#spiritsanddemons

The Spontaneous Combustion of Matilda Rooney

staged photo of spontaneous combustion

The evening of December 24, 1885, Mr. and Mrs. Rooney of Seneca, IL, were enjoying drinks with their farm hand, John Larson, and their son, John Rooney. Around 8PM, Larson headed upstairs to the room he slept in, and their son John left for the evening. Mr. and Mrs. Rooney continued to stay up drinking, it's assumed.

In the middle of the night or early morning Larson woke up to a coughing fit, as one does, but promptly fell back asleep, thinking nothing of it.

The next morning, Dec. 25, 1885, Larson woke up to an acrid smell, "haze in the air" and soot on his pillow and bed. He went down stairs and found Mr. Rooney in the doorway of his bedroom, which led directly into the kitchen, dead. Larson then fled the house and alerted authorities (the appropriate response if you ask me). 

When police arrived on the scene, they found that Mr. Rooney had died of asphyxiation caused by smoke inhalation. they then noticed that the kitchen had a hole burned into the wood floor. It was approximately two and a half foot by three foot and the ground beneath the house could be seen.

Dr. Floyd Clendenin was called in from Michigan to investigate the case and arrived Dec 26th to finish the investigation that the local police had started. He published his findings in the Therapeutic Gazette in 1889 (you can find it here)

In the hole they found a skull, cervical vertebrae, dorsal parts of vertebrae, park of an ilium, six inches of a right femur, and two feet still in their shoes (for those who didn't have to take a million anatomy classes like Bex did in college, that was essentially a head, neck, parts of the backbone, the top of a hip bone, part of an upper thigh bone, and obviously, both feet). All in a pile of ashes. It was determines that it was Mrs. Rooney, who had, at the time, weighed roughly 160lbs. All-in-all, she was reduced to just 12lbs of ash and body parts. The vertebrae and ilium were nearly reduced to cinder and the feet and shows were charcoaled. 

Investigation of Mary Reecer - another case of spontaneous combustion

Nothing else in the kitchen or house was burned or touched. The only exception being a "dirty, greasy, sooty substance" coating the walls and furniture of the house, and a partially melted candle on the kitchen table.

It takes nearly 3,000 degreed Fahrenheit and several hours to cremate a body. Let that sink in. Three thousand degrees and at least three hours of constant heat to cremate a body in a controlled oven at the morgue/mortuary/crematorium. 

Sometime between 8PM and roughly 8AM Matilda Rooney was on fire for a minimum of 3 hours at 3,000 degrees and nothing in the house was touched except the floor where she stood/sat/lay. And John Larson slept through it all. 

The investigation quickly looked at Larson as a suspect (because duh), but he was quickly ruled out as a murderer because there was a clear outline of soot of his body and head on the bed. It was obvious he had slept through the event.

The Rooney's son was also looked at, but again, he had no motive and there was no real evidence of foul play.

Their deaths were ruled as accidents, and Mrs. Rooney's cause of death is officially "Spontaneous Human Combustion".

Now, if you're anything like Bex and Ryan, you want to know the science behind this weird-ass phenomenon.

Dr Bentley, and Irish doctor who was another victim

Well, unfortunately you're shit out of luck, because there is no science behind it.

Essentially, back in the day, they assumed that drinking too much could cause a person to spontaneously erupt into flames if they got close enough to a fire or lit match because of the level of alcohol in their bodies. Now - I'm no scientist, I'm no doctor, and I'm definitely no genius. But if there's one thing I know, it's that you definitely don't become flammable when you consume alcohol, no matter how much of it you drink. So that's ruled out.

The next thought process is the "wick effect" (affect? Bex still doesn't know the difference between those two words). What this theory states is that the clothes, skin, and fat of the body effectively act as "wax" the same way a candle works, so the flame never spreads, but the body gets hot enough to "melt" or, more accurately in terms of human bodies, smolder and turn to ash. 

Ryan and Bex have a problem with this theory because we don't know about you, but even being near a flame, be it a candle or a bon fire and anything in between, you get hot and uncomfortable pretty fucking quick and the smoke alone can burn you. Literally burn your skin. I don't think anyone would just... let themselves continue to burn and not, I dunno, freak out and run around touching things and setting a mostly wooden house on fire. Much less the other people in the house not feeling this heat. Remember - Mr. Rooney was essentially right next to his wife when he died of smoke inhalation. It was never mentioned that he had any burns on him. 

