Larry Arnold April 18th 2026

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Somewhere tonight, in a quiet home, in a dimly lit room,
there sets a cheer. It's an ordinary cheer. But what
if I told you the cheer once held a person,
and now the person is gone, not vanished, not abducted,

(00:56):
not murdered, burned, reduced to ash from the inside out.
No raging fire, no spreading flames, no damage to the room,
except for one horrifying detail, the human body nearly incinerated,
while everything around it remains eerily untouched. Good evening, somewhere

(01:21):
between midnight and the unknown. You're writing the frequency where
reality begins to flicker. I'm Carl Richardson, and this is
midnight frequency Radio. Tonight we dive into one of the
most disturbing and controversial phenomenon ever whispered about in the
shadows of science. Spontaneous human combustion. Is it real? Is

(01:45):
it misunderstood science, a slow burn explained away by chemistry,
or is it something else entirely, something internal, something biological,
or perhaps something not of this world. For a decade,
reports have surfaced bodies burned to near total ash, limbs,

(02:08):
missing skull, shrunken rooms, untouched except for a greasy residue
left behind like a calling card, and yet science struggles
to explain it fully. Tonight we speak with a man
who has spent years examining these cases, walking the line
between skepticism and belief. Author, researcher, investigator Larry Arnold. Larry

(02:36):
was trained in a methodology of science, with an undergraduate
major in mechanical engineering. He later worked for the private
sector in electrical engineering. Larry developed a begoing fascination with
human consciousness potential and undertook a new province in study

(02:56):
the unexplained. In nineteen seventy six, he founded Para Science International.
As Director of PSI, he combines his scientific background with
investigating and describing the intriguing world of Fortiana, those unconventional
subjects and weird events that fail to find acceptance, let

(03:19):
alone explanation, within the boundaries of today's science. Larry is
internationally recognized for his pioneering research in spontaneous human combustion.
His book Ablaze dares to ask the question most are
afraid to even consider, What if the fire starts within?

(03:40):
Stay with us because the night we're not just asking
how this happens, we're asking why. We'll be right back
with Larry after this tees cround.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
This is dark matter news. I'm Joshua Stark. Astronomers have
created the most detailed three D map of the universe
ever built, and it could change our understanding of how
the cosmos works. This breakthrough comes from a powerful instrument
known as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument or DESI, which

(04:55):
has spent five years scanning the sky from a mountaintop
observatory in Arizona. Its mission to better understand dark energy,
the mysterious force driving the universe's accelerating expansion. The result
is staggering. The map includes roughly forty seven million galaxies

(05:16):
and quasars, far surpassing original expectations, and stretches across more
than eleven billion years of cosmic history. Each point represents
a galaxy, helping scientists trace how matter has spread and
involved over time. What makes this especially important is that

(05:36):
the data starting to reveal about dark energy itself. Early
findings suggest it may not be constant as previously believed. Instead,
it could be changing over time, potentially weakening. If confirmed,
that would challenge the current standard model of cosmology, which

(05:57):
assumes dark energy is a property of space. Scientists say
this could mark a major paradigm shift in our understanding
of the universe. Beyond that, the map provides an unprecedented
tool for studying how galaxies form, how cosmic structures grow,
and how the universe has expanded over billions of years.

(06:21):
Catch up with this is a Darkmatternews dot com.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
You know that it would be untrue.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
You know that I would be on.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Larry Arnold, Welcome to Midnight Frequency Radio.

Speaker 4 (06:45):
Good evening, Carl. It is a delight and a pleasure
to be with you, particularly as a familiar member of Artbell,
who had great influence on us. We were blessed to
do a couple of shows with Art back on Dreamland,
and it was always a joy when Who's living newspapers
early in the morning to be able to listen to
his many topics and guests and his fascinating persona.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well, he had a knack for it, and of course
I'm not as good at it as he was, but
I'm doing my best and I hope I get the
job done this evening. My questions are probably routine. You've
probably been asked who knows how many times before, but
what first drew you to investigate spontaneous human combustion?

Speaker 4 (07:24):
When we're in junior high school had a book program.
You could spend thirty five or fifty cents on paperback books,
and we bought one called Stranger the Stranger than Science
by Frank Edwards, and in fact we still have the book.
Frank Edwards. In his book as a newspaperman, he had
a chapter called Incredible Cremations and it dealt specifically with

(07:46):
the fire fatality of a woman named Mary Pardi Weezer
that happened in Saint Petersburg, Florida, in nineteen fifty one.
It intrigued us, but Frank Edwards was a newspaperman, and
sometimes he was noted for writing fiction as well as fact.
When we left college and we never forgot about reading

(08:09):
about Mary Reeser's apparently spontaneous human combustion event, and we
decided we would go down to the Library of Congress
when we through the microfilm of newspapers from Saint Petersburg
in nineteen fifty one, to see whether or not Frank
Edwards had accurately reported this apparently strange, alleged spontaneous human

(08:30):
combustion event that befell Mary Reser, whether he had made
up the story and what we discovered was that this
was front page news in July of nineteen fifty one
in the Saint Petersburg in Tampa newspapers. This was a
mystery that consumed Mary Reester, as you said in your introduction,

(08:51):
almost to dust, almost to powder, and left the investigators
in nineteen fifty one, at least for one month time
utterly baffled, bum fuddled. Details of Mary Reeser's death are
basically this Pennsylvania native. She grew up not too far
from where we live, outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and in
fact she's buried about twelve miles from where we live

(09:14):
and from where we're talking to you right now, carl Over,
in Mechanicsburg. What is buried there is a few pounds
of ashen vertebrae one foot, a few pieces of calcine vertebrae,
and what was said to be a liver, as well
as a head that had shrunk to the sizeis described
as that of an orange or a tea cup. Quite astonishing.

(09:35):
This is an incredibly localized blaze that should have required
temperatures probably exceeding two thousand degrees fare in height, and
yet the only thing in Mary Reese's apartment at Saint
Pete that burned that morning in July two, nineteen fifty one,
was herself, her chair, and an end table sitting next
to the chair on the morning or the evening of

(09:57):
July first, nineteen fifty one. She was a widow, sixty
seven years of age and a known smoker. She weighed
about one hundred and seventy five pounds. The following morning,
when at Western Union messenger arrived around eight o'clock to
do over a telegram the landlady Pansy carpenter for Missus Luiz,
who took the telegram in hand and went to open

(10:18):
Mary's apartment door and screened Because the handle of the
door was hot to the touch. Some painters working across
the street ran over and broke down the door and
found a scene macabb beyond belief. As it would later
be described by a forensic anthropologist, doctor Krogman, the fire
consumed Mary, the chair, and the end table, leaving behind

(10:39):
about eight pounds of ashen residue, and yet and the
rest of the apartment there is very little heat or
flame damage present to fire. The damage was so severe
to her one hundred and sixty seven hundred and seventy
five pound body that two firemen had to literally scoop
her up with shovels. While I was up to this,
no odoor burned flesh, the aquid smell that's normally associated

(11:03):
with the human fire fatality that was missing. Speculation began
to span the gamut, basically looking for explanations. Certainly, Arson
was considered an Arsen murder, but no accellant was found
at the scene. She was a smoker, yes, but according
to the fire officials who had dealt with fire fatalities

(11:26):
before Mary Resource, they had never found a body burned
so badly as was. She normally had a fatal fire
scene and unfortunately, thousands of people die every year in
America fire mishaps usually caused by a drop cigaretto pipe.
But in this case, or in those cases, you can
pick up the body, take it to a more, you

(11:47):
can autopsy it, you can look for evidence of foul play,
you can look for evidence of arsen murder because you
have a large portion of the bodies still intact. In fact,
Professor Elaine Pope, the Dame of Flame, has done experiments
on burned cadavers, and she insists that even in the
worst burned body, you can find evidence of a gunshot

(12:11):
or stab wound, something that indicate foul play. We would
challenge her or any forensic anthropologist to find in the
ashes that Mary Reeser left behind evidence of foul play.
For one month, this was a lazing macab mystery. In fact,
at the time, in nearby Bradenburg, Florida, a world renowned

(12:32):
forensic anthropologist, doctor water Marion Krogman, was vacationing. He heard
about the strange fiery fate that the film missus Reeser,
took a professional interest in it and was just bump
foddoled by what he learned as he pursued his investigation.
There was the localized nature of the fire. In fact,

(12:53):
it was he said, Mary Reeser was died in a
circle of fire that was about three feet in diameter
that encompassed the chair in her body. But beyond that
radius she must have extended her left leg, because, as
we said, the left foot and its black leather slipper
remained intact and untouched, were not clearly about at the ankle.

