Real-Life X-Files (7 page)

Even a lean body contains a significant amount of fat, which is present even in the bone marrow (Snyder 1967). Indeed, “once the body starts to burn, there is enough fat and inflammable substances to permit varying amounts of destruction to take place. Sometimes this destruction by burning will proceed to a degree which results in almost complete combustion of the body,” as police officials reported in the Mary Reeser case (Blizin 1951). Moreover, in general, “women burn hotter and quicker than men, because proportionally, women carry more fat.” (Bennett n.d.)

Arnold tries to compare favorably the partial destruction of bodies that occurs in his SHC cases (in which limbs, large segments of bone and other matter may remain, and that which does is rarely quantified or described scientifically) with the more complete destruction typical of crematories. But this is an apples-versus-oranges comparison at best. As Drysdale (1989) explains: “In a crematorium you need high temperatures—around 1,300 degrees C, or even higher—to reduce the body to ash in a relatively short period of time. But it’s a misconception to think
you need those temperatures within a living room to reduce a body to ash in this way. You can produce local, high temperatures, by means of the wick effect and a combination of smouldering and flaming to reduce even bones to ash. At relatively low temperatures of 500 degrees C—and if given enough time—the bone will transform into something approaching a powder in composition.”

It is interesting that the major proponents of spontaneous human combustion—Michael Harrison (Fire From Heaven, 1977), Jenny Randies and Peter Hough (
Spontaneous Human Combustion
, 1992), and Larry E. Arnold (Ablaze! 1995)—are all popular writers who are credulous as to other paranormal claims. They stand in contrast to the physicists and chemists, the forensic specialists, and other scientists who question—on the evidence—the reality of spontaneous human combustion.

References

Arnold, Larry. 1995.
Ablaze! The Mysterious Fires of Spontaneous Human Combustion
. New York: M. Evans.

Bennett, Valerie (crematorium superintendent), n.d. Quoted in Randies and Hough 1992, 50.

Blizin, Jerry. 1951. The Reeser case.
St. Petersburg (Florida)Times
, Aug. 9.

Dee, D.J. 1965. A case of “spontaneous combustion.”
Medicine, Science and the Law
5: 37-38.

DeHaan, John D. 1991.
Kirk’s Fire Investigation
, 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

Drysdale, Dougal. 1989. Quoted in Randies and Hough 1992,43.

Gaddis, Vincent. 1967.
Mysterious Fires and Lights
. New York: David McKay.

Liebig, Justus von. 1851.
Familiar Letters on Chemistry
, letter 22. London: Taylor, Walton & Maberly.

Nickell, Joe, and John F. Fischer. 1984. Spontaneous human combustion,
The Fire and Arson Investigator
34 (March): 4-11 no. 4 (June): 3-8. This was published in abridged form in Joe Nickell with John F. Fischer,
Secrets of the Supernatural
(Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1988), 149-57,161-71.

Nickell, Joe, with John F. Fischer. 1992.
Mysterious Realms
. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 165-75.

Randles, Jenny, and Peter Hough. 1992.
Spontaneous Human Combustion
. London: Robert Hale.

Snyder, Lemoyne. 1967.
Homicide Investigation
, 2nd ed. Springfield, 111.: C.C. Thomas, 233, 242.

Stevenson, Thomas. 1883.
The Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence
, 3rd ed. Philadelphia: Lea, 718-27.

Chapter 5

One of my old cases—solved twenty years ago—was never published. However, I recently rediscovered a souvenir of the investigation—a strange curio—at the bottom of a stored trunk. It has an interesting link to the “Believe It or Not” empire founded by Robert L. Ripley.

Ripley (1893-1949) began his career by combining a love of athletics and drawing to produce a series of sports cartoons. One day in 1918, facing a deadline and lacking any other idea, he transformed some notes on unusual sports events into a cartoon panel headed “Champs and Chumps.” His editor at the
New York Globe
liked all but the title, and soon “Believe It or Not” was launched. The changed title permitted a much broader selection of oddities, and the cartoon went from a weekly to a daily feature. In 1929, it began to be distributed by King Features Syndicate.

Ripley’s income skyrocketed, boosted by “Believe It or Not” books, radio programs, movies, “freak shows,” and other venues and ventures. Seeking out the weird, the grotesque, and the amazing, he traveled world wide, earning the sobriquet the “Modern Marco Polo.” According to a biographer, Ripley was his own greatest oddity:

He lived it up, this strange, mixed-up man. He would own the most expensive foreign cars obtainable, but never summon up enough courage to drive. He would pioneer in transatlantic radio broadcasting, but he would never dial a telephone, because in his curious mind there lurked the suspicion that he might be electrocuted in the process. He consumed enormous quantities of liquor and may have set a record for amorous dalliance, but he considered smoking and card playing
evil and would have nothing to do with them. He was, to those who knew him best, the very personification of shyness, but no contemporary matched him in flamboyance or in seeking notoriety. (Considine 1961,16)

Although Ripley insisted that every “Believe It or Not” claim was true, his biographer observes: “The truth was that Ripley literally believed everything. He made flat statements such as ’Neils Paulsen, of Uppsala, Sweden, died in 1907 at the age of 160 and left two sons—one nine years old and the other 103 years of age.’ His sources were usually reprints of old newspapers for items such as the long-lived Swede—rarely medical records, birth certificates, or such” (Considine 1961, 56). In addition to claims based on flimsy evidence, some of Ripley’s assertions were largely provocative. An example appeared beneath a portrait of William F. Cody: “Buffalo Bill Never Shot a Buffalo in His Life.” Ripley’s substantiation was that Cody actually slew
bison
. If readers felt they had been “had,” Ripley was all the more pleased (Considine 1961, 51, 54).

