Spontaneous Human Combustion: A Bizarre Controversy

Summary

Ridiculous History: “Spontaneous Human Combustion: A Bizarre Controversy”

Podcast: Ridiculous History (iHeartPodcasts)
Hosts: Ben Bowlin, Noel Brown
Date: December 4, 2025
Episode Theme:
A humorous, inquisitive deep-dive into the long-standing claims, pop culture influence, and scientific debate over spontaneous human combustion (SHC)—the alleged, mysterious phenomenon where humans burst into flames with little to no external cause.

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Main Theme & Purpose

Ben and Noel set out to explore the strange, macabre allure of spontaneous human combustion—its origins in folklore, infamous historical cases, pop culture echoes (from Dickens to The X-Files), and the attempts of science to explain or debunk it. Is SHC a factual, if rare, human hazard? Or is it an enduring myth sustained by anecdote, fiction, and wishful thinking?

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Allure of Fire (00:26–02:07)

• The hosts open with a playful nod to “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and share their fascination (not arsonist tendencies!) with fire and its mythic place as both creator and destroyer.
• Quote:

  “Fire is pretty cool. Promethean even, right? It's a big deal. It is the great creator and the great destroyer.”
  —Ben Bowlin (01:54)

2. Defining Spontaneous Human Combustion (02:11–08:04)

• SHC: “At any point a human can catch on fire—from within, with no external ignition. The internal self-destruction.” (02:48)
• Medical definition:
  The body reduced to ash, little damage to extremities and surroundings, with a “bad-smelling oily substance” present.
  —National Library of Medicine cited (08:04)
• The concept’s persistence: A mix of genuine mystery, sensational stories, and cultural fascination.

3. SHC in Pop Culture (06:07–14:43, 19:04–21:23)

• X-Files references:
  Multiple episodes touch on SHC and pyrokinesis.
• Charles Dickens & Bleak House (09:00–13:35):
  • Dickens used SHC as a dramatic plot twist in Bleak House, killing off the sordid Mr. Krook.
  • Public criticism followed; Dickens, defending himself, cited “dozens upon dozens” of supposed real cases and medical testimony.
  • Quote:

    “I shall not abandon facts until there shall have been a considerable spontaneous combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received.”
    —Charles Dickens (read by Ben) (13:57)

• Other authors: Herman Melville, Nikolai Gogol, even Sherlock Holmes stories employ SHC as a dramatic device (19:04, 32:23).
• Modern takes:
  • Joe Hill’s The Fireman (a viral pandemic causes people to combust under stress).
  • Comics: Marvel’s Human Torch.

4. Alleged Real Cases of SHC (22:10–32:00)

a. Case 1: Polonus Vorstius (1470) (24:04)

• Italian knight in Milan; after heavy drinking, complained of fiery chest pain, coughed “flames,” then “burst into fire.”
• Not an elderly female, but a noted drinker—a recurring theme.

b. Case 2: Nicole Millet (1725) (25:46)

• Paris innkeeper’s wife found as a “pile of ash” on an unscathed straw mattress.
• Husband acquitted of murder after testimony about SHC from surgeon Claude Nicholas Lakat.

c. Case 3: Dr. Irving Bentley (1966) – Cowdersport, PA (27:50)

• Retired doctor found as a pile of ashes with a slippered leg inside his home; surroundings unscathed; described “sickly sweetish smell.”

• Official verdict: Accidental death, possibly started by a cigarette or pipe, but details don’t quite add up, especially for the localized burn.

• Quote:

  “How can a fire get hot enough to burn Dr. Bentley but not scathe his walker?”
  —Ben Bowlin (30:42)

5. Common Patterns Noted in Alleged Cases (22:10–26:12)

• Victims usually chronic alcoholics, often elderly women.
• Bodies reduced to ash with extremities intact.
• Little damage to surrounding area; distinctive greasy/oily residue.
• Noted in medical textbooks as early as 1823 (Medical Jurisprudence, cited by Perry in 1938 British Medical Journal).

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The Scientific Debate

The Wick Effect (32:59–34:52)

• Theory: Body fat acts as candle wax; clothing or hair becomes the “wick.” A small external ignition (like a cigarette) could set off a slow, contained burn—accounting for localized burning.
• Brian J. Ford’s experiment:
  Scale model humans with pig flesh marinated in acetone “burn like incendiary bombs.”