(13:14):
Within that three foot radius, however, Mary Reser had burned
so completely that she exceeded what happens normally in a
crematorium retort, and as backgrounds, so are your listeners. If
they're not familiar with what happens to a burned body,
this is a good time to describe the cremation process itself.
Crematorium retort operates at temperatures twenty two to twenty four

(13:36):
hundred degrees fahrenheit for sixty to ninety minutes. The temperatures
then lowered to seventeen hundred and eighteen hundred degrees fahrenheit
to another hour to an hour and a half. What
comes out of the crematorium retort is not powder, but
bone fragments. Those fragments are then put in a device
called a crimulator, which physically grunts the bone fragments to

(13:57):
powder to be placed in an urn and handed over
the next time of kin. Crematorium retorts are not cheap,
and until about ten years ago, it took more than
an hour to cremate a body, usually an hour and
a half to two and a half hours. Only a
few years ago did cremation technology arrive at the ability
to cremate an adult human in one hour's time. But

(14:20):
to do that it requires millions of gallons of natural
gas or four and fifty gallons of fuel oil requires
a retort, which can cost one hundred thousand dollars. It
requires filtration equipment, licensing, zoning regulations have to be met,
plus the cremulator to grind up the bone fragments to

(14:40):
literally powdery dust. Cremation takes time, takes resources, and takes
a lot of effort to incinerate a body, and what
comes out of recrematorium retort does not rival what Missus
Reeser was able to do by herself, clearly not in
a retort and a crematorium, but in an apartment in

(15:02):
Saint Petersburg, Floyd, in the morning of July two, nineteen
fifty one. Doctor Krogman, as we mentioned earlier, was mystified
by the localization of the fire. He was mystified by
what appeared to have been an incredibly intense fire that
would have exceeded what happens in a crematorium, but clearly
there was no additional fire, flame, or heat damage beyond

(15:23):
that three foot circle that consumed Missus Reeser, her chair,
and the end table. He was certainly mystified by the
alleged shrinking of Missus Reess's head. That's atypical and Yet
he was also perplexed because he knew from his studies
in forensic anthropology that there had been a history of
cases that sounded very much like what happened to Missus Reser,

(15:46):
But Krogman had no explanation for how this could occur.
He said it caused the hairs in his neck to rise,
and if he were living in the Middle Ages, he
would speak of something like black magic. He called the
Mary Reeser scene Macaw beyond b Leave and they're the
mystery laid for a month, and suddenly, after some thirty days,

(16:08):
all of a sudden, it was determined that Missus Reeser was,
believe it or not, the victim of a chair smoking accident.
She had dropped one of her cigarettes in her lap
and slowly rapidly, depending on who was speaking, immolated herself
to that few pounds of dry ash and powder and
the left foot still intact. We were at Mary Rees's apartment.

(16:30):
We've been in communication with the Saint Pete Police Department
for decades. In nineteen ninety they had still not closed
the case. They had kept the case open. In fact,
the case was closed only a few years ago by
the Saint Petersburg Police Department as to Mary having been
the victim of a smoking mishap. This raises the issue
of all the cases that include Mary Reeser, doctor Bentley,

(16:54):
George Maddy retired fireman up in Upstate New York in
nineteen eighty six, and others that we can discuss with you, Carl,
and some detail. All these cases are explained away by
the mainstream scientific experts.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
Of course.

Speaker 4 (17:06):
It is in air quotes as a result of the
Wick effect. These people dropped cigarettes on themselves or a
pipe ash perhaps, and over several hours they were slowly
immolated in their own body fat, leaving behind, As we've
said already, something that is more thoroughly incinerated than can

(17:26):
be done in a crematory retorts scientifically and technologically. We
find that very problematic, in part because we've tried the
experimentation ourselves. We've taken hamshake with bone intact in the
meat sample, soaked it in a marinate of brandy, whiskey
and vodka for a year, and then wrapped it in

(17:48):
cotton fabric and torched it. Did it burn itself to powder? Now,
we did this experiment for the BBC in nineteen ninety
nine and after an hour the flame went out, and
we still had ninety eight to ninety nine percent of
the meat sample intact unburned. So how could a human
body whose consistency is about seventy to seventy five percent water.

(18:11):
In fact, one naysayer, doctor Murray, says that spontaneous human
combustion would be like trying to light a swimming pool.
This just too much water can't be done. I have
to apply that also to those who invoke the Wick theory.
It just doesn't make any sense to us. And our
own experiments that we've done multiple times has also proven

(18:33):
that the Wick effect. The Wick theory just does not work.
To explain these cases that history has called spontaneous human
combustion perhaps a bad terminology, we're preferred to relabel rename
the classic cases like Mary Reeser SAHC as a sudden
human cremation, because that's exactly what it is. These cases

(18:53):
happen quickly, it involves a human being, and it rivals
and indeed exceeds what can be done technology in a crematorium.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Do you think a flame is involved? I mean, you know,
I find it extremely interesting that a person can burn
like that and it not costs the rest of the
building to catch fire. Do you have any thoughts on
how that can take place?

Speaker 4 (19:17):
We find that very interesting too, which is why we're
devoted two thirds of our life now fifty years to
tracking down these cases that five common sense, the five
medical understanding. If SHC is the alleged, controversial and hardly
debated enigma that defies common sense, it is an utter

(19:39):
affront to orthodoxy. If it is real, it's a nightmare
for debunkers and a great twenty first century medical mystery.
And if it's not, then we are indeed what some
have called a world class fool for having wasted two
thirds of our life and something that is nothing more
than an urban myth that could be easily explained away
by the way of effect. We actually wonder, based on

(20:03):
the five hundred some cases that we've been able to
document historically, archivally and in many cases by first hand interviews,
first person interviews with the first responders at these remarkable
fire scenes, we often wonder, as have a few of them,
whether this is actually a fire in the conventional sense,
i e. In oxidizing based flame. In our book Ablaze,

(20:29):
we consider many theories that avoid having to deal with
the oxidizing flame type explanation for these remarkable human incinerations.
We can get into that later. But if this is
a normal fire, and if this is a normal fire
that struck down Mary Weser in other cases that we

(20:52):
personally investigated, then there's something afoot that we can't understand,
and frankly, forensic anthropology and professional fire investigators themselves can't understand.
When we resent the photographs and the documentation to professional firefighters,
we get basically two different reactions, both of which you

(21:15):
find most curious. One is, I've never seen anything like
this in my career as a firefighter. I didn't know
these fires could happen. This is really intriguing, quite mysterious,
and I'd like you to tell me more, Larry, about
what you know about these fire scenes. That's one reaction
that we get. In fact, when we were down at

(21:35):
the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, Maryland, wrapping up research
for our book before it was published, we had the
opportunity to meet with three senior instructors that day. One
express passing interest but didn't want to know any details.
The second we encountered in the hallway and when we
tried to hand them a photograph of Missus Reeser and
doctor Banley that we can discuss soon with you. Carl.

(21:57):
He turned on his heels and ran away from us,
said frankly, I don't I don't want to know a
thing about this. The third instructor happened to see that encounter.
He came over and looked at the photographs and he said,
I've heard about this. I can't explain this. Come into
my office, sit down and tell me everything you know.
I didn't get that response for more fire officials. When

(22:20):
we were out in California last last year to do
a shoot with William Shatner for his program on the
History Channel titled The Unexplained, we met with a fire
chief in Pasadena, California, who had worked a couple months
earlier in the Altadena fires. Introduced ourselves, explained why we
were there. When we're when we travel around, we always

(22:42):
try to meet with local fire companies because we never
know where we're going to find a credible lead. In
this case, we didn't find a lead, but we found
a fire professional who was just bumfuddled by the photographs
that we were showing to him. As we described the
circumstances related to these photographs. He had dealt with several
fire for talent in his career, and he told us,
I had never ever encountered a fire fatality that looks

(23:05):
like the photographs who're showing to me. He was intrigued,
he was interested. There's something perhaps even rarer than spontaneous
human combustion. That's what's happening tonight. As for chatting with
you about this subject, the History Channel is running that
very episode of The Unexplained. The episode titled Urban Mysterious

(23:25):
Urban Legends. It's airing right now as we speak, and
it's going to re air a couple hours to am
Sunday morning on April nineteenth. For people who get the
show and want to tune it in, it is on
the rerun cycle. Blessedly, the show presents sac as an
urban legend, but at the end of the program actually

(23:47):
concludes that this probably isn't an urban legend, that there
really is historical, scientific substance of proof and evidence that
supports that on rare occasion, human body will take fire
by means presently unknown, and we'll immolate more completely than
happens in a crematorium, and that is the mystery, that
is the enigma, that is the confounding confabulation of these

(24:12):
combustible conundrums.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
Why do you think that mainstream science doesn't want to
really deal with this? I mean to me, it would
be something, you know, if I worked in that field,
it was something I want to learn about and learn
a way to accept it and understanding.

