In December 2010, authorities attended the house of 76-year-old Michael Faherty in Galway, Ireland, after concerns from friends and family. As they entered, they realised that Michael had died, but something wasn’t quite right about the circumstances. Michael was discovered on the floor, near an open fire and was covered in horrific burns. The floor directly underneath him and the ceiling directly above him were scorched. But nothing else in the room was damaged. Forensics searched the scene and, strangely, discovered that the fireplace had absolutely nothing to do with Michael’s burns or death. The coroner, Doctor Ciaran Mcloughlin said, ‘This fits into the category of Spontaneous Human Combustion, for which there is no explanation’.
Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC) is a strange phenomenon where a person appears to burst into flames for no apparent reason, nearly always resulting in death. Records of SHC date back to 1641; physician Thomas Bartholin wrote the Historium Anatomicarum Rariorum and included the story of Polonus Vorstius. Polonus was an Italian knight who was known for his love of alcohol and habit of singing his way across various bars in Italy. In 1470, he drank a lot of strong wine, which wasn’t anything unusual. However, in front of his horrified parents, he belched resulting in flames pouring from his mouth. Before anyone could do anything, Polonus burnt to death.
Since then, there have been various reports of SHC, and I am going to talk about just a few cases that don’t seem to have any definitive answer.
On 2nd July 1951, Mary Reeser’s landlady arrived to deliver Mary a telegram. When there was no answer, she tried to turn the metal doorknob and found it uncomfortably hot. Finding this more than a little strange, the police were called and, when they arrived, a disturbing sight awaited them. Inside the apartment, what remained of Mary was still on her favourite chair. There was a pile of ashes along with part of her left foot, her backbone and her (slightly shrunken) skull. The police chief, J. R Reichart was at a loss as to what to do and wrote to the F. B. I: ‘Dear Mr. (J. Edgar) Hoover. This fire is too puzzling for the small town to handle. Boxes of evidence were sent along with the letter, which were sent to the F. B. I laboratory. There was no apparent substance that could have been the catalyst for the fire and there was no evidence that the fire had been caused by lightning or another natural phenomenon. Reichart described it as ’the most unusual case I’ve ever seen during my almost 25 years of police work in the City of St. Peterburg’.
On 5th December 1966, a meter reader let himself into Doctor John Irving Bentley’s house by prior arrangement. The meter reader upon entering saw a pale blue smoke that smelled ‘somewhat sweet, like starting up a new oil-burning central heating system’. He walked around until he found John, or, what remained of him; there was a pile of ashes and the lower half of a right leg. For John’s body to have become a pile of ashes meant there was some severe heat; if this was the case, why was there no damage to his wooden house?
The case of Robert Francis Bailey is the first case of SHC I read about as a child, and it has stuck with me ever since. At around 5 am on 13th September 1967, a member of the public rang the fire brigade, reporting blue flames coming from the abandoned building at 49 Auckland Street, Lambeth, South London. Minutes later, fire engines arrived. Later, one of the attending firefighters described the scene:’ When I got in through the window, I found the body of a tramp named Bailey laying at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the second floor. He was lying partly on his left side. There was a four-inch slit in his abdomen from which was issuing, at force, a blue flame. This flame was beginning to burn the wooden stairs. We extinguished the flames by placing a hose into the abdominal cavity. Bailey was alive when he started burning. He must have been in terrible pain’. Bailey’s jaw had to be prised apart as his teeth had sunk far into the mahogany staircase.
On the 15th of September 1982, Jeannie Saffin was at her home in Edmonton with her father, Jack, and her brother-in-law, Don. Jack was in the kitchen when he saw a flash of light; he rushed into the living room where he saw his learning-disabled daughter on fire. Jack and Don panicked and tried to extinguish the flames while simultaneously ringing for an ambulance. Jeannie made it to the hospital and survived for 8 days until she succumbed to the damage the fire had caused her. Don later described what he had seen, saying flames were coming from her mouth and she was roaring ‘like a dragon’. Despite the flames, her clothes weren’t overly scorched, and the kitchen was not damaged. Despite the family suggesting SHC could be responsible, the coroner, Doctor John Burton, gave an open verdict declaring there was ‘no such thing’ as SHC.