So essentially, we're left with, like, one solid conclusion. Alien lasers. It was 100% alien lasers.

 Aliens

Yep. I said Aliens. On Christmas Day.

Picture it. A beautiful south-western England town, Warminster, early Christmas morning. On your way to church. And BAM a huge, earth shattering sound comes over you, rocking your world! 

That is what one resident of Warminster experienced in 1964, just 9 years after WWII ended. She reported it to the local newspaper, The Warminster Journal, but wouldn't give her name for fear of being mocked. Little did she know that she would start a now 57 year old phenomenon in Wiltshire county England.

Between December 25, 1964 and September 1, 1965, there was an average of one sighting per day. The excitement, sightings, and theories were all published by Arthur Shuttlewood in the Warminster Journal. 

So on December 25th, 1964, the unnamed housewife reported that she heard a crackling noise coming from Bell Hill on her way to Christmas Services. She told Shuttlewood that the noise grew louder, moved over her head, and passed over her,  growing distant. She stated it sounded like branches being pulled over gravel and then a faint hum came after. Around this same time, Postmaster Roger Rump heard an identical noise, and roughly 30-ish soldiers at Knook Camp (a few miles north of Warminster), were woken up to a sound described as a huge chimney being ripped off the roof and sent scattered around the camp. When they went to investigate, there was nothing there.

Earlier that morning, Mrs. Mildred Head stated she had been woken up around 1:45 that morning to a noise she described as twigs being dragged across the roof and then hailstones pelting the roof. She stated it was followed by a humming sound that grew louder then faded away.

The next reported incident was February in 1965, 2 months later. A Mr. David C. Holton reported that a flock of birds were killed in-flight by "sound waves" at 5 Ash Lane. Bex was unable to find how the cause of death was determined.

Then in March of the same year, Mr. and Mrs. Brown of Warminster reported that they heard an onrush of sounds that caused their roof to quiver and their pet cat to vomit and die. From what Bex was able to gather - the cat was elderly to begin with, and honestly. Cats vomit all the time. It's kinda what they're known for, ya know?

But then on March 25th 1965, Ted and Gwen Davies of Crockerton, which is about 2 miles south of Warminster, hear the flapping of birds wings, crackling noise around chimney, and then a metallic grinding sound. 

“Our rafters shook and our windows rattled like there was a gale force wind” - Mrs. Gwen Davies

 Three days later, on Match 28th, Eric Paye (Payne?) heard a whistling noise and loud buzzing that he related to a "gigantic tin can with huge nuts and bolts inside it, rattling overhead". 

Then it wasn't until June 1st when the next incident happened.

On June 1st, 1965, Mr. and Mrs. Marson heard a loud humming followed by bumping noises and promptly after the noise went away, saw a brilliant white light that lit up their rooms. Mrs. Marson reported that “it was a great bouncing and bumping noise over our heads. As though a load of stones was being ripped against the roof and the back wall of the bungalow”, while Mr. Marson stated “it seemed as if tons of coal were being emptied from sacks and sent tumbling all over the place. It all began with an electric crackling.”

And again later in June, the phenomenon took on a shape in the sky. Mrs. Patricia Phillips, her husband, her three children, and a guest at her house, all saw what she described as a cigar-shaped object with a dark circular patch at the base and a ring around the lower end. She stated she noticed it staying in the same position for over 25 minutes, slowly turning on it's axis, but remaining in place where it hovered in the sky. That same day, Mr. and Mrs. Horlock reported seeing "Twin Red-hot pokers hanging downwards, one on top of the other, with a black space in between”, while 17 people who were swimming and/or fishing in Shearwater, close to Warminster, reported something similar. This is the first and only "mass sighting" of the Warminster Thing that Bex was able to find.

The final sighting that sparked public interest was on August 29th, 1965, when Gordon Faulkner was returning a camera to his sister and noticed an object in the sky. He stated it was moving far to fast to capture a good photo of it, so he aimed the camera within it's trajectory and snapped the photo as he assumed the object entered the view finder. It is one of the few photos of the Warminster Thing, and it looks nothing like that everyone reported seeing just 2 months prior.

There are a lot of theories about what this could have been. From actual aliens (maybe?) to post WWII mass hysteria (Bex's personal favorite theory). But nothing has been proven.

Warminster is still considered the UK's UFO capital and is still visited today by alien and ufo-enthusiasts.