Spontaneous Human Combustion: Granny's on Fire

Spontaneous Human Combustion
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Kenny: [00:00:00] Hello everybody. Welcome back to Enter the Rift Podcast Season two, episode six. I'm your host Kenny. Joining me is my brother and co-host Garrett. 

Garrett: Yo. Ooh. 

Kenny: Today on this episode, we're gonna be talking about people bursting in the flames, spontaneous human combustion, 

Garrett: like walking into a Yankee candle with a set of jerry curls.

Kenny: Oh my God, So what is spontaneous human combustion? 

Garrett: That shit that happened to Michael Jackson during the Pepsi commercial. 

Kenny: Uh, um, kind of, but not really. So spontaneous human combustion is. [00:01:00] It's the concept of a living person or someone who just recently died where the body will just light on fire without any apparent external source of ignition, 

Garrett: otherwise known as some wack ass voodoo bullshit.

Kenny: So spontaneous human combustions been around or it's been mentioned a, a long time. One of the first recorded cases was a knight in, in the 14th century who was drinking too much wine and then all of a sudden he burst into flames in front of his parents. 

Garrett: I can imagine is like he's in the armor, like full on plate armor while he burst into flames and just turns himself to like one of those, uh, big green egg smokers.

Kenny: Nice. But yeah, there's a, it's like, um, it's a really interesting thing. So the term was actually first coined by a, uh, Paul Rowley. He was [00:02:00] a fellow of the Royal Society. It was an article published in the philosophical transactions, and it was concerning mysterious death of Countess Cornelia Zangheri Bondi.

And he was the one who actually coined the term spontaneous human combustion all the way back in 1746. So people have been talking about this for a little while now. So 

Garrett: people have been lightening our weaves for quite some time. 

Kenny: Yes. So let's get into some stories here actually about, or some cases I should say.

And the, uh, this topic was also covered in the British Medical Journal in 1938. And, um, there was an article by La Perry. And he cited an 1823 published book, medical Jurisprudence. So there's a couple of, um, like characteristics that all these victims have in common from that work. It's, it's not true for everybody, but it seems like a lot of people share these characteristics.

So the victims are usually [00:03:00] chronic alcoholics, usually elderly females, but not necessarily. And it says the body is not burned spontaneously, but. Some lighted substances come into contact with it, which is like a point of contention or whether or not, like, you know, is it spontaneous? If there's a, is there a condition source or not?

Uh, the hands and feet usually fall off. 

Garrett: Yep. Okay. That's a little odd

Kenny: the fire has caused very little damage to combustible things in contact with the body. So you'll, you'll see that a lot in these cases that we're gonna be talking with. And then the combustion of the body has left a residue of greasy and fetid ashes.

Very offensive in odor. And you'll see that a lot as well. There'll be like greasy soot in the rooms where the bodies are, what's left of the bodies are found 

Garrett: pleasant. 

Kenny: Yeah. So what's actually go to the report of the case of Cornelia Zangheri Bondi. So during her last dinner, the 66-year-old Countess was dull and heavy.[00:04:00] 

Some counts report that she was a heavy brandy drinker and that she used to sprinkle camphorated brandy on her body to relieve physical pain. So the maid accompany to her, to her room, and the two spent over three hours just chatting and praying, and her maid left her when she was asleep the next day.

The Countess did not wake up when she normally did, so the maid went to to Waker and found just her remains left. The room was full of soot. The body of the Countess had reduced to a pile of ashes that was a little more than a meter from the bed, though her lower legs from the knee down, three fingers and the front of her skull relatively intact.

The rest of her body was reduced to a pile of ashes. 

Garrett: Okay. Well, 

Kenny: yeah, 

Garrett: big, big oof homie. 

Kenny: Yeah. Just, you know, drank a little too much brandy and all of a sudden gaboof. 

Garrett: Yeah. I mean, on one hand you almost wanna be like, it was an alcohol fire because the whole spritz in it on yourself, but the whole [00:05:00] house didn't burn down or whatever.

Kenny: Yeah. So it at the bed and the rest of the furniture had not been affected by the fire, but they were covered by greasy and smelly layers. So I guess, you know, like when you have, you're deep frying something and like the oil's popping. 

Garrett: Yeah. 

Kenny: I guess there was some splatter when she was, um, going up in flames.

Garrett: Well, 

was she, uh, rather rotund?

Kenny: Not that I see here. 

Garrett: Maybe she was like a big piece of fatty bacon and, you know, and just pop.

