with a four-inch (10 cm) slit in it? (This pressure had been sustained for at least five minutes, because the time of the call and the time of the fire brigade's arrival are both known).
- If one supposes that Bailey did not move due to alcoholic stupor, the idea that he clamped his teeth into a solid wooden post in agony becomes hard to support.
However, Bailey's head was fire-damaged and a less contradictory explanation could be that his jaw tendons contracted in the heat, clamping his jaws shut where his open mouth was already in contact with the post.
At inquest, it was found that the cause of Bailey's death was 'asphyxia due to inhalation of fire fumes'. Bailey had suffocated on the fumes of his own combustion. A search of his body revealed no portable sources of ignition (lighters, etc) or inflammable substances. He was a non-smoker.
2. John Irving Bentley (1874–1966) was a physician burned to death in the bathroom of his house in Coudersport, Pennsylvania. His death was allegedly caused by spontaneous human combustion.
Discovery of Bentley's remains
Bentley was last seen alive on December 4, 1966, when friends visiting him at his home said goodnight to him at about 9:00 P.M. On the following morning, December 5, Don Gosnell, a meter reader, let himself into Bentley's house and went to the basement to check the meter—since Bentley could only move about with the help of a walker, Mr. Gosnell had permission to enter as necessary.
While in the basement, Gosnell noticed a strange smell and a light blue smoke. Intrigued, he went upstairs to investigate. The bedroom was smoky and in the bathroom he found Bentley's cremated remains.
All that was left intact of the aged doctor was the lower half of his right leg with the slipper still on it. The rest of his body had been reduced to a pile of ashes on the floor in the basement below. His walker lay across the hole in the floor generated by the fire. The rubber tips on it were still intact, and the nearby bathtub was hardly scorched. Gosnell ran from the building to get help, screaming "Doctor Bentley's burned up!"
Theories
The first theory put forward was that Bentley had set himself on fire with his pipe, but his pipe was still on its stand by the bed in the next room. Perplexed, the coroner could only record a verdict of 'death by asphyxiation and 90 percent burning of the body.'
Joe Nickell, in his book Secrets of the Supernatural, gives an account of this event he got from Larry E. Arnold's article "The Flaming Fate of Dr. John Irving Bentley," printed in the Pursuit of Fall 1976. Nickell mentions that the hole in the bathroom floor measured 2-1/2 feet by 4 feet, and details the remains as being Bentley's lower leg burned off at the knee.
Nickell mentions that Bentley's robe was found smoldering in the bathtub next to the hole, and that the broken remains of "what was apparently a water pitcher" were found in the toilet; he adds that the doctor had dropped hot ashes from his pipe onto his clothing previously (which "were dotted with burn spots from previous incidents"), and that he kept wooden matchesin his pockets which could transform a small ember into a blazing flame.
Nickell believes that Bentley woke up to find his clothes on fire, walked to the bathroom, and passed out before he could extinguish the flames. Then, he suggests that the burning clothes ignited the flammable linoleum floor, and cool air drawn from the basement in what is known as "the stack effect" kept the fire burning hotly.
3. George Mott (November 20, 1930 – March 1986) was a firefighter who burned to death in his home outside Crown Point, New York, in 1986. He is often cited as an example ofSpontaneous Human Combustion. His body was consumed along with the mattress he was lying on, an implausibly shrunken skull, and piece of rib cage.
Fire investigators suggested that the death was either caused by an electrical arc that shot out of an outlet and set fire to Mott, or a gas leak. Some believe his alcoholism and heavy smoking could have contributed to it; he was not wearing his oxygen mask, and matches were found near the oxygen machine, unignited. He was 56 years old when he died.
4. Mary Hardy Reeser (1884–1951) of St. Petersburg, Florida was a suspected victim of spontaneous human combustion.
Reported events
On the night of July 1 – July 2, 1951 she burned to death after having sex in her apartment and the nickname "The Cinder Lady" was given to her posthumously by the local media.
The alarm was raised at about 8 a.m. July 2 when Reeser's landlady, Pansy Carpenter, arrived at her door with a telegram. Trying the door, she found the metal doorknob to be uncomfortably warm to the touch and called the police.
Evidence
Reeser's remains, which were largely ashes, were found among the remains of a chair in which she had been sitting. Only part of her left foot (which was wearing a slipper) and her backbone remained. Plastic household objects at a distance from the seat of the fire were softened and had lost their shapes.
