Spontaneous Human Combustion & Madge Knight’s Death

Is it possible for a human to catch fire without any external source? How terrifying would that be?

In this episode, we discuss several potential cases of spontaneous human combustion where individuals are found in peculiar ways, with their bodies burned and disintegrated, yet items nearby are completely fine.

We also discuss the mysterious death of Madge Knight, who some believe suffered an experience of spontaneous human combustion.

Is it possible to start a fire without an ignition source?

Can people mysteriously burst into flames without an external source of heat?

What caused Madge Knight’s mysterious burns that eventually led to her death?

What is up, Bizarros?! This week we are asking Is Spontaneous Human Combustion Real and diving into the mysterious death of Madge Knight.

Mysterious Death of Madge Knight & Spontaneous Human Combustion

In 1943, in Aldingbourne, West Sussex, England, Madge Knight died due to complications from mysterious burns she suffered during one fateful night. 

Madge is living a relatively normal, happy life with her husband, who is a retired architect. They also lived with Madge’s sister and her sister’s husband, who were formerly known as Mr. And Mrs. Moore.

In November of 1943, Madge’s husband took a trip to London with Madge’s sister, um, take that for what it is…I’m sure just a business trip. But, when they got back, Madge and her husband got into a huge argument, which according to Mr. And Mrs. Moore, was rare for them.

They suspected, of course, that it was rooted in jealousy.

Madge had reportedly also been heavily drinking the night that her husband and sister returned.

It got so bad that Mr. And Mrs. Moore left the home for a while, due to how intense the argument was and how uncomfortable they felt.

They ended up coming back around 10 pm when things seemed to settle down a bit. They discovered that Madge was sitting alone in their living room, still drinking.

They asked about her husband, and she said that he had already gone to bed.

To the Moores, she appeared very calm and surprisingly lucid despite how much alcohol she had consumed.

It is noted that it was common for Madge to have 5 or 6 whiskies every evening before bed, so other than the huge fight, this was a pretty typical evening. Eventually, the drinks stopped flowing, and everyone went to sleep.

Later that night, around 3:30 AM, everyone was abruptly awoken by the sounds of shrieks coming from Madge’s room.

The Moores ran to find out what had happened.

They discovered Madge lying in the bed, completely naked, covered only by her blanket.

She was writhing and groaning in pain, and they could see that it looked as if the skin on her back had been somehow “peeled away.”

Madge’s sister immediately attended to her and tried to figure out what happened, while apparently, Mr. Moore went back to bed.

Eventually, Madge calmed back down, despite her injury, and she was left on her own to return to sleep.

If you think it’s weird that they didn’t try to get any medical help – yes, you are correct. It is weird. But, for whatever reason, they didn’t feel any urgency, despite Madge being in a great amount of pain and the skin on her back literally peeling off.

Also, her husband never woke up in his room to check on her or anything.

The following morning, Mr. Knight woke up around 8 am and discovered what happened to his wife. He called a doctor, who came around 11 am.

After being examined by the doctor, he determined that it wasn’t a cut or anything like that. Rather, her back had been severely burned, and gave her some morphine.

Everyone acknowledged that there was no smell of burnt skin or anything in the air, nor was her bed or the room hot.

There were also no obvious sources of fire that could have created intense enough flames to have given Madge such a terrible burn.

Her bedclothes had not been burned or singed, either.

The doctor was understandably baffled but stuck by his diagnosis. When the police were called, just because everyone was so confused, they were left unsure of what had occurred, too.

An investigation into the previous evening’s events would turn up some discrepancies in the Moores’ version of events compared to the husband’s.

While they said that the Knights had been arguing intensely the previous evening, Mr. Knight had a different, conflicting version of what had happened.

According to him, he had merely sat and listened to his wife, who was upset at him, and who he described as “excited” rather than angry. He claimed he did not engage in any yelling with her, no was she truly that angry.

According to him, she had been stressed out from doing so much housework all of the time, as well as her ailing health, and that it had had nothing to do with his trip to London.

