85: Spontaneous Human Combustion
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Hey, it's your buddy AJ from the Y-Files. And Hecklefish. Right, and Hecklefish. We just wanted to tell you that if you want to start a podcast, Spotify makes it easy. It'd have to be easy for humans to understand it. Will you stop that? I'm just saying. Spotify for Podcasters lets you record and edit podcasts from your computer. I don't have a computer. Do you have a phone? Of course I have a phone. I'm not a savage. Well, with Spotify, you can record podcasts from your phone, too.

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Here's the nightmare scenario. You stop by your elderly mother's house to check on her. You grab the doorknob. It's hot to the touch. You ring the bell and knock. No answer. You fish out your key and open the door. You call out, but there's only silence. The air is warm.

There's a sweet, smoky smell, but nothing looks out of place. Finally, you go into the living room and you see it. In your mom's favorite chair is a pile of smoldering ash, completely unrecognizable as human. And just as you convince yourself that this isn't your mother, you see her jewelry in the gray dust. And then the grisly sight of your mother's feet still in their slippers on the floor by the ashes. There was a fire, an intense fire. But aside from her chair, nothing is burned.

Even stranger, everything in the house is covered with a thin layer of pale yellow grease. Your mother was a victim of spontaneous human combustion. Though rare, it happens more often than you think. According to at least one scientist, it could happen to anybody at any time, even you.

In December 2010 in Galway, Ireland, 76-year-old Michael Faraday was found burned to death. The official cause of death recorded by the coroner was spontaneous human combustion. Early that morning, Faraday's neighbor was jolted awake by the sound of an alarm. He went outside and saw smoke coming from Faraday's house. Faraday wouldn't answer the door.

When the fire department arrived, Michael Faraday was found completely incinerated sitting by his fireplace. Aside from his chair, there was no other damage to the room or anywhere in the house. Investigators couldn't find any accelerant.

The coroner referred to Professor Bernard Knight's book on forensic pathology. And Dr. Knight says that a high number of incidents of spontaneous human combustion occur near an open fireplace or chimney. This fire was thoroughly investigated, and I'm left with a conclusion that this fits into the category of spontaneous human combustion, which there is no adequate explanation. On Thanksgiving weekend 1979, Beatrice Oski said goodbye to her son Frank.

Frank didn't realize that this would be the last time he saw his mother alive. Beatrice had a number of health problems. She was a diabetic and alcoholic. She was also a heavy smoker. The next day, Beatrice's daughter-in-law stopped by and smelled smoke. She called the police.

She called the fire department. When they arrived, the scene was all too familiar. Beatrice was reduced to a pile of ash, but her legs weren't burned. She had shoes on her feet and her left leg brace was still intact. Her chair was burned, but nothing else in Beatrice's house had any sign of fire damage. To cremate a human body, you need temperatures of 2,000 degrees or higher. Yet there was a stack of newspapers not 18 inches from Beatrice's chair. They didn't catch fire.

And like many other cases of spontaneous human combustion, everything was covered with a thin layer of oil. Where does the oil come from? Well, it comes from burning human fat. Ugh, I'm sorry I asked.

Spontaneous human combustion is not a recent phenomenon. One of the first known cases happened in Milan in the late 15th century. Italian knight Polonius Vorstius was a heavy drinker. One night, after throwing back a few in front of several witnesses, he started belching fire. He then burst into flames and died.

Another well-known case happened in the 18th century. Innkeeper Nicole Millay, also a serious drinker, was the victim of spontaneous human combustion. All that remained of Millay was her skull, a few bones, and her unburned legs, all in a pile of ash. She was found near a straw bed that somehow didn't catch fire. Nicole Millay's husband was actually convicted of her murder. Mr. Millay was later acquitted because there was a doctor staying in the inn who saw what happened.

Cornelia de Bondi, an Italian countess, died in a similar way. She was found in the morning as a pair of unburned legs and skulls sitting on a pile of ashes. And the room was covered in soot. And grease. Yep. But otherwise, there was no evidence that a fire took place.