Reeser's skull had survived and was found among the ashes, but was 'shrunken' (sometimes with the added descriptive flourish of 'to the size of a teacup'). The extent of this shrinkage was enough to be remarked on by official investigators and was not an illusion caused by the removal of all facial features (ears, nose, lips, etc). The shrinking of the skull is not a regular feature of alleged cases of SHC, although the 'shrunken skull' claim has become a regular feature of anecdotal accounts of other SHC cases and numerous apocryphal stories. However, this is not the only case in which the remains featured a shrunken skull.
On 7 July 1951, St. Petersburg police chief J.R. Reichert sent a box of evidence from the scene to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. He included glass fragments found in the ashes, six "small objects thought to be teeth," a section of the carpet, and the surviving shoe.
Even though the body was almost totally cremated, requiring very high temperatures, the room in which it occurred showed little evidence of the fire.
Reichert included a note saying: "We request any information or theories that could explain how a human body could be so destroyed and the fire confined to such a small area and so little damage done to the structure of the building and the furniture in the room not even scorched or damaged by smoke."
The FBI eventually declared that Reeser had been incinerated by the wick effect. As she was a known user of sleeping pills, they hypothesized that she had fallen unconscious while smoking and set fire to her nightclothes. "Once the body starts to burn," the FBI wrote in its report, "there is enough fat and other inflammable substances to permit varying amounts of destruction to take place. Sometimes this destruction by burning will proceed to a degree which results in almost complete combustion of the body."
At the request of the Chief of Police, St. Petersburg, Florida, the scene was also investigated by physical anthropologist Wilton M Krogman. Professor Krogman, of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine, had spent some time in the 1930s experimenting and examining the remains of such incidents, in order to aid in the detection of crimes.
Krogman was frequently consulted by the FBI for this reason but after examining the scene and reading the FBI's report, he strongly disputed the FBI's conclusions concerning Reeser. However, the full circumstances of the death—and Krogman's objections to the FBI's version of events—would not become known publicly for a decade.
Quotations
In a 1961 article for The General Magazine and History Chronicle of the University of Pennsylvania, Krogman wrote extensively about the Reeser case. His remarks included:
- "I find it hard to believe that a human body, once ignited, will literally consume itself -- burn itself out, as does a candle wick, guttering in the last residual pool of melted wax [...] Just what did happen on the night of July 1, 1951, in St. Petersburg, Florida? We may never know, though this case still haunts me."
With regard to Reeser's shrunken skull, Krogman wrote:
- "[...]The head is not left complete in ordinary burning cases. Certainly it does not shrivel or symmetrically reduce to a smaller size. In presence of heat sufficient to destroy soft tissues, the skull would literally explode in many pieces. I have never known any exception to this rule."
Krogman concluded:
- "I cannot conceive of such complete cremation without more burning of the apartment itself. In fact the apartment and everything in it should have been consumed. [...] I regard it as the most amazing thing I have ever seen. As I review it, the short hairs on my neck bristle with vague fear. Were I living in the Middle Ages, I'd mutter something about black magic."
Later, having put this statement on the record, Krogman moved away from this position. He instead put forward the theory that Reeser had been murdered at another location. Her murderer had access to crematorium-type equipment and had incinerated her body. The hypothetical murderer had then transported the results of the partial cremation back to the apartment and used portable heat-generating equipment to add the finishing touches, such as the heat-buckled plastic objects and the warm doorknob.
In this connection, the FBI files on Reeser's death contain a large number of photocopies from a book on organized crime, specifically about Lucky Luciano.
Biographical details
She was born in Columbia, Pennsylvania and married Dr. Richard Reeser (b 1874/5). Their only surviving child, also Dr. Richard Reeser, was born in Pennsylvania in 1910 or 1911. She was buried in the Chestnut Hill Cemetery outside Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.
6. Henry Thomas (1907 – 1980) was a 73-year-old man who was found burned to death in the living room of his council house on the Rassau council estate in Ebbw Vale, south Wales in 1980.
Incident
Thomas' entire body was incinerated, leaving only his skull and a portion of each leg below the knee. The feet and legs were clothed in socks and trouser legs. The fire had also destroyed half of the chair in which he had been sitting and melted the control knobs on a TV set some meters away.
The victim's spectacles were sitting neatly folded in the grate of his open fire, within arm's reach of the position of the chair. The victim's slippers were on the carpet just beyond his unburned feet, suggesting that Thomas had eased his slippers off and settled back to watch television before being burned. (Thomas was farsighted).