Kenny: It said on the floor there wasn't oil lamp covered with ashes, but didn't have any oil in it. And the way the sheets were found seemed to indicate that the ha the Countess had risen at some point in the night. So, 

Garrett: well, if the bitch got caught on fire, I'd probably hop up out of bed 

too. 

Kenny: Yeah. Yes, exactly.

So she probably got lit up. And then 

Garrett: one way to put it, 

Kenny: try to get outta bed. Collapsed. 'cause you know she was burning. Yeah. And then was reduced to a pile of ashes and the only thing that was left was her [00:06:00] legs from the knees down a couple of fingers and like a, a piece of her skull. 

Garrett: Yeah. So the bitch probably, she was like, oh no, I got some acid reflux woke up and like, just like Lego, uh, star Wars, Yoda death noise.

Kenny: Oh my God. So that was back in like the, the 17 hundreds, which was. It's pretty interesting. Mm-hmm. Can you imagine just like, uh, walking into your, uh, your boss's room to wake her up and just, just legs? 

Garrett: Yeah. Just ah, shit. Now how he's going? Who, who the hell's gonna pay me now? Just play? Well, maybe if I don't tell any of these bitches, I can keep this house for myself.

I dunno how you, how you're gonna weak in and Bernie, just a couple of thumbs and a piece of skull , but, 

Kenny: oh, yeah. Yeah. So then if we go to 1885. So late at night on Christmas Eve in the small town of Seneca, Illinois, a woman named Matilda Rooney burst into flame. She was alone in her kitchen. When it happened, the fire quickly incinerated her entire body [00:07:00] except for her feet.

The incident also claimed the life of her husband Patrick, who was found suffocated from the fumes in another room with a house, 

Garrett: just, ahh you stinky bitch! aaghhh

Kenny: Oh God. The tragedy left investigators baffled. There was no reason to suspect foul play. The rings had been relaxing and drinking whiskey that evening, and a farm hand a few hours, who had spent a few hours with them, hadn't noticed anything outta the ordinary then furthermore, no source of ignition could be found for a blaze.

Now, although the flames have been intense enough to reduce Miss Rooney to a pile of ashes and a few fragments of bone. They had not spread to the rest of the room. The fire seemed to have started in her body and stayed confined to her body. And her husband simply died from like smoke inhalation. So there's a case where there's like, how earlier we said like there two of the criteria were there, alcohol was involved, they were drinking whiskey, the victim was an elderly female.

And um Yep. 

Garrett: Didn't burn the shit [00:08:00] around them, did 

Kenny: not burn the shit around them. Her feet fell off. 'cause that was the only thing. 

Garrett: Yeah, 

Kenny: only thing left. 

Garrett: I'm just imagining a pair of like. Air Force ones like, just like sit there with some burnt ashes around them. Oh 

Kenny: my God. 

Garrett: But like some Jordans, the house was still SpongeBob, zoom in.

Kenny: Right. You, you know, so 

there wasn't anything else like burned. There was, uh, no apparent source of ignition, though she was in her kitchen, so I guess there was, would've been a stove there. Apparently that wasn't the source of the flames. There was just a pile of ashes there. So like she is like a, from those characteristics from that, um, um, from medical jurisprudence that like she's like poster case of spontaneous human combustion.

Garrett: Yeah. 

Kenny: Of people just 

Garrett: the ho looked like a burnt garbanzo bean

Kenny: oh my God. But I think that's like really interesting how, oh man. How do you feel about that Christmas morning when you go to grandma's house and she's a pile of ashes on the floor and grandpa's all [00:09:00] suffocated and smothered in the chair over next in the living room.

Garrett: Yeah. It'd be like, uh. I don't know what y'all did, but y'all, y'all got smited 

Kenny: that is like one of the things that, uh, people have said that the reason spontaneous human, human combustion happens is people who were living a debaucherous lifestyle, you know, in vibing in too much alcohol, and this was, uh, God's punishment.

Garrett: Well, uh, if that was the case, like there'd be a lot of like Irish, you know, Catholic priests who just went ka bluey. 

Kenny: Speaking of Irish people, there is a famous case that happened in 2011. 

Garrett: Oh. do tell

Kenny: So, and it's actually the first case that's actually been officially classified as a death cause by spontaneous human combustion. 

Garrett: Ooh. 

Kenny: So the, uh, the, the victim's name was Michael Farhety. He was 76 and he died in his home in Galway and back in, so he died [00:10:00] in. Late 2010, but he was, his case was ruled in 2011.

He died in like December. The West Galway coroner, Dr. Sirhan McLaughlin said it was the first time in his 25 years of investigating deaths that he actually recorded a. Death to spontaneous human combustion. 

