The Midnight Train Podcast

#80 - Creepy Canada (Sorry, eh!)

"Canadians have an abiding interest in surprising those Americans who have historically made little effort to learn about their neighbour to the North."

Peter Jennings

 

     It is these words that define today's episode! We are all going to be surprised and learn about some of the creepiest, craziest, weirdest things our neighbors to the North have to offer. If you're not from the U.S. the Canadians may not be your neighbors to the North but they'll offer you some Tim Hortons and be extremely polite to you anyways! Most people only know a few things about Canada: they are polite, they love hockey, it's cold as fuck, and they say eh. But we're going to learn you all a few more things, and we're gonna do it the Midnight Train way, by telling you about the creepy side of Canada! So without further ado jump on your moose, grab your hockey stick, throw on your toque, and let's ride!

 

 Off to our first stop! With one hand in our pockets, we head to the home of Alanis Morissette, Ottawa! We're taking a quick trip to the Ottawa Jail Hostel. This hostel has a bit of a history. As the name implies this was one a jail!  The jail was built next to the courthouse in 1862 and was the main jail in Ottawa for over a century! There's a tunnel that connects the jail to the courthouse. Only three official executions took place in the jail. The most famous being that of Patrick J. Whalen. Whalen assassinated a man by the name of Thomas D'Arcy Etienne Grace Hughes McGee, wow. McGee was an Irish-Canadian politician, Catholic spokesman, journalist, poet, and a Father of Canadian Confederation. The young McGee was a Catholic Irishman who opposed British rule of Ireland, and worked for a peasant revolution to overthrow British rule and secure Irish independence. He escaped arrest and fled to the United States in 1848, where he reversed his political beliefs. He became disgusted with American republicanism and democracy, and became intensely conservative in his politics and in his religious support for the Pope. Over 5,000 people witnessed Whelan's hanging, which was a large number considering the size of Ottawa at the time. The third (official) and final execution at the jail took place on March 27, 1946, when Eugène Larment, who had killed an Ottawa police detective, was hanged. The building remained in use as a jail until 1972 when the outdated facility was closed. The original gallows, however, are intact and remain fully functional. There’s also what appears to be an ‘unofficial’ gallows over a back staircase, so it’s hard to say how many prisoners were executed at the jail. So you know… Don't piss off the people in the next room. While the jail was in use, prisoners were held under very inhumane conditions. Up to 150 prisoners, consisting of men, women, and children, would be forced to share 60 small cells (1x3 meters) and 30 larger cells (2x3 meters); as well as six solitary confinement units. The windows were open to the elements early on and offered no protection from the freezing Ottawa winters and got summers. Inmates included murderers, the mentally ill, or those incarcerated for minor infractions such as drunk and disorderly conduct. Modern excavations have unearthed numerous unmarked graves. It's no wonder this hostel is considered a haunted creepy place. Most guests convey a heavy creepy feeling while staying there. Here's a few of the things people report about the place! The Ghost of Patrick Whelan: Arguably the hostel’s most famous spook, you’ll see Patrick Whelan walking the halls toward the gallows where he was hanged. His restless spirit is said to be caused by an undignified burial after his execution.

The Hole: Also known as solitary confinement, this area of the jail is filled with an ominous, negative energy. Visitors report overwhelming feelings of despair in this cramped, lightless space.

The Gallows: The jail’s preferred method of execution is still standing and functional. Hotel guests have heard footsteps, disembodied voices and other baffling sounds coming from the execution chamber.

The Lounge: The hostel’s lounge was once used to house women and children prisoners, echoes of whom can still be heard today. Visitors claim to hear sounds of children crying and screaming, as well as knocking on doors and footsteps in the empty room. 

Assistant Manager Jeff Delgado recounts a particularly memorable experience when a woman had checked herself into the old Warden’s office for the night. They became suspicious when she didn’t check out on time the following day, and when he went to check on the woman, she was still in bed. Jeff says: “The front desk agent shook the woman and she woke up very frightened and hysterical. According to her, there was a small girl that appeared to her in her sleep in the office surroundings, and wrapped her arms around her so that she would not be able to wake up. The girl was also supposedly trying to whisper something in her ear, from which the guest could only make out the word ‘help’.

 

“Although the story might seem outlandish, the guest was unaware that the particular room she was staying in was indeed the old Warden’s office. She was also able to describe in detail the surroundings of an office and the physical description of the little girl.”

 

On the plus side of you make it through the night without getting scared off… There's a free continental breakfast… So there's that.

 

Next up we are going to play "informer" in the land of "Snow". Heading to Shag Harbor, Nova Scotia. We're not talking about ghosts or cryptids, we're talking about aliens! Shag Harbor was the sight of a supposed UFO crash in 1967. Oh hell… We are gonna say it was definitely a ufo crash! 

In the Air

At approximately 7:15pm, Air Canada Flight 305 pilots Captain Pierre Charbonneau and First Officer Robert Ralph were flying above Quebec, about 180 miles west of Nova Scotia. Everything was perfectly routine until they noticed something trailing their plane. They witnessed a massive, rectangular-shaped object, orange in color, gliding through the skies. Trailing the rectangle were small, orange orbs that seemed almost like a tail to this main object.

The pilots watched with growing concern for several minutes when, suddenly, there was some sort of explosion near the rectangle. A large white cloud was left behind, sporadically changing colors from red to blue. Two minutes later, another explosion occurred leaving behind a similar cloud of colors. The pilots watched in amazement as the small orbs swarmed around the rectangle and, along with it, descended in to a thick cloud cover and disappeared out of sight. Both pilots, visibly shaken, reported the incident when they finally landed.

 

Meanwhile, back on the ground, residents of Shag Harbour would report seeing four orange lights in tight formation flashing in rapid sequence across the night sky. A group of teens that were out fishing noticed that the lights were making a brisk descent towards the water. But instead of disappearing into the murky depths, the lights seemed to float effortlessly on the surface before disappearing into the water. Because of this, the teens believed it to be an airplane that had crashed a half mile from the shore. Another young man who had been fishing quickly phoned the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) to report the crash of an aircraft. The police dispatcher brushed off the young man, believing him to have been inebriated, but soon, over a dozen other calls flooded the station. Police immediately went out to investigate.

 

Unbeknownst to the RCMP, Constable Ron Pound was patrolling an area near the alleged incident. He witnessed the four orange lights moving at tremendous speed. As he sped up his vehicle, he believed the four lights to all be connected to a single aircraft and estimated it to be about sixty feet in length. He reached the shoreline where he was soon joined by fellow officers, Police Corporal Victor Werbieki, and Constable Ron O’Brien. Along with over thirty other witnesses, they all watched as the orange lights slowly changed to a yellowish tint, and it moved eerily slow across the surface of the water, leaving a similar yellowish colored foam in its wake. Some witnesses claimed to have seen the actual structure of the object, reporting it as “dome-shaped.” Due to the exhaustive dedication by investigators, Chris Styles and Don Ledger, they were able to compile a list of first-hand witnesses, and individuals involved with the search and recovery efforts.

When the object was reported to crash-land in the water, and it began to sink into the ice-cold waters, a loud “whooshing” sound could be heard by several witnesses. The Canadian Coast Guard was called to the scene, but before they could arrive, two RCMP officers had already secured local fishermen’s boats and headed towards the area for a possible search and rescue mission.

The lights were no longer visible, but the yellow foam remained. The officers and fisherman who assisted, all said that the foam was like no sea foam they had ever seen, much thicker than anything that could be caused naturally. They had to cut their way through it just to look for survivors of the supposed crash.

After several hours of searching, nothing could be found. The RCMP, along with The Coast Guard, contacted their local NORAD station and the Rescue Coordination Center, asking if there had been any reports that evening of a missing aircraft either civilian or military. They had nothing.

The following morning of October 5th, the Canadian Forces Headquarters sent out specially trained divers from the Navy and RCMP to systematically search the seabed in the alleged area where the crash had occurred. They searched for several days and found absolutely nothing.

Local newspapers began to circulate speculative theories of a Russian spacecraft, submarine, or spy satellite being the enigmatic culprit. There were also rumors that the United States had launched their own investigation into the incident. Slowly, the headlines made their way to the back of the newspapers and soon faded into obscurity as most UFO cases often do. In 2018, it was announced that Celine Cousteau and Fabian Cousteau, grandchildren of Jacques Cousteau, were heading to Nova Scotia to investigate the incident. As part of their visit, their investigative team would carry out an underwater search to try to locate the craft that could possibly still sit at the bottom of water.

While their deep sea investigation did not yield a craft or materials, anomalous activity was recorded between their radio transmissions while underwater when in proximity to where the craft was said to have submerged. Perhaps the most compelling developments in the Shag Harbour incident are its striking resemblance to the now famous “Tic Tac UFO” incident. But we can find similarities with actions taken by the Tic Tac UFO and the object witnessed in Shag Harbour in 1967.

In fact, the event in Nova Scotia meets at least one of the traits laid out by the former director of the once secret Pentagon UFO program, Luis Elizondo. Under AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program), Elizondo compiled a list of incredible capabilities commonly associated with UFO sightings. He called these traits the “Five Observables.” As stated on the TTSA website, they include:

-Sudden and instantaneous acceleration

-Hypersonic velocities without signatures

-Low observability

-Trans-medium travel

-Positive lift

If we are to observe the actions of the Shag Harbour object(s), it most certainly hits #4, Trans-Medium Travel. According to the AATIP criteria, this involves:

Objects that have the ability to travel easily in various environments and conditions seemingly without any change in performance capabilities. Our current understanding of physics requires vehicles to be designed specifically according to their application. For this reason, there are stark differences between those vehicles that orbit in space, fly in the atmosphere, and travel in the sea. Objects that can travel in all three mediums using the same design and without compromising performance or degrading lift remains an enigma.

This, and several other observables, make the Shag Harbour object most certainly an enigma. And while its performance may have in fact been compromised that day in the skies and eventually, in the waters of Nova Scotia, it begs for continued investigation. The extraordinary testimonies given to Styles and Ledger, were said to be highly credible individuals. However, their names remained confidential to protect them from possible threat or security oaths.

Therefore, the aforementioned information, just like most witness testimony by military and authority figures, was given “off the record.”

No matter the case, something extremely strange occurred in Shag Harbor on that dark, cold night, and even stretched southward towards the United States.

It remains one of the most compelling UFO cases of all-time, only bringing forth more questions than answers. It’s left even the most skeptical minds scratching their heads.

It could be best summarized with a quote from an October 14th editorial from The Chronicle-Herald :

“Imagination and/or natural phenomena seem to be the weakest of explanations. It has been a tough week for skeptics.”

 

Next up we head to the birthplace of one of the worlds most beloved musicians. A man who will the ladies love and every man want to be. A man who helped write the greatest musical anthems of all time. That's right… Chad Kroeger of Nickelback! We're heading to Alberta! And may we be the first to say… Fuck you Alberta for that whole fiasco. Any rate that's not what we're talking about here… That dude is way scarier than our next creepy Canadian tale! We're heading more specifically to Fort Kent, Alberta. We're going from aliens to evil spirits… But not ghosts, we're talking  Wendigo! The tale of the fort Kent Wendigo is pretty crazy. 

The Wendigo is a mythological creature part of Algonquin legend that speaks of an evil spirit that could possess the minds of men mad with grief and despair, driving them to commit gruesome acts of murder and cannibalism.

 

Such a creature is alleged to exist somewhere around Fort Kent, with a chilling legend that goes back nearly 100 years ago.

 

Thomas Burton was a young doctor that arrived in Fort Kent from England in 1921 when it was but a humble colony. Burton came to Fort Kent with his wife to treat an outbreak of small pox that had befallen the small community, allegedly on the backs of rats.

Burton also hoped that by leaving England, he would leave behind the horrible memories he had of World War I.

 

Initially the young doctor was successful in fighting the disease, and the townsfolk embraced him and his wife as miracle workers, but the disease’s spread suddenly became uncontrollable, and Burton became overwhelmed with the sick and dying.

 

It wasn’t long before his wife too fell ill, and when she succumbed to the sickness, Burton locked himself in his house with her dead body.

 

In the following days, Burton went mad with grief, and according to legend was possessed by the Wendigo.

 

Under the evil spirit’s influence, he ate his wife’s flesh.

 

When he was done with her, Burton turned his attention to the residents of Fort Kent, and allegedly went on a killing spree for the next three days with few spared, said to be some of the grisliest murders in Canadian history.

 

At the end of the third day, it is said Burton disappeared into the woods around Fort Kent, and was never seen or heard from again.

 

When he and his wife had arrived, there were 150 people in Fort Kent — 11 were all that remained, at least according to the legend.

 

Burton’s was not the first high-profile case of Wendigo possession in Western Canada — the first official hanging to take place in the region was also attributed to a man possessed by the evil spirit.

 

Swift Runner, a Plains Cree trapper, was arrested after he admitted to killing and eating his wife and children during the winter of 1878, 25 miles from a Hudson’s Bay Company outpost stocked with emergency supplies.

 

Because he committed such a heinous crime while help was so close by, he was believed to be possessed by the Wendigo

 

After he confessed to the crime, Swift Runner was hung in Fort Saskatchewan.

 

Today the community we know as Fort Kent no longer sits at the location Burton’s terrible murders were committed, but residents sometimes report strange cries resembling that of a coyote coming from the tree line, and children are warned not to be in the fields too long past dark, lest they be taken by the Wendigo. Sounds like a pleasant place!

 

As you all know Tom Cochran once told us all via song that life is a highway and we're gonna ride it all night long to where he's from… Manitoba Canada! Now if you follow your cryptids, like you should you have probably heard of Ogopogo, a lake monster in british columbia but some people are not aware of another pretty famous lake monster in Manitoba. This one is somewhat named after Ogopogo, it's called Manipogo, get it… Cus Manitoba...Mani...pogo… well whatever. In Canadian folklore, the Manipogo is a lake monster said to live in Lake Manitoba, Manitoba, Canada. There is also a Lake Winnipegosis sea monster called Winnepogo, thought possibly to be the same creature as the lakes are connected. Not very creative with the names but… You know… Canada? The monster is described as being from 4 to 15 meters long. It is described as "A long muddy-brown body with humps that show above the water, and a sheep-like head." People have claimed to have seen the lake monster since the 1800s. The name was created by Tom Locke, a land inspector in charge of planning the provincial government's program for public playgrounds and recreational parks. On Aug. 10, 1960, he and 16 others said they saw three creatures swimming near the area of Toutes Aides, a community 245 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, on the shore of Lake Manitoba. First Nations stories of Manipogo go back centuries, while the first documented sighting by a white settler came in 1909, when Hudson's Bay Company fur trader Valentine McKay claimed to see a huge creature in Cedar Lake. Timber inspector C.F. Ross and a friend were next, saying they saw a single-horned creature that looked like a dinosaur in 1935. And in 1948, C.P. Alric claimed to see something rise up from Lake Manitoba and let out a "prehistoric type of dinosaur cry." Here are some of the stories of sightings:

1957: Louis Belcher and Eddie Nipanik say they saw a giant serpent-like creature in the lake.

Aug. 12, 1962: Two fishermen, Richard Vincent and John Konefall, claim to have seen a large creature, like a serpent or giant snake from their boat on Lake Manitoba near the mouth of the Waterhen River.

1960s: A couple say they saw a "reptile-like beast" surfacing about 10 metres from their boat.

1989: Sean Smith and family, visiting from Minneapolis on a camping trip, stayed at Shallow Point Campground, off Highway 6 on Lake Manitoba. He described seeing "many humps" in the lake, about 25 metres offshore.

1997: Several reports by cross-country campers from Quebec staying at the Lundar Beach Campground describe what appeared to be a large reptile head rising and falling in the water, more than 100 metres offshore. Swimmers were asked to leave the water, but the "head" only appeared one time. It was dismissed as a floating log, but no log was seen afterward.

2004: Commercial fisherman Keith Haden, originally from Newfoundland and Labrador, reported that several of his fishing nets on Lake Manitoba near the narrows were torn up by what seemed like an ocean shark or killer whale. The fish that were in the nets were not nibbled on, but actually torn in half, he said, by what seemed like huge bites.

2009: Several residents at Twin Lakes Beach reported seeing several humps a few hundred metres from their lakefront cottages. No photos were taken.

2011: Many sightings of several humps emerging and then submerging, seen from offshore, were reported at locations like Marshy Point, Scotch Bay, and Laurentia Beach by security personal patrolling flooded cottage and home areas.

