September 8, 2025 • 26 mins
For over 400 years, people have spontaneously burst into flames with no external ignition source - and scientists still can't explain why. From a woman who breathed fire like a dragon to victims found as piles of ash with only their feet remaining, these cases defy everything we know about physics and medicine. We explore the terrifying theories behind spontaneous human combustion and why it could happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:16):
Strange mysteries, unexplained phenomena.
And the shadows in between.
This is The InBetween Official Podcastwith your host,
Carol Ann!
You're sitting at the kitchen table
with your disabled sister
when fire suddenly
erupts from her mouth and stomach
(00:37):
like a dragon breathing flames.
You throw water on her,
but she just sits there
calmly, hands folded,
not crying out in pain.
She doesn't understand
what's happening to her body.
Neither do you.
Neither does science.
I'm Carol Ann, welcome...
to The InBetween.
(01:02):
“...I softly opened the door
and looked in.
And the burning smell is there,
and the soot is there,
and the oil is there.
And he is not there.
That is a line
from the serial novel
Bleak House by Charles Dickens,
where he kills off
one of his main characters
in a very unique way.
Spontaneous human combustion.
(01:22):
When someone burst into flames
and is literally cremated
with no apparent cause.
Confession time.
I have been fascinated by this topic
since I was a kid.
I have this flash memory
in my head of a movie on TV
in the 70s,
where they showed a split
second of a woman's burned,
disembodied leg
on the floor of a bedroom.
But that's it.
(01:42):
That's all I remember.
And I'll be the first to admit
that what I see in my head
might be a total figment
of my imagination.
For all I know,
I might have just glimpsed
an advertisement for Leggs Pantyhose.
But whatever
I saw,
it has stuck in my brain to this day.
So I gotta say,
I'm kind of excited to finally cover
this topic
and maybe exorcize the memory
(02:03):
that's been living
rent free in my head for decades.
Now obviously,
spontaneous human combustion,
which I am going to refer
to from here on out as SHC,
is not a common occurrence.
Even Charles Dickens
took a lot of flak
for using such a rare
and scientifically unproven method
for disposing of a character,
but make no mistake. Even in 1853,
(02:25):
spontaneous human combustion
was prevalent enough
that it was already
being investigated
in the circles of medicine
and science.
And through all of this time,
a few commonalities
have been identified.
Things like advanced age
and heavy alcohol use,
and maybe even diabetes.
We're going to dig a little deeper
(02:45):
into how those things fit
into the big picture later,
but suffice to say,
there are some factors
that we can point to
that are somewhat common
in this very select group of people.
But before we dive into the hows,
let's take a look at the who's.
Let's talk about the cases
we know about,
to see if we can get an idea
of what is happening here.
(03:07):
And just to let you know,
there are so many documented cases
of this phenomena
that it was really hard
to decide which ones to cover.
But let's start with
what is probably the most famous case
of SHC.
Mary Hardy Reeser was a 67 year
old widow
in Saint Petersburg, Florida.
The night of July 1st, 1951,
She tells her son
(03:27):
before he leaves, that
she's just going to take
a couple of sleeping pills
and go to bed.
He says goodbye and leaves,
not having any idea
that it would be the last time
he would see his mom.
The next morning, around 5 a.m.,
Mary's landlady smells smoke.
She goes to open Mary's door
and the doorknob is warm.
She grabs a couple of neighbors
and they get into Mary's apartment,
(03:48):
only to find a pile of ash,
a few pieces of spine,
a shrunken skull,
and one of Mary's feet
still in its slipper.
That's a weird one.
And the whole scene was just weird.
Her apartment
didn't really have a lot of damage.
Mostly just the chair
she was sitting in.
And to a much lesser
extent, the floor under her.
(04:09):
Things like light
switches and outlets
higher on the walls were melted,
but things closer to
the floor were not.
But everything was covered
with a greasy coating.
Mary was a known smoker,
but fire investigators were stumped
at how her body could look like
it was cremated.
That process takes 2 to 3 hours
(04:30):
at temperatures
of 1,800 degrees or more.
Samples of Mary's remains
and some of the items around her
were sent in for analysis,
but no accelerants
were found on anything.
But Mary was far from the first case
of SHC.
Documented accounts
go all the way back to the 1400’s.
(04:50):
An Italian night
by the name of Polonius Vorstius,
is hanging out
with his possey
one night in Milan around 1470 or so.
Takes a couple of swigs
of some unusually strong wine
which his stomach didn't appreciate,
and he reportedly starts
vomiting fire and burst into flames.
Then there's 66 year
(05:11):
old Countess Cornelia Zangari di Bondi,
an Italian noblewoman
from Cesena,
the night of March 15th, 1731,
she's not feeling so hot.
She takes a bath
camphorated spirits of wine,
which is basically camphor
dissolved in alcohol,
used for pain
relief from aches
and pains and sprains.
(05:32):
And before you start thinking, aha!
It's the alcohol!
Slow your roll.
The alcohol would have evaporated
within minutes of her
getting out of the tub.
So it's not likely
to have set her on fire.
She gets out, gets dressed,
and goes to bed.
In the morning,
she's found on the floor
as a pile of ashes,
her head, and her arms and legs.
(05:54):
There's Matilda and Patrick Rooney,
a couple living the simple life
on a farm in Seneca,
Illinois, in 1885.
Christmas Eve, the two are having a drink
with their farmhand, John Larson,
before they all head to bed.
The Rooney's on the main floor
and John upstairs.
In the morning,
John comes downstairs
to see a pile of ashes
and the feet of Matilda
(06:17):
on the kitchen floor.