Speaker 4 (24:31):
That's the wonderful question. And believe us, we have pondered
that ourselves for many a year. If we were in
the fire service and we came across a case like
Mary Reeser or doctor Bentley, we would be spending the
rest of our night flowing through websites, looking through technical journals,
talking to fire educators, trying to understand how these people

(24:56):
can immolate so completely in a fire that is an
affront to what is supposed to happen in a human
fatal fire scene. The best answer we have for that
is twofold one. Fire professionals tend to think, at least
it's been our experience that they believe they pretty much

(25:17):
understand fire processes in cases that fit the concept historically
of spontaneous human combustion a lie. Just about every one
of those precepts that they've been taught to believe, they
understand and act upon. Secondly, it seems to be a
case simply of pure outright xenophobia, fear of the unknown,

(25:41):
fear of the unexplained. With our scientific background in engineering,
when we're presented with a mystery or a puzzle that
needs to be solved, we try to delve in, dig
deep and figure it out. We've discovered, however, that not
everybody responds that way, And Carl, you've probably just covered
this too in your career dealing with various protein topics.

(26:05):
Some people don't want to know too much about something
that is disconcerting and challenges their expertise. Spontaneous human combustion,
sudden human cremation, if you're honest and open minded, in
so many ways, challenges what is presently known and understood

(26:29):
about fire science, about human biology, and about all aspects
many aspects of the scientific community. That's one reason that
we spend so much effort, so much time, so much
energy tracking down these cases to us. Fires that fit
the concept of spontaneous human combustion raise so many fascinating

(26:54):
questions bre at so broad an area that the oportunity
to make due discoveries to learn something that perhaps could
even be worthy of a Nobel prize in medicine or physics.
It's worthwhile to pursue what we figured out in this lifetime.
If we're lucky, the answer is yes. If we don't,

(27:16):
we'll turn over our research and maybe someone smarter, more
stud than we will figure out an answer. But until then, unfortunately,
the pattern of mainstream science of orthodox thinking has been
to dismiss these cases as hoaxes. They are not as
hearsay urban legends. They are not or as explained away

(27:41):
by the Wick effect, that is a hoax in and
of itself. We've had physicians. Doctor Lester Addison comes to mind,
who was handed photographs of the cases that we'll be
talking to you about tonight, Carl, and he flat out
to Claire, these photographs are hoaxes. When ask why the
photographs are hoaxes, he said, because bodies don't burn this way,

(28:06):
end of case. No mistery for him. He's welcome to
take that attitude, but it's a false attitude and very
unscientific attitude. The photographs that we have, we have the
providence for the photographs, We know who took them. In
many cases, we know the circumstances in which they were taken,
and in several cases we're the only person who has
these photographs. If it were not for our dogged determination

(28:29):
and tracking down these cases once we get a tip,
many of the cases that are mentioned in our book
ablaze and that we hopefully will be discussing it, something
like the Hue Tonight would have been lost forever in
a history they would never have seen the light of day.
These cases are so disturbing to so many firefighters that

(28:49):
it's easier for them to call them hoaxes, to write
them off as the Wick effect and forget about them
than it is to face the uncomfortable, distressing, and yet
very provocative and fascinating facts. The crier for deeper investigation
and understanding.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
Are you familiar with a Charles Dickens's novel by the
name of bleak House that was put out by what
I said, Hobblitt like Brown. It has a depiction in
it that kind of resembles spontaneous human combustion, So apparently
this is something that's been around for many years that yes.

Speaker 4 (29:32):
We are familiar with bleak House. In fact, we have
an original copy of the bleak House, and in chapter
thirty three Charles Dickens created a lot of controversy. May
we say by getting rid of the evil mister Crook
by means a spontaneous human combustion, As Dickens said, call
it whatever you may, it is nonetheless spontaneous human combustion.

(29:55):
And we applaud Dickens for saying that George Lewis of
Memory Serves took Dickens severely to task for unduly alarming
his readers with something that could never happen and should
not have presented as fact. Even though Blue House was
clearly fiction. Dickens stood by the case. He said he

(30:15):
had investigated the subject before writing about using SAHC as
a means to the city of Mister Cook stood BIA's
contention that SHC was real. We fully support mister Dickens
in that conclusion of his as for SAC being around
quite some time. Blue House came out in eighteen fifty two.

(30:38):
The earliest case that we've been able to identify so
far in the medical literature dates from the early fifteen
hundreds and involved a knight named Polonus Borstius. We're the
first one to translate this from the medieval Latin. It
is said that he was observed drinking two costs of
a very strong liquor undefined beyond that suddenly exhaled flame

(31:01):
and was reduced almost instantaneously. This comes in a report
that was authored by a credible physician in that period
of time. In going back earlier in history, we have
cases that fit the classic definition of SHC back into
the Greek, Roman and Scandinavian eras. So we believe this

(31:21):
is a phenomenon, even though it's still denied in twenty
twenty six. It's a phenomenon that has plagued mankind for millennium.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
What is the earliest case that there is photo evidence?
Would that be John Irving Bentley of nineteen sixty six,
do you think?

Speaker 4 (31:37):
Or no? We'll be more than happy to regale you
and your audience in a few minutes with the Bentley case.
It's one that we discovered and take personal credit for.
But your question, the earliest photographically documented case, yes, sir,
now we know of happened in eighteen eighty eight February

(31:58):
of that year, if memory is correctly, in a hayloft
in Aberdeen, Scotland. The victim is Albert Minster. He was
discovered when bystanders saw smoke coming from a hayloft in Aberdeen,
rushed up to put the fire out and discover that
the fire was within mister Minster's body. A dtor schofield

(32:22):
hang on, I'm sorry, Doctor Mackenzie Brooks Memory Service right
was called the scene, the photograph was taken and it
was written up by the doctor in the British Medical
Journal later in eighteen eighty eight with the photograph, although
obviously at that time was an etching based on the photograph.

(32:45):
What the photograph shows, what the edging shows is that
mister am was reclining in the hayloft of the barn.
The body appears to be completely intact. You can recognize
the head, the shoulders, the torso of the legs, with
the straw on which the body his body burned was
itself intact. When the body was attempted to be removed

(33:05):
from the hayloft, it crumbled to powder in the hands
of the rescuers. So whatever burned mister Minster in a
hayloft that did not burn straw was able to completely
dehydrate his body. That's a classic trademark of classic spontaneous
human combustion fires, the water is evaporated, water is completely dissociated,

(33:29):
and in this case, the body didn't crumble like Missus
Reesis did, but was left intact, looking physical until it
was touched. If any sac debunker can replicate that in
a laboratory under scientific conditions, please let us know, because
we have never heard of a case similar to that.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
I'd like to know about it myself. Do you have
any scientists that privately agree with your theories?

Speaker 4 (33:57):
There are a few yes. When our book was published
in nineteen ninety six, Don Conkle, fire chief here in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
taught arts and science at local community college, and he
would have us come in every year for the next
twenty five years and gave a lecture to his students
about spontaneous human combustion and other types of pyrophenomena that

(34:21):
his students normally would not be exposed to. We're blessed
Don Conkle for that opportunity, and Don says he would
never come out and actually say I believe that people
will spontaneously combust But as to the problem here comes
up with using the words spontaneous with human which is

(34:41):
why we prefer to rename these classic cases set in
human cremation because it's an accurate description. It gets rid
of that spontaneous aspect that so many officials don't like.
But Don would say to us, and he has said
this both to our face and in print, that the
cases that we presented to his class during that quarter

(35:01):
century blied what is known and can be explained by
mainstream conventional fire thinking today. And he was gracious enough
to allow us to present our research, our documentation for
these amazing cases to his students. Once in a while
we'll get a fire chief, fire marshall deputy fire marshals

(35:25):
who will because they refuse to ignore the evidence that they,
as first responders confront, they have to admit and or
tell us that yes, this can only be explained as
sudden tuban cremation or spontaneous human combustion. But those cases,
those gentlemen, are incredibly rare because it takes courage to

(35:47):
do so. There's a case in Glasgow, Ireland in nineteen
twenty ten. Victim was Michael Flaherty. The medical examiner McLaughlin
announced that, in his professional opinion, mister Flaherty had died
by spontaneous human combustion. As soon as we heard about that,
we called him up, spoke to him by phone, and

(36:10):
he gave us brief information about the case, telling us
why he thought this was sac localized, intensely localized, apparently
fearsome destruction to the body by fire that did not
consume nearby combustibles. When we had the opportunity to travel
to Ireland in twenty sixteen, we called mister McLaughlan again

(36:32):
trying to arrange an interview with him. He refused, vigorously
refused the opportunity. We had also attempted to get the
details of the case, the forensics analysis, the police reports,
the medical examiner's report from the local constabulary. They refused
to cooperate. We believe that McLachlan now refused to meet

(36:58):
with us because he took so much grief, so much heat,
if you will, for pronouncing SHC as a plausible official
method of death, that he just refused to deal with
it any further. Unfortunately, that's something that we've had to
face again and again in our research. It's something that

(37:19):
shouldn't happen if his professional opinion was that the evidence
before him this can be explained by what history has
called spontaneous human combustion. Let it stand, we have death
certificates where the official cause of death was listed as asphyxiation.