Aug. 9, 2012: A report claimed that just offshore of the outlet at Twin Beach Road, something surfaced twice, showing a scaled/sawtooth jagged back, like that of a giant sturgeon. 

Sounds like a good time to me! Let's roll!

 

Where are we rolling too? Well hopefully we'll run into Rain Maida of Our Lady Peace cus we're heading to a town near St. Catherine's Ontario. We're actually heading to Thorold Ontario and we're gonna check out the Blue Ghost Tunnel! The Merritton Tunnel, also known as the Blue Ghost Tunnel and the Grand Trunk Railway Tunnel, is an abandoned railway tunnel in Thorold, Ontario. The decision to build the tunnel came from the need for a more durable and less interrupted way to cross the new canal situated directly above it via vehicles. Constructed in 1875, Completed in 1876, and Opened in 1887. The tunnel is located between locks 18 and 19 of the former third Welland Canal and was built using Queenston limestone, spanning a total length of 713 feet when including the winged stone work at either end. Hundreds of men armed with picks and shovels, as well as several horses were used in the excavation of the tunnel. The tunnel was used periodically until 1915, when Harry Eastwood was the last official engineer to pilot a train through the tunnel. Following that, the tunnel was used only occasionally by farmers to transport cattle or as a safe passage from the weather. Several fatal accidents occurred during the construction and use of the tunnel and the railway running through it. In 1875, a 14-year-old was killed when he was crushed under a large rock. On January 3, 1903 at 7:03 AM, Engine Number 4 and Engine Number 975 met in a head-on collision approximately a third of a mile from the western entrance of the tunnel. The trains were moving at approximately 22 miles per hour when they crashed, and the firemen of both trains, Charles Horning of Engine Number 4 and Abraham Desult from Engine Number 975, died as a result of their injuries. Charles Horning, the fireman on the express train was gruesomely pinned between the flaming hot boiler and the tentler. During his attempted rescue, the engineers and post-guards tried to pull his mangled body free, which resulted in his arms and legs being messily severed from his body.  

 

One train worker even reported that Horning’s watch still ticked on his severed arm. His body would never be fully recovered from the remains of the train.  

 

The fireman for the Mogul train, Abraham Desult, was flung into the boiler resulting in burns over 90 percent of his body. He was rushed to the hospital and died five hours later. 

 

For the Blue Ghost Tunnel, stories include people seeing blue wisps that are said to be the spirits of the Firemen. Alternate versions claim a blue mist haunts the tunnel and a ghost dog prowls the area at night. 

 

Some say the wisps do not belong to the Firemen, but to the souls of those whose nearby graves were flooded in the 1920’s. At that time, St. Peter’s Cemetery was flooded over to make way for a canal reservoir. Some families removed their beloved’s bones from the Lutheran burial ground before the flooding occurred but many graves remained. In 2009, a man found human remains in the area after water levels sank to a low level. 

 

Since people talk about feeling a shove, hearing footsteps and voices that don't belong to anyone. There are reports of blue balls of light to go asking with the most as well. There are many skeptics however and there have been a few paranormal investigators that have claimed they didn't find any proof of the tunnel being haunted. But hey… What do they know!

 

Ok we already made a Nickelback joke about Alberta… But now we're turning it lose and working for the weekend in the home of fucking Loverboy! While they're not from our next location exactly, they are from Calgary which from what the internet says it's about an hour and a half away… Close fucking enough.  We're not headed to Calgary as I said… We're headed to Banff! Banff is a resort town and one of Canada's most popular tourist destinations. Known for its mountainous surroundings and hot springs, it is a destination for outdoor sports and features extensive hiking, biking, scrambling and skiing destinations within the area. Sunshine Village, Ski Norquay and Lake Louise Ski Resort are the three nearby ski resorts located within the national park. We're not here for a sight seeing visit though… At least not a ski weekend. We're here to check out the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. Since it opened to the public in 1888, the Banff Springs Hotel has seen history, celebrity, and rebuilds, but it’s also seen tragedy. Millions of guests have checked in, but a few have never checked out. Some even believe that they still roam the halls of the iconic concrete castle in the Rockies, today. In 132 years, the popular Alberta vacation spot has allegedly set the scene for horrific murders, suicides, and terrible accidents. Rooms have been boarded up, and the paranormal are frequently recorded.

 

Some are skeptical, but many claim to have seen it with their own eyes. The bride of the Banff Springs is perhaps the most ‘active’ shadow of the hotel, even appearing on collector’s stamps and coins. Like many ghost stories, retold hundreds of times, the details have become embellished and no one is quite sure who or what happened to the elusive women in white.

 

The most popular theory, dating back to 1920, was that a bride had fallen down a flight of stairs after she tripped on the hem of her dress. She’s typically reported, veiled and dancing throughout the grand ballroom.

 

Other unexplained apparitions and heavy activity have been recorded in room 873. Unfortunately, for adrenaline junkies or Shining fans looking to get a 5-star spook, the room doesn’t actually exist anymore. Apparently, after years of people claiming that they were terrorized in the suite, the hotel decided to permanently seal the room. Guests in the room have reported being awakened by screaming. When they turned on the lights, they would see bloody hand prints on the mirror. Depending on who tells the story, the hand prints either disappeared before hotel staff had a chance to clean them or wouldn’t come off at all. Although hotel staff claims that no such crime ever took place, the room is believed to be the place where a man killed his wife and daughter before taking his own life.

 

Stories of Sam McCAuley, a genial old Scotsman who was head bellman during the sixties and seventies, have been circulating around the hotel since his passing in 1975. Supposedly, Sam is a helpful sort of spirit, and most stories involving him mention some service he’s provided to staff or guests. One incident involved two elderly women calling the bell desk for assistance after they found their key would not work. The regular bellman was occupied with other duties and didn’t respond for 15 minutes. By the time he arrived at their door, it was unlocked. One of the women said an older bellman in a plaid jacket, matching Sam’s description exactly, had helped them. Other stories including guests seeing Sam haunting his old office (now a guest room) on the mezzanine floor as well as seeing apparitions and feeling cold spots on the sixth, seventh or ninth floors of the hotel. 

 

While they’d rather not mention room numbers, there are specific rooms that staff say are haunted aside from 873 Guests have reported having the pillows yanked out from under their heads while they slept or even being pushed off the bed by some unseen entity. Whatever spirits haunt this room, it’s safe to say that if they can’t rest in peace, they want to make sure you won’t either. 

 

Next up we roll up like today's Tom sawyer and live in the limelight with rush in Toronto! We are gonna check out the gibraltar point lighthouse. The Gibraltar Point Lighthouse is a lighthouse located on the Toronto Islands in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Begun in 1808, it is the oldest existing lighthouse on the Great Lakes, and one of Toronto's oldest buildings. The lighthouse is perhaps best known for the demise of its first keeper, German-born John Paul Radelmüller, whose 1815 murder forms the basis of Toronto's most enduring ghost story. Recent research has verified many aspects of the traditional tale of his death and identified the soldiers charged with but ultimately acquitted of the crime. A local legend is that the lighthouse is haunted by its first keeper John Paul Radelmüller. Rademuller disappeared under mysterious circumstances on January 2, 1815. The story goes that he was murdered by two soldiers who had been enjoying his home-brewed beer. Versions of the story differ slightly (one version told in the mid-2000s was that Rademuller was killed after the soldiers bought the beer, but saw it freeze on the cold winter night and assumed that the alcohol content was so low that the lighthouse keeper was trying to rip them off). But most agree that Rademuller was killed that night and dismembered by his killers, who buried his body in a few graves near the lighthouse. His ghost is said to still haunt the site.

The story was recorded by John Ross Robertson in 1908 in Landmarks of Toronto and has become a staple of spooky local lore ever since. Even in his telling, Robertson raises skepticism that the murder ever occurred, but he writes that he heard the story from the current lighthouse keeper, George Durnan, who had apparently gone looking for a body and had dug up a coffin with a jawbone. The plaque at the lighthouse mentions the ghost story and the jawbone, although this was a somewhat controversial decision. People report seeing the apparition of a man wandering the grounds. Some say it is Radelmüller looking for his lost limbs! Since nights bring unexplained meaning sounds and an unexplained mist forming. Inside the tower there's unexplained thumping, banging, and echos. There's also reports of footsteps and what sounds like something being dragged. Creepy lighthouse… Fun stuff!

 

You fuckers hungry? I'm sure Moody is. At any rate at our next stop maybe we'll hunt some orcs with 3 inches of blood or pet a skinny puppy, drink some beer with The Real McKenzies or get a shitty hair cut with Devin Townshend. Or maybe we can head down to the old spaghetti factory in Vancouver and go ghost hunting! The first Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant opened at this location in Gastown in 1970. Located in what was once the headquarters of W.H. Malkin Co. Ltd. (grocery wholesalers).

 

The Old Spaghetti Factory has four ghosts in residence. The first and best known is the spirit of a tram conductor. He frequents the old trolley car that’s parked inside the restaurant and contains dining tables. The trolley, Number 53, was once a part of the British Columbia Electric Railway Company’s fleet of electric trams. Built in nearby New Westminster in 1904, it served as a public transit trolley in and around Vancouver for many years. In 1957, it and dozens of other trolley cars were decommissioned in favour of the electric and diesel buses that are commonplace in the city today.

 

The trolley car was installed in the building in 1969, during the set-up of the restaurant. It’s up for debate whether the conductor’s ghost came with the trolley or not. Some say he died in a collision on an underground rail line below the restaurant. But this is unlikely because Vancouver’s trolley cars all ran at street level. And as the building has no historical connection with the B.C. Electric Railway Co., the ghost probably came with the tram car.

 

Tram Car 53Regardless of his origin, various staff members have seen the ghost of the uniformed conductor. He always appears seated at the same dining table inside the streetcar late at night, after closing. Also, place settings are moved by unseen hands, and inexplicable cold spots are experienced inside the car.

 

The second ghost at The Old Spaghetti Factory is a small, mischievous spirit with a ruddy face and bright red hair. Simply known as the Little Red Man or Looky-loo, he calls out to staff members by name and strolls through the kitchen. His favourite prank is to surprise female customers in the ladies’ washroom. On one particular occasion, two ladies saw the dwarfish man leave one of the cubicles, dressed in a red shirt and red long johns. After looking at them and laughing mischievously, he left through the washroom door. To their surprise, nobody else had seen the unmistakable man leave the washroom. It’s said that one of the women took a picture of the ghost. But when the film was developed, he appeared as a blur.

 

Nobody knows who the little red man is or why he haunts the restaurant. One thing’s for certain, however — he’s a devilish little fellow.

 

The restaurant’s third ghost is that of a young boy. In early 2012, this ghost gave a female server a terrible fright. She was in the back section of the restaurant, helping to close up for the night. While she was busy resetting some tables, a boy ran past her towards the very back. With it being so late and no customers left in the restaurant, she thought it was strange that a boy was running around. So she followed him. The boy ran under a table alongside the back wall, turned around and looked up at her. When she looked at his face, she saw that his eye sockets were empty. Terrified, she ran to the front of the restaurant to tell the manager about what she’d seen. She told him that she couldn’t work at the restaurant any longer and resigned on the spot.

 

A psychic visited the restaurant and identified the ghost of the little boy as Edward. She also pointed out that there’s a vortex located at the back of the premises. (A vortex is a supposed portal to other dimensions that enables spirits to come into our world. Some also believe that vortexes are linked to the Earth’s electromagnetic field. This influences where and when these portals open and close.) She also claimed that several small artifacts that decorate the restaurant have spirits attached to them.

 

The boy ghost is thought to be responsible for bending cutlery on tables in the back of the restaurant. One night during closing hours, a staff member walked through the back area to check that place settings had been properly laid out. He was stunned to see that each cutlery item was bent upwards on one of the tables. Other staff members saw the bent cutlery, too. But by the time they brought the restaurant manager over to see, it was all back to normal. In addition, the ghost sometimes places a dining chair on top of a table in the back section, which the staff find in the morning.

 

In 2015, another server had an encounter with Edward. After closing, she saw the boy dressed in a flat cap, wool jacket and corduroy pants run towards the back of the restaurant. She chased him and, as he’s done before, he ducked under a table. She ran to the front of the restaurant to take the manager back with her to see the boy. But when they got there he was gone. And then they noticed that the place settings had been disturbed — the cutlery was all in a pile in the middle of the tabletop.

 

On another occasion, a customer sat in a row of booths behind the entrance to the restaurant. She saw the boy reflected in a mirror on the back wall. He was using an arm to spin around a narrow column behind the front desk. When she turned around to look at the boy, he’d vanished.

 

The fourth ghost in the Old Spaghetti Factory is of a little girl who appears at a table in the front window. She sits and holds a balloon. Nobody knows who she is. Once, a friend of the restaurant’s general manager had a conversation with her that lasted several minutes. The little girl explained to him that she was looking for her mother. When he returned to the table after telling the manager about her, she’d disappeared. Dinner and a ghost show sounds pretty awesome.

 

Next up we're not going to hell but we'll still be in good company with The Dead With In Regina, Saskatchewan. And maybe we'll win some money and see a ghost or two! Casino Regina is a casino located on Saskatchewan Drive — (formerly South Railway Street) — in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. It operates in the city's former union station, a Tyndall and ashlar stone structure completed in 1912. The Beaux-Arts style Union Station was constructed in 1911-12 and was actually Regina's third train station; the first is now a museum in Broadview, Saskatchewan. The station was completed the same year the deadly "Regina Cyclone" struck the city, tearing through Wascana Park and gutting part of the downtown area. The building underwent a major expansion in 1931, and the original façade was redone in a simpler Art Deco style with Tyndall stone. As well, terrazzo floors, marble support columns and plaster molded ceilings where added to the interior.[1]

 

In the early 1990s, cutbacks to rail services throughout Canada lead to the closure of Regina's Union Station. The Station had been an important part of Regina's history and heritage since its opening in 1912. After the station's closure, its fate remained unknown for several years. Union Station was designated as an official heritage site in 1991.

 

By 1995, a $37 million construction project began to convert the vacant station into the province's second casino. In 1996, Casino Regina opened. The first recorded supernatural encounter occurred in the 1930s, when a ghostly image of a woman was captured in a photograph, even though the room was empty. To this day the photo haha in the casino! Below the Casino the mystery continues in one of the former holding cells. Rumour has it that one prisoner was so determined to avoid jail time that he committed suicide by hanging himself. His ghost is felt so often that many staff members refuse to even go into his cell, even though it is now used for storage. Not to many places you can gamble and see ghosts at the same time!

 

Next up we are heading to new brunswick… Look... apparently there is not one band or musician that most of you people would know from new brunswick so we got nothing here. The only one that any of us have heard of is Stompin Tom Connors, he sings a song called The Hockey Song which I guarantee you've heard of you've attended a hockey game.  Well with that dumb shit behind us let's head to the Dungarvon River. A young cook by the name of Ryan hired himself out to work in a lumber camp near the Dungarvon River.  When he arrived at camp, he brought all his worldly possessions with him.  Around his waist was fastened a money belt stuffed with coins and large bills.  Nobody knew where he got the money, but the young cook made no secret of the fact that there was plenty of it.

 

Ryan was a handsome fellow, tall and strong with ruddy cheeks and black, curly hair.  He was well liked and could whoop and holler better than anyone in the camp; and a good strong shout was an accomplishment much valued among woodsmen.

 

Every morning Ryan was the first one up so as to prepare breakfast and fill the lunch pails with bread and salt pork.  Then he would let out a tremendous ear-splitting whoop to get everyone up.  After breakfast the men would go off to work leaving young Ryan alone.

 

It was an unlucky day for Ryan, for on this particular morning, the camp boss decided to remain with the young cook.  The boss was a stranger, but he was respected and his orders were obeyed.

 

When the men returned late in the afternoon, they found young Ryan lying lifeless on the floor.  He was dead and his money belt was gone.

 

When asked what had happened, the boss said the young cook had taken sick suddenly and died.  None dared question him further but the woodsmen were suspicious.  Where was the money belt?

 

That night a raging storm swept upon the camp making it impossible to leave so the men had to bury the poor cook in a shallow grave in the forest.  As they trudged back to the camp they stopped dead in their tracks, for above the howling and moaning of the wind came the most dreadful whoops and screams anyone has ever heard.  It continued all that night and all the next day driving the men crazy with fear.  They left camp never to return.

 

For years the haunting sounds continued until Father Murdock, a priest from Renous, was asked to put the poor spirit to rest.