  “When a person is ill, they sometimes naturally produce traces of acetone in the body... an unwell individual produces high levels of acetone, which accumulate in the fatty tissues and can be ignited, perhaps by a static spark or a cigarette.”
  —Brian J. Ford (34:15)

Skeptical Rebuttals (35:25–36:33)

• The cremation problem: Human bodies require very high sustained temperatures (1400–3000°F) to reduce to ash—a level hard to reach and sustain without destroying the surroundings.

• The “contained fire” problem: Why does the rest of the room remain largely untouched?

• Quote:

  “If the fire’s hot enough to reduce a body to ash, how does it not also burn down the whole house?”
  —Noel Brown (36:33)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “He describes him as being old, short, cadaverous and withered, and his breath as issuing invisible smoke from his mouth as if he were on fire within.”
  —Dickens on Mr. Krook (13:35)
• “I'm not trying to make light of this dude's untimely demise, but it is a little funny to picture just the smoking pile of ash and like dude's charred water and like a leg joint and a foot still slippered.”
  —Noel Brown, on Dr. Irving Bentley (29:59)
• “These are natural, valid questions asked in good faith—and with these in mind, it shouldn’t surprise any of us that there are other schools of thought.”
  —Ben Bowlin, on the scientific debate (35:32)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:26 — Introduction & fire as mythic force
• 02:11 — Defining SHC
• 08:04 — Medical/scientific description of SHC
• 09:38 — Dickens and Bleak House
• 13:57 — Dickens defends his creative choice
• 19:04 — SHC in fiction (Melville, Gogol, Joe Hill, Marvel)
• 22:10 — Overview of “over 200” historical cases, key patterns
• 24:04 — Polonus Vorstius (“Patient Zero”)
• 25:46 — Nicole Millet case
• 27:50 — Dr. Irving Bentley, Cowdersport, PA (1966)
• 32:23 — SHC in Sherlock Holmes
• 32:59 — Science: the wick effect, acetone theory
• 35:25 — Rebuttals: cremation and heat containment
• 36:33 — Concluding open question: Is SHC possible?

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Tone & Style

• Playful, irreverent, and riff-heavy, with frequent asides referencing pop culture (X-Files, Harry Potter, comics).
• Deeply curious, but skeptical—hosts invite listeners along as co-investigators.
• Open acknowledgment of limits (“We don’t have the answer... want to know what you think!”), encouraging community discussion.

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Conclusion & Call to Action (36:33–38:53)

• No consensus: Science’s best answers are unsatisfying; some cases remain unexplained.
• SHC persists as myth, curiosity, and fiction, fueled by the fascination with “one of the weirdest stories across the span of human civilization.”
• Listeners are invited to join the conversation and share theories or skepticism on their Facebook group, “Ridiculous Historians.”

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Summary:
The episode balances history, science, and cultural myth-making, examining how SHC became entrenched in both popular imagination and pseudo-science. Through the lens of odd historical cases, Dickensian drama, and modern skepticism, Ben and Noel keep the investigation lively, skeptical, and fun, ultimately leaving listeners with more questions than answers and an open invitation to ponder the enduring mystery for themselves.

Transcript

[Ben Bullen]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartradio.

Welcome to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always so much for tuning in. We didn't start the fire, but we're happy to talk about it.

[Noel Brown]

It was always burning.

[Ben Bullen]

It was always.

[Noel Brown]

The world was turning.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes, yes. And shout out to everybody who is going to listen to that song right after this and shout out to anyone who can do all of the lyrics without pause or a slip.

[Noel Brown]

So topical. It's also kind of, it's very at the End of the World as We Know it cadence wise. And what's that band? Fall Out Boy does a modernized version of that. So with like updated lyrics that I'm not, you know, the hugest Fall Out Boy fan, but I thought it was clever.

[Ben Bullen]

And it plays a big role in an episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia's latest season where they try to do a modern version of We Didn't Start the Fire. And then they learned that Fallout Boy already did it. And they allude to apparently a decades long beef they've had with Fallout Boy, but it's the first time they mention it in the show. Speaking of shows, this is our super producer, Mr. Max Williams.

[Noel Brown]

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Ben Bullen]

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. That is none other than the one and only Mr. Noel Brown. I am Ben Bullen. I don't know why I paused there for a second. And I gotta tell you guys, at the risk of sounding like an arsonist.

[Noel Brown]

Oh dear.

[Ben Bullen]

Fire is pretty cool.

