Spontaneous Human Combustion: It Does Fire The Imagination

This started out as an April Fools' story.

It may still be.

Although it sounds more like a Monty Python routine, doesn't it? Spontaneous human combustion. Or a cartoon of a bull-necked, red-faced guy exploding with rage.

Well . . . the people who found Mary Reeser's body weren't laughing. At least we don't think so.

It was 8 a.m. July 2, 1951, St. Petersburg, Fla.

The landlady who opened Reeser's apartment door discovered a blackened circle about 4 feet square, containing some coil springs, a charred human liver in a heap of ashes, and a foot encased in a black satin slipper, burned to just above the ankle.

There was no other evidence of fire in the apartment. But what was oddest was Mary Reeser's skull, or what was left of it: it had shrunk to the size of a baseball.

Now for the part that really piqued our interest.

Since there was no visible external cause for the fire, it was thought by many to be a case of spontaneous human combustion (SHC) - a death by fire for which there is no apparent external source.

Just like the death of Billy Peterson, 1959, Pontiac, Mich.

His body was discovered in his car, badly burned, some of it charred to a crisp. But his clothing was intact and unscorched, and except for a melted religious figure on the dashboard, the car was undamaged.

Well, it took a few more cases, but finally the inevitable - a supermarket tabloid wrote about a recent case of SHC, and the checkout stands were flooded with follow-ups. Then we find out that film director Tobe Hooper, famous for ``Texas Chainsaw Massacre'' and ``Poltergeist,'' has just finished a new film on the subject. It's called ``Spontaneous Combustion'' and is scheduled to be released on videotape May 2.

So the battle has been joined, and for one reason or another we thought April Fools' Day the right time to look into the facts surrounding this burning issue.

Our research:

-- Mary Reeser's unburned foot is a feature common to many deaths attributed to SHC.

On Dec. 5, 1966, a meter reader in Coudersport, Pa., discovered what remained of Dr. John Irving Bentley, 92. Only his right foot and part of the leg remained beside the doctor's walker, which was tilted over a blackened hole in the bathroom floor. A cone of fine, dark ash had trickled through to the floor below, and an oily blue smoke with a sweetish odor hung in the air. A knee joint was found on a post in the basement.

Dr. Bentley smoked a pipe. The coroner speculated that his robe had caught fire from dropped ashes.

-- Examples of SHC are mercifully rare.

-- SHC is never discussed medically, probably because there is no known way human tissue can generate enough heat to ignite.

But what can be said of the 1835 case of Professor James Hamilton of the Mathematics Department of Nashville University? Walking home from teaching one day, he felt a sharp pain ``like a hornet sting'' in his left leg. Looking down, he saw a bright flame several inches long spurting from his calf. Only when he pressed his hand over it did the flame expire.

When he got home, he discovered a livid abrasion on his leg. Despite the fact that the flame had shot through his trousers, the pants were unburned. The case was reported in the Transactions of the Medical Society of Tennessee and two other medical journals that year.

-- Most victims of SHC, it seems, die alone.

But there have been witnesses.

Consider the case of Phyllis Newcombe.

On Aug. 27, 1938, she was dancing with her fiance in Romford, England, when she burst into flames. Her fiance tried to beat out the fire, but ``within minutes'' she was reduced to ``a blackened mass of ash.''

Some said her frilly dress was must have brushed against a cigarette or a lighted match. However, her father later produced a piece of the fabric that had been used to make the dress. When he held a lighted cigarette to it, it would not burn.

-- Many medical experts say SHC is, well, all smoke and no fire.

``In the 17 years I've been here, I've never seen it,'' says King County Medical Examiner Dr. Donald Reay. ``A story like this gets its start when the only thing burned is the body. Surrounding areas don't catch fire for reasons that aren't clear.

``But there's no scientific evidence or literature to support that this kind of spontaneous combustion occurs.''

Some theorists speculate that ball lightning may be to blame - the same stuff that's said to be the cause of many purported sightings of flying saucers.

An offbeat explanation was advanced by Livingston Gearhart, in an article for Pursuit magazine. Using data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on readings of the Earth's magnetic-field strength, Gearhart found six cases of SHC that he could correlate to a time of sharp increase in the Earth's magnetic intensity.

The strongest doubts about SHC, however, were cast by writer Joe Nickell and forensic analyst John Fischer, who investigated 30 reported cases of SHC for The Skeptical Inquirer. Their findings appeared in the Summer 1987 issue.

They looked for correlations between heavy drinking and ``supposed instances of SHC.'' Nickell and Fischer speculated that heavy drinkers would be careless with fire, and unable to respond properly to accidents. Result: Whhhffft!

In some cases of SHC, clothing, upholstery and rugs augmented the combustion, they said, especially when they were under the body, and helped retain melted fat that flowed from it, ``and then volatilized and burned, destroying more of the body and yielding still more liquefied fat to continue the process known as the candle effect.''

They learned that when Mary Reeser was last seen, she was wearing a flammable nightdress and housecoat, and was smoking a cigarette in the chair in which her remains later were discovered. Earlier that day she had told her son that she had taken two sleeping pills, and planned to take two more before she went to bed.

And, they said, ``the alleged shrinking of the skull probably never happened. The self-styled `bone detective' who is often quoted on the subject merely referred to secondhand news accounts and thus spoke of `a roundish object identified as the head.' Actually, as a forensic anthropologist theorized at our request, Reeser's skull probably burst in the fire and was destroyed, and the `roundish object' could have been merely `a globular lump that can result from the musculature of the neck where it attaches to the base of the skull.' ''

Hmmmm.

From where we sit, that account sounds as fantastic as spontaneous human combustion.

It's too pat.

I have my own theory. I think it's attributable to walk-in aliens who have taken over human bodies, then been spotted by their own, other-dimensional police, and Zap!

Blue smoke and ashes.

Whaddya mean?

It's as logical as any other explanation.