I’ve left this case till last as it introduces us to John E. Heymer. John worked for the Gwent police force for over 25 years before retiring in 1981. He was a Scenes of Crimes and Crime Prevention Officer in the Criminal Investigation Department. In January 1980, John was called to Ebbw Vale in Gwent to investigate a death by burning, that of a man named Henry Thomas. John walked into the house and found it unusually warm and humid, like being ‘momentarily thrust down into Dante’s Inferno’, and with a strange orange glow about it. He soon saw what was left of 73-year-old Henry; a pile of ashes, a pair of feet (still with the socks on) and a skull. The wooden chair he had been sitting in was about two-thirds burned and the carpet around the remains was damaged. John described the scene, ‘The ashes lay on a rug and a foam-backed, fitted carpet, both of which were only burned where they were in contact with the ashes. The charred portion of the rug and carpet was saturated in melted human fat – I later discovered that on the floor under the fitted carpet were thermo-plastic tiles. A hot saucepan placed on such tiles will leave a permanent mark on the surface. When the carpet was removed, and the floor washed there was no sign to be found to show that any heat had been applied to the tiles.’ Forensic scientists discovered that when the chair collapsed, tumbling the body onto the floor, it had stopped burning. Now, this theory is one of my favourites; they decided that Thomas had fallen headfirst into the coal fire, set his head on fire, and then decided to sit back down in his chair (because, of course, taking a seat is the first thing you would do if your sodding head was on fire). Even better, the coroner Colonel Kenneth Treasure, actually accepted this as the cause of death despite John finding no basis for the pathologist’s report. John’s suggestion of SHC was dismissed.
John Heymer has continued to study SHC using his knowledge of forensics. He said, ‘Though I do not believe in the ‘supernatural’ I keep an open mind on phenomena which are apparently so’. He is one of the few who haven’t dismissed the idea of SHC. Many scientists believe that SHC results from ‘the wick effect’. The wick effect is when flammable clothing acts as an external wick and the body fat acts as an internal wick. Forensic scientist John DeHaan attempted the wick effect in 1998. He used a pig corpse wrapped in a blanket and set fire to it. When the flames were put out hours later, a large amount of the pig’s flesh and bones were reduced to ash. Interestingly, the feet were relatively untouched, as with cases of SHC – this could be because feet tend to have less fat than the rest of the body.
John commented on this theory, saying ‘sceptics make the mistake of insisting all instances of SHC are cases of the wick effect. I have found major differences. In most wick-effect cases, the victims are dead before coming into contact with an obvious source of ignition. Clothes are flammable in their own right and burn to ash on portions of the body that have not burned’.
As well as the wick effect, there are various other theories about SHC. Some believe it is caused by ball lightning. Some believe it is triggered by ketosis caused by alcoholism; even Charles Dickens killed off Krook with SHC in his novel, Bleak House. Some think it’s an increase of methane ignited by enzymes. Some out-there theories include aliens and poltergeists, which I would love to look more into in the future! John Heymer believes the following happens:
1 – Within the cells are mitochondria. These supply energy to the whole body by triggering minor chemical reactions.
2 – If one mitochondrion is defective it could release too much energy, causing an explosion of hydrogen and oxygen.
3 – Surrounding mitochondria are affected by the surge of energy, and they too explode. A chain reaction begins.
4 – As the mitochondria explode, the cell is engulfed and then explodes. The energy released starts another chain reaction.
5 – More and more cells are destroyed. Within a few minutes, muscle, internal organs and flesh are reduced to ash by the blue flame.
So, what is the truth? Is Spontaneous Human Combustion a real thing? In the case of Jeannie Saffin, her brother-in-law described flames bellowing from her mouth and her clothes being untouched. Yet, authorities at the time claimed the clothes were very much damaged but Jeannie’s mouth wasn’t and showed no sign of any physical trauma. But if it wasn’t SHC, why were Jack and Don not investigated after a vulnerable woman in their care was set on fire? Mary Reeser’s daughter-in-law spoke about her mother-in-law’s sleeping tablet use and smoking habit, explaining’ the cigarette dropped onto her lap. Her fat was the fuel that kept her burning. The floor was cement, and the chair was by itself. There was nothing around her to burn’. Was it simply the wick effect?
There seem to be some reasonable explanations, but they can still be questioned. If methane was the reason, why does it not happen to cows who produce much more methane than humans? One interesting aspect that makes me lean towards it being a natural phenomenon is the ashes left behind. A crematorium burns a body at temperatures of between 1000-1300 degrees Celsius for at least 2 hours and will still leave behind fragments of bone. Is it possible for a dropped cigarette to instigate that sheer amount of heat, enough to leave nothing but a pile of white ashes, especially in a relatively short space of time? I will leave you to make your own mind up and would love to hear your opinions in the comments. Thanks for reading; take care of yourselves and I will see you next time.
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