Morbid Medicine: Spontaneous Human Combustion
On December 22nd, 2010, a man named Michael Faherty was found in his home nearly burned to ash. Nothing else around him had been touched by the fire, however. The official coroners report read: Spontaneous Human Combustion
But what is SHC, and why does it happen? Let’s take a morbid little tour through history…
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SOURCES
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TRANSCRIPT
Just before 3 AM on December 22nd 2010, Tom Mannion of Galway, Ireland woke in the middle of the night to a shrieking smoke alarm . As he leapt out of bed, he quickly realized the noise wasn’t coming from his own home. It was coming from the little red brick house next door, where 76-year-old retiree Michael Faherty lived.
Tom rushed to check on his neighbor. As soon as he got outside, his heart dropped. clouds of dark smoke billowed from Michael’s home. Tom raced up the cobblestone walkway, heat radiating off of the house, and pounded on the front door, but there was no reply. He kept trying, banging so loudly that nobody could possibly sleep through the racket. Still, there was no sign of Michael. And tom was really worried, Michael was older, he had diabetes, what if he was inside, unconscious.
Eventually, the police arrived on the scene, but as they pulled up, they noticed the first strange thing about the scene. Though black smoke poured from the windows, there weren’t actually any flames. Like whatever had caught fire had already been put out inside. But with michael nowhere to be found, they’d have to go in to be sure.
They forced their way into the smoke-filled house.But, when they got inside, they still couldn’t see anything on fire. The kitchen and everything around it looked worse for wear, but nothing was on fire. And that’s when they noticed the next strange thing about the scene…
There, on the floor, was what looked like the source of the fire. It took them a moment to realize that they were looking at Michael Faherty himself… or, what was left of him. Almost all of his body had been reduced to ashes.
Yet, aside from the scorched floor directly underneath the victim, and some fire damage on the ceiling directly above him nothing else in the room had burned. Even highly flammable items, including a pack of matches sitting on the mantelpiece, were untouched.
And there were no clues as to how, exactly, Michael burned to death.
He was found on his back, with his head pointing towards the fireplace, where there was a small fire going. Which initially seemed suspicious, but investigators quickly ruled that this wasn’t how Michael caught fire. The fireplace was working properly, and nothing between it and Michael had burned.
When the local coroner, Dr. Ciaran McLoughlin, arrived on the scene, he was equally baffled. In his 25-year career, he’d never seen a fire death he couldn’t explain. There was always a source of ignition. A cigarette, a candle, a pan left unattended on the stove…
But here, there were no answers to be found. Even after a medical examiner conducted an autopsy on the few parts of Michael’s body that didn’t completely burn.
Months later, after conducting a full coroner’s inquest, Dr. McLoughlin ruled that Michael Faherty’s death was caused by something to this day scientists dont have a concrete answer for. Something that can happen at random, potentially to anyone, and reduce an entire human being to ash without harming anything around them. spontaneous human combustion.
Welcome back to heart starts pounding, I’m your host Kaelyn Moore, and today is a bad day to be a hypochondriac.
Because today we’re talking about a seemingly supernatural medical event known as Spontaneous human combustion.
It is when people seem to catch fire completely out of the blue. BUT, is it paranormal, or is there a more clear medical explanation for why this happens? We’re going to get into that today
But before we do, Its time again to shout out another creepy little listener. You guys have been sending me your macabre and dark hobbies and jobs, but also just spooky scary things that happen around you, and this week Mac reached out to let me know that they work in a haunted warehouse. And they think this warehouse is haunted because the owner of said warehouse keeps the mattress his mother died on IN THE WAREHOUSE. Mac says they've heard a woman whisper their name multiple times.
Keep these creepy little tidbits coming, i love to hear them. I also want to mention, if you are a Patreon or Apple Podcasts subscriber, get ready for this month’s bonus episode–Antarctic conspiracy theories. That is coming out Friday and as always it was suggested by Patrons and voted on by the Patreon high council. It’s a really fun one, so if you are not a subscriber and want to see what’s going on down there, you can sign up for a free trial on Apple or Patreon and check it out. As always thank you for your support. Now, let’s get settled into the study here at the Rogue Detecting Society, and see what we can figure out.