 

From over the wilderness grave Father Murdock read some holy words from the Bible and made a sign of the cross.

 

Some say Father Murdock succeeded in quieting the ghost but others declare the fearful cries of Ryan can be heard to this very day.

Next we are taking a long journey up to the Yukon Territory. There's a dude who's production and writing credits include Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Kendrick Lamar… Whatever… Fuck that guy… we are headed there to check it an old hotel and bar. The Caribou Hotel is one of the oldest buildings in the Southern Lakes Region and is one of the last two historic three-storey frame commercial buildings in Yukon dating from the early 20th century. This landmark structure stands in its original location and is one of the first properties recognized when entering Carcross. Its size, massing and historic character provide an anchor to Dawson Charlie Street, one of the last Yukon streets composed entirely of historic buildings relatively unchanged since 1910. The Caribou Hotel has housed one of Yukon's longest continuously operating food and lodging businesses. In Carcross, the hotel prospered under several owners including Dawson Charlie, who had made a fortune from his Klondike gold claims. But Dawson Charlie died on January 26, 1908, when he fell of the rail bridge at Carcross.

 

Edwin and Bessie Gideon then rented the hotel from his estate.

 

But the building burned to the ground on Christmas Eve in 1909. So the Gideons built a new hotel on the same spot, using wood from a building that had been torn down in nearby Conrad City.

 

The Caribou’s interesting history continued when, in 1918, Polly the Parrot moved in. Captain James Alexander, owner of Engineer Mine, had asked the Gideons to take care of the Parrot while he went outside. Alexander drowned when the Princess Sophia sank in 1918. Polly stayed with the Gideons who continued to operate the hotel. When Edwin Gideon died in 1925, Bessie ran it until she died in the hotel on October 27, 1933.

 

Since then, strange things have been seen at the Caribou. The hotel is said to be haunted by Bessie's ghost, considered a shy spirit. A story is told of the figure of a woman who often stands near a third floor window and bangs on the floorboards. She is thought to be the ghost of Bessie, described as a spirit that is neither friendly nor unfriendly.

 

Though she was said to have been buried in Carcross, a cemetery survey has been unable to find Bessie Gideon’s grave, but Polly the Parrot, who died in the hotel in 1972, is buried in the cemetery. The Caribou Hotel is now a Yukon historic site, soon to reopen under new management and - legend has it - still haunted. 

 

Well that's gonna do it for our first trip to creepy Canada. You politely mortified us and showed us a good time and we will definitely be back to run another train through creepy Canada! There's tons of crazy hotels and buildings with ghost stories. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the ones we picked and hopefully we did them some sort of justice. If there's some wrong info blame the fucking internet.

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#79 Guillermo Del Toro (director extraordinario)

“I cannot pontificate about it, but by the time I'm done, I will have done one movie, and it's all the movies I want.

People say, you know, "I like your Spanish movies more than I like your English-language movies because they are not as personal", and I go "Fuck, you're wrong!" Hellboy is as personal to me as Pan's Labyrinth. They're tonally different, and yes, of course you can like one more than the other – the other one may seem banal or whatever it is that you don't like. But it really is part of the same movie. You make one movie.

 

Hitchcock did one movie, all his life.”

 

—Guillermo del Toro, Twitch Film, January 15, 2013

 

Ok, passengers! First off, if you don’t know who Guermillo Del Toro is, press pause on this show, smack yourself in the mouth and then go watch Pan’s Labrynth, Hellboy or even Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and then come back to finish. Go on… git! We’ll wait!

 

Del Toro was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, the son of Guadalupe Gómez and Federico del Toro Torres, an automotive entrepreneur. Both of whom are of Spanish descent. He was raised in a strict Catholic household. Del Toro studied at the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Cinematográficos, at the University of Guadalajara. Having a taste for the macabre at an early age, del Toro decorated his family home with decidedly spooky elements. Del Toro loves monsters. . He claims that monsters used to crowd into his room at night, and he made a pact with them: If they let him go to the washroom, he’d be their friend for life. It worked, and del Toro says, “To this day, monsters are the thing I love most.” Del Toro liked monsters so much as a child that his Catholic grandmother, fearing for his soul, performed a real-life exorcism on him, and when that didn’t work, she actually performed a second one. Del Toro considers himself a book-person first and foremost, and there were two books that shaped his universe as a child. One was an encyclopedia of health (which led to an obsession with anatomy), and the other an encyclopedia of art.

 

When del Toro was about eight years old, he began experimenting with his father's Super 8 camera, making short films with Planet of the Apes toys and other objects. One short focused on a "serial killer potato" with ambitions of world domination; it murdered del Toro's mother and brothers before stepping outside and being crushed by a car.  Del Toro made about 10 short films before his first feature, including one titled Matilde, but only the last two, Doña Lupe and Geometria, have been made available.  He wrote four episodes and directed five episodes of the cult series La Hora Marcada, along with other Mexican filmmakers such as Emmanuel Lubezki and Alfonso Cuarón.Del Toro got his first big break when he made Cronos in 1993.The movie, about the effects of a device that confers immortality, won nine Ariel Awards from the Mexican Academy of Film—including best picture, best director, best screenplay, and best original story—and also received the International Critics’ Week grand prize at the Cannes film festival. 

 

Del Toro studied special effects and make-up with special-effects artist Dick Smith. Dick Smith had been a huge influence on del Toro throughout his life. He bought Smith’s make-up kit when The Exorcist came out in 1973, and applied for his make-up course in New York in 1987.  He spent 10 years as a special-effects make-up designer and formed his own company, Necropia. He also co-founded the Guadalajara International Film Festival. Later in his directing career, he formed his own production company, the Tequila Gang.

 

In 1997, at the age of 33, Guillermo was given a $30 million budget from Miramax Films to shoot another film, Mimic. After turning in a draft of his screenplay for Mimic to Miramax, the studio was not happy with how little was explained about the creatures at the centre of the story, and decided to commission a number of rewrites. One of these drafts was written by none other than Steven Soderbergh, but almost none of his work ended up in the film. Del Toro is not a fan of second unit work, and for his director’s cut of Mimic he managed to excise the majority of the second unit footage. Robert Rodriguez was one of the second unit directors on the film. Mimic was a very troubled production, and del Toro claims that his experience butting heads with studio execs at Miramax was actually more traumatic than his father’s kidnapping( which we'll discuss in a bit): “What was happening to me and the movie was far more illogical than kidnapping, which is brutal, but at least there are rules.” He was ultimately unhappy with the way Miramax had treated him during production, which led to his friend James Cameron almost coming to blows with Miramax co-founder and owner Harvey Weinstein during the 70th Academy Awards.

 

In 2001 Del toro made The Devil's backbone. The Devil’s Backbone, was produced by renowned Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar. Almodovar afforded del Toro a level of creative freedom that he’d never experienced up to that point, and the eternally grateful del Toro has tried to pay this gesture forward as a producer for many directors’ films. The film was an international co-production between Spain and Mexico. Del Toro wrote the first draft before writing his debut film Cronos. This "very different" version was set in the Mexican Revolution and focused not on a child's ghost but a "Christ with three arms". According to del Toro, and as drawn in his notebooks, there were many iterations of the story, some of which included antagonists who were a "doddering ... old man with a needle," a "desiccated" ghost with black eyes as a caretaker (instead of the living Jacinto who terrorizes the orphans), and "beings who are red from head to foot."

 

As to motivation for the villain, according to the actor who portrayed him (Eduardo Noriega), Jacinto "suffered a lot when he was a child at this orphanage. Somebody probably treated him wickedly: this is his heritage. And then there is the brutalizing effect of the War." Noriega further notes that "What Guillermo did was to write a biography of Jacinto (which went into Jacinto's parents, what they did in life, and more) and gave it to me."

 

DDT Studios in Barcelona created the final version of the crying ghost (victim and avenger) Santi, with his temple that resembled cracked, aged porcelain. The response was overwhelmingly positive, though it did not receive the critical success that Pan's Labyrinth would in 2006. Del Toro considers The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth to be companion pieces, and claims that they reveal “symmetries and reflections” if watched together.

 

His next film was on 2002, Blade 2. directed by Guillermo Del Toro and written by David S. Goyer, it is a sequel to the first film and the second part of the Blade film series, followed by Blade: Trinity. Guillermo del Toro was hired to direct Blade II by New Line production president Michael De Luca after Stephen Norrington turned down the offer to direct the sequel. Del Toro chose not to alter the script too much from the ideas created by Goyer and Snipes. "I wanted the movie to have a feeling of both a comic book and Japanese animation", said the director. "I resurrected those sources and viewed them again. I dissected most of the dailies from the first movie; I literally grabbed about four boxes of tapes and one by one saw every single tape from beginning to end until I perfectly understood where the language of the first film came from. I studied the style of the first one and I think Norrington used a tremendous narrative style. His work is very elegant". Blade II was released on March 22, 2002. This was during a period of the year (months March and April) considered to be a bad time for sequels to be released. Despite this, the film became the highest-grossing film of the Blade series, making $80 million in the United States and $150 million worldwide. 

 

Hellboy is a 2004 supernatural superhero film written and directed by Guillermo del Toro from a story by Del Toro and Peter Briggs. It is based on the Dark Horse Comics graphic novel Hellboy: Seed of Destruction by Mike Mignola. Del Toro and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola envisioned the film as a Ray Harryhausen film. The film was shopped and rejected by various studios for years due to studios disliking the title, script, and the fact that Perlman was cast as Hellboy.[7][8] Del Toro invited Harryhausen to teach the film's animators what made his effects techniques unique but he declined, feeling that modern films were too violent. While writing the script, Del Toro researched occult Nazi philosophies and used them as a reference for the film's opening scene. In an early version of the script, the gyroscope portal was described being made out of rails that formed into pentagrams, hexagrams, and inverted stars to illustrate the film's magic and occult elements. Del Toro chose to alter the origin from the comic to give main characters interconnected origins. Aside from working with Perlman before, Del Toro chose him for the title role because he felt Perlman can deliver subtlety and nuance with makeup.[23] Del Toro assigned his real life friend, Santiago Segura, to play the train driver who assaults Hellboy. The film was shot 6 days a week for 130 days, Mondays through Saturdays without a second unit. Sundays were reserved for editing.  Del Toro noted that the film could have commenced filming in 1998, however, the film had difficulty finding a committed studio due to the stigma Hollywood associated superhero and comic book films with, at the time. The action scenes were staged after Harryhausen films with little to no camera movement using wide shots. The cemetery sequence was filmed in a real cemetery in Prague.

 

Pan's labyrinth is a  2006 dark fantasy film written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. The film is  a Spanish-Mexican co-production. Del Toro stated that he considers the story to be a parable, influenced by fairy tales, and that it addresses and continues themes related to his earlier film The Devil's Backbone, to which Pan's Labyrinth is a spiritual successor, according to del Toro in his director's DVD commentary. The idea for Pan's Labyrinth came from Guillermo del Toro's notebooks, which he says are filled with "doodles, ideas, drawings and plot bits". He had been keeping these notebooks for twenty years. At one point during production, he left the notebook in a taxi in London and was distraught, but the cabbie returned it to him two days later. Though he originally wrote a story about a pregnant woman who falls in love with a faun,[12] Sergi López said that del Toro described the final version of the plot a year and a half before filming. Lopez said that "for two hours and a half he explained to me all the movie, but with all the details, it was incredible, and when he finished I said, 'You have a script?' He said, 'No, nothing is written'". López agreed to act in the movie and received the script one year later; he said that "it was exactly the same, it was incredible. In his little head he had all the history with a lot of little detail, a lot of characters, like now when you look at the movie, it was exactly what he had in his head". 

 

Del Toro got the idea of the faun from childhood experiences with "lucid dreaming". He stated on The Charlie Rose Show that every midnight, he would wake up, and a faun would gradually step out from behind the grandfather's clock. Originally, the faun was supposed to be a classic half-man, half-goat faun fraught with beauty. But in the end, the faun was altered into a goat-faced creature almost completely made out of earth, moss, vines, and tree bark. Some of the  works he drew on for inspiration include Lewis Carroll's Alice books, Jorge Luis Borges' Ficciones, Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan and The White People, Lord Dunsany's The Blessing of Pan, Algernon Blackwood's Pan's Garden and Francisco Goya's works. In 2004, del Toro said: "Pan is an original story. Some of my favourite writers (Borges, Blackwood, Machen, Dunsany) have explored the figure of the god Pan and the symbol of the labyrinth. These are things that I find very compelling and I am trying to mix them and play with them." It was also influenced by the illustrations of Arthur Rackham.There are differing ideas about the film's religious influences. Del Toro himself has said that he considers Pan's Labyrinth "a truly profane film, a layman's riff on Catholic dogma", but that his friend Alejandro González Iñárritu described it as "a truly Catholic film". Del Toro's explanation is "once a Catholic, always a Catholic," however he also admits that the Pale Man's preference for children rather than the feast in front of him is intended as a criticism of the Catholic Church. Additionally, the priest's words during the torture scene were taken as a direct quote from a priest who offered communion to political prisoners during the Spanish Civil War: "Remember my sons, you should confess what you know because God doesn't care what happens to your bodies; He already saved your souls."

 

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is a 2008 American superhero film based on the fictional character Hellboy created by Mike Mignola. The film was written and directed by  del Toro and is a sequel to the 2004 film Hellboy, which del Toro also directed. Ron Perlman reprises his starring role as the eponymous character. Hellboy II: The Golden Army was released by Universal Pictures.The director sought to create a film trilogy with the first sequel anticipated for release in 2006. Revolution Studios planned to produce the film and distribute it through a deal with Columbia Pictures, but by 2006, their distribution deal wasn't renewed and Revolution began refocusing on exploiting their film library. In August 2006, Universal Pictures acquired the project with the intent to finance and distribute the sequel, which was newly scheduled to be released in summer of 2008. Production was scheduled to begin in April 2007 in Etyek, Hungary (near Budapest) and London, England. del Toro explored several concepts for the sequel, initially planning to recreate the classic versions of Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man. He and comic book creator Mike Mignola also spent a few days adapting the Almost Colossus story, featuring Roger the Homunculus. They then found it easier to create an original story based on folklore, because del Toro was planning Pan's Labyrinth, and Mignola's comics were becoming increasingly based on mythology. Later, del Toro pitched a premise to Revolution Studios that involved four Titans from the four corners of Earth—Wind, Water, Fire, and Earth—before he replaced the Titans with a Golden Army. Mignola described the theme of the sequel, "The focus is more on the folklore and fairy tale aspect of Hellboy. It's not Nazis, machines and mad scientists but the old gods and characters who have been kind of shoved out of our world."

 

Pacific Rim is a 2013 science-fiction monster film directed by del Toro. In February 2006, it was reported that Guillermo del Toro would direct Travis Beacham's fantasy screenplay, Killing on Carnival Row, but the project never materialized.[48] Beacham conceived Pacific Rim the following year. While walking on the beach near Santa Monica Pier, the screenwriter imagined a giant robot and a giant monster fighting to the death. "They just sort of materialized out of the fog, these vast, godlike things." He later conceived the idea that each robot had two pilots, asking "what happens when one of those people dies?" Deciding this would be "a story about loss, moving on after loss, and dealing with survivor's guilt", Beacham commenced writing the film. On May 28, 2010, it was reported that Legendary Pictures had purchased Beacham's detailed 25-page film treatment, now titled Pacific Rim.

 

On July 28, 2010, it was reported that del Toro would next direct an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness for Universal Studios, with James Cameron producing.[51] When del Toro met with Legendary Pictures to discuss the possibility of collaborating with them on a film, he was intrigued by Beacham's treatment—still a "very small pitch" at this point. Del Toro struck a deal with Legendary: while directing At the Mountains of Madness, he would produce and co-write Pacific Rim; because of the films' conflicting production schedules, he would direct Pacific Rim only if At the Mountains of Madness were cancelled. Tom Cruise was attached to star in the Lovecraft adaptation. On March 7, 2011, it was reported that Universal would not proceed with At the Mountains of Madness because del Toro was unwilling to compromise on the $150 million budget and R rating. The director later reflected, "When it happened, this has never happened to me, but I actually cried that weekend a lot. I don't want to sound like a puny soul, but I really was devastated. I was weeping for the movie." The project collapsed on a Friday, and del Toro signed to direct Pacific Rim the following Monday. Del Toro spent a year working with Beacham on the screenplay, and is credited as co-writer. He introduced ideas he had always wished to see in the genre, such as a Kaiju birth and a Kaiju attack seen from a child's perspective. The film was shot using Red Epic cameras.[65] At first Guillermo del Toro decided not to shoot or convert the film to 3D, as the effect would not work due to the sheer size of the film's robots and monsters, explaining

 

I didn't want to make the movie 3D because when you have things that big ... the thing that happens naturally, you're looking at two buildings lets say at 300 feet [away], if you move there is no parallax. They're so big that, in 3D, you barely notice anything no matter how fast you move ... To force the 3D effects for robots and monsters that are supposed to be big you are making their [perspective] miniaturized, making them human scale.