[Noel Brown]

You know what? Unequivocally, it's pretty cool. Promethean even, right? It's a big deal. It is the great creator and the great destroyer. It's. It's pretty cool and pretty terrifying.

[Ben Bullen]

And this is a bit of a.

This is a nice episode of ridiculous history. For anybody who's a fan of our sister podcast stuff they don't want you to know. If you, like us, grew up reading Time Life books like the Mysteries of the Universe and so on, you probably at some point learned of the controversial concept of spontaneous human combustion or. Or shc. It's the idea that due to some unknown factors or variables, at any point a human being can catch on fire.

[Noel Brown]

Internally just for no good reason, sort of self destruct.

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[Noel Brown]

This is definitely a bit of red meat for paranormal enthusiasts. As you mentioned, the kind of stuff we talk about and stuff they don't want you, surely. Ben, I've been rewatching the X Files lately. It's gotta be a spontaneous human combustion episode of the X Files.

[Ben Bullen]

Oh, or there are things related to SHC in the X Files. For sure. Yeah. You nailed it.

[iHeartRadio Announcer]

Oh, yeah.

[Noel Brown]

It was an episode called Fire.

[Ben Bullen]

There it is. Yeah. And I think there's an episode about maybe more than one about someone who can start fires.

[Noel Brown]

There's another one called Soft Light. I think there are more than one spontaneous. There's a whole section on spontaneous human combustion on the X Files film fandom wiki. So there you go.

[Ben Bullen]

Nice. Yeah. And you know, shout out to Chris Carter when you've got to put out an episode every week. Sometimes you return to similar.

[Noel Brown]

Wells brother, let me tell you. I think I've been watching season seven because I've been enjoying Pluribus so much that I wanted to go back and watch some of Vince Gilligan's X Files episodes. And I think he started writing a little later in the series, but. And while some of those episodes that he wrote are great, but there are some real stinkers later in the X Files, there's one where Mulder, speaking of stuff that I want you to know, gets trapped in the Devil's Triangle and transported back in time on the Queen Anne. And it is some scenery chewing, bad British accents in that episode, I'll tell you what.

[Ben Bullen]

And then, yeah, I put that with the humorous episodes. There's a Christmas episode I'm thinking of as well. Or with the. A lot of the technology episodes didn't age super duper well.

[Noel Brown]

No. And to your point, make that many episodes in a season. Back in the day when a season was like 30 something episodes, you're going to reuse some topics and there's going to be some misses.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. You know what I mean? Even Stephen King has to write about similar things at some point. Guy has several novels about a haunted bicycle.

So here we go. What is up with spontaneous human combustion? Is there any proof or confirmation of cases of shc? And what does science have to say?

[Noel Brown]

Science does have something to say about it. The National Library of Medicine writes on their website from the journal article Spontaneous Human Combustion in the light of the 21st century. The term spontaneous human combustion refers to a situation when a human body is found with significant portions of the middle part of the Body reduced to ash, much less damage to the head and extremities and minimal damage to the direct surroundings of the body. Typically, no observable source of ignition is found in the vicinity of the victim, and a bad smelling oily substance is noted.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, and this'll be familiar to all of our fellow nerds in the crowd. The idea has been around for quite some time, and it's still controversial. I compare it almost to the idea of the mellified man, which is an episode for another day, but it's entombing someone with honey, basically. So it came and went throughout history, but it really had its big pop culture moment, thanks to Charles Dickens, the guy who wrote A Christmas Carol and Bleak House and a bunch of other stuff. He mentioned spontaneous human combustion in his 1853 novel Bleak House. There's a case of human combustion in the story that really gripped his audience. And in the public's perception, this was amazing writing. They were like, this guy spits hot fire about fire.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, for sure. There's quite a reaction.

From the public, from his readers, like you said, because it was just such an outlandish idea. So considering that just 10 years before that he was writing about Ebenezer's Scrooge being visited by ghosts, Bleak House, you know, created an even more extreme response. One of the characters described is an old, sleazy alcoholic, and his name is Mr. Crook. And he ultimately meets his end as a pile of ash on the floor. And noted in the text, a dark, greasy coating on the walls and ceilings could be found.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, okay, so let's put on our investigative hats here, because our deerstalkers. Right, yeah, let's Sherlock it. So we know that heavy consumption of alcohol appears to be a common trend in a lot of human combustion stories. And also the note about a dark, greasy coating or an oily substance in the vicinity, that's something that we see reported in other cases. Now, in Is that dark, greasy coding thing, is it something that Dickens made up and then later informed a bunch of other people's stories and tall tales?