And, as always, listener discretion is advised.
Spontaneous human combustion is a term that’s been used to describe the strange phenomena of a person seemingly bursting into flames for no discernible reason, hence the ‘spontaneous’ nature of it. The term has been around since 1746, when a man was trying to make sense of the death of Countess Cornelia Zangheri Bandi. One morning, the countess’s maid entered her room to see that her body had been reduced to a pile of ash, just her lower legs below the knee, three fingers and the front of her skull remained intact, the rest had been burned away. But stranger still, nothing else in the room had been burned, despite the furniture and linens being flammable. The room, however, was covered in a greasy, oily substance that stunk.
No one knew what to make of this death. Nothing in the room indicated how the countess could have caught fire, they said. It must have been something paranormal. And so, the diagnosis of Spontaneous Human combustion was first used. Over the years, the phenomena has continued to occur, and a lot of these cases have seemed stranger than fiction.
The strangest one being the case of Amy Kirby and her sister Alice-Ann.
On January 5th, 1899, recently separated young mother Sarah Kirby, of West Yorkshire, England, went out to fetch water from the well. Her four-year-old daughter, Amy, remained inside, along with her two younger siblings. Her other daughter, Alice Ann, was down the street at her grandmother's house.
It only took Sarah two minutes to fill her bucket and get back to the house.
When she returned, she found Amy completely engulfed in fire {sfx fire, but not screams), screaming horribly. Sarah saw “flames a yard high” coming from her daughter’s body. It had happened so fast—as if Amy caught fire the moment Sarah turned her back.
Sarah used her bucket to extinguish the flames. But Amy was already horribly burned.
Sarah ran towards her estranged husband’s home for help. But as she was running, she saw her neighbor down the street running in her direction, looking panicked. The neighbor flagged sarah down and said that she needed help. There was a horrible accident involving Alice-Ann, Sarah’s other daughter. What do you mean? Sarah asked. The neighbor explained that five-year-old Alice Anne had also just spontaneously caught fire.
So Earlier that morning, Alice Ann’s grandmother, Susan Kirby, left the house leaving Alice Ann asleep at home. Alice Ann hadn’t been feeling well, and her grandmother expected her to sleep until about 12:30 PM, as she typically did when under the weather.
But at about 11:00 AM, the neighbor saw a blaze inside the home, then saw Alice Ann approach the door, engulfed by flames. Neighbors rushed to her aid and wrapped her in a rug to put out the fire.
The two sisters, one year apart in age and a mile apart in distance, had burst into flames at the exact same time, in two different houses, while under the care of two different adults.
Sarah fell to her knees, stunned. It was bad enough watching Amy burn, and then having to leave her there, on the floor, to go get help. Learning that Alice Ann was in the same condition was almost too much for Sarah to bear.
A horse-drawn ambulance took both girls to the hospital, and unfortunately, neither of them made it.
After her children passed, all Sarah wanted was to lay them to rest with as much dignity as possible. But the local church refused to allow the girls to be buried in consecrated ground in the plot previously purchased by their family.
Instead, they were interred in unmarked graves in the unconsecrated section of the cemetery. Their entire family would later be buried in the unconsecrated section next to them. Locals believed the church was afraid, as if the fire that struck them both down was sent directly from hell.
Sensationalized tabloid coverage certainly didn’t help with that belief, it continued for weeks after the girls’ funerals, seizing on every salacious detail to sell papers. For example, we found a Halifax Courier’s headline that read, “FIRE FROM HEAVEN - Or were they flames from Hell that turned two sisters into human torches?”
Whether you believe it was hellfire, spontaneous human combustion, or something else, we’re all left with the same question: how could two girls have burst into flame at the same exact time in two different locations?
Was the church right? Was this some sort of paranormal phenomenon, and is it something that can happen to any of us, at any moment? I mean should I start traveling with a fire extinguisher? because I’m a hypochondriac, I’ll do it.
