WARNING: Episode describes topics that many not be suitable for children.
A widow burns to ash in her armchair, leaving behind a skull shrunk to the size of a teacup and almost nothing else in the room is touched. An Irish coroner rules a man's 2010 death "spontaneous combustion" after twenty-five years on the job without seeing anything like it. This week, Mitch and Russell dig into the strange 300-year history of spontaneous human combustion: the famous cases, the FBI file on Mary Reeser, the skeptics who say it's all just a slow-burning "wick effect," and the fringe theories that refuse to die. Is it bad forensic luck repeating itself for centuries, or something science still can't fully explain?

Sources:

1. "Spontaneous Human Combustion," Wikipedia.

2. "Death of Mary Reeser," Wikipedia.

3. "Spontaneous Combustion? The Curious Case of Mary Reeser," Northeast Journal.

4. "John Irving Bentley," Wikipedia.

5. "50 years later Bentley death still a mystery," Endeavor News.

6. "Henry Thomas (suspected combustion death)," En-Academic / Wikipedia mirror.

7. "Death of Jeannie Saffin," Wikipedia.

8. "George Mott," Unsolved Mysteries Wiki; Pacific Standard, "How to Explain Spontaneous Human Combustion."

9. "Coroner Concludes Irishman Died of Spontaneous Human Combustion," LiveScience.

10. "Coroner says Irishman died of 'spontaneous combustion': Blarney?" CBS News.

11. Nickell, Joe, and John F. Fischer. "Spontaneous Human Combustion," The Fire and Arson Investigator, 1984.

12. "Not-So-Spontaneous Human Combustion," Skeptical Inquirer, 1996.

13. "Wick effect," Wikipedia.

14. Emsley, John. Cited via Britannica, "Is Spontaneous Human Combustion Real?"

15. "7 Cases of Alleged Spontaneous Human Combustion," Mental Floss.

16. Dickens, Charles. Bleak House, 1853 (Chapter 32, "The Appointed Time").

17. IMAGE — Wikimedia Commons, "Strange Death Scene of Mary Reeser.png," public domain.

18. IMAGE — Wikimedia Commons, "Bleak House Découverte de Krook calciné.jpg," public domain.