It's tough to parse that game of telephone, but we know the public said, okay, this is amazing, but that can't happen in real life, Charlie. You've gone a bridge too far. You've crossed a Rubicon realism.

[Noel Brown]

But he defends it pretty aggressively, doesn't he?

[Ben Bullen]

He very much does. He doesn't say, well, everyone's a critic. He says, hey, you guys don't know how much work I do making my little novels. All right? I did A lot of research. Here are dozens upon dozens of famous cases of spontaneous human combustion. And I have receipts, I have doctors from those times who said this stuff was real.

[Noel Brown]

You know, speaking of the X Files, if I'm not mistaken, there is a television miniseries adaptation, I believe, from the BBC of Bleak House, starring Gillian Anderson, Agent Scully herself. It is a little unusual though, right, to include something like this as just like a basic plot point. Right. It just seems like there were other. You know, it's an interesting. It must have been a pet subject for him. He just must have found it fascinating and thought it was worth including. Because I don't know the plot of Bleak House right off the top. Is it like a mystery? Like no one could figure out what happened to the old kook or krook. Mr. Crook.

[Ben Bullen]

Right? Crook with a K. A bit on the nose there, Charlie. Well, here's why I think the X Files mentions that we brought in here. Here's why I think they're so apropos. Because Bleak House, while it's considered a novel now, it was a lot more like X Files or Lost when Charles Dickens was first writing it. It was published as a 20 episode serial from 1852 to 1853. So our guy is writing in segments and publishing those segments. So like Chris Carter or Vince Gilligan, he's got to put out an episode every, you know, at a certain cadence. And so maybe he just starts thinking out of the box due to necessity, right? Maybe he's like, he's getting to the death scene for Crook and he's like, all right, I've done this, I did this. I got to do something. Oh, what about spontaneous human combustion? Or maybe, and this happens to us all the time, maybe he just got super obsessed with the subject and was trying to shoehorn it into his job.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, that's my theory, too. I do wanna read a little bit of his introduction to the character of Mr. Crook, where he kind of plants the seed of his untimely demise. He describes him as being old, short, cadaverous and withered, and his breath as issuing invisible smoke from his mouth as if he were on fire within.

[Ben Bullen]

Okay, okay. So he had this in mind. Here's what he said to his critics, by the way, when people were questioning the veracity of the death scene, he said, I shall not abandon facts until there shall have been a considerable spontaneous combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received. Now, that sounds a little bit complicated, a little bit roundabout and circuitous for us in the modern day, but he is essentially saying you guys are wrong. This happens. I know about this. And get this folks, he is not the only author to use spontaneous human combustion as a plot device.

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[Noel Brown]

Yeah, we've got Herman Melville as well as Nicholas Gogol, both who use SHC to end the lives of some characters in their books, respectively Redburn and Dead Souls. We've got more modern pop culture examples, of course, in characters like Johnny Storm, AKA the Human Torch from the Fantastic Four, Flame on and all of that, as well as Stephen King's son Joe Hill, who mimics the horrifying superhero supernatural fate of SHC in his novel the Fireman.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, the Fireman's a great book. In this book, without spoiling too much, there's a horrific plague. It's a virus called Dragon Scale, and if you get too stressed out and you have this virus, you erupt in flames and you die. We don't want to give you too much more of the plot. It's definitely worth a read. It's a page turner for sure. Also, I want to shout out Joe Hill's most recent novel, an absolute epic called King Sorrow. I was able to get it before it officially released and just devoured the thing. It's like it's 900 something pages long. Oh, wow. Yeah, but I think People who enjoy creative horror stories like this, I think you'll really dig it. It's a page turner as well.

[Noel Brown]

Is it? Like, for some reason I'm picturing King Sorrow as being some sort of big bad supernatural figure.

[Ben Bullen]

Oh, dude. It's similar to it. Stephen King's novel, the main bad guy, and this is also not a spoiler, is a extra dimensional dragon.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, like Pennywise was an extra dimensional spider. I'm not trying to poo poo poo Joe Hill for cribbing from his dad a little bit. If you're gonna steal, steal from the best. And if that happens to be your dad, so be it. I think Joe Hill's very is good. And he's good in his own right for sure, as I think you would agree.