Investigation
The police officer in attendance was John E Heymer, and what follows is taken from his own notes on the incident- "The living room was bathed in an orange glow, coming from windows and a lightbulb. This orange light was the result of daylight and electric light being filtered by evaporated human fat which had condensed on their surfaces. The remainder of the house was completely undamaged".
Heymer describes the entire room as 'comfortably warm' despite the fact that the house was halfway up a mountain, in the middle of a Welsh winter (the temperature outside was 'well below freezing'), and had no double glazing or central heating. This is attributed to heat absorbed by the walls during the fire, being slowly released back into the room. The temperature during the fire had evidently been high enough to melt knobs on the TV set, which was some metres away from Thomas's remains, and to soften a plastic lightshade sufficiently for it to slide off its fittings and fall to the floor.
A coal fire in the grate had gone out. There was no sign of disturbance to the fire place, and no evidence (blood, etc.) of any injury occurring there. A stack of chopped sticks, suitable for laying a fire, had been prepared by Thomas and were sitting ready by the fire-tools. Thomas's ashes lay on a rug and a foam-backed carpet, both of which were only burned where they were in contact with the ashes. Thermoplastic tiles under the carpet, which should have been permanently marked by the proximity of a heat source, were unblemished.
Questioning Mr Thomas's neighbour, Heymer found that the night before the ashes were discovered, the neighbour had gone out into his garden and seen foul-smelling smoke pouring from Thomas's chimney. He had assumed Thomas was burning rubbish on his open fire. Pathologists found that Thomas had been alive when he began to burn, as his blood (taken from the remains of his legs) contained a high level of carbon monoxide.
Heymer reached the following conclusions;
- The body had begun to burn properly while seated in the chair.
- The chair had caught fire while in contact with the body.
- When one side of the chair had burned sufficiently, it collapsed, depositing the body on the floor.
- Now out of contact with the body, the unburned portion of the chair ceased to burn.
- The body continued to burn until only the skull and lower legs were left.
Police forensic officers arrived and announced that the incineration of Thomas was due to the wick effect.
They reconstructed the scene as follows;
- Thomas had fallen in the fireplace for some reason, while tending the fire, and had accidentally set alight to his hair. This accounted for his spectacles being in the hearth. He had then sat down in his chair and burned to death via the wick effect.
- A scrap of fibrous matter on the fireplace was seized upon and it was declared that this would prove to be forehead skin, proving Thomas fell and injured himself. In fact, analysis proved the scrap was of bovine origin, probably from some leather item that Thomas had burned on the fire.
Heymer, a trained crime scene officer, argued that everything about the remains showed that the victim had been sitting comfortably in his chair when he burned to death. He argued that even a victim who had fallen and injured themselves would not get up and sit down in a chair while alight. Moreover, he argued that the lack of fire damage to the rest of the room indicated a rapid blaze which went out before anything not in contact with the victim had caught light.
He also pointed out that the victim had draught-proofed his living room very effectively (to such an extent that no smoke particles were found on the outside of the living room doorframe) and that the oxygen supply in the room would not support the long slow burning of the wick effect. He also pointed out that the remains of the victim's trouser legs were undamaged, except for a very narrow burned 'fringe' where the remains terminated. Heymer described this 'fringe': 'as though the clothes had been burned through with a laser beam'. This, he said, also indicated something different from the wick effect.
Thomas's death was ruled 'death by burning', as he had plainly inhaled the contents of his own combustion.
Survivors of static flash fires/events
Two examples of people surviving static flash events are given in a book on SHC. The two subjects, Debbie Clark and Susan Motteshead, speaking independently and with no knowledge of each other, give similar histories. In addition, Jack Angel claims to have survived an SHC-like event:
- In September 1985, Debbie Clark was walking home when she noticed an occasional flash of blue light. As she claimed, "It was me. I was lighting up the driveway every couple of steps. As we got into the garden I thought it was funny at that point. I was walking around in circles saying: 'look at this, mum, look!' She started screaming and my brother came to the door and started screaming and shouting 'Have you never heard of spontaneous human combustion?'" Her mother, Dianne Clark, responded: "I screamed at her to get her shoes off and it [the flashes] kept going so I hassled her through and got her into the bath. I thought that the bath is wired to earth. It was a blue light you know what they call electric blue. She thought it was fun, she was laughing."
- In winter 1980, Cheshire, England, resident Susan Motteshead was standing in her kitchen, wearing flame-resistant pajamas, when she was suddenly engulfed in a short-lived fire that seemed to have ignited the fluff on her clothing but burned out before it could set anything properly alight.