Well, we’re going to take a quick break. and when we get back, we’re going to discuss some of the theories, both scientific and otherwise, about exactly why this happens.
So “Spontaneous human combustion,” or “SHC,” is the theory that a human being can catch fire through some sort of internal or supernatural process, without having to be exposed to extreme heat or an open flame, causing them to burn to death.
There’s a very real basis for this theory. For centuries, people have documented genuinely bizarre burn deaths, looking nothing like the aftermath of a typical household fire. like the cases we’ve discussed. Some of These deaths tend to have similar characteristics:
The first one being that in SHC cases the victim’s body is largely reduced to ash. Including the bones. Fire needs to get REALLY hot for this to happen, so not every person who dies in a fire is reduced to ash, yet in cases of SHC, they are. In other words, they’re burned more similarly to human bodies in crematoriums which produce much hotter temperatures than are typical of housefires.
Another characteristic they share is that Many cases also involve legs or feet left largely intact while the rest of the body is completely burned, like in the case of the countess, which has given rise to theories that whatever is happening, the fire is starting in the person’s abdomen.
There’s also how Several cases throughout history involved an oily, yellowish residue left behind in the room, often smeared all the way up the walls to the ceiling. Sort of like an extreme version of what you’d see if you cooked bacon on your stovetop every day, and never wiped the splatters off the walls. That was also described at the scene of the countess,the greasy oily residue that covered everything in her room and smelled terrible.
They didn’t know what the grease was when the countess burned, but it has since been discovered that the grease found in these cases is human fat that liquifies under extreme heat. Sometimes there’s a pool of liquid fat left under the ashes, too.
And Not all SHC victims fit the same profile, like the two small girls we spoke about earlier don’t fit this, but there is a “typical” victim: elderly and in poor health, with limited mobility and a substantial amount of body fat, likely a smoker, drinker, or both.
But what really causes these bizarre burn deaths? I knew I needed to get to the bottom of this or I’d simply never sleep again. And it seems like throughout history there have been many theories, ranging from the spiritual to the scientific…
Over the centuries, right up until today, some people have believed SHC to be a completely unnatural phenomenon. For example, British author Michael Harrison theorized that SHC is a result of poltergeists setting people on fire from the inside out.
Some people, especially the further back in history you go, associate SHC with demons or hell. The tabloid headlines about the Kirby sisters suggested hellfire as an explanation for their sudden ignition. And these deaths are so horrific, it’s easy to imagine them as some sort of punishment from Satan. I mean, just picture yourself explaining this to a pilgrim….they’re going to think you’re a witch.
But, if ghosts and hellfire are causing SHC, cases shouldn’t be less common today than they were in the Victorian era. Yet SHC is much rarer now.
another theory from the victorian era is a less literal kind of “demon”, alcohol addiction.
Back In the Victorian era, when cases of SHC peaked, these deaths were generally attributed to habitual drinking. Maybe so much alcohol had been stored in their bodies that if they were near a fire or a cigarette dropped on them, they’d catch fire.
The 1641 book that told the story of the countess, also mentioned the story of an Italian Knight named Polonus Vorstius. The knight drank a few glasses of strong wine with his parents one evening, reportedly burped fire, and then became engulfed in flames
However, experimental human and animal specimens are often preserved in much more alcohol than a person could possibly consume, and those do not easily ignite and burn completely to ash.
Also, this theory doesn’t fit cases that involve children—like the Kirby sisters. I know it was a different time but kids were not hitting the pubs. And the alcohol theory also fails to explain why this would happen so rarely, given the high rate of alcoholism in the Victorian era.
So, maybe we need to look at a different unexplained phenomenon to explain SHC? Some scientists have suggested that SHC victims are ignited by chance encounters with a high energy, somewhat mythical substance called “ball lightning.”
For centuries, people have reported seeing bright, moving spherical objects during thunderstorms. Some reports say these balls came through walls or windows, or even came out of telephone receivers. Unlike normal lightning, ball lightning is said to last for several seconds at a time before the balls burst, sometimes leaving behind a strange odor.