[Ben Bullen]

Oh, yeah. And if you like graphic novels, get into Locke and Key.

[Noel Brown]

Well, that's the one. That's what got me into him. I think that came out maybe before he was as known as a novelist.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, yeah. And then he was publishing short stories in novellas. But yeah, I remember back in one of our older offices, you and I were actually trading editions of Locke and Key back and forth.

[Melissa Jeltson]

It's just.

[Noel Brown]

Gosh, I think I may still have some of yours. Ben. I need to do a cleaning of my graphic novel piles and I'll report back.

[Ben Bullen]

Okay, we'll stay tuned. Now, we know that everything we mentioned so far, these are works of fiction. And Charles Dickens is popping back at people and claiming that the fiction is informed by the facts. But when we get to the facts of what we call SHC, or spontaneous human combustion, we see over 200 alleged cases in the past three centuries. So it would be a very rare thing to occur. But it seems like a lot of people have been convinced it is indeed a real thing that can happen.

[Noel Brown]

Right? So over the past 300 years, there have been more than 200 reported cases of alleged SHC. If you want to look back even further, back to medieval times, you know, the historical period, not the theme restaurant, we find that allegedly the first account of this SHC was reported by Polonas Vorstius. And from that point on, each case of SHC has shared some of the following characteristics, some of which we've already described. Originally described in the medical book medical jurisprudence from 1823. That was revisited when cited by L. A. Perry in 1938 in a British Medical journal article. This is how that goes. Victims were chronic alcoholics, which tracks for our character in Dickens's novel, usually elderly females body had burned spontaneously, hands and feet Usually fell off fire, caused little damage to surrounding areas. The combustion of the body left a residue of greasy and fetid ash as well as a horrid odor.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, and doubtlessly Charles Dickens read this and it informed Bleak House. It's one of the things that informed it. We also know that just as a note, in the interest of objectivity, we know that that forensic science and medicine was nowhere near where it is today. So it's quite possible that there were.

Cases that appeared to be SHC that just got confused because we didn't have the technology or know how to really investigate them. But it looks like a lot of very smart people were saying, hey, something is happening. Let's go to some of the the popular cases, the ones that will stand out to anybody familiar with this. And we're also going to give a special shout out to a hometown case for our research associate, Dylan, for sure.

[Noel Brown]

Starting off with the aforementioned Polonius Vorstius. We'll call this Patient Zero, right from 1470. His case is popularly known for its 1641 mention in Danish physician Thomas Barthelen's book Historiarium. Historiarium Anatomicarum rariorum. Again, I'm potter coated right now. A collection of strange medical phenomena. And Vorstius was an Italian knight who lived in Milan, Italy in 1470.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. And despite not fitting the profile of being an elderly female, he did drink a lot of wine, reportedly. Okay. He has a wild night cracking the vino. And as he is still consuming wine, like this is a party till dawn situation, apparently he gets a strong fiery pain in his chest and he starts coughing, just really like hacking it up. As his coughing escalates, he starts vomiting flames. His whole body bursts into fire.

[Noel Brown]

Wow. I was about to say sick. No, that's scary. But it's pretty cool.

[Ben Bullen]

It's pretty metal.

[Noel Brown]

Way to go breathing fire.

Ben, I think we maybe are saying the quiet part out loud here. Is the implication that these people are just so booze soaked that a single spark might just set their entire bodies ablaze.

[Ben Bullen]

It seems to be, based on the information we have now, it seems that there is at least some kind of alleged relationship.

[Noel Brown]

Flammability.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, alcohol consumption and flammability. I mean, we see it again if we go a little bit forward in time to nicole millet from 1725. This was reported by a French author, Jonas Dupont, in his book from 1763, De Incendius Corporis humani Spontaneis, a collection of cases and studies about. The whole book is about spontaneous human Combustion, Yes.

[Noel Brown]

Expect a patronus. I'm sorry, I'm still so potter brained. Her case is told through the eyes of her husband, who's a Parisian innkeeper who was startled from his slumber by the smell of smoke, at which time he rushed to the source only to find his wife ablaze. Well, not even ablaze. I think she'd already. You know, it's like what happens in Skyrim when you get blasted by a wizard. You just end up like a little pile of ash.