Reports of spontaneous human combustion continued through the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1938, a 22-year-old woman named Phyllis Newcomb was leaving a dance at Shire Hall in England when she suddenly burst into flames. She ran back into the hall and collapsed. She later died in the hospital. Investigators could find no evidence of a cigarette or match or anything that could catch fire. Her death was officially ruled incurable.

spontaneous human combustion. Dr. John Irving Bentley's death was front page news in 1966. He died in his bathroom. All that was found was his leg and a pile of ash. People have spontaneously combusted recently too. In 2007, a woman in Brazil burst into flames in front of several witnesses.

Her upper body was burned beyond recognition, but her lower body and even her clothes were undamaged. An investigator said it looked like she burned from the inside out. In 2010, Elizabeth McLaughlin of Ireland was found dead in her apartment. At first, her cause of death was ruled as smoke inhalation, but a year later, her case was reopened and her cause of death changed. Death was caused by fire.

There was talk of spontaneous human combustion at the time. I did a little research and that probably is an urban myth but when I did see the remains it did come to mind.

In 2013, Danny Van Zandt, a 65-year-old alcoholic and heavy smoker, was found completely incinerated in his home. Aside from Van Zandt's cremated body, there was no other sign of fire. Sheriff Ron Lockhart said, I think there's only about 200 cases of spontaneous combustion worldwide, and I'm not saying that this just happened. I'm just saying that we had it ruled it out. You could pour gasoline on somebody, and you wouldn't be as badly incinerated.

In November 2015 in Flensburg, Germany, a woman was sitting on a park bench when, according to witnesses, she suddenly burst into flames. In 2016, a drunk man was asleep in a doorway in a small town in Serbia. People saw white flames coming out of his torso. A similar case happened in 1967 when a fireman put out a fire that was coming from inside a homeless man's abdomen. And the stories go on and on. Hundreds of them. So what's going on? Can we solve this with science?

Well, in July 1951, Dr. Richard Reeser was visiting his mother, Mary Reeser. Mary was depressed that she couldn't travel for the summer, so she told her son that she was going to take a couple of second-all tablets and maybe two more before bed. Second-all is a pretty strong sedative, also called secobarbital. Also called reds, red devils, red dillies. Right, because of the color of the capsule. Secchies, cardinals, red hearts.

Pink ladies, fennies, bobs, ruby slippers. You seem to know a lot about this. Yeah, what do you want me to tell you? The 80s were wild. Anyway, around five in the morning, Mary's landlady smelled smoke. She went back to check on Mary and noticed the doorknob was hot.

When the landlady and a couple of neighbors got into the apartment, all that was left of Mary Reeser was a pile of soot, a few pieces of spine, a shrunken skull, and one of Mary's undamaged feet still wearing a slipper. Shrunken skull? Yeah, the shrunken skull is extra strange. Fire investigators will tell you that they've seen skulls explode because the brain actually cooks and expands, like putting an egg in the microwave.

But a shrunken skull is unusual. It's possible it just looked small in the context of being in a big pile of ashes. But we see shrunken skulls appear in other cases, too. An investigator said in order for Mary's body to be so thoroughly cremated, her body would have to burn at 3000 degrees for three or four hours. Now, this is much hotter than a fireplace or a cigarette. Yet there wasn't a lot of damage to her apartment. And the damage that did occur was odd.

Light switches and electric receptacles that were on the wall above three feet from the ground, those were melted. But switches lower than that were not. Candles on a nearby shelf were melted, but their wicks stood upright, unburned. A stack of newspapers only a few feet away didn't catch fire. The police were stumped. The fire investigators were stumped.

They sent some of Mary's remains, plus parts of the chair and other things found at the scene, to the FBI for analysis. The FBI found no trace of anything flammable. Not her chair, her clothes, nothing. But they did find something unexpected in Mary's rug. Melted human fat.