Is that what happened on August 27th, 1938, when 22 year old Phyllis Newcome reportedly caught flame out of nowhere while she was leaving a dance in England? Partygoers were stunned to see the woman erupt into blue flames while no one else around her was touched, as if hell had opened up to swallow the girl. She later died from her burns.
Scientists have been unable to create ball lightning in laboratory conditions, but they’ve gotten close. Running a very strong electrical current through saltwater can create a glowing ball of plasma that rises out of the water and hovers briefly.
If ball lightning is real, and if it’s involved in SHC, this very brief contact with a high-energy ignition source could possibly explain why only certain parts of the body burn while others appear untouched.
There have been many other theories that just haven't stuck. author Larry Arnold. proposed that SHC occurs due to an as-yet undiscovered subatomic particle within the human body that sometimes experiences a type of collision that starts an out of control reaction leading to rapid, inside-out ignition of the body. Sort of like a little atomic bomb going off inside a person.
Similarly, author Gerald Callahan suggested that some sort of thyroid malfunction could cause human mitochondria to combust internally, triggering a fission-like reaction.
In the late 19th & early 20th centuries, some speculated that, under certain circumstances, the human body becomes so unusually combustible that even static electricity can cause ignition, followed by complete immolation.
There was the thought that high levels of carbon monoxide poisoning can cause someone to spontaneously ignite. But experiments done on livestock that are, very not ok by today's standards, showed you’d have to expose them to high levels of carbon monoxide for 8 months for them to burn like the SHC victims. A person would most likely have to be exposed for longer, and by that point they’d be having very intense and noticeable symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. so, maybe Michael's home had a gas leak no one knew about. But many other victims have not shown any symptoms of poisoning before their immolation.
none of these Victorian Era explanations really feel like they’re a perfect fit for any of the cases we discussed. But we do have a theory today that feels like it fits a bit better.
One modern, scientific explanation for SHC is that people with these traits become unconscious, either in front of a fire or while smoking. Their clothes catch fire, and whatever they’re sitting on smolders at a high temperature. This eventually causes their body fat to ignite.
This is called the “fat wick” theory. Because, theoretically, human fat can act as a “candle,” while combustible clothing and furniture act as a “wick,” causing most of an entire human body to burn to ash without burning much of the surrounding room.
Then, by the time anyone finds the body, whatever the ignition source was—such as a lit cigarette—has also burned to ash, making the combustion look truly “spontaneous.”
It’s not unusual for people to burn to death after falling asleep or passing out with an open flame or cigarette nearby—the weird part about cases labeled “SHC” is that they burn so completely.
And If we look at the history of SHC, its interesting to note that cases appear to have peaked at a time when many homes were heated by open fires, indoor smoking was common, and many people still got their light from lanterns. In the age of electricity, furnaces, and smoke detectors, SHC is vanishingly rare—but in 2010, Michael Faherty’s death in Ireland was officially attributed to spontaneous human combustion.
Some, limited experiments with pig carcasses have supported the fatwick theory. But experimenters have had a really hard time replicating it on human cadavers. They say that its quite difficult to generate temperatures sufficient to carbonize human bones without a significant amount of outside fuel.
So, the fat wick theory has some support, but we can’t call it “proven” yet.
But fatwick theory is what is most often cited in one of the most famous cases of SHC, the case of Mary Reeser.
On July 1st 1951, 67-year-old widow Mary Hardy Reeser had a tense visit with her son, Dr. Richard Reeser Jr., during which she complained that she hated living in Florida.
Mary moved south after her husband’s death, to be closer to the kids and grandkids, but she never really adjusted. It was too hot and too humid, and there were too many bugs.
She wanted to take a trip home to Pennsylvania, and became so agitated about this that she refused supper. Dr. Reeser reluctantly left his mother’s apartment at 9 PM. He didn’t think he should be alone, but she insisted he should go.
