Like life, death can come in all forms, but some strange passings keep us wondering, how on earth is it possible? Such is the sad yet perplexing passing of Mary Reeser, an old widow, who apparently just burnt with no explanation whatsoever.
Referred to as the ‘cinder lady’ by the contemporary press, Reeser’s story was ruled by the public as the only case of death by spontaneous combustion in history. Even scientists have jumped in to analyze the case to expose their theories. However, to this day, her passing is still an unsolved case.
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What Happened to Mary Reeser?
It was a hot summer night in 1951 in Tampa Bay, Florida, when Dr. Richard Reeser kissed his mother goodbye. Without knowing it, it would be the last time he would see his loving mother. Mary wasn’t herself that day, she had moved to Florida to be near her son and grandchildren but missed her life in Pennsylvania.
She was feeling so homesick that day, that she didn’t even have a bite during dinner with her son. After Richard left, Mary decided to slip into her nightgown and have two sleeping pills, the only thing she had in her system before passing, and have a cigarette on her couch before going to sleep.
The next morning, Mary Reeser’s landlady, Pansy Carpenter, went to deliver the widow a telegram. The doorknob was too hot to touch; she perceived a strange smell that immediately alerted her. Pansy called the fire station, and all witnessed the most disturbing and strange scene. Right where Mary’s couch was, the embers still crackled, but there was no sight of the sweet lady who loved cross-stitching.
Firefighters could only find a pile of ashes and some coil springs that belonged to Reeser’s chair. The most bone-chilling discovery was a part of Mary’s backbone and her left foot that was still wearing her black silk slipper. More shocking was the finding of her skull, which according to the official police reports, was still intact although it had “shrunken to the size of a cup.”
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Spontaneous Combustion and Other Wack Theories
The police immediately started to look for signs of violence or forced entry believing this had been a murder, but they found nothing. The fire wasn’t even started by accident as all the walls were clean and the electric switches were perfectly normal. Inside Mary’s apartment, other than the horrid couch scene, everything looked neat and ordinary.
Having no clear answer to what happened to this sweet old lady, the public started cracking out some strange theories. Theories ranged from thermite bombs to phosphorus, or even that “a ball of fire came through the open window and hit her.” But as crazy as this last one might sound, it wasn’t as far-fetched as the theory that still prevails: Mary Reeser died from a spontaneous human combustion; but how?
J.R. Reichart, chief of the St. Petersburg police was so overwhelmed with the hundreds of letters suggesting what had happened to Reeser and the lack of evidence to prove anything that eventually decided to approach the FBI.
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Real Cause of Death?
The Bureau received boxes of evidence, and their laboratory examined absolutely everything, from samples of the rug and rubble from the walls to bits of the chair and the remains of Mary. After weeks of thorough analysis, they came to nothing. The FBI claimed they had no evidence suggesting that she had been struck by lightning and that the electric installation of her apartment was perfectly normal, thus ruling out an accidental fire.
Chief Reichart, eventually concluded that “common combustible fluids and accelerants such as alcohol, gasoline, etc. would probably be consumed in such a fire and no trace of them detected afterward.” Still, how come the only thing that burnt, if there was some sort of combustible involved, was Mary’s body? To ease the thousands of curious people, Reichart also ruled out spontaneous combustion.
What many scientists and experts who curiously analyze this case believe is that it was likely that the sleeping pills hit hard on Mary and made her doze off in her chair. If you remember well, Mary was smoking when she passed and according to reports, she was wearing a nightgown made of rayon acetate, a very flammable material. Since she was passed out, she never noticed she had set on fire. Also, they claim that human fat might’ve been what fed the fire.
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The Unsolved Case of Mary Reeser’s Death
Decades later, Mary Reeser’s daughter-in-law, Ernestine Reeser, declared that “Mary was a great smoker. 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.” In other words, the family accepted this theory, but not everyone else did.
Wilton M. Krogman, a notable anthropologist from the University of Pennsylvania, among many other specialists, disagrees with this theory. For starters, he claims that if that were the case, her skull would’ve exploded instead of shrinking. Also, he argues that the temperature wasn’t high enough to burn Mary’s body into ashes. To get into a cremation state, the fire should’ve been several thousand degrees higher and lasted for several hours. “I cannot conceive of such complete cremation without more burning in the apartment,” Krogman said at the time.
Over seven decades have passed since the mysterious passing of Mary Reeser, but even today, there’s no real explanation for what happened to her. No one has been able to confirm or deny the possibility she died by spontaneous combustion. But if it was, we all now have a new fear unlocked.