Spontaneous Human Confabulation: Requiem for Phyllis

Examination of an oft-repeated tale of spontaneous human combustion reveals distortions, errors, and mystery mongering.

According to popular books on the unexplained, a young woman burst into flames spontaneously in a crowded discotheque in Soho, London, and burnt to ashes in minutes. This extraordinary event apparently occurred at the end of the 1950s.

The story of Maybelle Andrews dying such a tragic and mysterious way has appeared in a number of versions. In April 1999 it surfaced in the respectable world of a magazine about the Dutch language (where it caught my attention). The discotheque disaster was mentioned in an article about Dutch words for spontaneous human combustion, or SHC. The inspiration for that article was a 1991 firefighter's magazine. The story may have appeared reliable because firemen supposedly don't tell old wives' tales.

Having investigated the various ways in which this and other similar stories have been reported in books and magazines, I can shed light on the tale's origin.

The Making of a Horror Story

Where does the Maybelle Andrews story come from? In itself it is highly implausible. Just for a start, an adult human body can't burn within five minutes just like that. Because of the short time involved, it would require a very high temperature, but the total heat of combustion of the human body is such that the effect would be similar to burning ten liters (or quarts) of gasoline within five minutes. The nightclub would have been gutted, and all people present would have died of a combination of lack of oxygen and smoke poisoning.

But the story of Maybelle isn't unique in the annals of SHC. There is a similar story that dates back to the sad death of Phyllis Newcombe as a consequence of a fire at the ballroom of the Shire Hall in Chelmsford, England, in 1938.

The story about Phyllis's accident first entered the world outside Essex through an item about the inquest, published in the Daily Telegraph on September 20, 1938. That story was somewhat unclear, because it didn't mention the date of Phyllis's death, and paid inordinately much more attention to the fact that the ambulance had taken all of twenty minutes to arrive. This may have given readers the superficial impression that the ambulance was too late to save Phyllis. Prominent in the story was a quote from Coroner L.F. Beccles: "From all my experience I have never come across a case so very mysterious as this."

The first author to write about Phyllis was science fiction writer Eric Frank Russell. In the May 1942 issue of Tomorrow, in the section "Scientific Fantasy," he described all kinds of mysterious deaths, including puzzling fire deaths. Of the latter he summarized nineteen cases (all from 1938 and the first week of 1939) that he had culled from British newspapers. He didn't mention Phyllis by name:

"Chelmsford woman burned to death in a dance hall" was followed by Beccles's quote. A revised version of Russell's article was printed in Fate (December 1950), and this was reprinted in March 1955 in the UK edition of Fate. In Fate "a dance hall" was changed to "in the middle of a dance hall" and Beccles' quote read "as mysterious" rather than "so very mysterious."

In Great World Mysteries Russell (1957) considerably embellished the story. The atmosphere on the dance floor is set by "Couples glided around the floor, others chatted and sipped soft drinks," the victim (still unnamed) "burst into flames bang in the middle of a dance hall" and the remark is added that the victim didn't smoke and that she hadn't been in contact with cigarettes. Russell writes: "She roared like a blow-torch and no man could save her."

This version was probably the source for an article in True (May 1964) by the American writer Allan W. Eckert. He dated the accident on September 20, made the location "the midst of a crowded dance floor," let the poor girl "burst into intense blue flames" (like a blowtorch?), made her crumple silently to the floor, and "neither her escort nor other would-be rescuers could extinguish the flames. In minutes she was ashes, unrecognizable as a human being." Then Eckert made up the first name "Leslie" for Beccles (and changed the quote again). The article was illustrated by a full page picture of a Marilyn Monroe-esque woman in a sexy pose wrapped in flames.

When I e-mailed Eckert to ask for the source of his story (which I knew originally only through quotes) he e-mailed back that he had lost his notes and didn't even have a copy of his own article.

The creator of the Bermuda Triangle, Vincent Gaddis, combines Eckert's version ("bluish flames," "within minutes a blackened mass of ashes") with Russell's Fate article ("middle of a dance floor"). His Beccles quote is a mix of Russell's and Eckert's versions. Gaddis plays the scholar by giving the Daily Telegraph reference, but judging from his text he never set eyes on that source.

Maybelle Andrews

Maybelle Andrews appears in a paperback by Emile C. Schurmacher titled Strange Unsolved Mysteries (1967). Schurmacher mentions six cases from Great World Mysteries, but neither Russell nor anyone else is credited.