Garrett: Yeah, I imagine that's something that you don't just like, you know, it's Tuesday, just another, uh, another old bastard went up like a fricking torch, 

Kenny: so, oh my God.

You would think if it was, uh, God's wrath for, uh, alcoholism, there'd be a lot more people to just lighten up. 

Garrett: Yeah. We wouldn't even need street lights at this point. Shit. Ireland would look like California. does On a regular basis. 

Kenny: Oh my 

God. So the experts, uh, that were investigating Mr. Faherty's case, he um, they, they said that there was a fire in the fireplace of the sitting room where the badly burnt body was found.

But he, they determined that the cause of the blaze that killed Mr. Farty was not the fire in the fireplace. There was just [00:11:00] so he happened to drop and burn in the. In the living room or the sitting room. 

Garrett: I'm just imagining like, like a, like a Sims character sitting on a rug next to a fireplace. 

Kenny: They also said there was no trace of any accelerant and there was nothing, no evidence to suggest foul play.

Garrett: Was he a boozer? 

Kenny: That's a good question. I don't, I'm not too sure. 

Garrett: He's Irish. We're just gonna say, yeah, move on with, 

Kenny: they said they found that he had been lying on his back with his head closest to the open fireplace, but the con, the fire had been contained to the sitting room. The only damage was to the body, which was totally burnt.

And the ceiling and the above, him and the floor beneath him were a little burnt and obviously had like the sooty ashes on him. 

Garrett: Okay, hear me out. An uh, an ember popped from his fireplace that was lit, right? And it landed on his, when his stomach that was dis tended, like a big old balloon. And it just, just from one ember, just all that alcohol in his stomach just went, POOF!

Kenny: Oh, ugh.

He was like popped. 

Garrett: Well, I was thinking more of [00:12:00] like cartoonish than gory, but you know, I was thinking more of like, uh, you know, like a loony tune style. Like, like extended belly and then just like a ka bluey. 

Kenny: Oh my gosh. 

Garrett: Yeah. Not more of a homie's got a IED shoved up his ass. Like you, it was the Dang. IRA

Kenny: oh my. 

Garrett: He puts C 4 up his bung hole, 

Kenny: it's boom. The only thing he left is hands n feet. 

Garrett: Yep. There you go. 

Kenny: But the crazy thing is, the weird thing about spontaneous human combustion is to actually reduce a body to ash, like a cremation. The fire has to be about 3000 degrees Fahrenheit in order just to reduce somebody to ashes.

So like if a fire is burning that hot, why doesn't the whole house burn down? You know? 

Garrett: Yeah, 

Kenny: that's just something so strange. And it's really interesting. 

Garrett: Turns out we're only, we're only missing one thing from like these like, uh, coroner reports. Yeah. They all lived [00:13:00] in like these stone shacks, you know, they, they slept on slabs, you know, like that's why their bed's still there.

Kenny: So here we go to another case. This took place in 1952, or sorry, this took place in the morning of, of, uh, July 2nd, 1951. And it happened, uh, to a Miss Mary Reer and, uh, who was born in Columbia, Pennsylvania. So that morning, Mary's landlady went to deliver a telegram to apartment where she lived at that time in St.

Petersburg, Florida, touching the door handle. She found it strangely warm to the touch. She, so it's like almost home alone style where she's like burning her hand on the door. Knb. Yeah, 

Garrett: yeah, yeah. 

Kenny: She called the police who broke into the apartment to find a scene described in this photograph, and I will.

Put the photograph upon the screen here. 

Garrett: Shoo. There ain't nothing left but the bitch's foot and the toilet. 

Kenny: The only thing really left 

Garrett: and looks like her Walker. Um, 

Kenny: Mary's left leg [00:14:00] with her shoe still on. Her backbone and her skull, 

Garrett: that's pretty horrendous. 

Kenny: Was there in a pile of ashes. So something pretty notable about this case is what it was the first case in spontaneous human combustion where more modern police and forensic techniques were applied.

But of course, being at like the 1950s, they weren't nearly as good, uh, as advanced with forensics as we are now. So they still. Remained pretty baffled. A year after the that incident, detective Cass, progress of the St. Petersburg Police said Our investigation has turned up nothing that could be singled out as approving.

Beyond a doubt what actually happened. The case is still open. We are still, as far as just establishing any logical cause for the death as we were when we first entered research's apartment. And then the police chief, uh, added to the statement that as far as logical explanations go, this is one of those things that just couldn't have happened, but it did.

I. The case is not closed. It may never be to the [00:15:00] satisfaction of all concerned. So that's like, yeah, it's just like wild. 

Garrett: Yeah. 

