Unsolved Mysteries: The Spontaneous Combustion of Mary Reeser

La combustione spontanea negli esseri umani è un fenomeno ipotetico che non è stato dimostrato empiricamente. Tuttavia, esistono diversi casi di persone morte in incendi improvvisi in cui questa sembra l'unica spiegazione possibile.

Bandera UK
Daniel Francis

Speaker (UK accent)

Aggiornato il giorno

Spontaneous Combustion

Ascolta questo articolo

Stampare

It was July 2nd, 1951 in St. Petersburg, Florida, when Mary Reeser’s landlady discovered that something was very wrong. The landlady, Pansy Carpenter, wanted to deliver a telegram to her sixty-seven-year-old tenant, but when she touched the doorknob on the door to Mary’s apartment, it was hot. Alarmed, Pansy called the police, and when the police arrived they discovered the burnt remains of Mary’s body inside her apartment.

What was mysterious in this case was that almost all of Mary’s body was carbonized, as was the chair that she had been sitting on, but nothing else in the apartment was burnt. There was no other evidence of a fire whatsoever. So, what had happened to poor Mary? Authorities disagreed on this point.

On examining the evidence, the FBI hypothesized that Mary, who had been a smoker and been taking sleeping pills, had fallen asleep while smoking and set fire to her clothes with a lit cigarette. However, professor Wilton M. Krogman, a physical anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine, contested this theory. He later hypothesized that Mary had been murdered at another location, then burnt in a crematorium, before being transferred to her apartment, where the murderer had used special equipment to heat up the doorknob and fabricated the scene.

Today, many believe that Mary was a victim of spontaneous human combustion, a phenomenon in which a person spontaneously bursts into flames, without any apparent external source of ignition. However, scientists contest that spontaneous human combustion is truly possible, so we still don’t know what really happened to Mary Reeser, whether she was murdered or died from natural or supernatural causes. Perhaps we never will.

It’s a Woman’s Game: US Soccer
AdobeStock

Current Affairs

It’s a Woman’s Game: US Soccer

Il 15 maggio 1940, in una località californiana sulla famosa Route 66 negli Stati Uniti, è stato aperto il primo ristorante McDonald's. Con fan e detrattori, la catena è ancora oggi un punto di riferimento globale per il fast food.

Talitha Linehan

From Land’s End to John O’ Groats
AdobeStock

Places

From Land’s End to John O’ Groats

Ovvero, dalla punta occidentale della Cornovaglia all’estremo nord della Scozia (o viceversa). Un viaggio attraverso tutta la Gran Bretagna, che dal 1871, quando fu fatto per la prima volta per beneficenza, ha sempre stimolato la voglia di avventura. L’ideale sarebbe farlo in bici o a piedi!

Mark Worden

More in Explore

TODAY’S TOP STORIES

Ironwoman

People

Ironwoman

Il suo laboratorio è una tenda indiana e i metalli sono la sua passione. Ferro, bronzo, acciaio non hanno segreti per Heather McLarty, l’artista californiana che crea capolavori con incudine e martello.

Talitha Linehan