Lillian Green's Fiery Death

The Legend:
In December 1916, Miss Lillian C. Green, housekeeper for the proprietor of a hotel seven miles from Dover, New Jersey, was found badly burned on the hotel's lower floor and later died at a Dover hospital.

Theories
Joe Nickell, in his book Secrets of the Supernatural, gives an account of this event compiled from three sources, Charles Fort's Wild Talents (1932), Vincent H. Gaddis' Mysterious Fires and Lights (1967), and articles from the New York Herald of December 27-28, 1916; I have a copy of Wild Talents, and will dig through it soon -- of the others, I will, of course, attempt to locate copies. Nickell points out that their is a conflict in his sources: Gaddis, in his book, cites accounts from the New York Herald as stateing "The floor under her body was slightly scorched, but with the exception of her clothing, nothing else in the room showed the slightest trace of burns or possible origin of fire." But, according to Nickell, the New York Herald reports differ from this, stateing that there "were no ashes from the clothing;" this curiosity lead investigators to suspect that Green had been burned elsewhere, a suspicion that was quickly followed by the discovery of "unmistakable evidence in traces of fire" found in a room on the second floor indicating that her clothing had caught fire there. A county detective put forward the theory that Green had accidently set her cloths afire herself, since the proprietor "told him that she frequently smoked cigarettes in her room."

Sources:

• Now available on Request.

See Also:

• General Article: Spontaneous Human Combustion