(37:40):
This happened in the doctor Betley case and in the
George Mott case, who retired firefighter in upstate New York
in nineteen eighty six. When there's no trachea, no lungs
left at the fire scene, how can you, as a
medical examiner pronounce asphyxiation as cause of death? You don't
have anything autopsy good point best if you're skeptical and

(38:04):
don't want to go with SAHC, at least put down
on the certificate cause on no one that's honest, and
we can accept that. But when doctor Bentley, even more
completely than did Mary Reeser. His death happened in northern Pennsylvania,
our home state, on December five, nineteen sixty six, the
night before Doctor Bentley was apparently in good health, mentally astute,

(38:30):
weighed about one hundred and eighty pounds, used an aluminum
walker to look them through his two room and apartment,
his sitting room, his bedroom, and the adjoining bathroom. When
a meter reader named Don Garznell arrived at doctor Bentley's
home in the morning of December five, nineteen sixty sixty.
Read the gas meter in the basement. He walked into

(38:51):
doctor Bentley's home the out agreeting to the doctor, got
no response, went down to the basement, read the gas
meter there, and before leaving the basement he noticed over
the earthen floor was a pile of ash about fourteen
inches in diameter five inches in height. Mister Garsnell was
also a volunteer fireman in Countersport, Pennsylvania. He walked over
to the mound, said, last time he was out of

(39:13):
the basement. No, this pile of ash wasn't there. Wonder
what burned? He looked above the pile of ash on
the earth and floor noticed in the basement ceiling was
a hole about two and a half feet in diameter,
and wondered what had burned through the upstairs bathroom and
now was a pile of ash in the basement floor.

(39:33):
He noticed also that there were some cherry red embers
around the perimeter of that two and a half by
three foot hole. Thinking nothing more of it, he went
back upstairs, and before leaving the house to go to
the next home to be the meat of it there,
decided he check on doctor Bentley just to make sure
that the ninety year old physician was in good health
and okay. Knocked in the door, got no answer, door

(39:55):
was unlocked. Countersport was a small rural community back in
nineteen sixty six, people did not locked the doors. Don
walked into doctor Bentley's sitting bedroom, did not see the
doctor sitting in a chair, which would normally have been
the situation. Stepped into the apartment and peered into doctor
Bentley's bathroom and saw the other side of the two

(40:16):
and airf I through foothold. Now in the bathroom floor.
Adjacent to the floor was half of a leg that
mister Gosnell first thought was a mannequin leg. And as
he told us what the hell was doctor Bentley doing
with the mannequin leg and his bathroom floor, he peered
down to take a closer look and realized it was
not a mannequin leg, it was a human leg. At

(40:38):
that point, mister Gosner realized that the ashes that he
had just kicked a few minutes earlier down in the
basement was what was left to doctor Bentley's body.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
I just posted a picture of that too, there you go.
It's extraordinary.

Speaker 4 (40:53):
It is an extraordinary photograph, and when we got it
from the newspaper editor who took it, it changed our
life because up until that time we knew we had
only had a photograph of Albert Minster from the British
Medical Journal, and photograph a photograph of Mary Reeser's foot
and calcine vertebrate. When we got the photograph of doctor Bentley,

(41:16):
throughout everything that we had known up to that point
that we'd seen in medical journals devoted to burn injuries
and fire photographs of human fire fatalities, we had never
seen a photograph like the Doctor Balley one. But it
had all the harmarks of classic spontaneous human combustion, an

(41:37):
incredibly localized blaze, apparently a fire of ferocity, fearsome heat.
And yet as we continued our investigation, we went to
that fire scene before the home was remodeled. We stood
in the bathroom of doctor Bentley. We are six feet tall.
We could stretch our hand up and touch the ceiling

(41:59):
directly above the hole through which doctor Bentley immolated downward.
There was not a scorch mark on the ceiling. As
we said, doctor Bentley used an aluminum walker. He was
semi invalidic aluminum momela twelve hundred degrees fahrenheit. As that
photograph shows. The walker rests directly above the hole through
which doctor Bentley's body burned downward. The alum walker was intact.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
I was going to ask about that if it was aluminum.
But all the legs are there the whole.

Speaker 4 (42:27):
The legs are there, the basket is there, and two
of the forward rubber tips are there. We do not
know whether the two rubber tips that are missing or
missing before the fire, whether they were burned up in
the fire, but the other two tips are clearly intact. Also,
you were not some blackening carbonization on the bathtub directly
above the perimeter of the whole. That bathtub was painted

(42:51):
with enamel paint. The paint is carbonized black. The paint
did not blister. We could chip paint off that bath ub.
So here we have a human body that burned more
completely that can be accomplished in a crematorium under normal

(43:11):
cremation technology to scorch the ceiling above the point of
consideration failed to melt aluminum at twelve hundred degrees fahrenheit,
failed to blister enamel paint literally inches away from where
doctor Bentley had to be standing before he immolated and
burned downward. In addition to that, Don Garsnell told us

(43:33):
that when he first entered doctor Bentley's home, there he
encountered a bluish, whitish gray haze in the hallway and
an odd smell that he couldn't characterize, described as kind
of sweet. We talked to doctor to Richard Lindholm, the
mortician who helped remove the body from what was left,

(43:54):
mooved the leg and the head because that was all
that was left of doctor Bentley beside that pile of
ashes basement. He said that he described when he was
at the home there was a sweet smell, as he
described it. We subsequently had the opportunity to talk to
a lady who lived across the street from doctor Bentley,
and on the morning of December five, she and her

(44:15):
mother questioned each other as to who was barbecuing, because
they around six thirty that morning, thought somebody was barbecuing steak.
That's what they smelled. That is so atypical of a
normal fatal fire scene involving a dead human body. The
stench is accurate. It's extremely difficult to get that unpleasant

(44:39):
odor removed from the fire scene. Cases of SAHC either
have no odor associated with them or a sweet, redolent
perfume like scent. This is found that the Doctor Bentley
Fire Scene has found that several other fires that fit
the construct the concept of sudden human creaming. The local officials,

(45:02):
the local firefighters who dealt with the body removal. In fact,
as we got around town, other firefighters showed up and
Don Gosnell, the first firefighter on scene, refused to go
back into the home. He told his colleagues, don't go
in there because it's too disturbing. You will not like
what you see. They were not. They could not believe
what he described to them, so one by one they

(45:24):
went in and came out to confirm to Gosnell and
subsequently to us in our interviews with them, that yes, indeed,
this was a real fire scene described as exactly the
photograph depicts incredible human incineration by what appears to be
a fearsomely localized, high heat temperature fire that failed to

(45:47):
blister paint, failed to mount aluminum, failed to scorch the
ceiling directly above the point of combustion. One of our
naysayers Mark Binnecki, he's a forensic profession He teaches in
the United States and in Germany. He says, in denying
the existence of sudden human creation, that there is no

(46:08):
known case in which internal organs of a burned body
are more damaged, more severely burned, than are the outer parts.
That is his rationale to dismiss the urban legion with
the myth of spontaneous uman combustion. Well, doctor Bentley belies

(46:28):
Mark Benetnique's rationale. Doctor Bentley duff behind no heart, no lungs,
no esophagus, no liver, no pancreas, no internal organ was
at that fire scene, all destroyed, as were the internal
organs of Mary Reser. In doctor Bentley's case, the corner

(46:52):
attributed death to asphyxiation compounded by burns to ninety percent
of the body. As we said earlier, lacking at asphyxiation,
lacking an esophagus, lacking lungs a corner, a medical examiner
cannot deduce asphyxiation as cause of death. There's no evidence

(47:12):
to support that rationale as far as ninety percent burning
of the body. When we talked to the deputy corner,
John dick. He said, eh, well, like ninety nine percent
burning of the body, which is closer to the truth.
As we said, doctor Bentley left behind a head that
was so badly burned that some of the first responders
did not recognize it as a human head. It was

(47:34):
found lying on the water pipes below the hole through
which his body burned, and half of that leg that's
gone in its leather slipper. Everything else of doctor Bentley,
It's one hundred and eighty pound body was powder or
more completely than it'ld be accomplished in a crematorium retort
that fits the definition of classic spontaneous human combustion is

(47:56):
defined by history by hundreds of cases that happened before
doctor bentleyineteen sixty six. And as we said, when we
got the photograph and we interviewed the witnesses, the first responders,
that's changed our life because this made no sense in
terms of conventional fire science theory and understanding, but it
made imminent sense in terms of what history has defined

(48:18):
as spontaneous human commotion, and we took a new career
path at that point.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
In your research, Do you feel this as a purely
physical situation or could it involve unknown biological processes within
the body, like internal chemical reactions or something to that effect.