In the meantime, Madge was taken to a hospital for treatment, where another doctor came to the conclusion that the burns had been caused not by fire but rather by a corrosive substance of some kind, such as acid, but there was no sign of anything like that at the home.

Medical staff did all they could for her, but surprisingly and tragically, Madge would die four days later from bacterial toxins in the blood due to her injuries, a condition called toxemia.

Essentially it’s like blood poisoning from toxins, based around bacterial infections.

When it came to looking into her strange death, it wasn’t a very thorough investigation. The conflicting reports were not questioned further, nor the fact that Mr. Moore simply went back to bed or that Mr. Knight had never awoken.

Other than potential foul play, which I suppose could be at hand here, although isn’t really talked about at all, there are two more unusual theories we’ll get into.

The first is poltergeist activity.

Paranormal Researcher Harry Price discussed this case in his book Poltergeist Over England.

He thinks it was a poltergeist that caused the burns and then her subsequent death.

Another theory, which will also be the base for the rest of the episode, is that perhaps Madge had been a victim of spontaneous human combustion.

What is Spontaneous Human Combustion?

The theory of spontaneous human combustion is that a person could inexplicably burst into flames without any sort of external flame or source. It would merely be internal.

This theory goes back to the 1600s and was more popularized by Charles Dickens since he used spontaneous human combustion to kill off Krook, a character in his book Bleak House.

Theories against SHC say we are mostly made up of water, and our only flammable properties are fat and methane gas, so it isn’t likely to occur.

Others say that a body needs to be exposed to flames of incredibly high heat to be reduced to ashes, so how would it be that other objects in the room didn’t also catch fire or burn?

I have a quote from Scientific American, which I’ll be using again later on a theory. But just keep this in mind:

“The human body isn’t especially flammable and has high water content. Surely the fire would be doused rather quickly even if the body did manage to catch fire.

That’s why it takes flames of around 1600 degrees Fahrenheit over two hours or more to cremate human remains. A cigarette tip, in contrast, only burns at around 700 degrees Celsius.”

So, this isn’t just something that is likely to happen, you know?

That said, let’s get to some cases.

Spontaneous Human Combustion Cases

Case 1

This case involves Helen Conway, and here is a quote from the online article on Exemplore –

In 1964, firefighters and paramedics were confronted by an unimaginably gruesome scene at the residence of Helen Conway.

They entered the bedroom of the Delaware, Pennsylvania, home to discover a scorched upholstered chair under blackened walls in a corner. At the foot of the chair were the recognizable remains of Conway.

Her upper body, along with portions of her chair, had been reduced to ashes. However, her legs and the rest of the room were unscathed.

The fire inspector believed Conway’s death was caused by her heavy smoking habit (it was documented that there were several cigarette burns throughout her house and bedroom).

One of the firefighters had this to say:

“The amazing part of the incident, in my opinion, is the time element.” Meslin went on to say that the granddaughter made the fire alarm call within “three minutes” of leaving Helen Conway’s house. That meant Mrs Conway was alive at 8:42 AM, and the firemen arrived to find her remains at 8:48 AM – taking only 6 minutes.”

Case 2

On July 2nd, 1951, a landlady was checking in a resident. She touched the doorknob and realized it was unusually warm.

Immediately, she alerted the police.

When they entered, they discovered 67-year-old Mary Reese burned to death, completely turned into ash, with only a leg remaining.

The chair that Mary had been sitting in was also destroyed. They discovered some sleeping pills near the burn marks, and apparently, Mary was a smoker.

A potential theory is that Mary took the sleeping pills while smoking, dozed off, and dropped the cigarette, which ignited everything.

Maybe she also liked taking bathes with gasoline, who knows.

Case 3

An 89-year-old woman in Ireland, Margaret Hogan, was found completely burned to the point of ashes on March 28th, 1970.

Strangely, the majority of the surroundings in the home were untouched and in great condition.