Here's how human combustion works. Some type of chemical reaction takes place which causes cells to ignite. Some say this is a release of enzymes that drastically increases cell metabolism and body temperature. Others say static electricity builds up inside the body over time, and eventually a spark creates fire. Internal fluids are converted into flammable gas like methane...

where bacteria in the gut create a large amount of methane. Methane is the accelerant. Now you've got fire, but to cremate a human body, you've got to burn really hot and really slowly for hours. You need a fuel source. Human body fat provides that fuel. Remember that in most of these cases, an oily residue is found on everything in the area? That grease is the fat from the victim's body. That's why there was fat in Mary Reeser's rug. It melted and pooled there. Easy.

Yeah, but how did these people go up in the first place? Well, nobody really knows, but there are a few theories. Larry Arnold investigated over 400 cases of possible spontaneous human combustion and released a book called A Blaze. According to his research, there's a subatomic particle called a pyroton that interacts with human cells to create a microscopic nuclear explosion. It appears in some cases there was what we would call the human Hiroshima effect.

that at the subatomic level in the human body, a chain reaction begins to unleash itself. It radiates outward, literally outward, from the subatomic level to the atomic level to the physical structure of the human body. And in doing so, the tremendous amount of energy released instantaneously literally vaporizes the moisture content of the body away. These people become their own self-immolators, their own crematoria.

Whoa, that guy rocks quite the mullet. He does. Science in the front, potty in the back. In New Scientist magazine, biologist Brian J. Ford suggested that spontaneous combustion could be caused by a buildup of acetone in the body. Ass what now? Acetone. Nail polish remover is acetone. It's a highly flammable and highly volatile substance. All humans have a small amount of acetone in their bodies.

But this can increase with alcohol consumption. And we do see alcohol playing a role in a lot of these cases. Brian Ford said diabetes or a specific kind of diet can cause combustion. He mentioned that cells in ketosis could become flammable. And ketosis is a metabolic state that happens when the body is deprived of sucrose. This is the keto diet. Low carb, low sugar. Hey!

Hey, uh, didn't you cut out sugar? Mostly, yeah. Why? But you still drink booze. Well, you gotta live. Interesting. I don't think I'm really at risk of... Who wants barbecue?

For a rational explanation of spontaneous human combustion, skeptics and most scientists cite the wick effect. In a candle, the wick is a piece of braided fiber, usually cotton, in the center of wax. Wax is a hydrocarbon with a low melting point and a slow burning temperature. As the wick slowly burns down,

Wax is melted around the flame and converted into gas. At the same time, wax is pulled up through the wick by a process called capillarity. A candle burns slowly and evenly, and the heat goes straight up. Now, I don't recommend putting anything flammable near a candle, like newspaper, but if you did, as long as the paper was below the candle flame...

it probably wouldn't ignite. The wick effect with human combustion works the same way, although a human is technically an inside-out candle. With human combustion, the wick is the victim's clothing. As the body burns, fat tissue is melted. Fat is also a hydrocarbon, so it burns low and slow and is converted into gas. And when that gas hits walls and objects in the area, which are cooler than the air, it condenses back to solid fat.

That makes everything greasy. Now, this has been tested a few times with pig flesh, which is similar to human flesh. As long as the heat source can stay connected to something flammable for long enough to cause a small fire, the wick effect is a real thing. So think of a cigarette which doesn't burn hot enough to cremate a human body.

but burns hot enough and slowly enough that it can cause a fire. If a cigarette falls on a flammable piece of clothing, like a rayon nightgown, for example, which is what Mary Reeser was wearing, then you can see how a fire can start pretty easily. Most modern cases of spontaneous human combustion, meaning within the last hundred years, the victims were smokers. Yeah, but

wouldn't they know they were on fire? Well, that's where the alcohol comes in, or in Mary Reeser's case, a bunch of sleeping pills. If someone is intoxicated or sedated, they might not wake up in time to stop a fire. Now, considering all these factors, we can create a pretty accurate profile of a victim of spontaneous human combustion. These people tend to be overweight. More fat means more fuel for the fire. They tend to be elderly and infirmed, so

so stuck in a chair or in bed, which would allow a large fire to develop from a small one. There's frequently an incapacitating substance involved, like sleeping pills. Lots of victims are alcoholics. And finally, the victims tend to be heavy smokers. Now, Mary Reeser wasn't just a heavy smoker. She was an irresponsible smoker. Cigarette burns were found all over her apartment. And in the cases where cigarettes weren't involved, the victims were near a fire source, like a fireplace or an oven. Oh, why are there, uh...