 

It was later announced that the film would be converted to 3D, with the conversion taking 40 weeks longer than most. Del Toro said: "What can I tell you? I changed my mind. I'm not running for office. I can do a Romney." 

 

Del Toro envisioned Pacific Rim as an earnest, colorful adventure story, with an "incredibly airy and light feel", in contrast to the "super-brooding, super-dark, cynical summer movie". The director focused on "big, beautiful, sophisticated visuals" and action that would satisfy an adult audience, but has stated his "real hope" is to introduce the Kaiju and mecha genres to a generation of children. While the film draws heavily on these genres, it avoids direct references to previous works. Del Toro intended to create something original but "madly in love" with its influences, instilled with "epic beauty" and "operatic grandeur". The film was to honor the Kaiju and mecha genres while creating an original stand-alone film, something "conscious of the heritage, but not a pastiche or an homage or a greatest hits of everything". 

The director made a point of starting from scratch, without emulating or referencing any previous examples of those genres. He cautioned his designers not to turn to films like Gamera, Godzilla, or The War of the Gargantuas for inspiration, stating: "I didn't want to be postmodern, or referential, or just belong to a genre. I really wanted to create something new, something madly in love with those things. I tried to bring epic beauty to it, and drama and operatic grandeur."

 

Crimson Peak is a 2015 gothic romance film directed by  del Toro and written by del Toro and Matthew Robbins. The story, set in Victorian era England, follows an aspiring author who travels to a remote Gothic mansion in the English hills with her new husband and his sister. There, she must decipher the mystery behind the ghostly visions that haunt her new home. Del Toro and Robbins wrote the original spec script after the release of Pan's Labyrinth in 2006. It was sold quietly to Donna Langley at Universal. Del Toro planned to direct the film, but postponed the project to make Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and then again to work on The Hobbit films. Langley suggested that del Toro produce the film for another director, but he could not find one he deemed suitable. While directing Pacific Rim, del Toro developed a good working relationship with Legendary Pictures' Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni, who asked what he wanted to do next. Del Toro sent them his screenplays for a film adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness, a Western adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, and Crimson Peak. The producers deemed the last of these "the best project for us, just the right size". Universal allowed del Toro to move the project to Legendary, with the caveat that they could put up money for a stake in the film.

 

Del Toro called the film a "ghost story and gothic romance". He has described it as "a very set-oriented, classical but at the same time modern take on the ghost story", and said that it would allow him to play with the genres' conventions while subverting their rules. He stated, "I think people are getting used to horror subjects done as found footage or B-value budgets. I wanted this to feel like a throwback."

 

Del Toro wanted the film to honor the "grand dames" of the haunted house genre, namely Robert Wise's The Haunting and Jack Clayton's The Innocents. The director intended to make a large-scale horror film in the tradition of those he grew up watching, such as The Omen, The Exorcist, and The Shining. He cited the latter as "another Mount Everest of the haunted house movie", praising the high production values and Stanley Kubrick's control over the large sets.

 

British playwright Lucinda Coxon was enlisted to rewrite the script with del Toro, in hopes of bringing it a "proper degree of perversity and intelligence", but she is not credited on the finished film.

 

The Shape of Water is a 2017 romantic fantasy drama film directed del Toro and written by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor. Set in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1962, the story follows a mute cleaner at a high-security government laboratory who falls in love with a captured humanoid amphibian creature. Filming took place in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, between August and November 2016.  The idea for The Shape of Water formed during del Toro's breakfast with Daniel Kraus in 2011, with whom he later co-wrote the novel Trollhunters. It shows similarities to the 2015 short film The Space Between Us. It was also primarily inspired by del Toro's childhood memories of seeing Creature from the Black Lagoon and wanting to see the Gill-man and Kay Lawrence (played by Julie Adams) succeed in their romance. When del Toro was in talks with Universal to direct a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon, he tried pitching a version focused more on the creature's perspective, where the Creature ended up together with the female lead, but the studio executives rejected the concept.

 

Del Toro set the film during the 1960s Cold War era to counteract today's heightened tensions:

 

"if I say once upon a time in 1962, it becomes a fairy tale for troubled times. People can lower their guard a little bit more and listen to the story and listen to the characters and talk about the issues, rather than the circumstances of the issues".  In an interview with IndieWire about the film, del Toro said:

 

This movie is a healing movie for me. ... For nine movies I rephrased the fears of my childhood, the dreams of my childhood, and this is the first time I speak as an adult, about something that worries me as an adult. I speak about trust, otherness, sex, love, where we're going. These are not concerns that I had when I was nine or seven."

 

The Shape of Water grossed $63.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $131.4 million in other countries, for a total of $195.2 million. The film had received a universally favorable response from critics and audiences. 

 

Pinocchio is an upcoming stop-motion animated musical dark fantasy film co-written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, based on Gris Grimly’s design from his 2002 edition of the 1883 Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It was written from a screenplay by del Toro, Gris Grimly, Patrick McHale and Matthew Robbins and a story by del Toro and Robbins. The film marks the animated feature film directorial debut of Guillermo del Toro. In 2008, Guillermo del Toro announced that his next project, a darker adaptation of the Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, was in development. He has called Pinocchio his passion project, stating that: "no art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio", and "I've wanted to make this movie for as long as I can remember". On February 17, 2011, it was announced that Gris Grimly and Mark Gustafson would co-direct a stop motion animated Pinocchio film written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins based by Grimly's designs, with del Toro producing along with The Jim Henson Company and Pathé. On May 17, 2012, del Toro took over for Grimly. On February 2012, Del Toro released some concept arts with the designs of Pinocchio, Geppetto, the Talking Cricket, Mangiafuoco and the Fox and the Cat. On July 30, 2012, it was announced that the film would be produced and animated by ShadowMachine.

 

On January 23, 2017, Patrick McHale was announced to co-write the script with del Toro. On August 31, 2017, del Toro told IndieWire and at the 74th Venice International Film Festival that the film need a budget increase of $35 million more dollars or it would be cancelled. On November 8, 2017, he reported that the project was not happening, because no studios were willing to finance it.[9] At one point, Matthew Robbins considered making the movie as a 2D-animated film with French artist Joann Sfar to bring the costs down, but del Toro eventually decided that it had to be stop-motion, even if the higher budget made it harder get greenlighted. However, on October 22, 2018, it was announced that the film had been revived, with Netflix acquiring it. 

 

So that's his  film history as a director let's get into some other aspects of his life!!

He was married to Lorenza Newton, cousin of Mexican singer Guadalupe Pineda. They have two children. He started dating Lorenza when both were studying at the Instituto de Ciencias in Guadalajara. Del Toro and Newton separated in early 2017, and divorced in September of the same year. He maintains residences in Toronto and Los Angeles, and returns to Guadalajara every six weeks to visit his family.

 

He also owns two houses devoted exclusively to his collection of books, poster artwork and other belongings pertaining to his work. He explains, "As a kid, I dreamed of having a house with secret passages and a room where it rained 24 hours a day. The point of being over 40 is to fulfill the desires you've been harboring since you were 7."

 

Politics Edit

In a 2007 interview, del Toro described his political position as "a little too liberal". He pointed out that the villains in most of his films, such as the industrialist in Cronos, the Nazis in Hellboy, and the Francoists in Pan's Labyrinth, are united by the common attribute of authoritarianism. "I hate structure. I'm completely anti-structural in terms of believing in institutions. I hate them. I hate any institutionalised social, religious, or economic holding."

 

Religion Edit

Del Toro was raised Roman Catholic. In a 2009 interview with Charlie Rose, he described his upbringing as excessively "morbid," saying, "I mercifully lapsed as a Catholic ... but as Buñuel used to say, 'I'm an atheist, thank God.'" Though insisting that he is spiritually "not with Buñuel" and that "once a Catholic, always a Catholic, in a way." He concluded, "I believe in Man. I believe in mankind, as the worst and the best that has happened to this world." He has also responded to the observation that he views his art as his religion by saying, "It is. To me, art and storytelling serve primal, spiritual functions in my daily life. Whether I'm telling a bedtime story to my kids or trying to mount a movie or write a short story or a novel, I take it very seriously." Nevertheless, he became a "raging atheist" after seeing a pile of human fetuses while volunteering at a Mexican hospital. He has claimed to be horrified by the way the Catholic Church complied with Francoist Spain, down to having a character in his film quote what actual priests would say to Republican faction members in concentration camps.[66] Upon discovering the religious beliefs of C.S. Lewis, Del Toro has stated that he no longer feels comfortable enjoying his work, despite having done so beforehand. He describes Lewis as "too Catholic" for him, despite the fact that Lewis was never a Catholic.

 

However, Del Toro isn't entirely disparaging of Catholicism, and his background continues to influence his work. While discussing The Shape of Water, Del Toro discussed the Catholic influence on the film, stating, "A very Catholic notion is the humble force, or the force of humility, that gets revealed as a god-like figure toward the end. It's also used in fairy tales. In fairy tales, in fact, there is an entire strand of tales that would be encompassed by the title 'The Magical Fish.' And [it's] not exactly a secret that a fish is a Christian symbol." In the same interview, he still maintained that he does not believe in an afterlife, stating "I don't think there is life beyond death, I don't. But I do believe that we get this clarity in the last minute of our life. The titles we achieved, the honors we managed, they all vanish. You are left alone with you and your deeds and the things you didn't do. And that moment of clarity gives you either peace or the most tremendous fear, because you finally have no cover, and you finally realize exactly who you are."

 

In 2010, del Toro revealed that he was a fan of video games, describing them as "the comic books of our time" and "a medium that gains no respect among the intelligentsia". He has stated that he considers Ico and Shadow of the Colossus to be masterpieces.

 

He has cited Gadget Invention, Travel, & Adventure, Cosmology of Kyoto, Asteroids and Galaga as his favorite games.

 

Del Toro's favorite film monsters are Frankenstein's monster, the Alien, Gill-man, Godzilla, and the Thing. Frankenstein in particular has a special meaning for him, in both film and literature, as he claims he has a "Frankenstein fetish to a degree that is unhealthy", and that it's "the most important book of my life, so you know if I get to it, whenever I get to it, it will be the right way". He has Brazil, Nosferatu, Freaks and Bram Stoker's Dracula listed among his favourite films.

 

Del Toro is also highly interested in Victorian culture. He said: "I have a room of my library at home called 'The Dickens room'. It has every work by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins and many other Victorian novelists, plus hundreds of works about Victorian London and its customs, etiquette, architecture. I'm a Jack the Ripper aficionado, too. My museum-slash-home has a huge amount of Ripperology in it".

 

Father's 1997 kidnapping Edit

Around 1997, del Toro's father, Federico del Toro Torres, was kidnapped in Guadalajara. Del Toro's family had to pay twice the amount originally asked for as a ransom; immediately after learning of the kidnapping, fellow filmmaker James Cameron, a friend of Del Toro since they met during the production of 1993's Cronos, withdrew over $1 million in cash from his bank account and gave it to Del Toro to help pay the ransom. After the ransom was paid, Federico was released, having spent 72 days kidnapped; the culprits were never apprehended, and the money of both Cameron and Del Toro's family was never recovered. The event prompted del Toro, his parents, and his siblings to move abroad. In a 2008 interview with Time magazine, he said this about the kidnapping of his father: "Every day, every week, something happens that reminds me that I am in involuntary exile [from my country]."

 

Del Toro has directed a wide variety of films, from comic book adaptations (Blade II, Hellboy) to historical fantasy and horror films, two of which are set in Spain in the context of the Spanish Civil War under the authoritarian rule of Francisco Franco. These two films, The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, are among his most critically acclaimed works. They share similar settings, protagonists and themes with the 1973 Spanish film The Spirit of the Beehive, widely considered to be the finest Spanish film of the 1970s.

 

Del Toro views the horror genre as inherently political, explaining, "Much like fairy tales, there are two facets of horror. One is pro-institution, which is the most reprehensible type of fairy tale: Don't wander into the woods, and always obey your parents. The other type of fairy tale is completely anarchic and antiestablishment."

 

He is close friends with two other prominent and critically praised Mexican filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu. The three often influence each other's directorial decisions, and have been interviewed together by Charlie Rose. Cuarón was one of the producers of Pan's Labyrinth, while Iñárritu assisted in editing the film. The three filmmakers, referred to as the "Three Amigos" founded the production company Cha Cha Cha Films, whose first release was 2008's Rudo y Cursi.

 

Del Toro has also contributed to the web series Trailers from Hell.

 

In April 2008, del Toro was hired by Peter Jackson to direct the live-action film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. On May 30, 2010, del Toro left the project due to extended delays brought on by MGM's financial troubles. Although he did not direct the films, he is credited as co-writer in An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies.

 

On December 1, 2008, del Toro expressed interest in a stop-motion remake to Roald Dahl's novel The Witches, collaborating with Alfonso Cuarón. On June 19, 2018 it was announced that Del Toro and Cuarón would instead be attached as Executive Producers on the remake with Robert Zemeckis helming the project as Director and Screenwriter.

 

On June 2, 2009, del Toro's first novel, The Strain, was released. It is the first part of an apocalyptic vampire trilogy co-authored by del Toro and Chuck Hogan. The second volume, The Fall, was released on September 21, 2010. The final installment, The Night Eternal, followed in October 2011. Del Toro cites writings of Antoine Augustin Calmet, Montague Summers and Bernhardt J. Hurwood among his favourites in the non-literary form about vampires.

 

On December 9, 2010, del Toro launched Mirada Studios with his long-time cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, director Mathew Cullen and executive producer Javier Jimenez. Mirada was formed in Los Angeles, California to be a collaborative space where they and other filmmakers can work with Mirada's artists to create and produce projects that span digital production and content for film, television, advertising, interactive and other media. Mirada launched as a sister company to production company Motion Theory.

 

Del Toro directed Pacific Rim, a science fiction film based on a screenplay by del Toro and Travis Beacham. In the film, giant monsters rise from the Pacific Ocean and attack major cities, leading humans to retaliate with gigantic mecha suits called Jaegers. Del Toro commented, "This is my most un-modest film, this has everything. The scale is enormous and I'm just a big kid having fun." The film was released on July 12, 2013 and grossed $411 million at the box office.

 

Del Toro directed "Night Zero", the pilot episode of The Strain, a vampire horror television series based on the novel trilogy of the same name by del Toro and Chuck Hogan. FX has commissioned the pilot episode, which del Toro scripted with Hogan and was filmed in Toronto in September 2013. FX ordered a thirteen-episode first season for the series on November 19, 2013, and series premiered on July 13, 2014.

 

After The Strain's pilot episode, del Toro directed Crimson Peak, a gothic horror film he co-wrote with Matthew Robbins and Lucinda Cox. Del Toro has described the film as "a very set-oriented, classical but at the same time modern take on the ghost story", citing The Omen, The Exorcist and The Shining as influences. Del Toro also stated, "I think people are getting used to horror subjects done as found footage or B-value budgets. I wanted this to feel like a throwback." Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska, and Charlie Hunnam starred in the film. Production began February 2014 in Toronto, with an April 2015 release date initially planned. The studio later pushed the date back to October 2015, to coincide with the Halloween season.

 

He was selected to be on the jury for the main competition section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

 

Del Toro directed the Cold War drama film The Shape of Water, starring Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, and Michael Shannon.

 

Filming began on August 15, 2016 in Toronto, and wrapped twelve weeks later.

 

On August 31, 2017, the film premiered in the main competition section of the 74th Venice International Film Festival, where it was awarded the Golden Lion for best film, making Del Toro the first Mexican director to win the award. The film became a critical and commercial success and would go on to win multiple accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Picture, with del Toro winning the Academy Award for Best Director.

 

Del Toro collaborated with Japanese video game designer Hideo Kojima to produce P.T., a video game intended to be a "playable trailer" for the ninth Silent Hill game, which was cancelled. The demo was also removed from the PlayStation Network.