Ripley began to amass a collection of curios from his travels, including shrunken heads, strange effigies, and other oddities, including (his reputed favorite) a “genuine” Fiji mermaid. In 1933, he displayed such items along with live performers at his “Odditorium” at the Chicago World’s Fair. Its success led to shows at various fairs and expositions, and in time Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museums—twenty-seven so far—have spread around the world (Kemlo 1997).

My case began in the early 1970s at the Ripley museum in Niagara Falls, Canada. I used to visit it on my day off when I was Resident Magi cian at the nearby Houdini Magical Hall of Fame. (Admission at most Falls attractions was reciprocally free to employees.) I have always enjoyed the “Believe It or Not!” museums’ displays, although I sometimes choose the “or Not” part of the equation. Such was my response to a particular item in the museum. It was a conical piece of wood accompanied by a display sign describing “A cypress growth found in the swamps of Florida with the word RIPLEY written by nature.” Obviously nature produces infinite random shapes that—given our tendency to make order out of chaos—we may perceive as recognizable forms, as by seeing pictures in clouds or envisioning images in ink blots. But the RIPLEY pattern seemed too good to be true. Each time I saw the object, I shook my head in disbelief and thought about how it might be scientifically examined or otherwise investigated.

After I left the Falls, I forgot about the mystery object until a few years later, in 1979, when I was traveling in Florida. On U.S. 27 near Palmdale, Florida, I came across the Cypress Knee Museum, with its ac companying factory and sales room and a three-quarter-mile catwalk that meandered through a cypress swamp. There I learned much about the curious growths known as cypress knees. The cypress is the only tree that has “knees,” which form on the roots and rise, without limbs or leaves, above the water level of swamps. Their function is the subject of some conjecture, but being porous, they may aerate the roots during high water (“Tree-Root” 1937 Gaskins 1978,18-19).

In the museum were many cypress knees “shaped by nature,” their gnarled forms prompting their descriptive names like “Mother and Child,” “Brown Bear,” and the like. But one was strikingly evocative of the Ripley knee, bearing a name and address! Alarm bells were going off in my head. When I asked proprietor Tom Gaskins about this, telling him of my interest, he led me to a shed where he revealed
five more
“RIPLEY” knees! Therein lay an interesting tale.

Tom Gaskins pioneered in using cypress knees for decorative purposes, beginning in 1934 and advertising them in
House
Garden
in November of the following year. In 1937, he was awarded U.S. Patent 2,069,580, for “Articles of Manufacture Made from Cypress Knees.” Basically, the knees are harvested from the swamp with an ax, peeled, and—without affecting the natural shape—modified by hollowing, drilling, etc., to produce “ornamental” items. These include flower holders, bird houses, lamp stands, ashtrays, candle holders, and other household articles.

Within a year of cutting his first knee, having observed a stump that had begun to heal and soon noticing the effects of scarring, he was struck by the idea “that it might be damage that caused knees to grow in strange shapes.” He began to conduct experiments in “controlled knee growth” and produced test scarring in 1938. He stated he had learned that letter ing, for example, could be cut into the knee and that subsequent growth would heal the wounds, producing raised wood where the cuts were made (Gaskins 1979).

In 1939, Gaskins spoke with a Ripley representative at the Odditorium at the New York World’s Fair about the possibility of employing his tech nique “to produce a knee—purely for novelty effect—bearing the word “RIPLEY.” He did later produce such a knee and sent it to the man who, as he recalled, subsequently asked for five more. He made the necessary carvings but forgot about them. It was not until 1978 that he finally sent a photograph of a group of the completed five knees to the Ripley Inter national Ltd. office in Toronto but was told that they did not require any more at the time (Gaskins 1979).

Figure 5.1. Cypress knee with “RIPLEY” “written by nature” ? Believe It or Not! (Author’s collection, gift of Tom Gaskins)

There was ample room for confusion and misunderstanding in all of this, and Tom Gaskins did not believe that anyone at Ripley ever intended to misrepresent how the “RIPLEY” knee was actually formed. During my investigation, a Ripley official reported to me that “This exhibit has been in the possession of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for many, many years, and we have no further details concerning it” (Copperthwaite 1979a). It remained for me to apprise Ripley’s of the facts by means of an affidavit from Tom Gaskins, and subsequently to be advised that the display wording had been amended satisfactorily (Copperthwaite 1979b). (The RIPLEY knee is no longer on display at the Niagara Falls Museum.)

When I reported Ripley’s prompt, appropriate action to Gaskins, I mentioned “luck” regarding my meeting him and learning the true Ripley story. He replied, “I have contemplated luck quite a great deal and use the word as it is commonly used now and then but with my tongue in my cheek. On account of, if you had not had [the] eyes you had and if a thousand other little parts had not been carefully put together, then this entertaining story would not ever have come out” (Gaskins 1979). Hmmm. As “Rip” would say, “Believe It or Not!”