logo
episode-header-image
Nov 2022
24m 3s

85: Spontaneous Human Combustion

The Why Files: Operation Podcast
About this episode

Here's the nightmare scenario. You stop by your elderly mother's house to check on her. You grab the doorknob. It's hot to the touch. You ring the bell and knock. No answer.

You fish out your key and open the door. You call out but there's only silence.

The air is warm. There's a sweet, smoky smell. But, nothing looks out of place.

Finally, you go into the living room and you see it.

In your mom's favorite chair, is a pile of smoldering ash. Completely unrecognizable as human.

Just as you convince yourself that this isn't your mother, you see her jewelry in the gray dust.

And then the grisly sight of your mother's feet, still in their slippers, on the floor by the ashes.

There was a fire. An intense fire. But aside from her chair, nothing is burned. Even stranger, everything in the house is covered with a thin layer of pale yellow grease.

Your mother was a victim of spontaneous human combustion. Though rare, it happens more often than you think.

According to at least one scientist, it could happen to anybody at any time — even you.

--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thewhyfiles/support
Up next
Jan 12
623: Witnesses of: Black Eyed Kids, Phone Calls from the Dead, The Cursed Heart
Gather round for three campfire stories investigators cannot explain.A dead man's phone calls thirty-five times in twelve hours, guiding rescuers through wreckage to his body. The phone battery should have died. The phone was never found.A heart transplant patient inherits his do ... Show More
37m 45s
Dec 29
622: COMPILATION: Staff Picks A to Z: From Aliens to Zombies, From Giants to Gobekli Tepe
This special compilation brings together ten staff favorites that question everything we think we know about reality. From the dark corridors of DARPA where future technology is born to the frozen wastelands of Antarctica where Admiral Byrd allegedly encountered an advanced civil ... Show More
5h 23m
Dec 24
621: The Man Who Saw Christ Still Walks Among Us | Immortal Count of St Germain Revisited
In 1745, London authorities arrested a stranger who refused to give his name. His pockets were full of diamonds, and he played violin like a master. For the next two hundred years, this man appeared at every turning point in European history. He transformed lead into gold for Cas ... Show More
32m 23s
Recommended Episodes
Jan 2025
Encounters x266
In this Encounters episode, Corinne and Sabrina are diving into the wild, weird, and downright chilling stories YOU sent in. From a TikTok-inspired sniff test of "space perfume" (spoiler: it smells like burnt almond cookies... and a tire shop 🛞) to a listener struck by lightning ... Show More
50m 10s
Jun 2025
Encounters x285 - Poltergeist Stories
This Encounters episode is full of chaos, comedy, and spirits that throw more than just shade. We’re diving into your wildest poltergeist stories. There’s an auntie ghost who stops a murder, a stuffed tiger flying across the room, and one listener who might just be psychic withou ... Show More
54m 16s
May 2025
Even as a Child, I Knew
It begins at her then-boyfriend’s childhood home, where she experiences two separate instances of being slapped on the head by an unseen force—while lying against a solid wall. Later, she learns of a man who died tragically nearby, deepening the mystery.In 2019, during what was m ... Show More
33m 10s
Aug 2024
The Smell of Cyanide (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)
<p>On a summer day in 1986, a medical examiner and her assistant stared down at a deceased woman lying on the metal table. Neither of them had ever seen anything like this, the woman appeared to have been completely healthy at the time of her death - she didn't have a stroke, the ... Show More
39m 55s
Nov 2
Episode 346 - The Bélmez Faces: A Mystery Etched in Stone
In the blistering summer heat of 1971, a quiet village in southern Spain became home to one of the strangest haunting cases ever recorded. When María Gómez Cámara found a face staring back at her from her kitchen floor, it launched a decades-long mystery that blurred the line bet ... Show More
1h 11m
Aug 2025
There's a Ghost in Your Bed
In 1987, a family purchased a set of second-hand bunk beds for their young daughters. Almost immediately after they started being used, their children started reporting a strange apparition, visions, and objects moving on their own. Can objects be haunted? And if so, are there mo ... Show More
24m 50s