He runs to the couple's bedroom
to find Patrick dead
of smoke inhalation.
There's the case of Jean and Nicole Millet,
who in 1725, in Reims, France, are running an inn.
Nicole's legs and a pile of ash
are found in the kitchen one morning,
and Jean is
convicted of murdering her.
(06:37):
However, when Jean appealed
his conviction,
Dr. Claude-Nicolas Le Cat, a surgeon staying at the inn,
testifies that based on the remains found
it was definitely a case of SHC.
So the court acquitted Jean and ruled
the incident a visitation from God.
And there are way more
(06:59):
that I can't even get into.
All through the last 400 years.
Depending on who you ask,
there are somewhere
between 200 and 400 documented cases.
So what in the world
is happening here?
Obviously, no one knows for sure,
but there are
some interesting theories out there.
The most popular one is
(07:20):
something called The Wick Effect.
Basically,
it states that given
an ignition source,
so something like a burning cigarette
or an ember from the fireplace,
and an accelerant, that Jack Daniel's
you accidentally spill on your lap,
that can start a fire
burning long enough
to burn through your clothes
and your skin,
and start
(07:40):
using your own melting fat for fuel
to keep it burning.
So you essentially become
a human candle
with your own fat
as the wax and your clothes
acting as the wick.
The theory's been around since
at least the 60s, not earlier,
but it wasn't until the late 90s
that experiments were conducted
using a pig carcass
wrapped in a blanket
(08:00):
and doused in gasoline
that showed
the wick effect in action.
The pig burned for 6.5 hours
and reduced 60% of the body to ash,
including the bones,
all while
causing minimal damage to the room.
Okay.
But not all cases
fit those parameters.
(08:22):
A newer theory
emerged in 2011
from a guy named Brian J.
Ford that point
the finger at acetone.
Acetone is a highly flammable
chemical available
in most households,
most commonly as fingernail
polish remover.
And I'm not saying these people
are taking swigs
of fingernail polish remover.
That's not necessary,
because we can actually make acetone
(08:44):
all by ourselves.
Conditions like alcoholism
and diabetes or low
carb diets
can move the body
into a state called ketosis,
which is where the body switches
from burning glucose for fuel
to burning ketones from stored fat,
which also produces acetone.
Oh, maybe
I need to start eating more cake.
(09:05):
Yes.
So his theory
is that if someone builds up
enough acetone in their system,
that acetone could build back up
into their fat stores
again,
making those fat stores
much more flammable.
Okay, decent theory.
The only problem is
that the experiments Mr. Ford conducted
were on pig flesh
that he marinated in acetone.
(09:26):
And of course,
they're going to ignite.
There's no science to show
that acetone levels in stored
fat can ever get high enough
to make a difference.
But okay,
we'll hold that one
in our back pocket.
Well, my favorite theory
is from Larry Arnold.
Larry came out with a book
called Ablaze in 1995
that went deep into the whole
(09:47):
SHC phenomenon,
reviewing around 200 cases of SHC
and interviewing witnesses, firemen
and survivors
of their own experiences.
The theory he introduced
is called these Subatomic Pyrotron Theory,
better known as the “Human Hiroshima” theory.
He suggests that SHC happens because
(10:09):
a hypothetical subatomic
particle called the
pyrotron, kind of like a neutrino,
exists within our bodies.
On rare occasions, it collides with a quark in an atom,
sparking an internal chain reaction
like a mini nuclear explosion
consuming the body from within,
(10:30):
like a “human Hiroshima.”
Well,
that's certainly is a novel idea, but
stick around, because maybe
it ain't all that crazy.
Like I mentioned earlier,
there are some commonalities between
most of the victims that we know of.
Most of them are over 60,
so maybe they're not moving
as quickly as they used to.
(10:51):
In some cases,
the victims are known
to have had mobility issues,
meaning that
if they did start on fire,
maybe they were not able to get up
and do anything about it.
In most cases,
alcohol is involved,
which, based on the current
theories, could be either
an accelerant
or the genesis of acetone
in the system.
(11:11):
Also,
a lot of the victims were smokers.
Not to dunk on smokers.
It's just a super easy
ignition source.
Okay, so the case that is being built
is that you have an older person
who maybe can't move around
that well,
they settle into their favorite chair
for the evening
with a glass of their
favorite spirits
and either a smoke in their hand
(11:32):
or a fireplace at their feet.
As they relax,
they either
fall asleep,
pass out,
or maybe even have
a medical emergency
that causes them to either
drop their drink and their smoke,
or not notice
when the fireplace spits an ember.
In either case,
that starts a fire
that the person
maybe can't get away from.
(11:54):
And because of the nature
of this particular
kind of fire,
that it's very hot, but very local.
Not much damage is caused
except for the immediate vicinity.
Sounds totally
plausible,
and it does seem to cover
a good chunk of the cases on record,
but not even close to all of them.
There are plenty of cases
(12:16):
that can't be explained
by any of these theories, except
maybe the Human Hiroshima theory.
Take baby Rahul, who lives in India
with his family,
mom, dad and an older sister.
I say lives
just to let you know up front
that little role is alive
and well today. Don't worry.
(12:37):
In 2013, when Rahul was just nine days
old, his mom,
Rajeshwari,
rushes him to the hospital
with burns all over,
telling the doctors and nurses
that he just started on fire.
She says he was totally fine
laying in his crib.
She leaves him to care for her
other child
when she hears him start screaming.
(12:58):
She doesn't rush in right away
because she's still tending
to the other child.
