Spontaneous Human Combustion

                                MARY REESER:



                             A Case Study in

                      Spontaneous Human Combustion

                      ----------------------------

The 1951 death of Mrs. Mary Reeser of St. Petersburg, FL, who was found reduced

to ashes in a practically undamaged apartment, was a landmark case of

spontaneous human combustion because it was the first instance where every

possible tool of modern scientific investigation was used to determine the

cause of this mysterious phenomenon. Yet despite the efforts of the FBI, fire

officials, arson experts, and pathologists, a year after the incident Detective

Cass Burgess of the St. Petersburg police commented as follows:

        Our investigation has turned up nothing that could

        be singled out as proving, beyond a doubt, what

        actually happened. The case is still open. We are

        still as far from establishing any logical cause

        for the death as we were when we first entered

        Mrs. Reeser's apartment.

And Dr. Wilton M. Krogman, a physical anthropologist at the University of

Pennsylvania's School of Medicine and a world-renowned expert on the effects of

fire on the human body, finally gave up trying to figure out what happened. Dr.

Krogman said:

        I regard it as the most amazing thing I have ever

        seen. As I review it, the short hairs on my neck

        bristle with vague fear. Were I living in the Middle

        Ages, I'd mutter something about Black Magic.

Here are the details of the case:

Mrs. Mary Hardy Reeser, an agreeable, motherly widow of 67, was living in St.

Petersburg, Florida, to be near her son, Dr. Richard Reeser. On the evening of

July 1, 1951, she had remained in her son's home with one of her grandchildren

while the rest of the family went to the beach. When they returned, they found

that Mrs. Reeser had already left for her own apartment. The younger Mrs.

Reeser drove to her mother-in-law's to see if everything was all right.

According to her testimony, there was nothing in Mrs. Reeser's appearance or

demeanor to cause any alarm. Dr. Reeser visited his mother later that evening.

She was mildly depressed over the fact that she had not heard from two friends

who were supposed to rent an apartment for her in anticipation of a return trip

to Columbia, PA, formerly her hometown. His mother told him that she wished to

retire early and would take two sleeping pills to ensure a good night's rest.

Dr. Reeser left at about 8:30 PM and returned to his home.

The last person to see Mrs. Reeser alive was her landlady, Mrs. Pansy M.

Carpenter, who lived in another apartment in the four-unit building (the two

units between them were unoccupied). Mrs. Carpenter saw Mrs. Reeser briefly at

about 9 PM. She was wearing her nightgown, a housecoat, and black satin

slippers and was lounging in a comfortable chair smoking a cigarette. The bed

covers had been turned back. Mrs. Reeser's last night was a typical summer

night in Florida: the sky was overcast with occasional flashes of heat

lightning in the distance.

When Mrs. Carpenter woke up Monday morning at 5AM, she noticed a slight odor of

smoke but was not alarmed, since she attributed the smell to a water pump in

the garage that had been overheating lately. She got up, turned off the pump,

and settled back into bed. When she got up an hour later to collect her

newspaper outside, she no longer smelled any smoke.

At 8AM a telegram arrived for Mrs. Reeser. Mrs. Carpenter signed the receipt

and went to her tenant's apartment to bring her the telegram.  The doorknob,

when she placed her hand on it, was hot. Alarmed, she stepped back and shouted

for help. Two painters working across the street ran over. One of them opened

the door; as he entered, he felt a blast of hot air. Thinking of rescuing Mrs.

Reeser, he frantically looked around but saw no signs of her. The bed was

empty. There was some smoke, but the only fire was a small flame on a wooden

beam, over a partition separating the living room and kitchenette.

The firemen arrived, put out the small flame with a hand pump. and tore away

part of the partition. When Assistant Fire Chief S. O. Griffith began his

inspection of the premises, he could not believe his eyes. In the middle of the

floor there was a charred area roughly four feet in diameter, inside of which

he found a number of blackened chair springs and the ghastly remains of a human

body, consisting of a charred liver attached to a piece of the spine, a

shrunken skull, one foot still wearing a black satin slipper, and a small pile

of ashes.

Coroner Edward T. Silk arrived to examine the body and survey the apartment.

Although deeply puzzled, he decided the death was accidental and authorized the

removal of the remains. The scooped-up ashes, the tiny shrunken head, and the

slipper-encased foot were taken by ambulance to a local hospital. 

The ensuing investigation included police and fire officials as well as arson

experts. The facts that confronted them seemed inexplicable considering the

great heat necessary to account for Mrs. Reeser's incinerated body. Little of

the furniture, other than the chair and the end table next to it, was badly

damaged, but the apartment had suffered some peculiar effects. The ceiling,

draperies and walls, from a point exactly four feet above the floor, were

coated with a smelly, oily soot. Below this four foot mark there was none. The

wall paint adjacent to the chair was faintly browned, but the carpet where the

chair had rested was not even burned through. A wall mirror 10 feet away had

cracked, probably from heat. On a dressing table 12 feet away, two pink wax

candles had puddled, but their wicks lay undamaged in their holders. Plastic

wall outlets above the four foot mark were melted, but the fuses were not blown

and the current was on. The baseboard electrical outlets were undamaged. An

electric clock plugged into one of the outlets had stopped at precisely 4:20,

but the same clock ran perfectly when plugged into one of the baseboard

outlets.

Newspapers nearby on a table and draperies and linens on the daybed close at

hand - all flammable - were not damaged. And though the painters and Mrs.

Carpenter had felt a wave of heat when they opened the door, no one had noted

smoke or burning odor and there were no embers or flames in the ashes.

Faced with such a mystery, the St. Petersburg authorities called in the FBI.

Laboratory findings showed that Mrs. Reeser's estimated weight of 175 lbs. had

been reduced to a total of _less than 10 lbs._, including the foot and shrunken

head. The final report concluded that no known chemical agents or other

accelerants had been involved in starting the fire.

Dr. Krogman has burned cadavers with gasoline, oil, wood, and all kinds of

other agents. He has experimented with bones encases in flesh or stripped, both

moist and dry. His tests have utilized combustion apparatus ranging from

outdoor pyres to the most modern pressurized crematorium equipment. He has

demonstrated conclusively that it takes extraordinary heat to consume a body,

and that only at over 3000 degrees Fahrenheit would bone become volatile enough

to lose its shape and leave only ashes. "These are very great heats", he said,

"that would sear, char, scorch or otherwise mar or effect anything and

everything within a considerable radius."

Another mystery was the slippered left foot, which Mrs. Reeser, having been in

some discomfort, was in the habit of propping up on a stool. The foot was left

unburned, apparently because it was outside the mysterious four-foot radius of

incineration.

Perhaps strangest of all, and unique to this case of SHC, was the shrunken

skull. Dr. Krogman commented:

        ...the head is not left complete in ordinary burning cases.

        Certainly it does NOT shrivel or symmetrically reduce to a

        smaller size. In presence of heat sufficient to destroy soft

        tissues, the skull would literally explode in many pieces.

        I...have never known any exception to this rule.

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SEE:    Michael Harrison, "Fire From Heaven"

        Vincent Gaddis, "Mysterious Fires and Lights"

        Francis Hitching, "The Mysterious World: An Atlas of the Unexplained"

        Frank Edwards, "Stranger than Science"

        Reader's Digest, "Mysteries of the Unexplained"