 

At the D23 Expo in 2009, his Double Dare You production company and Disney announced a production deal for a line of darker animated films. The label was announced with one original animated project, Trollhunters. However, del Toro moved his deal to DreamWorks in late 2010. From 2016 to 2018, Trollhunters was released to great acclaim on Netflix and "is tracking to be its most-watched kids original ever".

 

In 2017, Del Toro had an exhibition of work at the Minneapolis Institute of Art titled Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters, featuring his collection of paintings, drawings, maquettes, artifacts, and concept film art. The exhibition ran from March 5, 2017, to May 28, 2017.

 

In 2019, del Toro appeared in Hideo Kojima's video game Death Stranding, providing his likeness for the character Deadman.

 

Upcoming projects Edit

In 2008, del Toro announced Pinocchio, a dark stop-motion film based on the Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, co-directed by Adam Parrish King, with The Jim Henson Company as production company, and music by Nick Cave. The project had been in development for over a decade. The pre-production was begun by the studio ShadowMachine. In 2017, del Toro announced that Patrick McHale is co-writing the script of the film. In the same year, del Toro revealed at the 74th Venice International Film Festival that the film will be reimagined during the rise of Benito Mussolini, and that he would need $35 million to make it. In November 2017, it was reported that del Toro had cancelled the project because no studios were willing to finance it. In October 2018, it was announced that the film had been revived, with Netflix backing the project. Netflix had previously collaborated with del Toro on Trollhunters. Many of the same details of the project remain the same, but with Mark Gustafson now co-directing rather than Adam Parrish King.

 

In December 2017, Searchlight Pictures announced that del Toro would direct a new adaptation of the 1946 novel Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham, the screenplay of which he co-wrote with Kim Morgan. In 2019, it was reported that Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette and Rooney Mara had closed deals to star in the film, which went into production in January 2020.

 

https://aznmodern.com/2017/10/10/13-facts-guillermo-del-toro-may-not-know/

 

https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/all-guillermo-del-toro-movies-ranked-by-tomatometer/

 

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OUR YOUTUBE

#78 - The Hinterkaifeck Murders

   Sometime on the evening of March 31, 1922, six people were killed at a deserted farm in Bavaria. Despite decades of investigations and more than 100 suspects, the case was never resolved. This would come to be known as the Hinterkaifeck murders. Tonight on the train we delve into the crazy that surrounds this case. Who did it? Why did they do it? Incest?  That is gross… But also… Yes. There are tons of crazy theories, websites, documentaries and articles that delve into this case. We used two main sources for this episode which are amazing resources for actual information and not just myth and conjecture. They are www.hinterkaifeck.net and www.hinterkaifeck-mord.de. both have incredible amounts of information and discussion. Also pictures cus we know you guys are sick and you like that creepy gross shit. So with all that out of the way… in the immortal words of Michael buffer… Let's get ready to ruuuuuuuummmmmmble!!!!

 

Kaifeck was a small settlement to the north of Waidhofen, around 50 miles north of Munich in Bavaria, Germany. A mile or so to the north-east of Kaifeck was the village of Grobern. Between them lay the Witches’ Wood. At the north-west corner of the Witches’ Wood stood an isolated farm. Colloquially it was called ‘Behind Kaifeck’, or Hinter Kaifeck in German. This is where our story takes place. Lets run through a timeline of events and then get into the craziness that surrounds the case. Also as a disclaimer we've done or best to sister fact from fiction with this case when it comes to what happened. There may be some things in this episode that are shaky and far as being factually correct as there is tons of information and misinformation on this whole case. Also much of this information was translated from german so there are some odd wordings.

 

The fact that the chronology does not end with the act, but on the contrary continues to this day, is due to the special fact that the case was never resolved and that it continues to concern people to this day.

 

The following is a detailed chronology of events from Hinterkaifeck as well as details on the people involved. Some of the details may seem tedious so bare with us! 

 

1849, November 27.

Birth of Cäzilia Sanhueter, later Gruber

 

1858, November 9th.

Birth of Andreas Gruber.

 

1874, 08/16.

Birth of Lorenz Schlittenbauer.

 

1877, May 14.

Cäzilia Sanhüter (later Gruber) married Josef Asam von Hinterkaifeck for the first time. Josef Asam received the property HK from his widowed father Johann Asam on April 24th, 1877, and a notarial marriage and inheritance contract was signed between Cäzilia and Josef Asam. After the marriage, Cäzilia Asam was co-owner of the property.

1886, April 14.

Wedding of Cäzilia (née Sanhüter, used Asam) and Andreas Gruber.

A possible further marriage of Cäzilia Asam / Gruber to a Josef Ostermeier, which was possibly only of short duration and which according to Leuschner (3rd edition) should have existed after the death of Josef Asam, can now be almost ruled out after appropriate research.

 

1899

Lorenz Schlittenbauer takes over his parents' farm in Gröbern.

This yard is about 500 meters from HK.

At an unknown point in time, LS becomes ´local guide´ in Gröbern.

 

1903

According to Lorenz Schlittenbauer (interrogation in 1931), 16-year-old Viktoria Gruber tells his first wife - Viktoria Schlittenbauer - that she was seduced / abused by her father.

 

1914, April 3rd.

Viktoria marries Karl Gabriel from Laag, and the Einödhof is assigned to her beforehand. Allegedly KG leaves Victoria after a short time and goes back to his parents. These are said to have sent him back to Hinterkaifeck. (Note: Unclear source, needs to be checked!)

 

1914, 12.12.

Karl Gabriel is killed in France near Neuville St. Vaast during World War I.

 

1915, January 9th.

Birth of Cäzilia Gabriel, the daughter of Karl and Viktoria Gabriel.

 

1915, May 28.

On May 28, 1915, the district court in Neuburg sentenced old Gruber to one year in prison for incest, his daughter Viktoria to one month.

 

1918, July 14th.

Viktoria Schlittenbauer, Lorenz Schlittenbauer's first wife, dies.

 

1918, Aug (?) - Dec (?)

Around this time, Schlittenbauer had an intimate relationship with Viktoria.

 

According to his information (during interrogation in 1931), LS had sexual intercourse with Viktoria Gabriel about five times, the first time about two weeks after the death of his wife.

Viktoria Gabriel literally “imposed herself” on him after his portrayal.

 

A statement by the neighbors Pöll and Sigl (April 5th, 22) guarantees that LS wanted to marry Viktoria - possibly during her pregnancy or after the birth of little Josef. The old Gruber had strictly refused this.

 

1919, 07.09.

Birth of little Joseph.

In the period from 09/13/1919 to 09/27/1919 Andreas Gruber had to go to prison for incest, Schlittenbauer testified against Gruber on 09/10/1919. At the urging of Victoria, he revokes his testimony on September 23, 1919 and also assumes paternity.

It remains to be seen whether LS or old Gruber was the father of little Josef.

 

1921, March 27.

The maid Kreszenz Rieger gives birth to a daughter in Hinterkaifeck.

 

1921, 7:05 .

Lorenz Schlittenbauer marries his second wife, Anna Dick (29) from Diepoltshofen, who brings a son Josef (8, born on March 31, 1913) into the marriage. Another 3 children she had before this marriage had already died. They had only known each other for 3 weeks, so it seems to have been an arranged marriage. From this marriage there are 5 children. Schlittenbauer has become debt-free this year and is building a certain wealth. Schlittenbauer's eldest daughter, Magdalena, also gets married that year and moves to Tierham.

 

1921

At the end of August, the maid Kreszenz Rieger gave notice. 

 

1922 (?) March (?)

Allegedly, about two weeks before the night of the murder, Pastor Haas found 700 gold marks in an envelope that had been in the confessional. The money is said to have been deposited by Viktoria Gabriel as a donation for the mission.

 

(Note: This issue first appeared in a report written down from memory by the police officer Xaver Meiendres in 1948. The truth of the matter - for example, as regards the temporal proximity to the later murders or the amount of the sum - is difficult to assess. The police officer Meiendres is first Was transferred to Hohenwart in 1931 and was not involved in the original investigation.)

 

1922, March 29.

At the age of only a few weeks, Anna and Loorenz Schlittenbauer's first daughter probably dies of sudden infant death and is born on March 29th. buried. In the church register, "whooping cough" is found as the cause of death.

 

1922, March 30th

In the morning Andreas Gruber discovers that the lock of the engine house has been broken into. However, through this attached house there is no access to the stable or barn behind it.

There are also traces of an attempted break-in on the door to the feed room.

 

On the way into the forest, Gruber meets Lorenz Schlittenbauer at 11 o'clock and tells him about the break-in or attempted break-in and a trail in the snow that leads to the farm but not back. Shortly afterwards, Gruber meets the farmer Kaspar Stegmair from Gröbern and tells him about it.

 

It is said that shortly before the crime, either Viktoria (statement 1951 Sophie Fuchs, classmate of Cilli) or her mother (statement Sophie Fuchs 1984 and notes in the files) ran away in desperation at night. The woman was found crying on the couple. The next morning Cilli was very tired at school and when asked by the teacher why she was doing this, she told them about this incident. During this search, a current edition of the Münchner Zeitung is said to have been found, which so unsettled Andreas Gruber that he asked the postman Mayr on the following day whether anyone in the area was getting this newspaper. That was not the case.

 

1922, March 31.

In the morning of that day, Andreas Gruber and Viktoria Gabriel are said to have gone shopping in Schrobenhausen. Gruber is said to have reported inexplicable nocturnal noises in the attic in a hardware store and a cattle that was untied / got rid of at night. Supposedly Viktoria also reports about it in another store.

(Note: Neither the date of these purchases nor the exact circumstances are certain. Apparently there are only statements about it ´of hearsay´ by Johann Krammer and Wenzeslaus Bley from 1930.)

 

At 4.30 p.m. the new maid Maria Baumgartner, accompanied by her sister Franziska Schäfer, arrives in Hinterkaifeck. After an hour the sister leaves the yard.

 

1922, March 31st, probably between 7.30pm and 9pm / Friday

An unknown perpetrator kills Viktoria first, then her mother, then her father and then her daughter (order assumed / reconstructed) with a so-called Reuthaue (probably in the barn).

Then he kills the 44-year-old maid Maria Baumgartner with the same weapon in the maid's room and then kills little Josef in Viktoria's room.

The murder weapon comes - secured by the testimony of the former Hinterkaifeck farmhand Georg Siegl - from the possession of the Gruber.

 

1922, April 1st. / Saturday

Little Cäzilia is missing at school. The coffee representatives Hans and Eduard Schirovsky do not meet anyone in Hinterkaifeck during a visit (approximately between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m.).

Late in the evening / at night, the carpenter Michael Plöckl walks past the HK property. He is blinded by a stranger with a flashlight. A fire is burning in the oven.

 

It is uncertain to what extent the animals were looked after and the cows milked until the bodies were discovered.

 

1922, April 2nd. / Sunday

friends of Victoria want to pick them up for church service, but find Hinterkaifeck abandoned.

[Note: This issue appears for the first time in Hecker's Donaukurier series and is otherwise not proven]

 

The Grubers are missing in the church. A son of the farmer Sigl from Rachelsbach wants to buy lard at HK and doesn't meet anyone there.

 

1922, April 3rd. / Monday

The postman Josef Mayer reports in 1952: “As usual, I put the newspaper in the kitchen window. The only thing that struck me was that I didn't see the pram in the kitchen as it usually was when I walked this way. The kitchen door itself was half open. I would also like to say that I watched the child, who always rocked himself in the car, on my deliveries through the kitchen window. "

 

1922, 04.04. / Tuesday

The fitter Albert Hofner arrived in HK on Tuesday, 04/04/22 at around 9:00 a.m. to repair the cylinder head gasket on the 4 hp diesel engine. Before that, he talked to Mayor Greger in Wangen for about 30 minutes and informed him that he was on his way to HK.

 

Since the garden door (presumably on the house garden) was locked, he went around the house to check on the residents. There he found the back door locked, looked through the kitchen and stall windows and heard the barking of a dog (inside the house) and the roar of the cattle.

Afterwards he waited about an hour near the house garden under an apple tree (west side) for the HKer to return. In the meantime he whistled through his fingers a few times to attract attention.

Because he couldn't wait any longer, he gained access to the engine shed on the north side of the building and repaired the engine there for about 4.5 hours. He testified that he sang and whistled while he was working and then carried out a test run of the engine to draw attention to himself.

 

Then he locked the door of the engine hut and then went through the house garden into the courtyard again.

Only now did he notice that the “barn door in all directions” was open. He came within ten feet of the open door but did not enter the building. Then he walked along the house to the front door. At the front door he found the barking dog tied up. The front door was locked now too.

 

Comment on the dog: The yellow Spitz is described as a “good and watchful dog” (Pöll) or “a very watchful dog” (Sigl), “who was locked in the stable every evening” (Sigl). On 04/04/1922 the witnesses found the dog in the stable, but with one injured eye, he was disturbed and aggressive towards anyone who approaches him. After the death of the Hinterkaifecker, the dog comes to Laag because it finds a new home there with the father of a Jakob Gabriel (Karl Gabriel Sr.?), According to the Augsburg files.

 

Hofner went back through the house garden to his bicycle, which he must have parked on the north side of the building, and left around 2.30 p.m. via Gröbern, where he informed the sledge-builder daughters Viktoria and Maria that the engine had been made usable and that it was open Hinterkaifeck nobody was to be found. Johann (16) and Schlittenbauer's stepson Josef Dick (9 yrs., Schoolmate of Cäzilia), are then sent by Lorenz Schlittenbauer about 250 meters to the Hinterkaifeck farm, they do not meet anyone and return home.

 

Meanwhile, Hofer continues to Kaifeck to see Blasius Lebmeier. On the way back, Hofer reported to Mayor Greger in Wangen that the HKer's engine had been successfully repaired. At 5:30 p.m. he then went home. He reached Pfaffenhofen around 7 p.m. in the evening.

 

Based on the statements made by the fitter, it can therefore be assumed that a person was either already in the yard at the time the fitter arrived, or only from the south side while the fitter was busy repairing the engine has entered the building. According to this, this person must have led the dog from the stable outside to the front door during the repair time between approx. 10 a.m. to approx. 2:30 p.m. and tied it there and opened the western town gate. After the fitter left at around 2.30 p.m., the dog was led back into the stable and the barn gate was again barricaded from the inside. So the three men Schlittenbauer, Pöll and Sigl found the building around 5 p.m.

 

When Lorenz Schlittenbauer's two sons returned from Hinterkaifeck after 3:30 p.m. without result, Lorenz Schlittenbauer went to Hinterkaifeck together with his neighbors Michael Pöll and Jakob Sigl and his sons Johann and Josef Dick. The men enter the barn. The sons stay outside in the yard. The three of them enter the building through the open door to the former engine house (note: not to be confused with the attached engine house!), The next door to the barn is locked and must be broken into. Four bodies are then discovered in the barn. Lorenz Schlittenbauer continues alone through the stable, while Pöll and Sigl leave the barn and go through the inner courtyard to the front door.

 

In the bedroom and in the maids' room they find the other corpses of little Joseph and the strange maid.

 

After finding the bodies, Pöll and Sigl leave the crime scene with Josef Dick. Schlittenbauer waits in the house for the police to arrive.

 

Mayor Greger from Wangen is notified and notifies the Hohenwart Gendarmerie.

Another Groeberner is sent to Waidhofen to call the police in Schrobenhausen.

 

Onlookers visit the crime scene.

 

6:00 p.m.: The police from Hohenwart and Mayor Greger from Wangen arrive.

 

18: 15h: A telephone message reaches the Munich criminal police.

 

The police from Schrobenhausen arrive in Hinterkaifeck. She locks the crime scene. Onlookers can no longer enter and visit the murder site at will.

 

9:30 p.m.: The Kripo drive from Munich to Hinterkaifeck begins, the six officers (two of them dog handlers) arrive in Gröbern after midnight and go to the house of Mayor Greger.

 

22:00: The court commission from Schrobenhausen arrives, but does not stay until the criminal investigation department from Munich arrives.

 

1922, April 5th. / Wednesday

In the early morning, the police officers from Munich go to the crime scene. There the first interrogations take place (Schlittenbauer, Pöll, Sigl, Franziska Schäfer (sister of Maria Baumgartner), Cäzilia Starringer, Bernhard Gruber). The five crime scene photos are taken. A possibly prepared crime scene sketch has not been preserved.