Speaker 4 (48:37):
We've been criticized for being a pseudoscientist, for making up facts,
presenting evidence that is hoaxed as truth. We reviewed that
that's what some of our critics have done to us
and about us. We have demonstrated we believe effectively in
numerous occasions as well as crematorium operators have demonstrated that

(48:57):
the Wick effect does not work for these rare, dramatic,
extraordinary cases of human incineration. In our book of Blaze,
we explore we think in excess of one hundred and
twenty theories to try to offer some guidance based on
our research and how we think in our reality construct

(49:20):
about how these cases might be explained. We look at biochemistry,
We look at bioelectricity. We look at things like prana
key energies that Eastern physicians and metaphysicians have dealt with
for millennia but are only beginning to come to cognizance
to recognition in Western medical science. We look for patterns.

(49:46):
We found an interesting pattern that we call the cartography
of combustion. There are places where these cases involving human
incineration as well as other types of pyrophenomenon. Spontaneous combustion
of property, for example, seemed to be seem to occur
along straight alignments, at least in the United Kingdom. They
do this statistically very significant. We have track down cases

(50:11):
of sac that align, and by following these trackways trackways
what we call fire alignments fire lanes, we have found
two cases that happened after we plotted these lines. And
if the test of a theory is that it leads
you to expected new cases that the theory predicts, then

(50:33):
the idea that some of these fires can fall on
places that seem to have unusual earth energies power points
underneath our feet, for example, the concept of the cartography
of combustion and fire lanes is certainly worth looking at.
One case happened. We plotted these alignments in nineteen seventy

(50:55):
five on a map of the United Kingdom. These lines
can at least kate at least three cases, often four
point alignments and a one amazing alignment that roughly parallels
the east coast of the United Kingdom, perhaps a dozen
cases of hiero phenomena. In tracking these leads, when we're
over in the UK and one of our research expeditions

(51:18):
we went to Lincolnshire where there's a number of hyrophenomena
events had happened. We sat down with fire Brigade commander
for Lincolnshire, introduced ourselves, explained why were there might he
have cases that we did not know about. His first
response was nope, I've heard about this phenomenon. But then
he got really quiet and we could almost see the

(51:41):
wheels cogniting in his head.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
You could smell some off up to his desk.

Speaker 4 (51:46):
Looks at us and he says, well, you know, a
couple of years back, we did have this really strange fire.
This old hermit lived alone in a combustible tar paper
of a shack. His neighbors said they hadn't seen him
for a couple of days. Sent out a crew looking
for him, went in the house, came back out, wasn't
in the house. Neighbors said, he hasn't been outside. He's

(52:08):
got to be in there somewhere. Firemen went back inside
and they eventually found him and what they found between
stacks of newspaper was a little bit of ash between
the newspapers on the floor and that was the victim.
Oh my, it should have burned the entire structure down,
but didn't so completed that the first responders actually walked

(52:32):
through the evidence i e. His ashes, not realizing that
they were doing so. So by following the fire lanes,
we found a new case that we didn't know about
that certainly fit the criteria for classic spontaneously and combustion.
In nineteen eighty we heard a case that happened in Wales.
Victim there was Henry Thomas burned in much the same

(52:54):
fashion that Mary Weeser or doctor Bentley had burned. We
got out our map of fire Lane and we looked
at the lanes, the alignments that went through Whales and
lo and behold, one of those alignments went through a
little village called eber Vail. Never heard of it until then.
So plotting some plotting many cases of pyrophenomena on a

(53:17):
map in the UK allowed us to find a a
new case, find a case that host dated the alignments
by following those alignments, and that more than eighty percent
of those unusual fires can be connected by straight alignments.
Tell us that one theory that merits further investigation is

(53:41):
that there are places on the planet that if you're
in the right place but at the wrong time, will
cause your property or your body to spontaneously combust We
develote a fourth chapter in a boocal plaze. If that
sounds outlination, probably it does. Get our book and read
the chapter of about fire lanes, and maybe we'll convince

(54:02):
you that this is an avenue worth pursuing further.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
I'm going to bring something up, and I might be
going off the deep end, but have you seen any
case have you run across any of these cass occasions
of situations where paranormal activity is also played a part,
like poultrygeist activity and spontaneous human combustion.

Speaker 4 (54:26):
We do have a file on poltargeist fires. We don't
yet have a case where poltar geist fires has incinerated
a person, but it's come pretty close. We have a
case where a lady's a child's garment ignited. The fire

(54:47):
was able to be put out. In that case, had
that not happened, had would she have incinerated? We just
don't know. The closest we've come to having a victim
involved with paranormal activity is if memory serves Peter Vessi,

(55:08):
who was said to be dabbling in the occult. The
story that we have is that he sent his family
out of the house one afternoon, told them not to
come back for a few hours, presumably he was going
to engage in some kind of an occult ritual. When
the family returned, they found what could possibly be described
as classics HC. We've not been able to get the

(55:30):
original source material in that, so we're not willing to
put our reputation on the line, and we just passed
that along. We're certainly not adverse to considering dabbling in
the occult or various metaphysical or paranormal other types of
podium phenomena overlying, overlapping, imposing themselves upon this very rare

(55:52):
phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
Yes, sir, we're a little left on top of the hour.
I'm going to go ahead with my second break, and
then we'll come back and continue on.

Speaker 2 (56:44):
This is dark Matter News. I'm Joshua Stark. Scientists have
uncovered new insights on how cancer cells managed to survive
and spread by reprogramming the body's own immune defenses. In
this latest study, researchers focused on a key biological process
that tumors use to evade detection. Instead of simply growing uncontrollably,

(57:09):
many cancers actively send out signals that confuse or suppress
nearby immune cells, effectively turning off the body's natural alarm system.
The team found that certain immune cells in the tumor
environment can be re educated by cancer to support rather
than attack, tumor growth. This creates a protective micro environment

(57:34):
where cancer can expand more easily and resist treatment. This
is dark matter news.

Speaker 3 (57:42):
The Bible describes men's thoughts in the last days as
deeply corrupted, selfish, and rebellious against God, marked by perilous times.
In reverse speech, the Fulfillment of Prophecy, David John Oates
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(58:04):
Did scripture anticipate a time when hidden words would be revealed?
Drawing from the Bible, the Gospels, Revelation, and ancient spiritual traditions,
this book examines recurring themes long overlooked, the voice of
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(58:25):
the housetops, sealed books opened at the appointed time, and
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Reverse speech fulfillment of Prophecy now available at Amazon dot com.

(58:49):
Get your copy today.

Speaker 2 (58:51):
Maryland is on the verge of making history in a
very unusual way by officially designating the extinct as its
state shark. Lawmakers in the state have passed a bill
that would give the prehistoric giants shark formal recognition, sending
the measure to Governor Westmore's desk for final approval. If

(59:16):
signed into law, Maryland would become the first US state
ever to have an official state shark. The choice of
Megalodon isn't random. Fossilized teeth from the massive shark, one
of the largest predators to ever live, are commonly found
along Maryland's Chesapeake Bay region, especially near Calvert Cliffs. These

(59:40):
discoveries have made the ancient species a natural symbol of
the state's deep prehistoric marine history. Megaladon itself lived millions
of years ago and is believed to have reached links
of up to eighty feet or more, dominating ancient oceans
before going extinct roughly three point five million years ago.

(01:00:03):
Supporters of the bill say the designation is meant to
highlight Maryland's rich fossil record and spark interest in both
science and ocean history. It also joins a growing list
of quirky official state symbols, alongside birds, reptiles, and even
state dinosaurs in other parts of the country. While symbolic,

(01:00:25):
the move has generated attention for blending paleontology with pop culture,
turning one of Earth's most fearsome ancient predators into a
modern day state icon. This is one bill I'd love
to see approved. Catch up with DarkMatter News on Facebook

(01:00:45):
and Darkmatternews dot Com from Memphis, Tennessee. I'm Joshua dark.

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
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Speaker 4 (01:02:06):
Things.

Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
How could see? A set of.

Speaker 5 (01:02:11):
How could it be?

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
You know that welcome back to Midnight Fregrancy Radio and
our guest Larry Arnold. Larry, on all of these cases
that you've discussed, has there been any similarity between age, health,
lifestyle of the victims.

Speaker 4 (01:02:28):
Larities, or that all the victims are human? We're not
being facetious because beyond that, there's not much commonality that
we can find. It was once claimed in the seventeen
and early eighteen hundreds, and when this was a hotly
debated subject within the mainstream medical community in France and
in Germany, that all victims of SAHC were female, elderly, sedentary,

(01:02:53):
alcoholic drunken sots. Not true, tistically, in our database of
about five hundred examples that fit the concept of SAHC
fIF female, forty seven percent or male, and history just
doesn't tell us the three percent remaining as to gender.
So by gender about fifty to fifty male or female,

(01:03:17):
you could become a victim, albeit really and not likely,
but potentially victim of sac the age ranges, we have
children ages four and five to whom this has happened,
although up to age ninety not surprisingly, at least in
our view, the elderly or more prone to have this

(01:03:39):
fate happened to them. Body tends to break down with age,
so that does not surprise us. Some are drunk drunks, yes,
some are teetotalers, Some are smokers, some are not smokers.
If there is a commonality that ties most of these
victims together, it's one that we've not been able to identify.