[Ben Bullen]

And again, we see another factor that's common to a lot of these alleged cases. She's on a straw pallet, straw floor, bed, but it has not caught on fire. It's not even singed. It's unscathed. Despite the fact that straw is incredibly flammable when it's dry. All that was left of her body was her skull, along with a scattering of bones from her back and lower legs. And again, according to Dupont, this victim was also a heavy drinker. At first, the authorities go to her husband and say, okay man, you murdered your wife.

[Noel Brown]

Clearly. He was initially put on trial and found guilty of murder, but later was acquitted when he appealed using the SHC argument and was backed up by the testimony of one Dr. Claude Nicholas Lakat. This is an amazing name. Who was a surgeon who had been staying at the inn that very night and was able to corroborate some of the more unusual features of the case.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, and also able to speak from his own area of expertise. You know, I am a man of medicine. This can happen. So we know that there are hundreds and hundreds of alleged cases of this. So we can't do all of them, but we're going to give you one more that is crucial to our pal research associate, Dylan. It is the case of Dr. Irving Bentley that occurred in Cowdersport, Pennsylvania in 1966. So we're moving way forward in time.

[Noel Brown]

That's right. Dr. Bentley was a family doctor, a family GP serving the Cowdersport area. That's C O U D E R S P O r t from 1920 to 1953 after he retired, he just kind of lived a chill, little small town, quaint existence in his two story ranch Rambler. That's not true. That's Hank Hill's house. But it was a two story home in North Main street area of town. He had kind of a verbal agreement with the North Penn Gas Company that allowed them to enter his property and check on his gas meter, which was located in the basement because it was inside.

[Ben Bullen]

So they Couldn't just walk up to the side of the house. And so this is where we see an employee of the North Penn Gas Company, guy named don gosnell. It's December 5, 1966, and don gosnell, who's been, who's done this many times before, he lets himself into the good doctor's home. And it's 9am and he's just going to go straight down to the basement and check the meter. But as he gets closer to the basement, he is overwhelmed by a stench. He describes it as a sickly sweetish smell. So he follows his nose and he sees a skyrim style pile of ashes. And above the pile, there's a large hole in the ceiling and it's literally still smoking. There are glowing embers rimming it.

[Noel Brown]

I'm not trying to make light of this dude's untimely demise, but it is a little funny to picture just the smoking pile of ash and like dude's charred water and like a leg joint and a foot still slippered.

[Ben Bullen]

Right, Exactly. And he had apparently, I guess, burned through the floor of the master bathroom. And so he calls out for Dr. Bentley and he's trying to say, hey, is everything okay? You got a weird basement situation. And that's when he discovers Bentley in his master bathroom over the basement with, you know, just a few remains as we described there.

[Noel Brown]

I believe there was also a bit of burned bathrobe.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody involved with this case because of course Don gets to the authorities. Toot sweet. Everybody involved with this case is thinking, how can a fire get hot enough to burn Dr. Bentley but not scathe his walker? We do know that he was like so many people back then, a fan of tobacco, a bit of a tobacconist. He was a frequent smoker. We don't know too, too much about his alcohol consumption. We know the county deputy coroner got there. We know the local fire department was on the scene. The mortician was summoned, and eventually the deputy coroner had to make some official statement. That is deputy coroner John Deck. And we've got a direct quote from him.

[Noel Brown]

We do indeed. Looks like Doc Bentley was smoking his pipe. The pipe toppled over and spilled over the tobacco. And in the meantime, he fell asleep. When he woke up, he was on fire because some of the flannel night shirt pieces fell on the floor as he went to the bathroom. I don't know about that. That sounds, that's a little jumping. I don't know. I mean, it's not particularly thorough sounding. It just seems yeah.

[Ben Bullen]

Accidental death is the ultimate verdict or the ultimate conclusion of the authorities. But it's also a very vague conclusion, and it doesn't really explain.

The pattern of burning.

[Noel Brown]

I just think Agent Mulder would say tsk, tsk to this, right?

[Ben Bullen]

Ever heard of the knife ghost? That's one of my favorite Mulder lines.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, man.

[Ben Bullen]

No.