I mean,
she was just in the room with him.
She knows he's okay.
But before she can get back to him,
the neighbor rushes in
to let Rajeshwari
know that little Rahul is on fire.
The neighbor saw it
through the window
as she was walking by.
Rahul's doctors try to figure out
(13:19):
what could have caused
the outburst of flame.
But the best
that they can come up with
is that maybe his skin
is emitting some strange
flammable gas.
It's a wild guess on their part,
but whatever.
However, wild or not, Rahul
actually starts on fire
three more times
over the next two years.
(13:39):
No one can figure out why.
Then in 2015, Rajeshwari
rushes back to
to the hospital with Rahul's
ten day old new baby brother
whose feet supposedly caught fire.
Now, keep in mind
that Rahul has a big sister,
Narmatha,
who has been totally fine
this whole time.
(14:00):
But I'm sure at this point
that you're probably thinking
what I'm thinking,
Munchausen by proxy, right?
When a parent,
usually the mother,
intentionally harms her child
so she can benefit
from the intention.
Well,
we're not the only ones
to think that.
So did the hospital staff.
They didn't really want to let
Rajeshwari take her new baby home,
(14:21):
but she and her husband
went through a battery
of psychiatric tests
that showed
that they were normal people.
But I will tell you this.
Munchausen by Proxy can sometimes be tricky to diagnose.
So if in this case,
that's actually what's going on,
it failed.
(14:41):
Instead of getting attention
and sympathy from their community,
the entire family is ostracized.
And even better
example of not fitting
the mold is the case
of Robert Bailey,
a 33-year-old homeless man
living on the streets
of Lambeth, London.
Like the homeless often do,
Robert took refuge in the abandoned building
at 49 Auckland Street.
(15:02):
On the morning of Sept. 13th, 1967,
some people are standing
at the bus stop,
waiting for the ride to work
when they see
blue flames
in a window of that
abandoned building.
They call the fire department,
who rushes into the building
to see Robert
still alive with blue flames
shooting out of a four inch slit
(15:24):
in his stomach.
To put the fire out,
the firemen
literally put the hose into Robert's
stomach.
Needless to say,
Robert did not survive.
He did
fit some of the rough parameters
we've talked about so far.
He was a raging alcoholic,
but he was only in his 30s.
The fire investigators couldn't
(15:45):
find any external ignition source.
I would call that a human Hiroshima.
Another one
I find extremely intriguing
is the story of George Mott.
In 1986, George had recently retired from a
30-year career as a fireman in Crown Point, NY.
(16:05):
He lived
alone, was kind of depressed
about the current direction
of his life
as he was just put on oxygen for some lung issues he was having.
Thirty years of running into burning buildings.
Imagine that.
His son Kendall would usually stop by each night
on his way home from work to make sure his
dad was ok, and spend a little time with him.
On the night of March 24th,
(16:26):
George and Kendall
were watching The Twilight Zone.
It has been reported
that George told Kendall,
“Nothing weird like that ever happens to me. I wish it would.”
Be careful what you wish for.
The next night, March 25th,
Kendall had to work late,
so he didn't stop at his dad's,
so he made sure to stop
the night after that.
(16:46):
Walks up to George's door
and the door knob is warm.
He knows there's a problem.
He walks inside to a house
full of acrid,
metallic smelling smoke.
Everything is just black with soot
and a greasy substance.
Even the windows
were all browned out,
making it hard to see anything.
Kendall calls out for George
(17:07):
with no response.
It was hard to see anything, but
Kendall makes his way back
to his dad's bedroom
to find his dad's bed,
a pile of ash
sunken down to the floor.
The fire department comes
and starts investigating.
Now, this guy was one of their own,
so they are determined
to get answers.
(17:27):
The scene inside
the house is just odd.
The bed
that George was lying on
and the floor below
it are totally gone.
They're just a few pieces
of George left,
including his lower
right leg and his skull, which seemed
oddly small,
just like Mary Reaser skull.
But the fire
seemed to selectively damage
(17:48):
other parts of the house.
The water in the toilet
had evaporated.
The butter
and the plastic butter dish it was in
were totally melted.
The package of hot dogs
was boiled in the plastic,
and that's inside
an insulated refrigerator.
None of them can understand
how the fire
could have been that hot,
but not ignite the whole house.
(18:10):
They go through that house
with a fine tooth comb
and get nothing.
They could find no reason for this
fire to have started.
Now, George's oxygen
machine was turned on,
but George was not wearing
the mask that goes with it.
George used to be a smoker,
but had quit
and never allowed
anyone to smoke in his house.
(18:31):
He even made his son
go outside to smoke.
Joe Nickell,
the editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine,
puts forth the theory
that maybe George's depression
led him to start smoking again.
But I don't buy that for a second.
This guy had been a firefighter
for 30 years
and no doubt
knew the dangers
(18:52):
of smoking in a room
with an open oxygen tank.
That's not rocket science.
One thing
we can at least partially explain
is the weird pattern of damage
throughout the house.
While in many of these
stories, things on the floor right
next to the deceased are just fine.
We all know that heat rises,
(19:12):
so when a fire starts, it
creates a column of heat
that hits the ceiling
and then starts to spread outward.
Once it's gone as far out as it can
go, it starts going down
and heating the air under it.
But that intense heat
rarely makes it
all the way to the floor.
So things that are sitting 3
or 4ft off
the ground may be melted
while books on the floor or not.
(19:35):
But whatever happened to George
that night,
the entire Crown Point fire department will tell you,
it was not an accidental fire
caused by a careless old man.