(01:04:01):
History just doesn't provide. This is one of the problems
with the researching this of this topic. The firefiles, which
should be a wealth of information to peruse and dig into,
or sadly lacking in many cases. We have the file
on Mary Reser. For people who say that we are

(01:04:23):
a mystery bonger. As Joe Nicol has said, to us,
this is our file on Mary Reser. This is one case,
and this isn't the entire file.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
That's a pretty file.

Speaker 4 (01:04:33):
We're creating a lot of fake documentation, you know. We
do our best to track down all the information that
we can find from the first responders, from from the
autopsy reports that if they're available, from the police files,
from photographic evidence, whatever, to verify that what we're writing about,

(01:04:53):
what we're discussing, what we are researching, really is based
on the best available documentation that we, as a researcher
can provide. It's not been an easy task. We alluded
in the first hour to a couple of cases that
we'd like to delve into a bit deeper. What is
George Mott? George Mott was a retired firefighter in upstate

(01:05:16):
New York back in nineteen eighty six. Late March of
that year, his son Kendall had not heard from his
dad in a day and a half or two was concern.
Went out to his dad's home, and as soon as
he opened the front door, he realized that something was
amiss and refused to go farther. Called a neighbor who

(01:05:36):
went in and discovered that mister Mott had burned to
death in his bedroom in the rear of the home.
It was a domicile about twenty by forty feet in
square footage, and it proved to be an incredibly complex
and difficult to describe, difficult to understand fire scene. What

(01:05:58):
was notable was what happened mister Mott's bedroom. We made
three trips from down south central Pennsylvania to upstate New
York to meet with the first responders, to meet with
the fire officials, the county Emergency Preparedness Director Bob Purdy,
State fire investigators, and take what we believe is the

(01:06:22):
most comprehensively documented photographic evidence and a classic scene of
spontaneous human combustion. Why is mister Mott's fire death classic
sac He burned through his bed through the four boards
below the bed, leaving his ashes in the crass space below,

(01:06:46):
reminiscent of doctor Bentley. On the bed was mister Mott's head,
said by Tony Morett, the local fire investigator, who knew
his colleague as a friend as well as a firefighter.
Mott's head had shrunken in size to about that of
a grapefruit. Not supposed to happen in any human fire fatality.

(01:07:09):
At the other end of the bed was half of
mister Mott's right leg. Everything else was ashed burned through
the bed through the mattress. Well. We are showing that
one of those photographs to those students that we taught
for Don Conko's fire science level college level fire science class.

(01:07:30):
I think in twenty five years we had one student
who was able to identify that leg in the photograph.
It's not easy to see. This is how badly mister
Mott burned up. As we said, we went to that
fire scene three times. On our second trip, we gained
access to the house with permission of the family and
the fire investigator. We stood where mister Mott's bed was.

(01:07:52):
We could look down on the hole through which his
body burned. We could touch the ceiling directly above mister
Mott's and like the ceiling in doctor Bentley's bathroom, there
was not a scorch mark on the ceiling above mister
Mott's bed, no odor of burned flesh. Once again, an
incredibly localized, apparently fearsomely hot fire, and yet no evidence

(01:08:19):
of two thousand degree temperatures elsewhere in mister Mott's home.
It was a tinder box of the environment. Again, the
entire structure should have burned to the ground. It did not.
In the death certificate of mister Mott, death is attributed
to asphyxiation once again, no esophagus, no lungs to autopsy. Ironically,

(01:08:43):
mister Mott's leg and ashes were taken to the Burlington
Crematorium to be cremated. We called the crematorium up said
have you ever gotten a body like this before? It's
badly burned. They said no, there wasn't much to cremate,
was there with a smile, They said no, but they
did the job anyway. So mister Mott got doubly cremated,

(01:09:06):
once by himself and once by a retort ashes for
stewing at see studying a remarkable case once again. Had
we not been tipped off to this by a colleague
in upstate New York and doggedly pursued it, this case
would be lost to history. As a factual fire investigator,
one would never know about it. The other case we'd

(01:09:27):
like to share with you is another one that we
personally investigated. It took us took us a more than
serendipity to track this from down we had the opportunity
to attend, as a non firefighter an advanced arson course
offered by the Pennsylvania Fire Academy. This is a rare

(01:09:48):
and perhaps unique privilege that was afforded to us. At
the end of that class.

Speaker 6 (01:09:53):
Where we learned things like how we could a corner
drugstore and by chemicals that we could use to create
and scendiar devices, the instructor, Buzz Treepold, said, you know,
I just got an.

Speaker 4 (01:10:05):
Envelope with some photographs that some people might say a
spontaneous human combustion. He said, it was a lady who
burned up in a chair, didn't they, you know, in
a very localized fire, Only thinking oh, it's he just
got a photograph of Mary Reeser Tatah. He's passing the
photographs around. We're chatting with a fellow student about the
resar case, and when the photograph lines in our hand,

(01:10:28):
we look at it and immediately realize this is a
chair fire. Yes, but the chair is reasonably intact and
in front of the chair are two lower human legs.
This is not the resur case. This is a case
we know nothing about. You can probably imagine it quite easily.
How eager we were to meet with the instructor after
the rest of the class had dismissed. Who when, how, what?

(01:10:51):
How do we learn more about this case? He didn't
know other than it happened somewhere in southeastern Pennsylvania. Wow,
most populous part of Pennsylvania. Millions of people lived down there.
We had no name, no date, no fire company. We
just had this astonishing photograph to try to track down.

(01:11:13):
Through serendipity and a bit of luck. Nine months later
we had a name, we had a place, we had
a fire company. We pursued it, and after a couple
anxious weeks, we got a letter from Bob Meslin, who
was the fire marshal for Upper Darby Township outside of

(01:11:35):
Philadelphia in nineteen sixty four. In nineteen sixty four, November twelfth,
Memory serves, Missus Conway's family had gone to Sunday morning church,
leaving behind Missus Conway in a second floor sitting room
and two grandchildren downstairs watching television. Long story, short bypasser

(01:11:58):
noticed the smoke coming from the second for a window.
The granddaughter had just been sent to retrieve a pack
of cigarettes for Helen Conway for her grandmother. Fire Department arrives,
rush upstairs hose extinguishing equipment to a fire scene that
they don't have to extinguish. When the smoke is cleared,

(01:12:20):
they find a chair largely intact, two human legs propped
up against the front of the chair. The rest of
Missus Conway's body is severely severely burned, but next to
her chair is a telephone just partially melted. On her
thigh she was partially invalidic was a brass bell that

(01:12:42):
she used to summon assistance, probably used to have her
granddaughter Stephanie bring up that pack of cigarettes. The wood
handle on that brass bell would melt at five hundred
and seven degrees. It did not burn. What we'd learned
from Bob Meslin, the fire Marshal, is in his view
from the time that Missus Conway was known to be

(01:13:03):
alive until the fire department arrived to a fire scene
that they did not have to extinguish was twenty minutes.
This is astonishing. This is almost unbelievable, and in terms
of normal fire science behavior, it would be unbelievable. One

(01:13:24):
of the problems with researching spontaneous human confession is the
time factor. People say, well, missus Reeser was seen alive
at nine pm, and the Western Union Telegram arrived the
next morning at eight pm. She had eleven or twelve
hours that she could have slowly burned herself via the
Wick effect. But in the Conway case, we have the

(01:13:47):
time window we believe lockdown, but not lockdown to twenty minutes,
because the twenty minutes that Bob Meslin first wrote to
us about involved the time that it took him to
arrive at the fire scene, be sent home by the
fire chief Oh Hagerdy, to get his camera, return to

(01:14:10):
the fire scene, have the smoke ejected, and take a
dozen photographs. Well, we subtract all that time from twenty minutes,
we're down to six minutes maximum, from the time that
Missus Conway was known to be alive until the fire
department arrived. There is no way in any fire science

(01:14:35):
textbook that we have seen that can explain the amount
of destruction to Missus Conway in six minutes. Nothing conventional
can explain this. However, because people don't like to deal
with sac we have people like John Trybell who says this,
and we're going to quote as scientists. It is clear

(01:14:58):
to us that if a horso burns way with minimal
damage to its surroundings, i e. The Conway case, this
must occur at a relatively slow rate over a number
of hours. The lack of observed timings in most cases, however,
is a boon to the peddlers of SAC propaganda, who
can compound the mystery with exaggerated claims of reduced time scales.

(01:15:22):
And now he continues, this is a case from the USA.
The remains of Helen Conway were found on November eighth,
nineteen sixty four, in Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania. The SAC
storyline is that her granddaughter's specter over the telephone at
eight forty two. That's wrong. There's no telephone call there,
but fireman found her completely consumed at eight forty eight.