The next morning around 8:00 AM, landlady Pansy Carpenter tried to deliver a telegram to Mrs. Reeser, but found her apartment’s doorknob too hot to touch. Pansy sprung into action. There were painters working in the building, and getting their help was faster than calling the fire department.
The painters forced Mary’s door open. Inside, the apartment was hot and smelled like smoke, with scorch marks on the floor and streaks of grease on the walls.
At first, Pansy was relieved—they couldn’t see Mary anywhere. The fire must have started while she was out, perhaps running an errand or visiting her grandchildren.
Then the painters saw something awful: a slipper and part of a woman’s leg, sticking out of a pile of ashes. Horrified, they called the police.
Upon arriving, the police officers were just as confused as the painters. Sifting the ashes, they retrieved Mary’s left foot and a portion of her spine. That was really all that was left of her.
Despite apparent extreme heat, sufficient to turn her bones to ash, the fire didn’t spread, nor did it appear to generate much smoke—Mary’s bedsheets were still a crisp white. not even a streak of soot on them
most of the room where Mary’s body was found looked fairly normal, except for the greasy yellowish residue on the walls. Candles near Mary’s remains had melted into puddles of liquid wax, but their wicks didn’t burn.
Nobody in town had ever seen anything like this. In fact, the police had a hard time finding anyone out of town who’d seen anything like it.
The FBI ended up getting involved, but their investigation was inconclusive. The Feds weren’t able to determine a cause of ignition. there just wasn’t anything that obviously had set this fire. and no reason why the only thing that burned was Mary’s body. though, interestingly enough, their report ruled out spontaneous combustion.
And her case remained unsolved.
But the scientific community wasn’t ready to let go of Mary Reeser just yet.
A two-year reinvestigation by Joe Nickell and John F. Fischer concluded that Mary likely died in a similar way to most house fire victims, even though her body burned differently.
She became unconscious, due to her sleeping pills, before finishing her cigarette. Then the lighted cigarette ignited her highly flammable rayon acetate nightgown, the fire spread to her easy chair, and the chair smoldered at high temperatures for many hours without producing open flames; this superheated Mary’s body fat, causing her to burn like a candle. By the time she was found, her cigarette had burned up completely, leaving no sign of how the fire started.
In other words, the case of Mary Reeser gave rise to the fat wick theory, now the most widely accepted hypothesis about SHC.
So, maybe we have it. Fatwick theory after all. But is that something we all have to worry about? Can the fat inside of us just combust at any given moment if we’re near an open flame?
Well, probably not. Fatwick theory doesn’t apply to everyone, there are certain conditions that make a person more susceptible to burning from the inside out
For instance, bones that have been weakened—like the bones of people with osteoporosis—burn more easily and more completely than healthy bones. And many SHC victims were at an age where they likely suffered from at least some bone density loss.
There’s also a theory that diabetic people, or people on a Keto diet, may actually be in a state of ketosis where so much acetone has accumulated in their system it makes them more flammable.
There’s also a theory that diabetic people, may actually be in a state of ketoacidosis where so much acetone has accumulated in their system it makes them more flammable.
It’s not entirely proven, it has been difficult for researchers to replicate, though they have found that pig abdomens soaked in acetone do burn with the blue flame that is sometimes associated with SHC. People who are more prone to being combustible, like diabetics or people with brittle bones, find themselves near a combustible source, like a cigarette in Mary’s case, or a fire in the countesses case, and the ignition causes all of the fat in their body to ignite
And actually, that leads me back to Michael’s case. Because remember, Michael was diabetic.
Though it still says “spontaneous human combustion” on his death certificate, people now have a different understanding of how michael likely died. But lets go over the facts of his case again.
76-year-old Michael Faherty died alone at home on December 22nd, 2010. He was found lying on his back in his sitting room, with his head facing the fireplace. Scorch marks were observed above and below his body, but nothing else in the house was burned—though there was extensive smoke damage.
Michael was found near a fireplace with an active fire; however, forensics experts did not believe that fire caused his combustion. No accelerant was found at the scene. There was no evidence that anyone had entered or left the home between the time when Mr. Faherty must have ignited and shortly after 3 AM, when firefighters found him dead.