Another case
that blows the wick effect theory
out of the water
is the case of Jeannie Saffin.
In 1982, Jeanie is 60 years old
but is mentally disabled,
(19:56):
so she lives with her dad.
On the afternoon of September 10th,
Jeannie and her dad, Jonathan,
are just hanging out
at the kitchen table
when Jonathan sees a flash
out of the corner of his eye.
He looks over in that direction
and sees fire
coming out of Jeannie's mouth.
Jeannie's brother-in-law, Don Caroll,
is there that day,
(20:16):
hears a racket coming from the kitchen.
He goes in to find out what's going
on, and also sees fire
coming out of both Jeannie's mouth
and her stomach.
He describes the scene
like every fire
breathing dragon movie
you've ever seen.
Dodging the flames.
Don Carol gets a pitcher of water
and puts out the flames.
(20:36):
Jeannie doesn't even cry out in pain.
She just sat there with her
hands in her lap,
not able to understand
what had just happened to her.
Who could?
She’s taken to the Mount Vernon Hospital burn unit,
but sadly dies six days later.
Skeptics say it was Jonathan,
a pipe smoker,
(20:56):
who must have been knocking the ash
out of his pipe
when a stray amber
was blown on the breeze
of the open window
into Jeannie's lap.
But Don Carroll says, no way.
That fire was coming
out of her mouth.
The corners report says
there is no evidence of burning
at the back of Jeannie's throat,
and that she suffered burns
(21:17):
over 30 to 40% of her body.
But according
to Larry Arnold,
remember the guy with the human
Hiroshima theory?
Both Jonathan and Don
Carroll
stated to the police
that the entire inside of Jeannie's
mouth was burned.
But those police statements
are not mentioned
anywhere in the coroner's report.
(21:39):
And if Jeannie's case doesn't qualify
for the human
Hiroshima theory,
maybe this one does.
The case of Helen Conway.
In 1964, Helen was a 50-year-old widow living alone
in her home in Darby, Pennsylvania.
The morning of November 8th, Helen is upstairs while
two of her grandchildren are downstairs.
(21:59):
Her daughter had dropped them
off the night before,
so she and their dad
could have a date night.
And the plan is for them
to pick the kids back up
later on Sunday.
Helen has trouble getting around,
so she spends most of her time
on the second floor of the house
and rings a bell
if she needs any help from the kids.
Around 8:30 that morning, her granddaughter, Stephanie,
heard grandma ring the bell
(22:21):
and ask her to bring her
a book of matches.
Stephanie brings the matches
to Helen, who's a smoker,
and goes back downstairs
to her cartoons.
A passing neighbor
sees a glow in the upper window,
runs to the house.
Stephanie lets her in
and the neighbor
tries to go upstairs,
but by that time
the heat is so intense
she can't get up there.
(22:41):
She calls the fire department
somewhere around 8:50 or 8:55.
When they arrive and enter the house, they run upstairs,
but there is no fire to put out.
Helen is just gone,
save for a few bones and her two legs
It is actually not just common, but almost universal that
(23:01):
the only things left are the feet and hands.
The Wick effect
actually accounts for this detail
and that the extremities
usually carry less fat.
So once the fire spreads that far,
there's not enough fuel
to keep burning.
So is this one just a case of Helen
dropping a match on her lap
and starting herself on fire?
If that's the case,
(23:22):
why wouldn't she have made any noise?
You'd think that
she would have screamed out
to her grandchildren for help.
But Stephanie,
just downstairs watching cartoons,
never heard anything.
Now, a lot of the furniture back
then was made of some pretty
combustible material.
So if she did drop a match on herself
and the fire spread to her
chair, it
(23:43):
very well
could have gone up in flames
pretty fast.
But that doesn't account
for Helen's
body being reduced to ashes in
just a 20 minute window.
Cremation usually takes 2 or 3 hours
at temperatures of 1,800 degrees.
This fire had heat.
There certainly was damage
to items all over the top floor,
(24:04):
but the heat necessary
to turn
Helen to ash
would have created far more damage
than what investigators
actually found.
But here
is the most intriguing of our cases
today.
Someone who actually survived.
Frank Baker
is a decorated war veteran
who lives in Vermont.
(24:26):
In June of 1995,
Frank and his friend Pete Willey
were sitting on the couch
at Frank's house
getting ready
for a fishing tournament
the next day.
They're having a great time
when Frank bursts into flames.
Frank and Pete managed
to put out the flames
and get Frank to the hospital,
where Frank's doctor tells him
(24:46):
the burns look like they came
from the inside out.
Frank and Pete
were just sitting in the living room,
sorting out their tackle boxes
and putting new line
on their fishing rods.
They weren't smoking.
There's no fireplace,
no ignition source anywhere.
Unfortunately for the scientists
who study this phenomena,
(25:06):
but fortunately for the rest of us,
cases of spontaneous
human combustion are pretty rare,
so they just don't
have the data necessary to figure out
whether we're
dealing with the Wick effect
spikes in acetone levels
in our fat layers,
human Hiroshima syndrome,
a combination of all of them
or something else entirely.
(25:28):
So my advice to you would be
don't smoke like a chimney.
Don't drink like a fish and eat cake.
Man, I could use a
piece of cake right now.
Or even a cocktail.
Why is everything good?
Have to be bad?
You would like to continue
this exploration
in the weirdness of this world.
Join me in this episode right here.
(25:51):
Come on. It'll be fun.
Be careful out there
and I will see you here again
on The InBetween.
Thanks for tuning into The InBetween Podcast.