 

1922, April 6th. and 07.04. / Thursday and Friday

On a provisional table in the courtyard of the Hinterkaifeck estate, the Neuburg Regional Court doctor Dr. Johann Bapt. Aumüller autopsied the six victims. Viktoria Gabriel, Cäzilia Gruber and Cäzilia Gabriel will be autopsied on Thursday, Andreas Gruber, little Josef and Maria Baumgartner on Friday. (Note: A record of this autopsy cannot be found in the files still preserved today.)

 

1922, April 8th. / Saturday

The transfer of the 6 victims in their coffins from Hinterkaifeck to Waidhofen did not take place until the morning of April 8, 1922 (according to J. Ludwig Hecker 1951, who in turn quotes a contemporary witness).

The victims are buried in Waidhofen with great sympathy from the population. The Schrobenhausener Wochenblatt writes about the funeral in the edition of April 11, 1922 as follows:

 

“After the judicial commission released the bodies of the six murdered after the dissection, the burial of the six victims could take place on Saturday. The number of participants who wanted to give the murdered their last escort was extremely numerous. 3,000 people came from near and far. It was a harrowing sight when the bridge wagon with the six coffins drove up, accompanied by the entire school youth.After Pastor Haas had made the funeral at the southern entrance of the cemetery, the unfortunate victims of the crime were taken into a mass grave, adults on the right and left, the two children in the middle. In moving words, Rev. Haas described the biblical story of Cain and Abel, what is terrible in God's eyes, and how only a person who has no more faith in God in his heart can allow himself to be carried away to such a terrible deed because one did not shrink back from murdering innocent children. Immediately after the funeral, the first St. Soul service for the murdered in the church. It turned out to be too small to hold all those who suffer. "

 

1922, June 7th.

The district court of Schrobenhausen is dealing with the question of whether the Hinterkaifeck inheritance belongs to the Gruber family or the Gabriel family. One of the heirs, Bernhard Gruber - Andreas' brother - has lived and managed Hinterkaifeck since the deed. The two families in dispute finally agree (out of court) that the Gabriel family can buy the property from the Gruber heirs at special conditions. The Gabriel family seems to have been interested in the acquired agricultural land and less in the buildings.

 

1923, February / March

Karl Gabriel senior and his sons tear down the property with the help of neighbors. The well-hidden murder weapon - smeared with blood - and a rusted pocket knife are discovered.

An - allegedly bloody - “band iron” is also found, which is not mentioned later.

Parts of the building are being transported away for further use.

 

1925, April 5th,

the teacher Hans Yblagger meets Lorenz Schlittenbauer at the ruins, who bent forward on the cellar stairs and looked into the cellar. (The basement and foundation walls were still there). Schlittenbauer reacted very shocked and said something hitherto unknown: Allegedly, attempts were made to dig one or two holes near the place where the corpses were found, perhaps to bury the corpses in them.

 

1926

Fire at Schlittenbauer, which also burns papers that are related to Hinterkaifeck. According to a later testimony of Schlittenbauer, these papers also supposedly included the document in which Victoria Gabriel waived maintenance for her son Josef. The fire damage is fully covered by the insurance.

 

1931, March 30.

After some suspicions against Schlittenbauer have arisen, he is interrogated in Munich. This “second interrogation” reveals a number of contradictions, but these do not give the police any reason to investigate any further.

 

1941, May 22.

Lorenz Schlittenbauer dies. 

 

A few other things leading up to the murder that were reported but some not substantiated: Six months before the attack, the family maid quit. It has been widely claimed that her reason for leaving was that she had heard strange sounds in the attic and believed the house to be haunted, but this is unsubstantiated; nothing in her statement to the police suggests this. Andreas Gruber found a strange newspaper from Munich on the property in March 1922. He could not remember buying it and thus Gruber initially believed that the postman had lost the newspaper. This was not the case, however, as no one in the vicinity subscribed to the paper.  Just days before the murders, Gruber told neighbours he discovered tracks in the fresh snow that led from the forest to a broken door lock in the farm's machine room.

 

Later during the night they heard footsteps in the attic, but Gruber found no one when he searched the building. Although he told several people about these alleged observations, he refused to accept help and the details went unreported to the police. According to a school friend of the seven-year-old Cäzilia Gabriel, the young girl reported that her mother Viktoria had fled the farm the night before the act after a violent quarrel and only hours later had been found in the forest.

 

 

Ok so now that the timeline is set, let's get into the murders themselves and the suspects. 

 

The victims of the murders are as follows:

 

Viktoria Gabriel, née Gruber (35)

(* February 6, 1887, † March 31, 1922)

 

Most of the threads run towards Victoria, so her introduction is put in front here. Viktoria was born on Hinterkaifeck and grew up on the farm with 2 older half-siblings. In 1914, at the age of 27, she married the farmer's son Karl Gabriel, 1.5 years her junior, who came from a hamlet just 1.5 km away. 9 months later, their daughter Cäzilia Gabriel was born, but Karl Gabriel had already died in World War I.

In 1919 Viktoria had an illegitimate child, Josef Gruber, who was 2.5 years old at the time of the crime.

 

 

 

Cäzilia Gruber, b. Sanhüter (72)

(* November 27, 1849, † March 31, 1922)

 

Cäzilia Gruber came from Gerolsbach and moved to Hinterkaifeck after her first marriage with Josef Asam. The two had 4 children together, of which only Martin Asam and Cäzilia Asam survived childhood.

After the death of her first husband in 1885, Cäzilia Gruber stood alone with her two children and, less than a year later, married the servant Andreas Gruber, who lived on the farm, who was 9 years younger. Viktoria Gabriel was the only daughter together who survived childhood.

 

 

 

Andreas Gruber (63)

(* November 9th, 1858, † March 31st, 1922)

 

Andreas Gruber came from Grainstetten and worked as a farmhand until he married his widowed employer Cäzilia Asam in 1886.

 

Andreas Gruber had an incestuous relationship with his daughter Viktoria. Both were convicted in a court case in 1915 .

 

 

Cäzilia Gabriel (7)

(* January 9th, 1915, † March 31, 1922)

 

The 7 year old "Cilli" was also murdered. She attended school in Waidhofen and grew up in Hinterkaifeck without a father.

 

 

 

Josef Gruber (2.5)

(* September 7th, 1919, † March 31st, 1922)

 

Even when he was born, Josef was the subject of arguments. The reason was publicly expressed doubts about his paternity. The widowed neighbor Lorenz Schlittenbauer wanted to marry Viktoria Gabriel and started an affair with her in 1918. When the marriage did not take place, but he was supposed to pay alimony as his biological father, he accused Andreas Gruber of being the real father of Josef. Because of several withdrawals of his testimony, Lorenz Schlittenbauer had become unsuitable as a witness and the subsequent process ended with an acquittal. Maintenance payments were settled out of court.

 

 

 

 

 

Maria Baumgartner (45)

(* October 2nd, 1876, † March 31, 1922)

 

The 45-year-old maid Maria Baumgartner arrived at Hinterkaifeck hours before the crime, in order to start her job on April 1, 1922. Her life has been characterized by exclusion and hard work. She was slightly mentally retarded and a shortened leg made walking difficult. Her sister said the following:  "My sister was a little mentally limited, had a short foot and therefore a limping gait" . That was probably one of the reasons why she was passed around and had not been employed for weeks after Candlemas. The position in Hinterkaifeck was ultimately arranged through a Verdinger.

 

It appears that in the late evening, Viktoria Gabriel, her seven-year-old daughter Cäzilia, and her parents Andreas and Cäzilia, were lured to the family barn through the stable, where they were murdered, one at a time. The perpetrator (or perpetrators) used a Reuthaue, which is similar to an adze. No murder weapon was available between April 1922 and February 1922. But it was so close: in the false floor in the attic. There, under a board, the blood-smeared Reuthaue was found just as the yard was being torn down. The examination in forensic medicine had shown that it was the murder weapon; in addition to blood, hair from humans and animals had also been found on it.

 

The tool itself had some noticeable properties that were consistent with the injury patterns. Prosecutor Ferdinand Renner will write the following about this peculiarity in his report in October 1923 : “This is an old blood-stained reed hoe in which the hoe is strangely attached to the handle by means of a screw. The screw protrudes about 1 cm above the screw nut. This screw apparently caused the previously puzzling injuries , pencil-sized, round holes on the skulls of the murdered people during the blows with the pick . The pick was found carefully hidden in the attic of the house. " The perpetrator moved into the living quarters, where - with the same murder weapon - he killed Josef, sleeping in his bassinet, and Baumgartner, in her bedchamber. They were all beheaded. 

 

Four days passed between the murders and the discovery of the bodies. On April 1, coffee sellers Hans Schirovsky and Eduard Schirovsky arrived in Hinterkaifeck to place an order. When no one responded to the knocks on the door and the window, they walked around the yard but found no one. They only noticed that the gate to the machine house was open before they decided to leave. Cäzilia Gabriel was absent without excuse for the next few days of school and the family failed to show up for Sunday worship.

 

Assembler Albert Hofner went to Hinterkaifeck on April 4 to repair the engine of the food chopper. He stated that he had not seen any of the family and had heard nothing but the sounds of the farm animals and the dog inside the barn. After waiting for an hour, he decided to start his repair, which he completed in roughly 4.5 hours.

 

Around 3:30 PM, Schlittenbauer sent his son Johann  and stepson Josef  to Hinterkaifeck to see if they could make contact with the family. When they reported that they did not see anyone, Schlittenbauer headed to the farm the same day with Michael Pöll and Jakob Sigl. Entering the barn, they found the bodies of Andreas Gruber, his wife Cäzilia Gruber, his daughter Viktoria Gabriel, and his granddaughter Cäzilia, murdered in the barn. Shortly after, they found the chamber maid, Maria Baumgartner, and the youngest family member, Viktoria's son Josef, murdered in the home.

 

Inspector Georg Reingruber and his colleagues from the Munich Police Department investigated the killings. Initial investigations were hampered by the number of people who had interacted with the crime scene, moved bodies and items around, and even cooked and ate meals in the kitchen. The day after the discovery of the bodies, court physician Johann Baptist Aumüller performed the autopsies in the barn. It was established that a mattock was the most likely murder weapon, though the weapon itself was not at the scene. Evidence showed that the younger Cäzilia had been alive for several hours after the assault – she had torn her hair out in tufts while lying in the straw. The skulls of the victims were removed and sent to Munich, where they were further examined.

 

The police first suspected the motive to be robbery, and they interrogated travelling craftsmen, vagrants, and several inhabitants from the surrounding villages. When a large amount of money was found in the house, they abandoned this theory. It was clear the perpetrator(s) had remained at the farm for several days: someone had fed the cattle, eaten the entire supply of bread from the kitchen, and had recently cut meat from the pantry.

 

With no clear motive to be gleaned from the crime scene, the police began to formulate a list of suspects. Despite repeated arrests, no murderer has ever been found and the files were closed in 1955. Nevertheless, the last interrogations took place in 1986 before Kriminalhauptkommissar Konrad Müller retired.

 

Inconsistencies Edit

In the inspection record of the court commission, it was noted that the victims were probably drawn to the barn by restlessness in the stable resulting in noises from the animals. A later attempt, however, revealed that at least human screams from the barn could not be heard in the living area.

 

On the night after the crime, three days before the bodies were discovered, the artisan Michael Plöckl happened to pass by Hinterkaifeck. Plöckl observed that the oven had been heated by someone. That person had approached him with a lantern and blinded him, whereupon he hastily continued on his way. Plöckl also noticed that the smoke from the fireplace had a disgusting smell. This instance was not investigated and there were no investigations conducted to determine what had been burned that night in the oven.

 

On April 1 at 3 AM, the farmer and butcher Simon Reißländer, on the way home near Brunnen, saw two unknown figures at the edge of the forest. When the strangers saw him, they turned around so that their faces could not be seen. Later, when he heard of the murders in Hinterkaifeck, he thought it possible that the strangers might be involved.

 

In the middle of May 1927, a stranger was said to have stopped a resident of Waidhofen at midnight. He asked him questions about the murder and then shouted that he was the murderer before he ran into the woods. The stranger was never identified.

 

Let's get into the suspects now and saw you may have committed this insane crime.

 

Karl Gabriel:

 

This first one is kind of weird as he was reported to have died in the first world war in 1914. He was supposedly killed in a shell attack on Arras, France. There are also reports that his body was never found. After the murders, people began to speculate if he had indeed died in the war. Viktoria Gabriel had given birth to Josef illegitimately in her husband's absence. Two-year-old Josef was rumoured to be the son of Viktoria and her father Andreas, who had an incestuous relationship that was documented in court and known in the village. There are even reports from after the second world war that captives from the Schrobenhausen region who were released prematurely from Soviet captivity claimed that they had been sent home by a German-speaking Soviet officer who claimed to be the murderer of Hinterkaifeck. Later on, some of these men changed their stories which brought their credibility into question. Some theorized that the man who released these men was actually Karl Gabriel sauce there were witnesses that had claimed Gabriel had started he wanted to go to Russia after the first war. But then again, as early as April 1922, the police were investigating the death of Karl Gabriel. One wanted to rule out that he had returned and committed the sixfold murder.

 

Based on the death notification in the Schrobenhausener Wochenblatt dated December 29, 1914, the Central Office for War Losses and War Graves was contacted, which confirmed the burial of Karl Gabriel on May 2, 1922 in a French military cemetery.

 

Several war comrades testified to the death of Karl Gabriel. It seems that this theory is one of those false rumors and theories going around, even though it is a pretty cool premise.

 

Lorenz Schlittenbauer

 

Police interrogated Lorenz twice. Once shortly after the murders in 1922 and again in 1931. Schlittenbauer alternately recognized and revoked the paternity of Josef Gruber, who was born out of wedlock , because he had a relationship with the murdered Viktoria Gabriel in 1918. A marriage he wanted was prevented by Andreas Gruber .

 

In 1926 the house of the Schlittenbauer family was completely destroyed by fire. During this fire, the confirmation that was given to him by Viktoria Gabriel and freed him from all obligations towards Josef Gruber is said to be burned.

 

Since Jakob Sigl called Lorenz Schlittenbauer the murderer of Hinterkaifeck , the two of them came to an atonement negotiation , in which Jakob Sigl was sentenced to a payment of 40 marks. According to Allmystery, there is even said to have been a civil trial in which Sigl is said to have incited Lorenz Schlittenbauer's son, Johann Schlittenbauer, to perjury.

Lorenz Schlittenbauer appears in the files as a suspect from time to time. When Schlittenbauer and his friends came to investigate, they had to break a gate to enter the barn because all of the doors were locked. However, immediately after finding the four bodies in the barn, Schlittenbauer apparently unlocked the front door with a key and (suspiciously) entered the house alone.[3] A key to the house had gone missing several days before the murders, though it is also possible that Schlittenbauer, as a neighbor or as Viktoria's potential lover, might have been given a key. When asked by his companions why he had gone into the house alone when it was unclear if the murderer might still be there, Schlittenbauer allegedly stated that he went to look for his son Josef. Regardless of any of the above rumor, it is known that Schlittenbauer had disturbed the bodies at the scene, thus potentially compromising the investigation. For many years after, local suspicion remained on Schlittenbauer because of his strange comments, which were seen as indicating knowledge of details that only the killer would know. According to reports in the files for the case, local teacher Hans Yblagger discovered Schlittenbauer visiting the remains of the demolished Hinterkaifeck in 1925. Upon being asked why he was there, Schlittenbauer stated that the perpetrator's attempt to bury the family's remains in the barn had been hindered by the frozen ground. This was seen as evidence that Schlittenbauer had intimate knowledge of the conditions of the ground at the time of the murders, although being a neighbor and familiar with the local land, he may have been making an educated guess. Another speculation was that Schlittenbauer murdered the family after Viktoria demanded financial support for young Josef. Before his death in 1941, Schlittenbauer conducted and won several civil claims for slander against persons who described him as the "murderer of Hinterkaifeck".

 

The Gump Brothers

 

In 1941, an elderly neighbour, Kreszentia Mayer, made a deathbed confession, to her priest, that her brothers, Adolf and Anton Gump, were responsible for the Hinterkaifeck farm murders. Apparently Adolf, the eldest brother, had been in an intimate relationship with Viktoria and became violently angry when he found out about the incestuous relationship. It was claimed that Adolf and Anton had murdered Viktoria and Andreas as the result of this. However, they murdered the other household members to ensure that there would be no chance of witnesses that could reveal their crime.