[Noel Brown]

That's good. Ben. We're about to talk about something called the wick effect. But I was just thinking, surely there must, speaking of our deerstalker hats and literature future b, a mention as a plot point in Sherlock Holmes of spontaneous human combustion. And there absolutely is. In a story called the Singular Problem of the Extinguished Wicks, a spinster is found dead in her apartment, strangely burned, with nothing else affected. But what seems a simple case is made more complex when her younger sister is later found dead in the apartment, also burned. So two cases of SHC or something else.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. And again, this is clearly an obsession in a lot of fiction, especially in years past. But we have to ask what science has to say about it. If you go to the scientific community at large and you ask them, hey, how do we explain something as out there and as frankly scary as spontaneous human combustion? You're most likely going to hear about something called the wick effect. The best way to think about it through ghoulish analogy is that your body is like a candle, and your body has fat in it. The fat acts as a flammable substance, and the oils from your body can be absorbed into your clothing, and it can be found in your hair. And maybe, if the conditions are right, a source as small as the lit cherry of a cigarette could set the candle on fire. And then they say, well, think about it this way. If we continue our ghoulish candle comparison, maybe this theory explains why fire of this sort can seem so contained and restricted just to the individual's body and the stuff they're wearing without really damaging the rest of the room.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. A guy named Brian J. Ford, who is a biologist and author, had this to say in support of this. The argument when a person is ill, they sometimes naturally produce traces of acetone in the body. And acetone is highly flammable. I experimented with scale model humans using pig flesh that had been marinated in acetone. They burn like incendiary bombs. Alcoholism can cause people to produce acetone. So can many diseases. My conclusion is that an unwell individual produces high levels of acetone, which accumulate in the fatty tissues and can be ignited, perhaps by a static spark or a cigarette.

[Ben Bullen]

I mean, it sounds good. I think we can all agree. However, there are some additional follow on questions. Right. Like when somebody is smoking a cigarette, how does that hit the flammable stuff? Like how does that trigger the issue? Because usually the. I'm assuming the fire is supposed to come from within. Yeah, it'll be outside of the body. So are these people just super hardcore gangsters and just putting the cigarette out on their tongue?

[Noel Brown]

They're doing a parlor trig. Or they swallow it, but the saliva, it seems like, would put it out before it got any more meaningful.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. And these are natural, valid questions asked in good faith and with these in mind, it shouldn't surprise any of us that there are other schools of thought. There are scientists who oppose the wick effect theory and they point out something that is pretty obvious to medical authorities. The human body has to get to a very high temperature to be reduced to just ashes.

[Noel Brown]

That's the kicker, right. We're talking 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. To put that into perspective, the process of cremating a human body happens when the temperatures reach between. Between 1400 and 1800 degrees. That is like vaporizing, you know, the kinds of temperatures that will, you know, reduce bone to ash. So this notion of the wick effect doesn't really take that into account. And also the whole secondary kicker of how does that fire stay contained within.

[Ben Bullen]

Right, yeah. Because there are many unfortunate and tragic cases of total loss. Loss, structural damage to homes and buildings that start from fires that are pretty small but still spread to consume the entire domicile. So at this point, we don't have the answer. We want to know what you think. Hop on over to our show page on Facebook, Ridiculous Historians, and tell us your take on spontaneous human combustion. Is this phenomenon alleged though it may be? Is it something that really happens? Or is it possible that somehow civilization got too excited about the concept and got everything wrong in all of these cases? That seems kind of unlikely.

[Noel Brown]

It does. It does seem pretty unlikely. And the fact that medical science still doesn't quite have a consensus on this so many years later, I don't know, it does seem relatively improbable and it.

[Ben Bullen]

Also seems endlessly fascinating. Folks, thank you so much for joining us. We can't wait to hear your thoughts over on Ridiculous Historians. Thanks to Our super producer, Mr. Max Williams, our research associate, Dylan, and who else?

[Noel Brown]

Who else? Oh, man. Well, plenty of people. But I just wanted to say, if you're feeling spontaneous, why don't you head on over to Apple Podcasts or your podcast platform of choice and write something nice. It makes us feel good and helps people discover the show. Huge thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme. Max Williams, super producer extraordinaire. Jonathan Strickland, the Quizzter, you know what you did. AJ Bahamas Jacobs, the puzzler.

[Ben Bullen]

And of course I am not thanking the Quizzter, but I am thanking we're both thanking Dr. Rachel Big Spinach Lance as well as our pals the Rude Dudes over ridiculous crimes. If you dig us, you'll dig them like a grave. I'm kidding. It's 99% murder free attack line that.

[Noel Brown]

We'Re we're very happy with.

Indeed. Oh geez. Happy holidays, I guess, right? No, is it Thanksgiving ish time? It's like holiday season holiday season. Y' all have a fun time with your fam or you know, with your friends. Friends givings are great. We'll see you next time, folks.

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