Enjoy the full visual experiencewith me over on YouTube.
Just search for @TheInBetweenTales.
(26:11):
I'm Carol Ann.
And until next time, be careful out there.
Strange mysteries, unexplained phenomena.
And the shadows in between.
This is The InBetween Official Podcastwith your host,
Carol Ann!
You're sitting at the kitchen table
with your disabled sister
when fire suddenly
erupts from her mouth and stomach
(00:37):
like a dragon breathing flames.
You throw water on her,
but she just sits there
calmly, hands folded,
not crying out in pain.
She doesn't understand
what's happening to her body.
Neither do you.
Neither does science.
I'm Carol Ann, welcome...
to The InBetween.
(01:02):
“...I softly opened the door
and looked in.
And the burning smell is there,
and the soot is there,
and the oil is there.
And he is not there.
That is a line
from the serial novel
Bleak House by Charles Dickens,
where he kills off
one of his main characters
in a very unique way.
Spontaneous human combustion.
(01:22):
When someone burst into flames
and is literally cremated
with no apparent cause.
Confession time.
I have been fascinated by this topic
since I was a kid.
I have this flash memory
in my head of a movie on TV
in the 70s,
where they showed a split
second of a woman's burned,
disembodied leg
on the floor of a bedroom.
But that's it.
(01:42):
That's all I remember.
And I'll be the first to admit
that what I see in my head
might be a total figment
of my imagination.
For all I know,
I might have just glimpsed
an advertisement for Leggs Pantyhose.
But whatever
I saw,
it has stuck in my brain to this day.
So I gotta say,
I'm kind of excited to finally cover
this topic
and maybe exorcize the memory
(02:03):
that's been living
rent free in my head for decades.
Now obviously,
spontaneous human combustion,
which I am going to refer
to from here on out as SHC,
is not a common occurrence.
Even Charles Dickens
took a lot of flak
for using such a rare
and scientifically unproven method
for disposing of a character,
but make no mistake. Even in 1853,
(02:25):
spontaneous human combustion
was prevalent enough
that it was already
being investigated
in the circles of medicine
and science.
And through all of this time,
a few commonalities
have been identified.
Things like advanced age
and heavy alcohol use,
and maybe even diabetes.
We're going to dig a little deeper
(02:45):
into how those things fit
into the big picture later,
but suffice to say,
there are some factors
that we can point to
that are somewhat common
in this very select group of people.
But before we dive into the hows,
let's take a look at the who's.
Let's talk about the cases
we know about,
to see if we can get an idea
of what is happening here.
(03:07):
And just to let you know,
there are so many documented cases
of this phenomena
that it was really hard
to decide which ones to cover.
But let's start with
what is probably the most famous case
of SHC.
Mary Hardy Reeser was a 67 year
old widow
in Saint Petersburg, Florida.
The night of July 1st, 1951,
She tells her son
(03:27):
before he leaves, that
she's just going to take
a couple of sleeping pills
and go to bed.
He says goodbye and leaves,
not having any idea
that it would be the last time
he would see his mom.
The next morning, around 5 a.m.,
Mary's landlady smells smoke.
She goes to open Mary's door
and the doorknob is warm.
She grabs a couple of neighbors
and they get into Mary's apartment,
(03:48):
only to find a pile of ash,
a few pieces of spine,
a shrunken skull,
and one of Mary's feet
still in its slipper.
That's a weird one.
And the whole scene was just weird.
Her apartment
didn't really have a lot of damage.
Mostly just the chair
she was sitting in.
And to a much lesser
extent, the floor under her.
(04:09):
Things like light
switches and outlets
higher on the walls were melted,
but things closer to
the floor were not.
But everything was covered
with a greasy coating.
Mary was a known smoker,
but fire investigators were stumped
at how her body could look like
it was cremated.
That process takes 2 to 3 hours
(04:30):
at temperatures
of 1,800 degrees or more.
Samples of Mary's remains
and some of the items around her
were sent in for analysis,
but no accelerants
were found on anything.
But Mary was far from the first case
of SHC.
Documented accounts
go all the way back to the 1400’s.
(04:50):
An Italian night
by the name of Polonius Vorstius,
is hanging out
with his possey
one night in Milan around 1470 or so.
Takes a couple of swigs
of some unusually strong wine
which his stomach didn't appreciate,
and he reportedly starts
vomiting fire and burst into flames.
Then there's 66 year
(05:11):
old Countess Cornelia Zangari di Bondi,
an Italian noblewoman
from Cesena,
the night of March 15th, 1731,
she's not feeling so hot.
She takes a bath
camphorated spirits of wine,
which is basically camphor
dissolved in alcohol,
used for pain
relief from aches
and pains and sprains.
(05:32):
And before you start thinking, aha!
It's the alcohol!
Slow your roll.
The alcohol would have evaporated
within minutes of her
getting out of the tub.
So it's not likely
to have set her on fire.
She gets out, gets dressed,
and goes to bed.
In the morning,
she's found on the floor
as a pile of ashes,
her head, and her arms and legs.
(05:54):
There's Matilda and Patrick Rooney,
a couple living the simple life
on a farm in Seneca,
Illinois, in 1885.
Christmas Eve, the two are having a drink
with their farmhand, John Larson,
before they all head to bed.
The Rooney's on the main floor
and John upstairs.
In the morning,
John comes downstairs
to see a pile of ashes
and the feet of Matilda
(06:17):
on the kitchen floor.
He runs to the couple's bedroom
to find Patrick dead
of smoke inhalation.