(01:15:43):
There is something clearly wrong in either the witness accounts
or the reporting of this case. So John Dehan, another
fire expert in Pennsylvania and in the United States, came
up with the same thing. Something has to be wrong
with the chronology because it couldn't happened in twenty minutes.
It couldn't happen in six minutes. What the family left

(01:16:05):
the grandmother alone burning for hours while they went to church.
Highly unlikely. In fact, we would say quite impossible. This
continual effort to change the facts to something that the
experts are willing to find comfortable to avoid their own

(01:16:27):
xenophobia is something that really takes us the heck off.
We've done the research. We spoke to the fire chief,
the fire Marshal and the deputy Fire Marshal involved in
the Conway case, and they all, to a person, have
no reason to review the timeline that we have given

(01:16:49):
to you. They found no evidence of foul play, No
accelerants were involved. This is a case, as they said,
looked like the victim had been hit by the after
burner of a jet engine, and it happened in six
minutes or less, but at least no more than six minutes,
if we may. We're going to conclude our coverage of

(01:17:11):
the Conway case with this quote from Harry Lott, who
is the assistant Party Marshal in the Conway case, quoting
the thing which is disturbing to me about the whole
thing was that the amount of damaged under her body
in the timeframe that was allowable. It would seem to
me you'd probably have to have a temperature between fifteen
hundred and two thousand degrees fahrenheit in order to do

(01:17:33):
that much damage to that body, and that just wasn't
the case. There was nothing there to substantiate that temperature.
The lady was still sitting, her remains were still sitting
upright in the chair. And that's amazing to me that
all those things like that could happen. It couldn't burn

(01:17:55):
like that, but it did end. Quote.

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
Do you find is as interesting as I do that
a lot of scientists will go around the world to
cross the street to come to a conclusion. It just
amazes me.

Speaker 4 (01:18:13):
Yes, it amazes us too, and it's become incredibly frustrating
to us. We have fire professionals who have lied to
our face and they have lied to the media about
the cases that we're sharing with you, the cases that
we have devoted basically our lifetime to document. It's not

(01:18:34):
just the professional firefighters. Oh, give you an example of that.
When you're down to Philadelphia. Just after we met with
with sat down with Bob Messlin in his kitchen table.
Whenever the timeframe for the Conway case, we drove a
couple miles east to downtown Philadelphia because we had several
cases in the city of the City of brother We
love that we wanted to track down. Now with a

(01:18:55):
senior fire investigator on duty that day, introduced ourselves, said,
here are the name, the dates, the locations in your city.
We like to see the fire files for research purposes. Well,
mister Arnold, I can't show you those files because I said, well, okay,
maybe you move the files. This is brand new headquarters

(01:19:15):
will go to wherever the files are located. No, you
don't understand, mister Arnold. The reason I can't show you
these files is because what you're asking about doesn't happen,
so we can't have files about them.

Speaker 1 (01:19:26):
Jesus.

Speaker 4 (01:19:27):
On this desk, we put the photograph of Mary Research,
put the photograph of doctor Bentley with his aluminum walker,
and we put the photograph of Helen Conway with her
two legs propped up in front of her incinerated body
on his desk and said, you're the details real sisscially
now you're the expert. You help us understand from your

(01:19:49):
experience as a professional firefighter, what would you do if
you were called to a fire scene and saw what
these photographs depicted? Long silence, We put the question to
him a second time. His answer, we shall never forget
direct quote, I go out, get drunk and forget about it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
Oh good god, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:20:11):
At which point, at which point we were told to
pack up our photos, pack up our paper, and he
escorted us not just out of his office, not just
to the elevator, but to the ground floor, to the sidewalk.
This is how scared, how intimidating, how horrifically frightening this
subject is to professional firefighters, so imagine what it is

(01:20:33):
like to the general public. We found that people are
kind of curious. It intrigues to a point, but they
don't want to know too much about it. It's just
the nature of the beasts, so to speak. Yeah, we've
got that attitude repeatedly from professional firefighters. Unfortunately, we get
the same attitude from professional skeptics. And boy are we

(01:20:57):
being kind when we put skeptic in air quotes. I'm
sure you, Carl, and most, if not all, of your
listeners will recognize the name Joe Nicol, professional skeptic who
made this transition now just about a year year, a
little over a year ago. Anyway, he's been our nemesis
for twenty five or thirty years. We have a long

(01:21:19):
history going back together. We've interviewed Joe, he's spoken to us,
He's signed his books to us with derogatory inscriptions, we've
shared television programs together. In his books and in his writing,
he has said, regarding the Bentley case in particular, that
he knows exactly how doctor Bentley died, and it's by

(01:21:43):
his by ashes from his pipe for sure. With an
exclamation point, okay, fine, That means Joe Nichol, without equivocation,
knows exactly how doctor Bentley died. But the only way
he can know that is if either he was there
in person or he found an eyewitness. Well, we know

(01:22:05):
Joe wasn't there in person, So who is the eyewitness?
We wrote to Jail and we ask him very politely
if he would be so kindness to tell us who
the eyewitness is, how he managed to locate the eyewitness
because we could not find one, because as we got
was Don Goznell who discovered the ashes, And we would
certainly give mister Nicol credit for being the incredible detective

(01:22:30):
sleuth that he proposed to be. Joe wrote back to
us in written letter. It begins, I didn't, of course
have the eyewitness you sarcastically imagine in your familiar caricature manner.
It should be apparent to anyone nassel by the fantasy
of SAHC that I made deductions and inferts based on

(01:22:53):
difference from the research that we did, not that he
did so. Joe has no eyewitness. He guessed, but he
presented his speculation as fact, and that is dishonest. That
is dishonest scientifically, that is dishonest skeptically. It's not the

(01:23:14):
first time that Joe has done this to our research,
and rather than deal with the evidence that we present
to him and try to make scientific sense of it,
it was easier for Joe to ridicule it, to misrepresent it,
and to mischaracterize it. When he transitioned, we knew that

(01:23:38):
Skeptical Inquire would publish laudatory o bits about mister Nicol
one of their own. We submitted a thirteen hundred word
countero bit detailing the many, many times that mister Nichol
portrayed himself as not a skeptic, but by definition of

(01:23:59):
debunk or misrepresented himself to the public. Skeptical Inquires editor
refused to print that because it would be inappropriate for them,
he said, to belign one of their own.

Speaker 1 (01:24:13):
Well, mister Nichols, a boil in a lot of people's side.

Speaker 4 (01:24:17):
That's what now. He is a clever wordsmith, he has
he's good on air persona. He can make himself sound
really convincing. But do so with integrity, do so with honesty,
do so with facts at hand, and that is Those

(01:24:37):
are three things that in our personal experience over many
years with Joe Nicholl, he lacked all three. He lacked integrity,
he lacked honesty. And it was easier as it is,
as it is for someone well know in politics these days,
to malign and cast dispersions and name call exactly something

(01:25:01):
you find uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 (01:25:03):
Honestly say, I'm with you. Are there any other cases
that you would like to cover this evening?

Speaker 4 (01:25:11):
Oh? Yeah, this is one we rarely talk about, but
this intrigues the heck out of us. I think this
will be a special one for you, Karl, and for
your listeners, And thank you, by the way for this opportunity.
We really value it. This is a this is a
fairly old case, but it is so intriguing that we've
pulled it out from file just for you. Here we

(01:25:31):
go November tenth, seventeen thirty one, a fierce but localized
fire rare reached a sixty year old I'm sorry, sixty
eight year old female in Vitry. This is a remote
village in eastern France. The woman, who lived alone, fell
and struck her head on a heart which had, it
is said, but a little fire in it. Now quoting
a position who was at the scene. News of her

(01:25:54):
deaths spread like wildfire the next day when neighbors discovered that.
And here we quote her body, though we used to ashes,
appeared at first to be quite whole, reminiscent of Albert
Minster in eighteen eighty eight in Aberdeen, Scotland. We continue
with quoting one surprisingly noticed the folds of her dress,

(01:26:15):
upon which her right arm and fingers were like firebrands.
On touching them, one found no more than ashes. All
the bones, even the largest, were consumed end quote. What
is significant about that, aside from having the hallmarks of
classic SAHC, is that her bones her fingers were found

(01:26:40):
on the folds of her clothing. That is, her flesh
burned to ashes in a fire that failed to consume
her garments.

Speaker 1 (01:26:53):
How does that happen?

Speaker 4 (01:26:54):
Lise. We went if Joan Nikoer were still alive, or
FIREX for John de hanstill alive, or Mark Binecki or
Loin Pope or any other sac denier to duplicate that
situation under laboratory conditions. We've got a stack of ce

(01:27:14):
notes that says you've got to fail.

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
Have there any been cases that have been quietly closed
regarding shc Oh? Wow, that's a power of them, isn't it.

