Mary Hardy Reeser (March 8, 1884 – July 2, 1951) of St. Petersburg, Florida, was a woman whose unusual death by burning was surrounded by mystery, and even controversially reported at the time to be a case of spontaneous human combustion (SHC). She was often referred to as the "cinder lady" in newspaper accounts of the day. Plastic household objects at a distance from the seat of the fire were softened and had lost their shapes. Reeser's skull had survived and was found among the ashes, but shrunken "to the size of a teacup", a description disputed by a fire researcher who was in Bradenton for a conference at the time and managed to view the scene. She was buried in the Chestnut Hill Cemetery outside Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Her son died in 1998 at the age of 88. He had a daughter, Mary Carole, named for her grandmother, who died in 2005, another daughter, Nancy, who died in 2021. Their mother died in 2008.
Death of Mary Reeser
191 words updated Jun 19, 2026, 6:48 PM