There's the case of Jean and Nicole Millet,
who in 1725, in Reims, France, are running an inn.
Nicole's legs and a pile of ash
are found in the kitchen one morning,
and Jean is
convicted of murdering her.
(06:37):
However, when Jean appealed
his conviction,
Dr. Claude-Nicolas Le Cat, a surgeon staying at the inn,
testifies that based on the remains found
it was definitely a case of SHC.
So the court acquitted Jean and ruled
the incident a visitation from God.
And there are way more
(06:59):
that I can't even get into.
All through the last 400 years.
Depending on who you ask,
there are somewhere
between 200 and 400 documented cases.
So what in the world
is happening here?
Obviously, no one knows for sure,
but there are
some interesting theories out there.
The most popular one is
(07:20):
something called The Wick Effect.
Basically,
it states that given
an ignition source,
so something like a burning cigarette
or an ember from the fireplace,
and an accelerant, that Jack Daniel's
you accidentally spill on your lap,
that can start a fire
burning long enough
to burn through your clothes
and your skin,
and start
(07:40):
using your own melting fat for fuel
to keep it burning.
So you essentially become
a human candle
with your own fat
as the wax and your clothes
acting as the wick.
The theory's been around since
at least the 60s, not earlier,
but it wasn't until the late 90s
that experiments were conducted
using a pig carcass
wrapped in a blanket
(08:00):
and doused in gasoline
that showed
the wick effect in action.
The pig burned for 6.5 hours
and reduced 60% of the body to ash,
including the bones,
all while
causing minimal damage to the room.
Okay.
But not all cases
fit those parameters.
(08:22):
A newer theory
emerged in 2011
from a guy named Brian J.
Ford that point
the finger at acetone.
Acetone is a highly flammable
chemical available
in most households,
most commonly as fingernail
polish remover.
And I'm not saying these people
are taking swigs
of fingernail polish remover.
That's not necessary,
because we can actually make acetone
(08:44):
all by ourselves.
Conditions like alcoholism
and diabetes or low
carb diets
can move the body
into a state called ketosis,
which is where the body switches
from burning glucose for fuel
to burning ketones from stored fat,
which also produces acetone.
Oh, maybe
I need to start eating more cake.
(09:05):
Yes.
So his theory
is that if someone builds up
enough acetone in their system,
that acetone could build back up
into their fat stores
again,
making those fat stores
much more flammable.
Okay, decent theory.
The only problem is
that the experiments Mr. Ford conducted
were on pig flesh
that he marinated in acetone.
(09:26):
And of course,
they're going to ignite.
There's no science to show
that acetone levels in stored
fat can ever get high enough
to make a difference.
But okay,
we'll hold that one
in our back pocket.
Well, my favorite theory
is from Larry Arnold.
Larry came out with a book
called Ablaze in 1995
that went deep into the whole
(09:47):
SHC phenomenon,
reviewing around 200 cases of SHC
and interviewing witnesses, firemen
and survivors
of their own experiences.
The theory he introduced
is called these Subatomic Pyrotron Theory,
better known as the “Human Hiroshima” theory.
He suggests that SHC happens because
(10:09):
a hypothetical subatomic
particle called the
pyrotron, kind of like a neutrino,
exists within our bodies.
On rare occasions, it collides with a quark in an atom,
sparking an internal chain reaction
like a mini nuclear explosion
consuming the body from within,
(10:30):
like a “human Hiroshima.”
Well,
that's certainly is a novel idea, but
stick around, because maybe
it ain't all that crazy.
Like I mentioned earlier,
there are some commonalities between
most of the victims that we know of.
Most of them are over 60,
so maybe they're not moving
as quickly as they used to.
(10:51):
In some cases,
the victims are known
to have had mobility issues,
meaning that
if they did start on fire,
maybe they were not able to get up
and do anything about it.
In most cases,
alcohol is involved,
which, based on the current
theories, could be either
an accelerant
or the genesis of acetone
in the system.
(11:11):
Also,
a lot of the victims were smokers.
Not to dunk on smokers.
It's just a super easy
ignition source.
Okay, so the case that is being built
is that you have an older person
who maybe can't move around
that well,
they settle into their favorite chair
for the evening
with a glass of their
favorite spirits
and either a smoke in their hand
(11:32):
or a fireplace at their feet.
As they relax,
they either
fall asleep,
pass out,
or maybe even have
a medical emergency
that causes them to either
drop their drink and their smoke,
or not notice
when the fireplace spits an ember.
In either case,
that starts a fire
that the person
maybe can't get away from.
(11:54):
And because of the nature
of this particular
kind of fire,
that it's very hot, but very local.
Not much damage is caused
except for the immediate vicinity.
Sounds totally
plausible,
and it does seem to cover
a good chunk of the cases on record,
but not even close to all of them.
There are plenty of cases
(12:16):
that can't be explained
by any of these theories, except
maybe the Human Hiroshima theory.
Take baby Rahul, who lives in India
with his family,
mom, dad and an older sister.
I say lives
just to let you know up front
that little role is alive
and well today. Don't worry.
(12:37):
In 2013, when Rahul was just nine days
old, his mom,
Rajeshwari,
rushes him to the hospital
with burns all over,
telling the doctors and nurses
that he just started on fire.
She says he was totally fine
laying in his crib.
She leaves him to care for her
other child
when she hears him start screaming.
(12:58):
She doesn't rush in right away
because she's still tending
to the other child.
I mean,
she was just in the room with him.
She knows he's okay.
But before she can get back to him,
the neighbor rushes in
to let Rajeshwari
know that little Rahul is on fire.