Michael suffered from Type 2 diabetes and hypertension. Due to the burned condition of the body, it was not possible to determine his exact cause of death. However, the state pathologist, Dr. grce Callagy, was able to examine his organs sufficiently to rule out heart failure.
Coroner Dr. Ciaran McLoughlin’s best guess, after months of studying the body and conducting a full coroner’s inquest, was that Michael died of shock due to being burned. With no ignition source identified, the coroner was forced to list SHC as a cause of death for the first time in a 25-year-career.
But, there was another theory…
Though she couldn’t prove it, based on her report, Dr. Callagy appears to have believed Mr. Faherty was dead before he caught fire. She noted a lack of soot in Mr. Faherty’s partial lung and his trachea, meaning he did not inhale smoke.
It would be difficult for a living person to burn to death without inhaling smoke, so if this is true, Mr. Faherty was probably dead when his body caught fire.
That leads us to the theory that maybe if he had a severe build up of acetone in his body, potentially from being diabetic, perhaps when he died it caused him to exude a lot of acetone, the vapors could have been ignited by the fire in the fireplace after all?
It’s interesting to note here, but Since Mr. Faherty’s death, the coroner in this case, Cieran McLoughlin, has continued to make headlines in Ireland. some Irish publications have characterized this particular coroner as an attention-seeker who was a little too eager to report the first case of SHC in decades. Perhaps he knew that something else killed michael, but he wanted to draw up some attention by calling it SHC
Maybe SHC isn’t as supernatural as people believed it to be.
But then what happened to those little girls in West Yorkshire, Alice Ann and Amy? How did two children, who most likely were not both diabetic or suffering from brittle bones catch fire at the exact same moment?
Children at the time were often dressed in highly combustible fabrics and raised in homes heated by open hearths. even the district coroner, William Barstow, in presiding over the inquest, expressed that children often burned to death in the area.
Separately, both Kirby sisters were left alone in rooms with open flames. The coroner’s inquest revealed that one of them had a history of playing with fire, while the other one had a history of pulling her younger siblings away from the fire.
Some believe that Most likely, both children got too close to the fires, their flammable clothes ignited, and their panicked reactions only fed the flames. By the time an adult was able to extinguish them, the sisters were too badly burned to survive. It was only coincidence that it happened at the same time.
the girls’ parents were separated at the time of their immolation. At a time when divorce was quite rare and even separation was highly stigmatized, the public may have been predisposed to perceive the tragedy as punishment for the Kirby family’s sins. And so, it was believed to be SHC
So, where does that all leave us… and most importantly, should we be worried about spontaneously combusting ourselves?
With so few cases to study, and only one of them occurring in the current millennium, it’s hard to draw any definitive conclusions about SHC or what causes it.
Some cases, like the Kirby sisters, were probably just accidents. Others were probably homicides or suicides that got mislabeled as SHC over the years. But that still leaves at least a few cases we can’t completely explain.
The acetone theory is pretty convincing, and it does potentially fit the Michael Faherty case, but, at least for now, it’s just a plausible theory.
The fat wick theory has been studied more, and definitely aligns well with Mary Reeser’s death. But it doesn’t explain the source of ignition in Michael Faherty’s case, especially if he was dead when he caught fire.
The problem with these theories is they are hard to ethically test. Unless one of you wants to volunteer to see how you could catch fire and have just the fat in your body burn you to ash, I don’t know how we’ll ever prove that.
And to me, at least, that’s the thing that is the spookiest about this condition. To this day, all we have are theories. No one knows why a human being can be reduced to a pile of ash out of seemingly nowhere.
But as we all sit here in the rogue detecting society headquarters, around the flickering flame of my fireplace. Perhaps we are all just one rogue ember landing on our shirtsleeve away from finding out for ourselves.
That’s all I have for you this week. Next week, I’m dragging you all with me to the north sea, one of the scariest and most dangerous remote locations on earth to hear stories of folklore, legends and real life horror. And until then, stay away from open flames, my dear listeners…