On 2 July 1951,
Mary Reeser, a 67-year-old woman, was found burned to death in her house after her landlady realised that the house's doorknob was unusually warm. The landlady notified the police, and upon entering the home they found Reeser's remains completely burned into ash, with only one leg remaining. The chair she was sitting in was also destroyed. Reeser took
sleeping pills and was also a smoker. Despite its proliferation in popular culture, the contemporary FBI investigation ruled out the possibility of SHC. A common theory was that she was smoking a cigarette after taking sleeping pills and then fell asleep while still holding the burning cigarette, which could have ignited her gown, ultimately leading to her death. Her daughter-in-law stated, "The cigarette dropped to her lap. Her fat was the fuel that kept her burning. The floor was cement, and the chair was by itself. There was nothing around her to burn".
[29][30]
Margaret Hogan, an 89-year-old widow who lived alone in a house on Prussia Street,
Dublin,
Ireland, was found burned almost to the point of complete destruction on 28 March 1970. Plastic flowers on a table in the centre of the room had been reduced to liquid and a television with a melted screen sat 12 feet from the armchair in which the ashen remains were found; otherwise, the surroundings were almost untouched. Her two feet, and both legs from below the knees, were undamaged. A small coal fire had been burning in the grate when a neighbour left the house the previous day; however, no connection between this fire and that in which Mrs. Hogan died could be found. An inquest, held on 3 April 1970, recorded death by burning, with the cause of the fire listed as "unknown".
[31]
On 24 November 1979, during Thanksgiving weekend, Beatrice Oczki, a 51-year-old woman, was found charred to death in her home in the village of
Bolingbrook, Illinois, United States.
[32]
Henry Thomas, a 73-year-old man, was found burned to death in the living room of his council house on the
Rassau estate in
Ebbw Vale,
South Wales, in 1980. Most of his body was incinerated, leaving only his skull and part of each leg below the knee. The feet and legs were still clothed in socks and trousers. Half of the chair in which he had been sitting was also destroyed. Police forensic officers decided that the incineration of Thomas was due to the
wick effect.
[33]
In December 2010, the death of Michael Faherty, a 76-year-old man in County Galway, Ireland, was recorded as "spontaneous combustion" by the coroner. The doctor, Ciaran McLoughlin, made this statement at the inquiry into the death: "This fire was thoroughly investigated and I'm left with the conclusion that this fits into the category of spontaneous human combustion, for which there is no adequate explanation."[34]
In this example from
The Skeptic magazine, there were two children from the same family who were burned to death in different places at the same time. The evidence showed that although the coincidence seemed strange, the children both loved to play with fire and had been "whipped" for this behavior in the past. Looking at all the evidence, the coroner and jury ruled that these were both accidental deaths