Speaker 4 (01:27:31):
I'm not sure we've been asked that question before. If
they were successfully closed, we would not learn about them.
It almost happened with the Mott case. It almost happened
with the Conway case. Lord knows how many cases has
happened to that we haven't heard about yet. There was
a case in Hokkaiam, Washington. The name at the moment

(01:27:55):
escapes us. I think it was Sewell, Barbara Sewall. Don't
hold us to that. Supposedly her corpse combusted in the
funeral home where she was to be interred or given
last rites. We wrote to the funeral home and got nowhere.

(01:28:20):
We were in Hokkaiam, tried to track it down in person,
got nowhere. There's one other instance that does come to mind.
We were contacted by an attorney in a lawsuit that
involved a hospital and a burned victim, and the defense

(01:28:44):
was going to argue that it was not malpractice but
a case of SAHC, and they wanted us to be
an expert witness. Fabulous, We would do that. We were
testified to the best of our ability and knowledge. Once
we know more about the case, and that's where the inquiry,
that's where the opportunity died quickly. Whether it was SAHC,

(01:29:08):
we don't know, whether it was medical malpractice, a calorizer
that ignited the victim's robe on the operating table, we
don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:29:18):
You're in your research. Have you ever been actively discouraged
from pursuing certain leads say proverbally men in black type
characters approaching you and tell you don't go there.

Speaker 4 (01:29:32):
Not that we know when when we've been thwarted in
our investigations, it's been to our face and very obvious.
Like the fire inspector in Philadelphia, the fire instructors at
the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg. There there, they're upfront,
they don't want to deal with us, and they tell
us so, yes, I want aware of any clandestine subterfuge

(01:29:56):
that's working behind the scenes to thwart us.

Speaker 1 (01:29:59):
Has this rec search changed your view on the human body?

Speaker 4 (01:30:04):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:30:04):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:30:08):
Has it changed our view in the human body? Probably not. We've,
as long as we can consciously recall, we've been pretty
open to all kinds of weird things that the human
body can do to itself. It certainly has opened us
to what possibilities that the human body can do to itself,

(01:30:30):
or that can happen to the human body from external
circumstances that are not yet recognized by orthodoxy, by medicine,
by mainstream science. Being interested in a wide range of
Fortian phenomena, but having specialized in piral phenomena, we're just

(01:30:50):
amazed and intrigued by what nature can do to a
human being.

Speaker 1 (01:31:00):
Believe this could happen to anyone.

Speaker 4 (01:31:06):
If one is very spiritually evolved, it might happen by choice. Conversely,
a very evolved spiritual person would likely interview have the
wherewithal to prevent it from happening if the circumstances external

(01:31:27):
were about to occur. As we've alluded to earlier, this
is an extraordinarily rare phenomenon. You probably have the probability
of being struck multiple times by lightning as very slomon,
then becoming a singular case of sudden human cremation. Being

(01:31:51):
rare doesn't mean impossible.

Speaker 1 (01:31:55):
And this my last question. Have you ever experienced anything
personally if that makes you think this is more real? Wow?

Speaker 4 (01:32:05):
Oh boy. We're going to answer that multiple ways. One, yes,
we have experienced spontaneous human combustion, and we say that
because we have been severely sunburned a few centuries ago.
Being sunburned would fit the definition and the concept of

(01:32:26):
spontaneous human combustion, albeit not as extreme as Mary Reeser
or George Maud or doctor Bentley or Helen Conway, but
spontaneous burning of flesh by means unknown. Now today we
understand science understands that sunburn is caused by ultra violet radiation.

(01:32:46):
It's still SAHC, but it's an explained and accepted form
of SAHC. We'll also answer your question by saying that
we have been noted to produce extremely high body temperature
while ass sleep that did not lead to classic SAC

(01:33:07):
could it in someone else or in ourselves. It's plausible
in our viewpoint, in our reality to construct that is plausible.
More than a few women have talked to us about
experiencing menopausal hot heat flashes and wondered if they could
sac as a result.

Speaker 1 (01:33:25):
Why not.

Speaker 4 (01:33:28):
Yes, well, we can't say that that's how how these
cases can be best explained, but will not adverse to
the possibility that this is one more means to explore
and something as bizarre and denied as is sudden human
cremation SAHC. We have to be as a researcher, we

(01:33:52):
believe open to all possibilities, all probabilities, and narrow down
or eliminate the world for which we can categorically say nope,
this one doesn't work. Until then, though, this is a
field that's wide open for speculation or exploration and frankly

(01:34:13):
for honest discovery, because there are mysteries of foot here
that need to be resolved, need to be addressed, and
need to be explained because until that happens, people are
going to continue to die. This is rare, as we've
said repeatedly, but there's going to be another case. The
last one that we investigated that we would take a
reputation on that the classic concept was in nineteen I'm sorry,

(01:34:33):
in twenty thirteen in eastern Oklahoma, the victim Danny van Sant,
classic case. The photographs are astounding. Again, had we not
been tipped off to the case and doggedly pursued, it
probably lost to history because the family, much as we tried,
will not cooperate with US fire department, fire fire fire departments,

(01:34:55):
the fire Marshal for Sequoia County or very cooperative, however,
or encouraged us to help them to understand how best
that fire death could be explained. As Rick Russell, the
fire chief, the first responder told us, this fire and
Danny van Zant began and ended at the body, another

(01:35:16):
very localized fire that burned through the hole in this
case left behind his heart, but no other internal organ
was again belying where Binecki's means to dismiss sac as
an urban bit or a hoax.

Speaker 1 (01:35:29):
Well, if you run across any newer stuff, then you
would like to come on the show to discuss it.
Give me a call and I will have you on.

Speaker 4 (01:35:38):
Be delighted to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:39):
And your comments earlier about sunburn. My dad did two
tours of duty on Stoffield Berry's Hawaii, and we would
go spend the entire weekend at the beach and I
have had burns so bad that I had to have
vinegar bass, go to the emergency room and get Benadryl shots.
So that's a very serious issue in itself. So nowadays

(01:36:04):
I don't step outdoors on a sunny day without sunscreen,
and I recommend others did the same.

Speaker 4 (01:36:10):
Very good. Yep, yeah, actually that you just brought to
mind real quickly. There is a medical condition called Stephen
Johnson syndrome STS that involves inexplicable burns to the body,
usually of a chemical nature. So again there is there's
one little niche in mainstream medical science that will recognize

(01:36:30):
one type of spontaneous human combustion. They just call it
Stephen Johnson syndrome. But when you get into the more
classic cases like we've been sharing with you, where the
body is wholly incinerated, Steven Johnson doesn't work. So we'll
back to that mystery again.

Speaker 1 (01:36:46):
And do you have a website that our listeners can
go to and view some of your content.

Speaker 4 (01:36:52):
We do. It's here of Science p a r A
Science dot com. Not the best website. We need to
revamp it, but don't get you started. Also, it gives us,
the gives the viewer email to us. We're certainly open
and eager to hear from anybody who's watching the program tonight.
Tell your questions, that is, give us your ideas, and

(01:37:15):
best of all, if you had to lead on a
possible new case, you're going to get one. That's what
we're here for. To track down these mysteries, look for patterns,
look for solutions, and maybe we'll get to know about
prize of medicine someday.

Speaker 1 (01:37:29):
And when where can I go to locate your book
A Blaze?

Speaker 4 (01:37:34):
The best way to do that is go to Amazon,
type in A Blaze Larry Arnold and that'll link you
to the book. Now what I now? For reasons we
have been unable to understand, aside from what causes spontaneous
human combustion, Amazon continually puts up that A Blaze is
some romance novel about two people. It's not a romance novel.

(01:37:55):
We've tried to correct that repeatedly and fail every time.
But if you go down to the reviews reviewer the book,
you see that this is a book about real events
researched and unless you've read the book already, we will
guarantee that you are going to learn at least one thing,
probably a whole lot of new things that you did

(01:38:17):
not know. Heretofore. This book is the product of years
of archival research, traveling around the world, speaking and interviewing
first responders and collecting photographs for these amazing cases that
include not just fire fatalities, but survivors are partial spontaneous
human combustion.

Speaker 1 (01:38:38):
It sounds like Amazon needs to update their AI on
automatically picking categories for their books, is what that sounds like.
Mister Arnold. It has been a pleasure to have you
on the show tonight, and I look forward to having
you on in the future if you want to cross
any new cases or release any new materials.

Speaker 4 (01:38:59):
We were certa in my college. Has been our pleasure
and honor. You've done a wonderful job covering a subject
that is very difficult. We appreciate the opportunity. Blessings to
you and all your listeners and viewers.

Speaker 1 (01:39:12):
Thank you, sir, and I hope you have a good evening.
We get what time zone your end, but it's probably
very late there.

Speaker 4 (01:39:18):
It's close to midnight.

Speaker 1 (01:39:21):
It's time for me to let you go to bed.
You have a good night. You will. They the.

Speaker 5 (01:40:35):
Pet at the bot

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