Kenny: And so I guess she was like walking to the bathroom. 'cause you can see like the, uh, well the toilet in the background and I don't know, maybe she felt sick or something and just went up in flames.

Garrett: I have a theory. 

Kenny: What's the theory? 

Garrett: So you see, uh. On top of, uh, granny's ashes and severed leg, uh, there's a, a walker, so I'm assuming she can't walk that good. So she probably, uh, dragging her feet. She build up too much static, had gas, boom, granny went up like a freaking, like a christmas tree. 

Kenny: Oh my God. 

Well, you know, well, she looks like she's wearing like a normal, like a shoe that you would wear outside, but not like a slipper.

Yeah. But honestly, like, that's not a bad. Like, uh, theory, honestly. 'cause we'll get into what more people think about what potentially could be happening here. [00:16:00] And so let's hold onto that thought because it's kind of funny, but yeah. Yeah. See single 

Garrett: singlehandedly, myself, I sherlock holme's this bitch's death.

Pick up your legs, grandma. You're gonna Blow up

one little static and poof. Looks at that scene from Hannibal with the wheelchair going down the road, covered in gasoline. 

Kenny: Oh my God. So this case, uh, in 19, in April of 1985, it's not nearly as an extreme, but in Birmingham, there was a death of Mary Carter in 80, uh, who was 86 years old. She was found dead in her flat.

Uh, the cause of death was ruled as a heart attack, yet she had burns on her body that could not be explained. So maybe. She started to combust and had a heart attack and died and just didn't burn completely. Or maybe she started to light on fire, which gave her the heart attack and she died. 

Garrett: I, I'm, I'm Well [00:17:00] when one, uh, combusts out of nowhere, uh, most people were probably a little startled.

Kenny: Probably a little bit, yeah, 

Garrett: yeah. Grandma turned into a rage against a machine album cover.

Kenny: Oh my gosh. So another interesting case here. Is Dr. John Irvng Bentley. So he was a 92-year-old physician who lived in a small two story home in coudersport, Pennsylvania. So in December of 1966, his charred remains were found by a meteor reader in his otherwise undamaged house. So that morning meter man, Don Gosnell, entered the house of Bentley as a part of his morning rounds.

He made his way to the basement at around 9:00 AM when he noticed a hole in the ceiling above him. Small embers still burned from the floor upstairs. Gosnell attempted to locate Bentley when he stumbled upon his charred remains in the bathroom on the second floor, Gosnell described a bluish smoke and a sickly sweet odor [00:18:00] around the scene.

All that remained of Bentley, which was identifiable was his brown, lower leg and shoe. The rest of Bentley had burned completely to Ash. Some of which had fallen through the hole to the floor below. Bentley's robe, partially burned, sat in the bathtub where Bentley's Walker was also leaning. Bentley had been a family physician from 1925 to 1953, and after a hip injury in 1947, he needed the walker to get around and the walker was noticeably not burned.

Garrett: Very weird. 

Kenny: Yeah, so Gosnell the fire department and then the deputy coroner, John Dec and Mortician Dick Lindhome who could find no sure cause of fire nor definitive answer as to why only Bentley and the hole in the floor burned. Dec speculated that Bentley, who was a frequent pipe smoker, ignited himself after falling asleep while smoking, 

Garrett: but in the bathroom.

Kenny: So I guess like evidence was present in his bedroom as well as the hall leading up to the bathroom. [00:19:00] But. They weren't able to really recreate, uh, what happened. So it's possible that maybe he dropped some of the ashes, uh, from his pipe. Like when he fell asleep, like he was, uh, smoking in bed and he lit on fire.

Maybe he was running, trying to run as fast as he could to the bathroom, you know, as close as water source. Yeah. To douse the flames and he just went up. 

Garrett: Plop. 

Kenny: Yeah. 

Garrett: Rip bozo.

Kenny: Oh. It says Dr. Bentley was also known to keep matches in his pockets. I guess you know, the light, his pipe with it's possible maybe that they erupted in into flame and maybe 

Garrett: it's all that shuffling around. Homie didn't pick up his feet 

Kenny: and maybe that was enough to like light a small fire and cause his body fat to burn.

But yeah, I think that's interesting. So it's another case where it's an the victim's elderly. They had still had a leg left, you know, so that fell off. 

Garrett: Yeah. 

Kenny: The fire only [00:20:00] really caused damage to the floor and then the ceiling of the basement, so not a whole lot. And his, obviously his walker somehow was in the room with him and was still untouched, so That's pretty weird.

Garrett: Yeah. And just the, the stump laying there. 

Kenny: Yep. 

