7 Cases of Alleged Spontaneous Human Combustion

“Four feet distance from the bed there was a heap of ashes, two legs untouch’d, from the foot to the knee, with their stockings on,” wrote Paul Rolli, a fellow of the British Royal Society, describing the mysterious 1731 death of Countess Cornelia Bandi. The inconclusive circumstances of her demise led Rolli to an unusual diagnosis: spontaneous human combustion, the first such case in scientific literature.

Many investigators have since examined the phenomenon and gathered that spontaneous human combustion is simply pseudoscience. Often, a more mundane but no less tragic explanation of the victim’s death can be gleaned from the evidence. Here are a few famous cases.

1. Henry Thomas
2. Robert Francis Bailey
3. Mary Reeser
4. John Irving Bentley
5. Jeannie Saffin
6. George Mott
7. Jack Angel

Henry Thomas

Thomas, a 73-year-old man living in South Wales, came to his mysterious end in 1980. The police and forensic scientists deduced the details from Thomas’s remains: He had been sitting comfortably in his easy chair when he somehow caught fire near the top of his body and burned to death. And it was an intense fire—all that was left of Mr. Thomas were his legs below the knee and his skull. Oddly, his feet were completely unburned and his legs were still clothed in socks and trousers that were practically untouched by the fire.

Although there was evidence of a fire in the fireplace, there was no evidence that it had spread from there. One of the non-combustion theories of his cause of death was that Thomas had somehow managed to set his hair on fire while stoking the fireplace, then sat down in his chair unaware of the fact. The trained crime scene officer who analyzed the place argued that if a man had been sitting down when he realized his hair was on fire, he certainly wouldn’t sit there and continue to let it burn. In the end, though, Thomas’s death was ruled “death by burning,” with no mention of spontaneous human combustion.

Robert Francis Bailey

Bailey apparently experienced something similar about 13 years prior to Thomas's incident. A group of London office workers was waiting for the bus around 5 a.m. on September 13, 1967, when they noticed flames in the upper window of a building. They immediately called the police, who rushed to the scene of the derelict building. There, they found the still-burning body of Robert Bailey, an unhoused man. The police officer first to the scene reported that a blue flame was being emitted forcefully from a four-inch slit in Bailey's abdomen, and his teeth were clenched down on the newel post of the staircase he had collapsed next to. They managed to extinguish Bailey by forcing a hose into the abdominal cavity.

No external means of ignition were found on his body, and he was a non-smoker. He did abuse alcohol, though—he drank denatured alcohol because it was cheap. Denatured alcohol is the stuff without any beverage properties to it; it’s often used to ignite fires while camping and to remove stains from clothes and upholstery. One theory was that all of the denatured alcohol in his gut somehow reacted with an igniter of some sort.

Mary Reeser

The St. Petersburg, Florida, resident was found dead in her home on July 2, 1951. Her landlady showed up at the door around 8 a.m., and when she touched the doorknob to the apartment, it was alarmingly warm to the touch. Getting no response from inside, the landlady called the police.

They found what was left of Mary Reeser in a chair, just like Henry Thomas. Part of her left foot remained, including the slipper it was encased in. Her skull remained as well, but some reports say the heat had shrunk it down to the size of a teacup. Reports and evidence were sent off to the FBI; the bureau concluded that Reeser had taken sleeping pills—something she was known to do regularly—and then inadvertently set herself on fire with her cigarette after the pills had taken effect. Professor Krogman of the University of Pennsylvania had another theory, though: Someone had murdered her, then incinerated her remains in a crematorium and brought them back to her apartment for someone to find. What's more, he suggested, they used some sort of a portable heating device to burn the spots that surrounded Mary’s body and burn the doorknob to make it hot.

John Irving Bentley

Bentley, of Coudersport, Pennsylvania, enjoyed an evening visiting with friends at his home on December 4, 1966, and then, apparently, spontaneously combusted. Sometime after 9 p.m., when his friends departed, and the morning of December 5, when his meter reader showed up to check the meter, Bentley was reduced to a pile of ashes, except for his right leg. The meter reader noticed a weird odor and saw some blue smoke and decided to investigate; When he reached Bentley’s bathroom he found Bentley and ran to get help, yelling, “Dr. Bentley has burned up!”

At first, it was thought that the elderly man had accidentally set himself on fire with his pipe, but then his pipe was found intact by his bedside. Nevertheless, it remains the culprit in this case: Investigators determined that he dropped ashes from his pipe onto his robe and then went to the bathroom to fetch a pitcher of water to put out the flames. This was supposed by the broken remains of something that may have been a pitcher and by Bentley's smoldering robe, which was found next to the hole that had burned through the floor. Bentley apparently kept matches in his robe pocket, which are thought to have intensified the fire when they caught.

Jeannie Saffin

Saffin’s case stands out with one unusual detail: Someone actually witnessed her combustion. She was 61 years old when she died, but had the mental development of a 6-year-old. According to her father, who was 82, he and Jeannie were both sitting in the kitchen when he saw a bright surge of light out of the corner of his eye and turned to ask his daughter if she had seen it. To his amazement, when he turned his head to look at her, she was on fire, but just sat still with her hands in her lap. He yanked her over to the sink to try to put out the flames and disfigured his hands in the process.

Jeannie suffered “full thickness” burns on her face, hands, and abdomen, meaning the flesh was burned down to the subcutaneous fat. She lapsed into a coma and died eight days later. Her combustion is largely unexplained, though an attempt has been made: Supposedly, a spark from her father’s pipe had fallen into her clothing sometime earlier and was only ignited when a gust of wind from an opening door fanned it.

George Mott

George Mott, of Crown Point, New York, was enjoying an episode of The Twilight Zone the night before he burst into flames, and is said to have remarked, “Nothing weird like that ever happens to me. I wish it would.” The next day, according to Weird New England, his son found 3.5 pounds of bone and ash that used to be George Mott. Unlike some of the other people on this list, Mott was not a smoker and therefore couldn’t have accidentally touched a cigarette to his clothing. An investigation came up with no means of external ignition whatsoever. Another kicker: Mott was a retired fireman.

Jack Angel

Jack Angel is a man who spontaneously combusted—and survived. At least, that’s his story. He said he simply went to sleep in his trailer in a hotel parking lot and woke up four days later with burns and blisters all over his body, including a giant hole in his chest. He got up and showered and walked over to the hotel, where he collapsed. He woke up in a hospital and was so badly burned that his right hand became horribly infected and was unsalvageable. He had to have his arm amputated at the elbow. However, this totally contradicts what Angel said in court when he sued the manufacturers of his trailer's hot water heater for $3 million. The conclusion? Angel was taking a shower when the water stopped and when he went out to check it, the pressure valve released and the hot water scalded him. But the doctor who examined Angel signed a report saying that Angel had burned from the inside out, not the outside in. Was the doctor mistaken? Or did Angel really spontaneously combust and then try to pass it off on a faulty hot water heater to get the money?

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A version of this story was published in 2009; it has been updated for 2025.