The neighbor saw it
through the window
as she was walking by.
Rahul's doctors try to figure out
(13:19):
what could have caused
the outburst of flame.
But the best
that they can come up with
is that maybe his skin
is emitting some strange
flammable gas.
It's a wild guess on their part,
but whatever.
However, wild or not, Rahul
actually starts on fire
three more times
over the next two years.
(13:39):
No one can figure out why.
Then in 2015, Rajeshwari
rushes back to
to the hospital with Rahul's
ten day old new baby brother
whose feet supposedly caught fire.
Now, keep in mind
that Rahul has a big sister,
Narmatha,
who has been totally fine
this whole time.
(14:00):
But I'm sure at this point
that you're probably thinking
what I'm thinking,
Munchausen by proxy, right?
When a parent,
usually the mother,
intentionally harms her child
so she can benefit
from the intention.
Well,
we're not the only ones
to think that.
So did the hospital staff.
They didn't really want to let
Rajeshwari take her new baby home,
(14:21):
but she and her husband
went through a battery
of psychiatric tests
that showed
that they were normal people.
But I will tell you this.
Munchausen by Proxy can sometimes be tricky to diagnose.
So if in this case,
that's actually what's going on,
it failed.
(14:41):
Instead of getting attention
and sympathy from their community,
the entire family is ostracized.
And even better
example of not fitting
the mold is the case
of Robert Bailey,
a 33-year-old homeless man
living on the streets
of Lambeth, London.
Like the homeless often do,
Robert took refuge in the abandoned building
at 49 Auckland Street.
(15:02):
On the morning of Sept. 13th, 1967,
some people are standing
at the bus stop,
waiting for the ride to work
when they see
blue flames
in a window of that
abandoned building.
They call the fire department,
who rushes into the building
to see Robert
still alive with blue flames
shooting out of a four inch slit
(15:24):
in his stomach.
To put the fire out,
the firemen
literally put the hose into Robert's
stomach.
Needless to say,
Robert did not survive.
He did
fit some of the rough parameters
we've talked about so far.
He was a raging alcoholic,
but he was only in his 30s.
The fire investigators couldn't
(15:45):
find any external ignition source.
I would call that a human Hiroshima.
Another one
I find extremely intriguing
is the story of George Mott.
In 1986, George had recently retired from a
30-year career as a fireman in Crown Point, NY.
(16:05):
He lived
alone, was kind of depressed
about the current direction
of his life
as he was just put on oxygen for some lung issues he was having.
Thirty years of running into burning buildings.
Imagine that.
His son Kendall would usually stop by each night
on his way home from work to make sure his
dad was ok, and spend a little time with him.
On the night of March 24th,
(16:26):
George and Kendall
were watching The Twilight Zone.
It has been reported
that George told Kendall,
“Nothing weird like that ever happens to me. I wish it would.”
Be careful what you wish for.
The next night, March 25th,
Kendall had to work late,
so he didn't stop at his dad's,
so he made sure to stop
the night after that.
(16:46):
Walks up to George's door
and the door knob is warm.
He knows there's a problem.
He walks inside to a house
full of acrid,
metallic smelling smoke.
Everything is just black with soot
and a greasy substance.
Even the windows
were all browned out,
making it hard to see anything.
Kendall calls out for George
(17:07):
with no response.
It was hard to see anything, but
Kendall makes his way back
to his dad's bedroom
to find his dad's bed,
a pile of ash
sunken down to the floor.
The fire department comes
and starts investigating.
Now, this guy was one of their own,
so they are determined
to get answers.
(17:27):
The scene inside
the house is just odd.
The bed
that George was lying on
and the floor below
it are totally gone.
They're just a few pieces
of George left,
including his lower
right leg and his skull, which seemed
oddly small,
just like Mary Reaser skull.
But the fire
seemed to selectively damage
(17:48):
other parts of the house.
The water in the toilet
had evaporated.
The butter
and the plastic butter dish it was in
were totally melted.
The package of hot dogs
was boiled in the plastic,
and that's inside
an insulated refrigerator.
None of them can understand
how the fire
could have been that hot,
but not ignite the whole house.
(18:10):
They go through that house
with a fine tooth comb
and get nothing.
They could find no reason for this
fire to have started.
Now, George's oxygen
machine was turned on,
but George was not wearing
the mask that goes with it.
George used to be a smoker,
but had quit
and never allowed
anyone to smoke in his house.
(18:31):
He even made his son
go outside to smoke.
Joe Nickell,
the editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine,
puts forth the theory
that maybe George's depression
led him to start smoking again.
But I don't buy that for a second.
This guy had been a firefighter
for 30 years
and no doubt
knew the dangers
(18:52):
of smoking in a room
with an open oxygen tank.
That's not rocket science.
One thing
we can at least partially explain
is the weird pattern of damage
throughout the house.
While in many of these
stories, things on the floor right
next to the deceased are just fine.
We all know that heat rises,
(19:12):
so when a fire starts, it
creates a column of heat
that hits the ceiling
and then starts to spread outward.
Once it's gone as far out as it can
go, it starts going down
and heating the air under it.
But that intense heat
rarely makes it
all the way to the floor.
So things that are sitting 3
or 4ft off
the ground may be melted
while books on the floor or not.
(19:35):
But whatever happened to George
that night,
the entire Crown Point fire department will tell you,
it was not an accidental fire
caused by a careless old man.
Another case
that blows the wick effect theory
out of the water
is the case of Jeannie Saffin.
In 1982, Jeanie is 60 years old
but is mentally disabled,
(19:56):
so she lives with her dad.