So let's get into some theories of what the actual cause of spontaneous human combustion is. So the main theory that has the most scientific consensus behind it is called the wick theory or the wick effect. 

Garrett: So, uh, they go, they go burning up like a, like a wick on an oil amp 

Kenny: or like a candle.

So the wick effect is the Partial or total destruction of a human body by fire. And it's when the clothing of the victim soaked, soaks up, melted body fat and, and acts like the wick of a candle. So the person just burns. And that's typically why only like hands and feet are left. 'cause it acts like the human body acts like an inside out candle.

Oh, [00:21:00] 

Garrett: pleasant. Someone said the road fla up his asshole and he went up. Oh my 

Kenny: God. So that's the main, main theory right now. And um, so there was actually an a, like an art, it's not more of a scientific article in the Journal of Burn Care that was posted out and uh, published in 2012. Where the authors looked at, over 12 patients could be termed like spontaneous human combustion patients.

And they looked and they said that there, there has to be a unique series of events that have to take place for the human body to incinerate. So the flame burn victim has to die where the body fat to start melting. So there's like recently dead. There has to be a tear in the skin that has to occur so that the melted fat to impregnate the charred clothes to act as the wick effect.

Garrett: Hmm. So they gotta be like half a goo pile first. 

Kenny: So they have to not necessarily be a goo pile, but they have to die, have a tear in the skin, 

Garrett: they gotta be leaking. 

Kenny: There has to be a ignition source that can produce, [00:22:00] the person has to die. There has to be a tear in the skin for melted fat to impregnate the the clothes.

And there has to be an ignition source that actually can provide the heat to start the body, fat start melting, to make them actually like. Light up. So what these, the authors here say is that it's not really spontaneous combustion because they, people don't, 

Garrett: external ignition source, they 

Kenny: don't just light up.

There has to be an external ignition source. The person has to die. So maybe when they, they die, they fall and they break fall, they get like a skin tear that exposes their body fat. The flames allow the fat to melt and start to burn. And then that's actually how they burn. So they say that like they don't think spontaneous human combustion is actually a good term for it.

They suggest the term fat wick burns just to describe the phenomena, which 

Garrett: mm-hmm. 

Kenny: If that's how it happens, then yeah, that could be more [00:23:00] applicable. But there have been a couple stories of people just randomly bursting in into flame and there's been been a couple stories of people actually seeing it.

Garrett: Yeah. Plus, um, if. You also need to take an account that everything around them didn't burn. And also if you've seen any cases where, uh, morbidly obese people had to be cremated and then their fat, uh, liquified and sloughed out of the crematorium, and then the burn, the whole funeral home down, because that's actually happened multiple times.

Kenny: Yeah. Well, I mean it's, it's fuel, right? So, I mean, it's kind of a morbid way to think about it, but like you get enough liquid fuel that's on fire and if it starts leaking out of where it's supposed to be, 

Garrett: yeah. You know, just some, some buffalo bill oil. Lamp oil, you know, and just poof, oh my, it rubs the lotion on its skin.

It does this whenever it is told

Kenny: there was also a, an experiment [00:24:00] done to try to prove the, the wick effect. Mm-hmm. Not in a buffalo bill fashion, but with dead pigs. 

Garrett: Oh, okay. So it's just like a, like a, it's typical kitchen grease fire. Yeah. So what you're telling me is they, uh, took Miss Piggy, put her in a flannel and then poked a hole in her side, left her laying her dead, and then like lit the bitch up.

Kenny: Something like that. 

Garrett: Hmm. Or if this will show up for you so you can hear it, but bet they sound like something like this.

Kenny: The one theory, an experiment done by a biologist by the name of Brian J. Ford. He was looking into spontaneous human combustion, and he was using pigs as proxies. So they, they took a couple of dead pigs and they marinated the, the abdominal tissue and ethanol for a week. And then, um, so what he said. Even when cloaked and gauze moistened with alcohol would not burn, alcohol is not normally [00:25:00] present in our tissues, but there is one flam, constituent.

Of the body that can greatly increase in concentration and it's trya cycle, glycerol lipids, CLE form, fatty acid chains and glycerol. So the idea is that humans build up too much acetone in their bodies, which can ignite. So these pigs had their abdominal, like the pieces of abdominal tissue were soaked and kind of acetone, and then they were ignited.

The two dummies. They used to like as their human proxies. Once they lit, they burned in about 30 minutes and only the, the legs were left after the burn. He kind of showed that when they got too much acetone, they can kinda ignite and burn in a similar fashion to what, um, the spontaneous human combustion cases are, which would reflect potentially a back with like the alcohol.