However, there were plastic flowers on the table in the center of the room that had melted to a liquid and Margaret’s television screen, which was about 12 feet away from where her ashes lie, was also melted.

Similarly to Mary, in a way, both of Margaret’s feet and legs below the knee were perfectly fine.

So, it’s kind of like an upper body/core thing, it seems.

Case 4

In 1980, a 73-year-old man named Henry Thomas was discovered burned to death in his living room in South Wales.

His entire body was incinerated, although they were able to identify his skull and a portion of each leg below his knee, which, again, were oddly unharmed.

In fact, in Henry’s case, the legs still had on part of his trousers and his socks.

Case 5

Let’s get a little more recent, in Ireland in 2010, a 76-year-old man Michael Faherty was deemed, quote, “spontaneously combusted” by the coroner.

Here is a quote from the doctor, Ciaran McLoughlin, regarding 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.”

Theories About Spontaneous Combustion

Natural explanations

Low Mobility

Whether it be due to older age or obesity, some of the victims may have died in their sleep or when they caught fire, did not have the energy or the ability to escape.

Smoking

Some believe that the majority of spontaneous human combustion victims are smokers.

But, not necessarily that they purposefully or even accidentally lit themselves ablaze, but rather in their older age, they had a heart attack or stroke and dropped the cigarette, which is why they let themselves be consumed by the flames.

Also, since the bodies are disintegrated essentially, they can’t test to see if the victim suffered a heart attack or anything like that.

The Wick Effect

I’m going to do my best to try to explain this. The idea is that a small flame, like a cigarette, for example, ends up charring the victim’s clothing, splits the skin, and releases subcutaneous fat. This fat is absorbed into the clothing and acts as a wick, making the victim a candle.

Typically, the human will have enough stored fat and chemicals so that fire has enough energy, so to speak, to continually burn and combust the body until the person is reduced to ashes.

Alternative Theories of Spontaneous Combustion

Ball Lightning

Some have proposed ball lighting could be the cause, though it’s hard to exactly explain how or why. However, it is rare and only about 5% of the population have ever claimed to see it.

It is essentially a ball of lightning that can range from the size of a pea to several feet in diameter, and if you touch it, they say it can cause burning but is mostly harmless.

Pyrotron

In his 1995 book, Ablaze!, Larry E. Arnold proposed there is a new subatomic particle called Pyrotron and that alcohol and extreme stress can intensify this particle and lead to combustion.

Poltergeists

In his 1976 book Fire from Heaven, UK writer Michael Harrison wrote that Spontaneous Human Combustion is connected to poltergeist activity.

He claims, quote,” the force which activates the ‘poltergeist’ originates in, and is supplied by, a human being.” Within the concluding summary, Harrison writes: “SHC, fatal or non-fatal, belongs to the extensive range of poltergeist phenomena.”

Study About Human Combustion

Again from Scientific American:

“There is a 1998 experiment conducted by Dr. John de Haan of the California Criminalistic Institute for the BBC TV science program QED.

De Haan took a dead pig, wrapped it in a blanket, and placed it in a furnished room, then set fire to the blanket with nothing but a match and a bit of gasoline.

(Pig flesh is the closest to human flesh, so pigs are frequently used in these sorts of experiments.)

It took a while for the pig body to catch fire — Sarah was correct that the body isn’t highly flammable – but once it caught, it burned at a high temperature and low flame, burning for several hours until de Haan extinguished the fire.

The flesh and bones in the burned part of the body were reduced to ashes, but there was almost no damage to the rest of the room — except for a melted TV set.

The pig’s feet were left behind, too.

De Haan reported that the heat from the burning body collected at the top of the room, making it hot enough to melt the appliance.”

Is Spontaneous Human Combustion Real?

What do you think, Bizarros?

Did the study provide a scientific explanation for this?

What could be the source of ignition?

What could be a reasonable explanation for reports of people bursting into flame?

Let us know what you think in the comments.