On the afternoon of September 10th,
Jeannie and her dad, Jonathan,
are just hanging out
at the kitchen table
when Jonathan sees a flash
out of the corner of his eye.
He looks over in that direction
and sees fire
coming out of Jeannie's mouth.
Jeannie's brother-in-law, Don Caroll,
is there that day,
(20:16):
hears a racket coming from the kitchen.
He goes in to find out what's going
on, and also sees fire
coming out of both Jeannie's mouth
and her stomach.
He describes the scene
like every fire
breathing dragon movie
you've ever seen.
Dodging the flames.
Don Carol gets a pitcher of water
and puts out the flames.
(20:36):
Jeannie doesn't even cry out in pain.
She just sat there with her
hands in her lap,
not able to understand
what had just happened to her.
Who could?
She’s taken to the Mount Vernon Hospital burn unit,
but sadly dies six days later.
Skeptics say it was Jonathan,
a pipe smoker,
(20:56):
who must have been knocking the ash
out of his pipe
when a stray amber
was blown on the breeze
of the open window
into Jeannie's lap.
But Don Carroll says, no way.
That fire was coming
out of her mouth.
The corners report says
there is no evidence of burning
at the back of Jeannie's throat,
and that she suffered burns
(21:17):
over 30 to 40% of her body.
But according
to Larry Arnold,
remember the guy with the human
Hiroshima theory?
Both Jonathan and Don
Carroll
stated to the police
that the entire inside of Jeannie's
mouth was burned.
But those police statements
are not mentioned
anywhere in the coroner's report.
(21:39):
And if Jeannie's case doesn't qualify
for the human
Hiroshima theory,
maybe this one does.
The case of Helen Conway.
In 1964, Helen was a 50-year-old widow living alone
in her home in Darby, Pennsylvania.
The morning of November 8th, Helen is upstairs while
two of her grandchildren are downstairs.
(21:59):
Her daughter had dropped them
off the night before,
so she and their dad
could have a date night.
And the plan is for them
to pick the kids back up
later on Sunday.
Helen has trouble getting around,
so she spends most of her time
on the second floor of the house
and rings a bell
if she needs any help from the kids.
Around 8:30 that morning, her granddaughter, Stephanie,
heard grandma ring the bell
(22:21):
and ask her to bring her
a book of matches.
Stephanie brings the matches
to Helen, who's a smoker,
and goes back downstairs
to her cartoons.
A passing neighbor
sees a glow in the upper window,
runs to the house.
Stephanie lets her in
and the neighbor
tries to go upstairs,
but by that time
the heat is so intense
she can't get up there.
(22:41):
She calls the fire department
somewhere around 8:50 or 8:55.
When they arrive and enter the house, they run upstairs,
but there is no fire to put out.
Helen is just gone,
save for a few bones and her two legs
It is actually not just common, but almost universal that
(23:01):
the only things left are the feet and hands.
The Wick effect
actually accounts for this detail
and that the extremities
usually carry less fat.
So once the fire spreads that far,
there's not enough fuel
to keep burning.
So is this one just a case of Helen
dropping a match on her lap
and starting herself on fire?
If that's the case,
(23:22):
why wouldn't she have made any noise?
You'd think that
she would have screamed out
to her grandchildren for help.
But Stephanie,
just downstairs watching cartoons,
never heard anything.
Now, a lot of the furniture back
then was made of some pretty
combustible material.
So if she did drop a match on herself
and the fire spread to her
chair, it
(23:43):
very well
could have gone up in flames
pretty fast.
But that doesn't account
for Helen's
body being reduced to ashes in
just a 20 minute window.
Cremation usually takes 2 or 3 hours
at temperatures of 1,800 degrees.
This fire had heat.
There certainly was damage
to items all over the top floor,
(24:04):
but the heat necessary
to turn
Helen to ash
would have created far more damage
than what investigators
actually found.
But here
is the most intriguing of our cases
today.
Someone who actually survived.
Frank Baker
is a decorated war veteran
who lives in Vermont.
(24:26):
In June of 1995,
Frank and his friend Pete Willey
were sitting on the couch
at Frank's house
getting ready
for a fishing tournament
the next day.
They're having a great time
when Frank bursts into flames.
Frank and Pete managed
to put out the flames
and get Frank to the hospital,
where Frank's doctor tells him
(24:46):
the burns look like they came
from the inside out.
Frank and Pete
were just sitting in the living room,
sorting out their tackle boxes
and putting new line
on their fishing rods.
They weren't smoking.
There's no fireplace,
no ignition source anywhere.
Unfortunately for the scientists
who study this phenomena,
(25:06):
but fortunately for the rest of us,
cases of spontaneous
human combustion are pretty rare,
so they just don't
have the data necessary to figure out
whether we're
dealing with the Wick effect
spikes in acetone levels
in our fat layers,
human Hiroshima syndrome,
a combination of all of them
or something else entirely.
(25:28):
So my advice to you would be
don't smoke like a chimney.
Don't drink like a fish and eat cake.
Man, I could use a
piece of cake right now.
Or even a cocktail.
Why is everything good?
Have to be bad?
You would like to continue
this exploration
in the weirdness of this world.
Join me in this episode right here.
(25:51):
Come on. It'll be fun.
Be careful out there
and I will see you here again
on The InBetween.
Thanks for tuning into The InBetween Podcast.
Enjoy the full visual experiencewith me over on YouTube.
Just search for @TheInBetweenTales.
(26:11):
I'm Carol Ann.
And until next time, be careful out there.
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