- Feet. - Right. A slow burning fire like a candle or a human is gonna burn straight up. So objects below the fire source, the victim's torso, are gonna be fine. So switches low on the wall, papers on a coffee table, or the victim's legs won't burn.

but objects above the fire source will be affected, like light switches high on the wall or plastic picture frames. These would melt, and things directly above the heat source, like the ceiling, are always burned badly. The wick effect theory can cover most cases of spontaneous human combustion,

But not all of them. Skeptics are quick to point out that victims are always alone, without witnesses. But that's not always the case. In September 1982, Jeannie Safin was sitting in the kitchen with her father, John Safin, and brother-in-law, Don Carroll. It was the middle of the day. No fire was anywhere near her. Out of the corner of his eye...

John saw a flash of light. He looked at Jeannie and she had fire coming out of her mouth. Don Carroll and John Safin said that the fire was coming from inside her. Her clothes weren't burned. An ambulance was called and Jeannie died eight days later. This case was such a mystery that several police investigators went from being skeptical of spontaneous human combustion to believers. And many of these cases are still open.

So can we debunk spontaneous human combustion? Nope. Mostly, yes, we can. At least the modern cases. Almost exclusively, so-called spontaneous human combustion victims are overweight, elderly smokers with mobility issues who live alone.

Often, alcohol or drugs play a role. They drop a cigarette, it starts a small fire, and the victim is unable to move because he or she is too intoxicated or too immobile, or both. The small fire eventually burns through their clothing, starts to melt away their fatty tissue, and the wick effect takes it from there. Tough way to go. Yeah, it is. But in quite a few of these cases, the victim has a heart attack or stroke while they're smoking and the cigarette falls into their lap.

The burning takes place post-mortem. Every cloud has a silver lining, eh? That's one way of looking at it. These fires burn so hot that all evidence, like cigarette butts, are incinerated. In a few of the cases where the victim was a non-smoker, they happened to be sitting near a fireplace. We can assume that a hot ember jumped from the fireplace and onto the victim. But some cases are more difficult to explain.

In the case of Jeannie Safin, who was supposedly breathing fire, there was no cigarette or fireplace. She just went up. Even John Hamer, a former British police officer, cited the Safin case as one of the ones that convinced him that spontaneous human combustion was real. Now, to be fair to skeptics, the Safin autopsy revealed that she actually had no burns inside her mouth.

And although reports say her clothes were intact and Jeannie appeared to burn from the inside out, the official reports say her clothes were burned and Jeannie's burn injuries were external, not internal. I don't trust official reports. I know you don't.

Now, there were two fire sources in her kitchen. The pilot light from the stove. That wouldn't do it. And her father's pipe. He had just finished smoking and tapped out his ashes. The kitchen window was open, which caused a cross breeze. Burning ash could have caught that breeze and landed on Jeannie, who was wearing a flammable polyester dress. Lots of would-haves and could-haves in your theory, Mr. Holmes. I know there is.

Because if you dismiss spontaneous human combustion as fiction, you have to work with the facts that you have, no matter how much of a stretch. Now, there are plenty of people who believe in spontaneous human combustion. Scientists, police officers, even fire investigators. They all say the same thing. They never believed in the phenomenon until they ran across a case or multiple cases that couldn't be explained. Then they changed from skeptic to believer. Occam's Razor says the simplest answer is usually the correct one.

I believe that the vast majority of spontaneous human combustion cases can be explained. Elderly smokers living alone with mobility issues who have a fondness for drink. Now they're at risk from all sorts of things, not least of which dying in a tragic accidental fire. The simplest answer is usually the correct one.

But not always. Sometimes the correct answer is not so simple. Sometimes the answer is so difficult that it's completely beyond our understanding. If spontaneous human combustion is real, there's probably not much we can do to protect ourselves and avoid it. But if you're an overweight elderly smoker enjoying a martini by the fire, wear nice shoes because at some point that might be all that's left of you.

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