Oh, if like, if they're drinking too much alcohol and they die, that can cause them to burn. So I don't know about if all the patients of, or victims of spontaneous human combustion were [00:26:00] like alcoholics and we're just drinking all the time. Like a fish. 

Garrett: And then so they're basically pickled with alcohol and Yeah.

And then something happens, 

Kenny: happens that they light on fire and they burn. So that's, and that would come kind of with the WIC effect. So something with. People's alcohol or acetone levels could potentially be explaining why people are lighting on fire in a more conventional method. But there's some alternative theories on like why people are, um, going up in flames 

Garrett: freaking a fantastic four flame on.

Kenny: So one theory is that there's too much methane built up in the digestive tract. So potentially, um, maybe they're eating too much food and getting a little gassy that just, uh, maybe they encounter, they get a little too hot and then all of a sudden, woo, they go up in flames from potentially from having too much methane, which that's, I don't know.

I [00:27:00] feel like that wouldn't result in them burning. I feel like that'd be more of just like an explosion, like they just pop and then there'd be like guts everywhere. 

Garrett: Yeah. Why is this only happening in people? You say like, it could be like the alcohol thing, but I mean, you see what happens like when cows, you see what happens when like cows get their, um, like, what is it, it's, uh, digestive issues where they build methane in their stomachs.

Yeah. Can't remember what it's called. But I feel like you would, uh, be able to like to see this more in like situations like that with animals instead of just. Yeah, they got methane in their system and then they went up like a candle. 

Kenny: Yeah. 

Garrett: Never heard any farmers talking about their cattle. Um, going up like a wick.

Kenny: Just going, woo. Yeah, I'm not too sure. See, another theory that's like an alternative from the WIC effect is actually ball lightning causing people to combust. So ball lightning is just like a, literally like a glowing sphere of [00:28:00] lightning. It's usually. Present when thunderstorms are nearby. It's fairly rare, but there is a large number of sightings of it.

And ball lightning is really weird. It can, it's um, it's like a ball of light, usually bluish in color. Um, the 

Garrett: ball lightning's really weird. It's like a, like a ball of lightning. 

Kenny: Yes. But I was gonna say is, uh, some, it can float through objects sometimes, and sometimes those objects are people. And when that happens and, 

Garrett: and then grandma gets blown apart and except nothing but her, uh, her ankle and shoe.

Kenny: Yes. 

Garrett: Yeah, because the bitch got kame hame ha'd then, uh, she a ghost now. 

Kenny: But I was gonna say, sometimes the weird part of Ball Lightning is there's been stories where it seemed like the Ball Lightning almost had a sense of agency to it, like it was following people or making. Choices. And that's what the weird part was, not just [00:29:00] that it's a glowing ball of lightning.

Garrett: Hmm. Homie guy hit with the blue turtle shell.

Kenny: So one case of this. So this happened back on May 25th, 1989. It was a place by the road, uh, by the roadside near Carezen Village. Uh, it was 109 kilometers from Budapest. So the victim was a 27-year-old engineer within his body. It's con injected ball. Lightning formed, so the man stopped his car and walked to the edge of a field about 10 meters away to pee.

Suddenly his wife, who had remained behind in the car, saw that the young man was surrounded by a blue light. He opened his arms wide and fell to the ground. His wife ran to him noticing that one of his tennis shoes had been torn off. You know, if the shoes get knocked off, it's bad. 

Garrett: Yeah. 

Kenny: Although it looked hopeless.

She tried to help him, but soon after, uh, she was able to stop a passing bus. Amazingly, the bus was filled with [00:30:00] medical doctors returning from a meeting unhappily. They immediately pronounced that the man was dead. They did an autopsy afterwards. 

Garrett: I'm, I'm sorry ma'am, but your, your husband got hit with a hadokin

Kenny: so they found a hole in the man's heel where his shoe had been, his lungs were torn and damaged, and his stomach and belly were carbonized. So that was indicative of internal combustion. Just as the blue light is proof of atmospheric electricity while the damaged heel and shoe are indicative of electrical earthing.

So this man. Got out his car in a field, take a piss, and he got really unlikely and everything aligned perfectly. And he just went and that was it. Yeah. 

Garrett: Homie hit the reset button 

Kenny: right? Little, a little too hard there. Yeah. Uh, he, he got sent to the shadow realm. 

Garrett: Yeah. [00:31:00] Pully set. He, uh, he stepped on God's landmine.

And, uh, he got cooked. 

Kenny: So, one another alternative theory. It's actually the Kundalini energy going awry and that is causing people to go up in flame. 

Garrett: And do you mind explaining what, uh, Kundalini is? 

