Here's an excerpt from a piece I wrote recently about a reputed case of spontaneous combustion. The full article is almost 8K words long, so I have to decide to expand into something bigger, or settle on a short format e-booklet.
THE FLAME THAT IS MYSELF: The Story of
Peter Vesey
Paul B. Thompson
Between the realms of fiction and
non-fiction exists a wide, gray area of reputedly true stories of history, crime,
religion, and the occult. Here are also found the "stranger than fiction"
tales of the paranormal. It's a flourishing genre that has transplanted itself
quite successfully from pulp magazines to mass-market paperbacks, and now to
the internet. This is not surprising. People love a good mystery, and branding
them true imparts a luster that lends both historical weight and emotional
impact. A questionable facet internet journalism has also inherited is a
reliance on previous popular accounts at the expense of genuine historical
research.
One enduring topic in the stranger-than-fiction
genre is Spontaneous Human Combustion. As the title implies,
this is the alleged phenomenon of human beings unexpectedly (and without
external cause) bursting into flame and dying, being reduced to ash in moments.
The close environs of the victim are usually unaffected by fire, though certain
tell-tale traces often occur: soot stains on walls or ceiling, greasy residue
around the remains, and most macabre, the victim's extremities often escape
destruction. The literature of SHC (as it is usually shortened) is littered with death scene
photos of human ash heaps from which short lengths of leg or feet remain,
untouched by fire. The deaths are real, the fire genuine, but considerable
debate goes on between advocates of paranormal theories and skeptics who
explain SHC deaths as peculiar but natural accidents.
In 1967, Vincent Gaddis published Mysterious
Fires and Lights, a collection of allegedly true tales of ghost lights, lightning
anomalies, UFOs, and SHC. Gaddis was a former newspaperman turned freelance
writer. He was also a member of the original Fortean Society, that loosely associated
group of writers, researchers, and theorists devoted to the works of Charles
Fort.
Gaddis wrote several highly readable but poorly
researched books on UFOs, psychic phenomena, and unexplained disappearances. For
example, his accounts of aerial and maritime disappearances in the Caribbean fostered
the legend—and created the name of—the Bermuda Triangle.
At the end of Chapter 12 of Mysterious Fires and
Lights ("Enigma of the Fire Deaths"), Gaddis breaks his narrative
and adds this last item:
Originally, when planning this chapter, I had decided
not to include the story of Peter Vesey. It is a fourth-hand tale in which I
have no details as to time and place. But I have changed my mind in the hope
that some reader of this book who has personal knowledge of the tragedy can
supply me with additional information.
In 1944, Carl Payne Tobey, a well-known astrologer and
mathematician, sent an account of this case to novelist Tiffany Thayer, who was
secretary of the former Fortean Society. Thayer published it in issue No. 10 of
the Fortean Society Magazine (later called Doubt). Tobey had the
letter and clippings he referred to at the time, but since he was busy and the
material was lost somewhere in his files, he wrote from memory. When, in 1962,
I visited Tobey at his home in Tucson, Arizona, he told me that these records
had been destroyed by termites.
In the early 1930's Tobey was one of the editors of American
Astrology magazine. Peter Vesey wrote astrological fiction for publication.
His stories appeared almost every month and were popular with the magazine's
readers. Suddenly his contributions stopped arriving in the editorial offices.
Little thought was given to the matter, and his space was filled by someone
else.
One day a letter came from a reader who lived in Vesey's
part of the country. Enclosed were newspaper clippings that told a weird story.
Peter Vesey was dead. He had departed this life under bizarre circumstances.
Vesey was a strange man who had devoted his life to
the study of strange subjects. It was hinted that he went in for the occult
rituals of medieval magicians. He was secretive. One morning he called his wife
and son into the living room. He said he wanted to be alone for a while. There
was something he wanted to do. He asked his wife and son to leave the house for
an hour and to walk around the grounds outside. Vesey was alone in the house
for an hour. Then his wife and son returned.
On the floor of the living room were the remains of
Peter Vesey. They were charred remains. Peter Vesey was a blackened cinder, his
body burned to a crisp. Nothing else in the room or around the body had been
burned or even scorched. There was a fireplace at the far end of the room with
a modest fire, but nothing between the fire and the remains was burned.
The clippings stated that the authorities were never
able to determine what had happened to Peter Vesey. What was it he wanted to
do—alone—that added his name to the long list of victims of mysterious
combustion?
I
would like to know more—much more—about Peter Vesey.
When I first read Gaddis' book as a
youth, I took this challenge seriously. As a college student in the 1970s I
tried several times to find out more about the case, using the resources of a
major university library without success. It became a nagging, unfinished item
I never forgot yet couldn't seem to pin down. I did eventually find Tobey's
original letter in The Fortean magazine, published in 1945.
CASE OF PETER
VESEY by Carl Payne Tobey
Although these notes are written from
memory, it is a true case with a record in newspapers and courts. Whatever
further details might be desired can [be] obtained.
Peter Vesey wrote astrological fiction for American
Astrology magazine. I did not like his fiction and cannot be accused of
having read it. His stories were popular with the public. Although I was one of
the editors of the magazine at the time, I wasn't interested in Peter Vesey,
which appears to have been his true name. Perhaps I should have been more
interested. Had I known what was ahead for Peter Vesey, I might have read his
stories with great interest.
Peter Vesey lived on a farm, way out west
somewhere. I forget where, but can check. His stories came by mail and were
always published. Then they stopped coming, and we didn't hear from Peter
Vesey. Little thought was given to the matter, and his space was filled by
someone else.
One day, came a letter from a reader who
lived in Peter Vesey's part of the country. It enclosed newspaper clippings.
Peter Vesey was no longer mortal. Peter Vesey had departed under strange
circumstances. The story was something like this.
It was early in the day . . . before noon.
Peter Vesey had devoted his life to studying strange subjects. He went in for
the occult. He was secretive. He studied alone. On this morning, he called his
wife and son, the only persons in the house outside of himself, to the living
room. He explained that he wanted to be alone for a while. He had something he
wanted to do. He wanted to be left in the house alone for an hour. As a favor,
he asked whether his wife and son would mind going out and walking around the
grounds, for an hour.
Although the request may have seemed
strange, Peter Vesey was a strange fellow anyway, and wife and son did not take
the request as anything too unusual. They went out of the house and walked and
talked in the grounds.
For
one hour, Peter Vesey was alone in the house.
At the end of that time, wife and son
returned. On the floor of the living room, were the remains of Peter Vesey.
They were charred remains. His body was burned to a crisp. Nothing around the
body, nothing else in the room, was in any way burned. Just Peter Vesey was
burned. At the far end of the room was a fire-place with a modest fire. But
there was no traceable connection between this fire and Peter Vesey. Nothing
between the fire and Peter Vesey was burned.
The authorities were never able to determine what
happened to Peter Vesey. All we ever knew about the matter was that the
termination of his stories by mail coincided with the above event. If more
accurate and detailed data should be desired, I'll have it dug out of the files
of American Astrology magazine.
For
many years this was the sum total of what was known about the case. One obvious
lead was to find back issues of American Astrology. In pre-internet days
this meant finding either actual archived paper copies or microforms. For
years, real life prevented me traveling around the United States to locate
eighty-year-old astrology magazines. When the internet matured in the third
decade of the twenty-first century, the search for Peter Vesey became easier
and wider than ever before.
[to be continued . . . somewhere]