 

This deathbed confession, of the brothers’ guilt, was not investigated until 11 years later. At this time, they found that Adolf had been dead for eight years and that Anton was an elderly pensioner, who unambiguously denied any involvement in the murders. Despite this, Anton was still arrested but later released without any charges, after spending three weeks in custody.

 

Peter Weber

 

In the winter of 1919/1920, Peter Weber worked as an unskilled worker in an ammunition plant in Desching near Kösching (Ingolstadt) for the builder Spreng . He shared his room with Josef Betz . According to Betz, Weber spoke of the secluded farm and even knew that it was owned by an elderly couple, who had their daughter and grandchildren living with them. Betz testified in court that Weber had suggested murdering Andreas for the family’s money but when Betz didn’t respond, Weber never spoke of it again. According to Betz, Weber is said to have traded in worn military clothing, women's clothing and tobacco in addition to his labor. The case was dropped and Weber was never convicted of the murders.

 

Karl S. and Andreas S.

 

In 1971, a woman named Therese T. wrote a letter citing an event in her youth: At the age of twelve, she witnessed her mother receiving a visit from the mother of the brothers Karl and Andreas S. The woman claimed that her sons from Sattelberg were the two murderers of Hinterkaifeck. The mother said, "Andreas regretted that he lost his penknife" in the course of the conversation. In fact, when the farm was demolished in 1923, a pocket knife was found that could not be clearly assigned to anyone. However, the knife could have easily belonged to one of the murder victims. This track was followed without result.  Kreszenz Rieger, the former maid of Hinterkaifeck, was certain she had already seen the penknife in the yard during her service.

 

The Bichler Brothers

 

The former maid Kreszenz Rieger worked from November 1920 to about September 1921 on Hinterkaifeck. She suspected the brothers Anton and Karl Bichler to have committed the murders. Anton Bichler had helped with the potato harvest on Hinterkaifeck and therefore knew the premises. Rieger said Bichler talked to her often about the Gruber and Gabriel family. Anton reportedly suggested that the family ought to be dead. The maid also emphasised in her interrogation that the farm dog, who barked at everyone, never barked at Anton. In addition, she reported speaking with a stranger through her window at night. The maid believed that it was Karl Bichler, the brother of Anton. She thought that Anton and Karl Bichler could have committed the murder together with Georg Siegl, who had worked at Hinterkaifeck and knew of the family fortune. Supposedly, Siegl had broken into the home in November 1920 and had stolen a number of items, though he denied it. He did state that he had carved the handle of the murder weapon when he was working at Hinterkaifeck and knew that the tool would have been kept in the barn passage. For his part Karl said the following about the accusations in his statement to police: The night from March 31st to April 1st, 22nd I stayed in the Bergmüller inn in Althegnenberg. Rehearsals had taken place repeatedly beforehand from a play organized by the master carpenter Peter in Althegnenberg, which was performed on April 9th ​​and 17th, in which I participated at Peter's insistence. I don't know whether a rehearsal was held in the night from March 31st to April 1st, in which I participated. But almost every day I went with the builder Michael Huber from Gut Lindahof after work around 6 1/2 a.m. with him in Althegnenberg to the Bergmüller's inn. Both Bergmüller and the local waitress “Tina” can confirm my information.

 

The murdered in Hinterkaifeck except the servant I have known personally. I helped with the potato harvest there in autumn 1919. The domestic conditions were so well known to me that I only knew about the living room, kitchen and stables. The other rooms were not known to me. It is correct that I knew that the murdered were wealthy and that they also had gold money , which I learned in the economy and from other people.

 

I found out about the murder from the newspaper. I have no suspicion of the perpetrator or accomplice or instigator.

The information held

before me, according to which I would have commented , -Anl. 2-

How about if one broke into Hinterkaifeck , one would have to put away the old Gruber and the women would give us the money, are untrue. I didn't need a statement like that, but I said that the money from the people behind the scenes would be fine, you wouldn't have to work anymore. Such remarks were not only made by me, but also by other people, said in particular the single butcher Andreas Kaspar von Waidhofen, 25 years old, once in the apartment of the master baker Lang in Waidhofen, “I would already know where the people from Hinterkaifeck get their money”. That I would have asked someone to steal the money with me in Hinterkeifeck does not correspond to the facts.

 

That I would have said, "I don't work anymore, I'm no longer so stupid that I get my hands dirty, it has to go that way and if I have to get my hands bloody," I deny, especially the statement that I will make my hands bloody. It is correct that I have stated that I no longer want to get my hands dirty. I wanted to express that I was getting on with the trade, back then with the potato trade.

 

It is true that I was interested in a means that could be used to paralyze a dog.

–Anl. 5-

I frequented the Gütlers Reil and Riedl in Waidhofen and I asked both of them whether they knew the means by which one could make a dog inactive. It was not true that I had asked the shepherd of my employer at the time, Josef Greppmeier, in Steinerskirchen about such a means. On the other hand, the community shepherd of Epenhofen near Schrobenhausen, credibly with the first name “Martin”, told me that he could paralyze any dog. I asked this shepherd to reveal the remedy to me; but he answered me: "not for 1000 M". To this day I have not had such a remedy in my hands and I do not know of any.

 

It cannot be explained to me that people are suspecting of murder or of inciting or aiding and abetting me, since there are still enough people in Waidhofen who have not worked all winter and drink in the inn almost every day without that they are wealthy or do business. So I would just like to refer to the person of von Pfaffenhofen aIIn the autumn of last year, the single shoemaker Josef Fleck or similar moved to Waidhofen, who also has another brother there who is a tailor. These two also socialize a lot with the butcher Bichler Michael, who z. Currently, works and lives at Unterbräu in Schrobenhausen. This shoemaker mentioned here is said to have bought a building site for 4000M in Waidhofen, although in reality he cannot have a 1000M fortune. From where he got the money to build is inexplicable to me. His brother, the tailor, is a person who always carries a revolver and a dagger with him.

 

In my opinion, Bichler is a rascal. He stole grain from his father and then sold it. I trust those named here to do this and I ask that the survey be initiated against them.

 

I firmly deny that I committed the murder, or participated in it in any way, or that I incited anyone to do it. Nobody approached me either to inquire about the situation in Hinterkaifeck.

 

I would like to mention that the Thaler brothers in Unterkaifeck are not clean either. You've also stolen. I also deny that I was in Schrobenhausen on April 3rd and 4th and asked a Mr. Buchernecker for a map there. I haven't come from the municipality of Althegnenberg since I started working at Gute Lindahof. All of the suspicions against me in this direction are untrue.

I cannot give any further information about the murder itself ”. Her goes on in the statement to discuss his criminal past and his brother Anton. The full statement can be found online. 

The Thaler family

 

There are many instances where the Thaler family had been brought up as suspects on the killings sometimes with a man named Wendelin Kaspar. Some of those reports are as follows: 

 

February 25, 1924

According to the testimony of an unknown witness but whose name is known to the police, Josef Thaler is said to have been interested in Viktoria Gabriel. A pick from Johann Gall is said to have been stolen some time before the murder in Hinterkaifeck and the Thaler brothers are said to have been suspected of having carried out this theft. After the murder, the "old Thaler" Hinterkaifeck would have liked to buy and it would have annoyed him that the court went to the Gabriels.

 

April 5, 1924

Josef Fuchs, dentist from Pfaffenhofen, is questioned.

At some point around this time the pastor of Waidhofen must also have testified, whose information, together with those of Josef Fuchs and Anton Strasser, initiated new investigations against the Thalers and Kaspars.

Fuchs tells of the rumor spread in Schrobenhausen and Waidhofen that Wendelin Kaspar was the culprit of Hinterkaifeck. Kaspar was gloomy and would leave the inn as soon as the conversation turned to the murder. He reacts passively to accusations from the perpetrator and does not defend himself.

These rumors could not be confirmed by the police, and those present who were given as witnesses could not testify to the incidents and conversations described.

 

May 23, 1924

The butcher Anton Strasser gives the police information that Wendelin Kaspar and Andreas Thaler senior, who were good friends before the murder. be referred to in the inns as the perpetrators of Hinterkaifeck; The Thaler brothers are also said to be involved in the murder.

Kaspar and Thaler suddenly became enemies after the murders. Wendelin and Andreas Kaspar were suddenly able to continue building, although construction had previously been stopped due to lack of money. It was also noticeable to him that it was precisely on this construction site that craftsmen were later paid with gold money. Kaspar also paid for flour and his daughter's trousseau in gold.

Essigkrug from Waidhofen had publicly described Kaspar as a murderer, whereupon a libel suit was pending.

 

March 3, 1925

An anonymous letter is sent in Augsburg, which also brings the Thalers into play as the perpetrator.

The letter arrives anonymously at the Augsburg city police on March 6th.

 

January 8, 1937

Statement by Josef Thaler in Augsburg. Thaler states that he has been questioned both as a witness and as a suspect in the Hinterkaifeck murder case since it was found. He was asked if he could name a perpetrator. He could not, he could only name those people who were suspected of being the perpetrators in the area. Thaler openly talks about the suspicion against him, his brothers and his father. And against Wendelin Kaspar. Thaler can give his father an alibi for the night of the crime and he doesn't trust his brothers to do the crime either.

Thaler wants to pursue a libel suit because of the renewed allegations.

Thaler also denies ever having been to Rieger's window.

On the day of the discovery, Thaler claims to have gone to Hinterkaifeck with Lebmeier, his father and his brother around 5 p.m. There they found 100 people from Gröbern and the surrounding area. They were free to move around the house and look at the bodies. The Thaler brothers took over night watch on the first night together with a farmer from Gröbern with the first name Josef until 4 a.m.

These three joined the judicial commission at the inspection after it arrived at around 11 p.m. In addition, the commission found a lot of coins in a wardrobe, whereupon they would have ruled out robbery. They had spent the night watch on a bench in front of the bakery. They weren't in the bakehouse itself, there were no traces of blood or burnt clothing to be seen. The night watch had no lamps with them.

Thaler also describes that there were rumors in the area about Lorenz Schlittenbauer, who was the father of the two-year-old Josef. And there were also rumors against Josef Gabriel. Thaler denies, however, that there was enmity between the Gabriels and the Hinterkaifeckern, the two families simply never met.

Thaler confirms the Gabriels' statement that none of the Gabriel family came to the farm for the first few hours after they were found. 

 

There are several more reports, interrogations, and accusations all the way up until at least the early 50s. Nothing ever came off all this as none of the Thalers were ever charged. 

 

Paul Müller(Mueller in american documents)

 

Paul Mueller is a suspected serial killer in america in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He has been put forth as the orientation of a series of axe murderer in the US during that time period. Author Bill James puts forth his theories in a book called The Man From The Train. He puts all the clues together and links various killings, including the infamous Villisca ax murders, together and links Mueller as the killer. He then brings up the similarities to Hinterkaifeck! The similar murders stopped around 1912. James believes that this is because Mueller believed the authorities were on to him and he left and went back to Europe. There are many similarities to the US crimes and Hinterkaifeck that lead James and many others to believe it could have been Mueller. Since of these include the fact that an entire family was murdered, the weapon used was similar to those used in the US, the blunt side of the weapon was also used in all the murders, the young girls bodies were treated differently, the bodies were stacked and covered, isolated farm houses, and all we're in walking distance to train stations.

 

There were well over 100 suspects questioned but these are generally postulated to be the most likely suspects. 

 

So who did it? Why did they do it? So many questions are out there still. Was someone living in the attic up until the murders? Did they start there until the bodies were found? So many other strange things went on its hard to tell what really happened.  There's a wealth of information on the website we mentioned earlier which is where a beast majority of this information came from. There is much to sift through and if you want to delve into this case more, which we highly recommend, Check out those websites. This is another case we still most likely never get an answer too. But it's a great case to research and head down rabbit holes!!

 

Movies: 

 

1922: https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?year=1922&title_type=feature&

 

German: https://screenrant.com/horror-movies-german-absolutely-terrifying/

#77 Creepy Australia

Episode 77

Creepy

Australia

G'day mates! Tonight on the Midnight Train we've decided to take another creepy trip! Last time we stayed stateside and headed to Texas, where they seem to have an inordinate amount of haunted bridges. This week we are heading to The Land Down Under! That's right Australia here we come. Not only can pretty much all the wildlife in Australia kill you… It's also chock full of creepy places as well! So, without further ado, throw another shrimp on the barbie, wrestle yourself a croc, pull out all the other Australian cliches you can, and take a trip with us to some of the creepiest, craziest places in Australia. No bridges… We promise!

 

     We'll start off with a nice refreshing swim...OF DEATH!!! Local legend states that at the Babinda boulders, aka The Devil's Pool, there is something sinister going on. Legend has it that a long time ago, when the Yidinji tribe lived in the Babinda Valley, there was a tremendous upheaval that created these unusual shaped Boulders. In the tribe was Oolana, a very beautiful young woman.  Also in the tribe was Waroonoo, a very old, wise and respected elder.

 

It was decided that these two should be given in marriage to one another, and so it was done.  Some time later, a wandering tribe came through the valley, and as was the friendly custom of the Yidinji, they made the strangers welcome, inviting them to stay.  In the visiting tribe was Dyga, a very handsome young man.  All eyes were upon him for his grace and beauty.  At first sight, Dyga and Oolana fell in love. Knowing full well that their desire for each other would never be permitted, they ran away.  Oolana knew she could now never return as she was rightfully married to Waroonoo.  They journeyed well up into the valley; spending wonderful, happy days together and they camped under Chooreechillum, near the water’s edge. The two tribes had been searching for them and it was at this spot, they came upon the two lovers.  The wandering tribesmen seized Dyga, forcing him away, calling how they had been shamed and how they would travel far away and never return.  The Yidinjis had taken hold of Oolana and were dragging her back, forcing her to return with them to the rest of the tribe.  Suddenly, she broke away and violently flung herself forward into the gentle waters of the creek, as she called and cried for Dyga to return to her, but the wandering tribe had gone, and with them her handsome lover. Would he ever return?  Just at the very instant Oolana struck the water, a tremendous upheaval occurred.  The land shook with terror and sorrow as Oolana cried for her lost lover to come to her.  Her anguished cries spilled out as rushing water came cascading over the whole area.  Huge boulders were thrown up and she disappeared into them.  Oolana seemed to become part of the stones as if to guard the very spot where it all happened. It is said that to this day her spirit resides at the Devil's Pool and lures young men to their deaths. Since 1959 almost 20 young men have died there. Is it a result of the restless siren spirit of Oolana or just a result of carelessness on behalf of these young men. As we are the Midnight Train, We'll go with the daunting spirit of a broken-hearted & scorned woman.

 

       Next up we'll take you to a place that kinda hits closer to home right now. We are heading to the North Head quarantine station. Not because of Covid… But because it's fucking haunted of course. First, Jeff's favorite, a bit of history. The Quarantine Station was established primarily to regulate the risk of disease importation through the migration of free and convicted Europeans, and the arrival of merchant shipping. Up until the 1830s, the majority of ships requiring quarantine were convict transports, and being under government contract, the somewhat informal proclamation of quarantine by the Governor of the day was easy to enforce. One reason for the introduction of formal statutory regulation for quarantine in NEw South Wales in 1832 was the increasing rate of free immigrant vessels entering port. The initial quarantine practice of housing the sick on board the vessel in which they arrived, was dispensed with after the experience with the long detention of the Lady Macnaghten in 1837, and the subsequent heavy demurrage claimed for that delay. After that time the sick were removed from their ship and housed ashore, while the ship was fumigated and scoured for return to the owner with the minimum delay. A consequence of this decision was the construction of permanent accommodation and storage buildings at the Quarantine Station at North Head. The alarming experiences of quarantine in 1837 and 1838 prompted a review in the colony of the organisation and conditions aboard immigrant ships. The final report, arising as a NSW initiative, pricked the sensitivities of the British emigration officials, but nevertheless had positive outcomes. The review indicated that there was insufficient checking of the health of the emigrants before boarding; there was insufficient concern with diet during the voyage, especially for the needs of children; and that the formula of three children equalling one adult when allocating food and berth space aboard required reconsideration, as it led to excessive number of children in cramped spaces, with inadequate food. The subsequent reorganisation of the system resulted in interviews and medical checks on would-be emigrants before embarking them; vaccination for smallpox of all emigrants; the signing of undertakings to follow the directions of the surgeon-superintendent on voyage and better definition of his role and powers; improvements in diet and hospital accommodation aboard; and moves to prevent overcrowding. The arrival of the Beejapore in 1853, with over one thousand passengers, at a time when the Quarantine Station could accommodate 150 persons, triggered a new building phase. As a temporary measure, the hulk Harmony was purchased and moored in Spring Cove as a hospital ship. The Beejapore was an experiment in trying to reduce migration costs by using two-deck vessels, and the outcome was judged not to be a success. Fifty-five people died during the voyage, and a further sixty two died at the Quarantine Station, from the illnesses of measles, scarlet fever and typhus fever.  As a result of this downturn between 1860 and 1879 only 138 immigrant vessels arrived [compared with 410 between 1840 and 1859], and of these 33 required cleansing at the Quarantine Station, but few required their passengers to be landed and accommodated. In the same period 29 merchant or naval vessels were quarantined, but again mainly for the cleansing of the ship rather than the landing of diseased crews. The run-down Quarantine Station had become unsuitable for passenger quarantine, and particularly for first and second class passenger accommodation, by the time the Hero was in need of quarantine for smallpox in 1872. The passengers were kept aboard the ship, because the station could not adequately house them. The inadequacy was further publicised during the quarantine of the Baroda in 1873, when first class passengers had to do their own washing. The growth of the other states also meant that shipping was more evenly distributed in terms of destination than had been the case in the nineteenth century. In the period 1901 to 1940, Sydney and Melbourne had roughly similar numbers of assisted immigrants (134,864 and 115,988 respectively), and the other States had, in combination, more immigrants than either Sydney or Melbourne, totalling 174,526. By 1958 there were 39 "first ports of entry" into Australia. Thirty-two sea ports had staff capable of carrying out quarantine inspections, ten ports were "landing places" for air entry; major quarantine stations with accommodation were established at five ports, and there were three minor quarantine stations at other Ports.