Kenny: Yes. So 

Garrett: hippie dippy bullshit 

Kenny: kind of hippie dippy bullshit. Kind of. Maybe not. I dunno so Kundalini is a form of divine feminine energy, or Shakti in Hinduism, and it's believed to be located at the base of the spine in what's called the mul mu ah Muladhara chakra.

So there's several chakras. In the body, which are like, kind of like energy points that go from the base of like the spine and groin up to the top of your head. And sometimes Kundalini energy when it gets too [00:32:00] hot, uh, it might literally cause people to go up in flames. So there was a famous guru of, in the name of, uh,Gopi Krishna, that um, had several close calls while doing meditation with this, that.

They felt like they literally were, he was starting to burn up because of the energy. So the theory is that if, you know, you're not prepared, you know? So a little old grandma in the kitchen on Christmas Eve, all of a sudden the, her chakras aligned just the right way for the Kundalini energy to go up. And she went up in flames.

Garrett: So she, to bring it back to more street fighter references, she, she got hit with that yoga fire. 

Kenny: Yes. So somebody, uh, a penny Kelly has described Kundalini as an increase in electrical current in the body. And he says that they speculate that the voltage potential of the body dramatically increases during Kundalini energy and spontaneous human combustion.

So [00:33:00] older individuals who are less physically fit, maybe unable to endure such high voltage potentials in current flow. And that may be the causative factor in spontaneous human combustion. So it's like their body, they just can't handle the energy. And they go up in flames. 

Garrett: The homie just couldn't hang.

Kenny: They couldn't hang. 

Garrett: Yeah. And then he went, 

Kenny: yep. There is another like alternative theory, it's called a subatomic pyrotron theory. And the theory states that there's an extremely small but high powered, high powered particle, like a neutrino that zips between spaces between the Clarks that make up Adam. So this is like quantum physics shit.

Garrett: This is a Jimmy Neutron brain blast. Yeah. Looking animation. 

Kenny: On Aware and it says on on Aware occasion, this rogue particle may score a direct hit with a quark and sets off an internal chain reaction. And this person calls it the internal Hiroshima effect, which may cause some spontaneous human combustion.[00:34:00] 

Just, 

Garrett: ah jimmy, I don't feel too good. Ah, just cuts to like flashlight beams coming out of, uh, mouth and eyes. Yeah. Nuclear explosion from the inside out. Yeah. But somehow doesn't affect anything around them except for like some scorch marks and some goop. 

Kenny: Yes. Another theory, but, uh. People run is called the current, uh, he dubbed it, uh, um, I believe this was Jo, uh, Larry Arnold.

Uh, he dubbed it, uh, the Cartography of Combustion. So he said there's been a lot of abnormal fire phenomenon relating to people and property in the uk and he's noticed that a lot of these are on lay lines. So what. Lay lines are, is they're all over the world and they're supposedly these routes where energy flows throughout, um, throughout the world, like geomagnetic energy, just magical energy, that, that kind of thing, [00:35:00] like earth energy or whatever, however you wanna say it.

What happened is, is maybe sometimes under the correct circumstances, this high level of energy can cause. People to go up in flames, so like they're susceptible to it. So, I don't know, maybe, uh, little old grandma, again, she's on a lay line, she didn't know about it and, and 

Garrett: she basically just stepped into a giant microwave.

Kenny: Yes. And living woo. Lit up. So I think that's interesting. But, um, yeah, I definitely, I don't know, I, of all the alternative theories, I don't, I feel like lay lines probably aren't it. 

Garrett: Yeah, I don't think, uh, you really have to worry about somebody stepping on a, uh, invisible line and just getting cooked. 

Kenny: They got a Stonehenge and just go, like, 

go up in flames

Garrett: yeah, just, just lay out. 

Kenny: Yeah. But yeah, I think there's been a lot of historical cases. There's been so much that we didn't get to touch on, [00:36:00] but I don't know there, it's a interesting phenomena for sure. I just don't know what the exact cause is. I mean, I guess, and it really hasn't been proven yet either exactly what the cause is.

Like, is this the, yeah, 

Garrett: the WIC effect, maybe Ball lightning or 

Kenny: B ball, lightning, like obviously like light, a bunch of electricity going through somebody will make things go woo. Have you ever seen those, uh, videos of those Russians climbing up those, uh, the big high amperage, uh, power lines and they just go.

Garrett: Yeah, I was gonna say the monkeys in India videos just touch a transformer and just, 

Kenny: yep. There's so many just weirdness of like, you know, the knight in the 14 hundreds drinking too much wine, it's going up in flames. 

Garrett: The Countess turn himself to a damn steam cooker. 

