The Mysterious Death of Mary Reeser
Was it murder, a freak accident, or spontaneous human combustion?
On an early July morning in 1951, landlord Pansy Carpenter received a telegram addressed to one of the tenants in her Tampa Bay apartment complex.
She went to the apartment, carrying the telegram, and knocked. There was no answer. She decided to open the door. When she touched the doorknob, it was warm. Almost unbearably warm. Pansy felt something was very wrong. She retreated back to her apartment and called the police.
When the police arrived and entered the apartment of the tenant — 67 year old Mary Reeser — they encountered the most inexplicable case of their lives.
Mary, along with the chair she was sitting on, had burned to ashes. If it wasn’t for the one remaining left foot, skull and part of her spine, nobody would have been able to tell that what they are looking at is a person’s remains. Mary’s body had been almost completely cremated.
Just next to the remaining springs of her chair, was a pile of newspapers. Intact. All of the furniture, carpets, walls in the apartment: also intact. The only sign of a fire were few softened plastic appliances and some soot at the ceiling from the heat and smoke.