Kenny: Yeah, like the Countess going up in flames and just having her feet left.

A little old grandma in the 1880s was going up in flames and smother choking out her husband with her corpse fumes. Um, I don't [00:37:00] know. It's so weird. I th I want to lean towards, it's probably more of the wick effect of all the alternative theories. I don't think it's methane building up from the gut, because I don't think that would cause someone to just burn.

I think that would be more of an explosion. 

Garrett: Yeah. That'd be more like when you see like the whale carcasses, wash up on the beach and they just go cut a pop. Yeah, exactly. Or like a road kill deer on the side of a road and like, you know, they get real hot in like middle of summer. Just pop. 

Kenny: Yeah. Of the alternative theories that we discussed, I think it's either Ball Lightning or maybe the Kundalini energy going haywire.

Maybe there, maybe people do have like some kind of like metaphysical energy you can tap into, but if people aren't prepared for it, like they don't train with it. And it just goes off and they're not prepared then. Yeah, I can see how they just go woof up in flames. 

Garrett: I'm, I'm leaning more. If it's anything it's maybe Ball Lightning.

[00:38:00] Maybe. 

Kenny: Maybe. Yeah. I mean, 

Garrett: shit's whack. 

Kenny: It is like, it's crazy. Could you imagine like, you know, you just chill in your bed and Ball Lightning comes through the window and game over, man. But what do you, what do you think do you lean more towards, like, it's the WIC effect, like a certain chain of events happens and these people light up because they're like, they had too much alcohol or acetone in their system, and or do you think it's, uh, more of a, a spooky phenomenon or sometimes people just go up in flames?

Garrett: I'm thinking maybe it has to just be like a right. Set of circumstances for it all like to happen. Like I have no idea how or any of their, or why none of the other shit burns around them. But, uh, yeah, they, they, they are, uh, a, uh, burn piece of gristle now. 

Kenny: Burn piece of gristle. Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's, I think it's really interesting and, um, fun to look into anyway.

Like there's so many, there's [00:39:00] been like a couple hundred cases. Over the last several hundred years. So this doesn't happen a ton of times, but you know, 

Garrett: every once in a while somebody just gets cooked outta nowhere. Yeah. 

Kenny: And I guess the skeptical argument would be like, if there's so many people in the world now, why isn't this happening more frequently?

But I mean, if the chain of events that have to happen, like they have to happen a certain way. Then like, maybe that's why it is so rare, because you know, if it's like 12 steps that have to occur or less, you know, maybe it's only five, but they have to happen in a particular order where people will just go, woo.

Garrett: Yeah. Or somebody gets mini Hiroshima'd 

Kenny: or, yeah. Or mini Hiroshima'd from the inside out. 

Garrett: Yeah. Which again, I feel like you more like pop if that happened, but 

Kenny: Yeah. But the, the weirdest thing is though, is like the body they have to burn so. Hot to be reduced to ash, and I don't understand how these houses just don't burn [00:40:00] down from the heat.

Like only like the chairs, unless are a part of the floor that they're laying on is burning. 

Garrett: Yeah. I mean, unless they were like an immediate, just like flash cooked and then somehow all the fire went away. 

Kenny: Yeah. Maybe. 

Garrett: Well, I 

guess if it was hot enough, these are all in enclosed spaces. 

Kenny: Yeah. 

Garrett: Unless it got so hot enough, so fast, it sucked all the oxygen out.

Kenny: Maybe. You would think it would cause other parts of their house to ignite. 'cause like if we go back to the, the, the case of the Countess, like she had like bedsheets and curtains and all that and it was like none of that was really lit up. They were little charred and covered in soot, but not like burned out.

It's just strange. 

Garrett: you



Garrett: assume she'd 

be like cook cooked 

Kenny: and, and who knows how long it takes. Like with the pig experiment, it, the, the dummies took about 30 minutes to be reduced to ash except for the legs. So like, that's not a long time, but it's more than enough you would think for a house fire to occur.

Garrett: Yeah. You'd assume like every single round would be burnt. 

Kenny: You would think so [00:41:00] anyway. I think it's really. Interesting and kind of spooky. Woo. People just going 

Garrett: very spooky. Woo. 

Kenny: Just kind of like, uh, you know, minding your own business, maybe getting a little too, uh, crunk there and then 

Garrett: just 

Kenny: game over. 

Garrett: Yeah. Just cooked.

Kenny: Yeah. Anyway, if you guys have enjoyed listening to this episode of Enter the Rift podcast, please let us know what you think. Share it with your friends. Have a good night and don't go up in flames. 

Garrett: [00:42:00] Peace.