 

The impact of improved medical science, immunisation, and quarantine procedures in the twentieth century is perhaps shown most dramatically by the fact that though the post-WWII immigration was vastly more than had gone before, the number of ships or aeroplanes quarantined plummeted proportionately. Sydney received nearly 700,000 assisted immigrants between 1946 and 1980, or nearly double the number it had received between 1831 and 1940, yet only four ships were quarantined in that period and at least one of those was a tanker.

 

In all, between 1828 and 1984 at least 580 vessels were quarantined at the Quarantine Station. More than 13,000 people were quarantined at the station of whom an estimated 572 died and were buried there. Now with that compacted and somewhat confusing history out of the way, let's get into some creepiness.

 

    Since records were first kept, reports of the ghosts of the doctors and nurses returning to haunt the station have flooded in. The National parks and Wildlife Service regularly conducts a three hour ghost tour after sunset, where visitors are led by tour guides through the winding unlit streets and buildings of the North Head Quarantine Station.

 

Every building and open area on the site is believed to be haunted by at least one ghost. Visitors have reported seeing apparitions walking in front of their cars as they leave the site at night, as they are driving down North Head Scenic Drive. Psychics have claimed to have been led around the station by ghostly nurses, and long dead patients all still remaining within the confines of the complex. TV's Ghost Hunters Team visited the site and found enough evidence to suggest that the site is haunted by several different entities, who have remained at the site, but you know how we feel about those tools...

 

One of the more common accounts you may hear while on the ghost tours are that of the ghostly girl with blonde braids who occasionally holds a tourists hand and leads them along the pathways. Some visitors see her hiding behind bushes or even tugging at their jacket sleeve. Guests have said she speaks to them or sees her as a child on a tour, only to be told later that there were no children on their tour. In the Asian quarters visitors have reported seeing the ghost of a Chinese man dressed in authentic period robes.

 

Other paranormal experiences at North Head Quarantine Station include: lights turning themselves on and off in locked buildings, strange sounds and footsteps coming from the verandas, and the feeling of being touched by an unseen force.

 

Many people have felt uncomfortable and have frozen on the spot of the old cemetery where a lone gravestone now is the only remaining evidence of the hundreds of bodies buried below.

 

Several buildings on the site were destroyed by fire in 2001. One of the buildings was the station's original hospital. Several ghosts were seen here before the fire; these were either laying in the hospital beds, or wondering around the wards. There are plans in the future to reconstruct this building because of its historic importance, and of course, its haunted history as well. There is a corrugated-iron structure on the site that houses the station's shower block. Paranormal events here include: doors slamming shut, lights turning on and off, bangs against the walls, and the sounds of footsteps. There are many many stories from this place which is also now a hotel. There's tons more history and tales that you can find on your own but we must be moving along, now.

 

We head next to Uluru also known as Ayers Rock. Uluru/Ayers Rock, is a giant monolith, one of the tors (isolated masses of weathered rock) in the southwestern Northern Territory, in central Australia. It has long been revered by a variety of Australian Aboriginal peoples of the region, who call it Uluru. The rock was sighted in 1872 by explorer Ernest Giles and was first visited by a European the following year, when surveyor William Gosse named it for Sir Henry Ayers, a former South Australian premier. It is the world’s largest monolith. There's an ancient history to the rock. On the northern top of Uluru are a series of caves that are informally called “the Skull”. The Aborigine, the peoples of the Mala, or Hare Wallaby group (both the Pitjantjatjara and Yankuntjatjara belong to it) well, they believe that they represent the camp made by their ancestors in the Dreamtime, when they came to Uluru from the Haasts Bluff region, some 200 miles north, to initiate their youth. The Dreamtime is the era in which these forebearers created 'The Earth' through their adventures along trails that cross the desert. Many of these paths merge to crossroads at important features of the desert landscape, such as Uluru. The caves to the right of the Skull are said to mark the camps of the fathers and uncles of the initiates. In the uncles' camp lived the eagle chick, which would be used to provide feathers for this important ceremony. Other caves represent the camps that male elders, not involved in the ceremony, resided, and a series of flat rocks to the east, stand for the camp of the women. Whenever the tribes of the area gather at the Rock for these ceremonies, they still camp precisely in this pattern.

 In the northwest corner, separated from the main body of the Rock, is an immense pillar that locals call the Kangaroo Tail. To the Aborigine this is the ceremonial pole (naldawata) stolen from the midst of the Mala camp by a 'Devil Dingo'. The Dingo, a species of dog, is believed to have come to Australia with the aboriginals across land bridges and shallow seas that existed between Australia and Indonesia before the melting of the glaciers toward the end of the last ice age.

 

This particularly savage canine, who stole the ceremonial pole, had been sung into existence by the elders farther west in the mountains now called the Petermanns, and sent into the camp at Uluru to punish the Mala group for refusing to supply eagle feathers to their cousins. This devil dingo put the Mala, and their guests from the southwest side of Uluru, the Carpet Snake people, to flee. There are enormous writhe marks and paw-shaped caves at the base of Uluru that represent the escape route of the Hare Wallaby and Carpet Snake people, their panic quite legible in the rock. 

 

The Mala group are still aware of that devil dingo, which they believe dwells somewhere on the crest of Uluru. 

 

Then there's the stories of the curse of Uluru. While climbing the rock is now banned there are many stories of folks who went to see the sites and decided to bring a piece of Australia home with them only to be met with bad luck and misfortune. Steve Hill talks about his experience. He had taken a small rock from the site. Here's the short version found on an Australian website:  The moment I put it back, it felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders,” explains Steve Hill, who recently made a 3000km road trip from Canberra to return a small rock to Uluru. Hill, who pilfered the match box–sized rock from the base of the landmark inselberg in 2017, admits he was “a complete idiot for taking it in the first place”. In the weeks after, he claims, he was struck by a “long run of bad luck”, including car accidents and expensive repairs to his four-wheel-drive. He's not the only one to have stories like this.

 

“I wanted to take away some of your magic with me for the rest of my travels, for the rest of my life even. I realise it was wrong to do so, therefore I am sending it back to you. Forgive me for being foolish,” wrote one French tourist who returned a rock via mail in January 2014.

 

Another tourist wrote "To Australia, I'm so sorry I took this piece of Uluru. I wanted a piece of Australia to take home with me. This was the wrong thing to take. I hope Australia can forgive me and welcome me if I ever come back. signed, An Unwise Traveller" 

 

One British tourist wrote: "Things were good in my life before I took some of Ayers Rock home with me, but since then my wife has had a stroke and things have worked out terribly for my children – we have had nothing but bad luck."

 

The national park receives at least one package a day from remorseful rock thieves who are seeking to return pieces of the monument. In an even more bizarre twist, recent research indicates that 25 percent of those packages contain apology notes claiming that the stolen stone has brought misfortune upon its abductors; by returning it, they hope to undo the curse. While most of the returned pieces of Uluru are pocket-sized, officials once received a 70-pound chunk from a remorseful couple in South Australia, and packages have come from as far away as Germany.  So what to you guys think? Do you believe in curses? I don't need a rock or sand that bad! And now like Vanilla Icev were gonna keep on pursuing to the next stop.

 

The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), known as ScreenSound Australia from 1999 to 2004, is Australia's audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting and providing access to a national collection of film, television, sound, radio, video games, new media, and related documents and artefacts. The collection ranges from works created in the late nineteenth century when the recorded sound and film industries were in their infancy, to those made in the present day. Doesn't seem spooky… Until you find out the building to which the Archive moved in 1984 was the home of the Australian Institute of Anatomy from 1931-84. Originally it held the anatomy collection of Sir Colin MacKenzie. A little more creepy. The Australian Institute of Anatomy was a natural history museum and medical research institute that was founded in 1931 and disbanded in 1985 located in Acton, Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory. MacKenzies collection included the heart of the celebrated Australian racehorse Phar Lap, Australian outlaw Ned Kelly's skull and a mummy from Papua New Guinea. MacKenzie became the founding director of the Institute on Anatomy, and on his death in 1938 his ashes were placed behind a commemorative plaque in the building's foyer. Buildings constructed during this phase were 'built to broaden national interest and establish the city as a centre of archives and collections'. The building housed human skeletons, animal specimens and artefacts, and was the site of scientific experiments. "The NFSA building is regarded by many ghost hunters or paranormal aficionados as not only one of the most haunted in Canberra, but also one of the most haunted in Australia," cryptonaturalist Tim the Yowie Man said.

 

"It's not because it houses spooky movies. The ghosts that are reported in the building stem from the period when it was the Institute of Anatomy." 

 

"During the '30s most of the research was on childhood nutrition; during the '40s when the war came that evolved to general nutrition, nutrition for the troops," Mr Kennedy said.

 

"In the '50s and '60s there was a liver dissection section and animal testing laboratory."

 

There have been many reported sightings of MacKenzie's ghost.

"It's one of the more extraordinary apparitions," he said."It's been described by some people like a genie out of a bottle.They're in the building in the late afternoon and they see an outline of an elderly man, dressed well, come out of the wall near where his ashes are.He just appears there, doesn't move much, and then suddenly sucks back into where the ashes are behind the wall." 

 

Another of the commonly reported ghost sightings is that of a little girl that would pop out through a grate in the old theatrette and make visiting school students laugh.

 

There have also been reports of poltergeist activity, particularly where the dissection laboratories used to be.

 

Since the NFSA moved in, that space has been used as an office with two sound recording booths.

 

"Quite often staff would have meetings in that room, and they would hear noises coming from the [recording booths] and they would see things flying around in there," Tim the Yowie Man said.

 

"All these tapes had fallen out of anti-gravity tape decks, which can't happen unless someone or something had forced them out."

 

A group of ghost hunters from the New South Wales south coast stayed overnight at the building ."They set up their equipment and it all went crazy," Mr Kennedy said. "One of the things ghosts or spirits apparently do is suck energy, so they'll suck the life out of batteries. They had six of these pieces of equipment set up in a row, and we all watched all of the batteries drain from full down to empty at the same time, which was pretty creepy."

 

Most of the reports of spooky activity come from NFSA staff, with an employee who worked there in the 1980s coming forward with an experience just last week.

 

"In the Film and Sound Archive it seems you don't need to be a true believer — you can be a sceptic, or sitting on the fence — to have an experience there," Tim the Yowie Man said.

 

"There just seems to be a higher-than-normal proportion there of really credible eyewitnesses seeing things they can't explain." 

 

Again these are just a few of the crazy stories floating around about this place and it bc send like a pretty cool haunted hotspot! And now like Fred Durst we're gonna keep rollin rollin rollin and head over to the Adelaide Gaol.

 

A brief history from the website states the following: Adelaide Gaol is one of the oldest remaining colonial public buildings in Adelaide and is the site of some of South Australia's more interesting, grisly past and important history of Adelaide. 

 

In 1840, George Strickland Kingston was commissioned to design Adelaide's new gaol. The architectural plans for Adelaide Gaol were based on the latest in European gaol designs and were said to be radical for the time.

 

The original cost estimate for Adelaide Gaol was £17,000, but by 1841 costs had already reached £16,000 with only half the planned works complete. The final bill was more than double the original quote and the expense of construction sent the fledgling colony of South Australia bankrupt.

 

As a result, Governor Gawler, who was considered responsible for this situation, was recalled to England and replaced by Governor Grey. Governor Grey halted work and Adelaide Gaol construction languished for over six years.

 

The full extent of Kingston's original design was never delivered, but there were all kinds of additions and modifications made to the Gaol during its 147 years of operation. In 1879, Adelaide Gaol was packed to capacity and the New Building was constructed using the prisoners as labour.

 

Approximately 300,000 prisoners passed through Adelaide Gaol during its working years and 45 people were executed. Their bodies are buried within the grounds of Adelaide Gaol.

 

The first public hanging took place in November 1840 while the site was still under construction.

 

It was decided in the early 1980s that Adelaide Gaol would be closed and on 4 February 1988, was officially decommissioned.

 

 Here's a little more on the prison. On Christmas Eve, 24 December 1840, the first prisoners, some fourteen debtors, were transferred from the old temporary gaol to occupy the first yard to be completed at the new Adelaide Gaol. Remaining prisoners at the old gaol were transferred in early 1841, as further building work was completed. From 1867 to 1869 Sister Mary MacKillop, foundress of the Australian Sisters of Saint Joseph and later canonised as Australia's first Saint, regularly visited the gaol and along with members of her order tended both male and female prisoners. The first attempt at escaping occurred in August 1854 when two prisoners were caught in the act with each receiving 36 lashes. The first "successful" escape was in 1897 when three prisoners made it as far as Blanchetown before being recaptured. In 1942 the "New Building" was taken over by the military for use as a detention barracks. The gallows located in the building were used for a civilian execution on 26 April 1944. Following public protests over the unsanitary conditions at both Yatala Labour Prison and Adelaide Gaol, extensive renovations were carried out in 1954–55. A toilet block was constructed in 4 and 6 yards and a semi-circular wall built in "The Circle" to allow more privacy for visits. Previously, prisoners would line up toeing a brass rail in the Sally port of the main gate with visitors standing opposite and no closer than 2 metres (6.6 ft) which required the raising of voices to be heard over adjacent conversations. Former prisoners have stated that after a few minutes the noise level would be so high that no one could be heard. In 1961 a shower block was constructed and a bakery established which would supply bread to both Yatala and Adelaide Gaols. By this time the gaol was badly affected by salt damp and throughout the 1960s many prisoners were kept busy repairing it. In 1963 the Deputy Keeper's rooms in the Governor's residence were converted to administrative offices and a new residence was built in the forecourt, adjacent to the Gaol entrance.

 

In 1965 it was announced that the gaol would be demolished and all but essential maintenance work ceased. In 1969 this decision was reversed and the gaol's female inmates were transferred to a new facility at Northfield. Throughout the 1970s considerable modernisation of the old buildings occurred with one building (6 Yard remand prisoners) demolished and rebuilt. In 1971 all staff housing on the site was vacated with most of the guards former residences demolished. In 1980 it was announced that the gaol would be closed once new facilities were completed and the only major work that took place until it did close was the installation of security cameras in 1984. Later that year the remand prisoners were transferred to the new Adelaide Remand Centre. The remaining Adelaide Gaol prisoners were transferred in 1987 when Mobilong Prison opened.

 

Adelaide Gaol was decommissioned in 1988 and the site taken over by the South Australian Department for Environment and Heritage and reopened as a museum and tourist attraction with overnight accommodation in cells for tourists. In 2007, the gaol was found to not comply with the relevant safety regulations for accommodation, ending the option. The Deputy Keeper's residence, built in 1963, was later considered not in keeping with the overall architectural style of the complex and demolished in October 2009. 

Until an Act of Parliament in 1858 mandated private executions, seven hangings were held in public outside the gaol walls with the first occurring in November 1840 while the site was still under construction. Joseph Stagg was the first prisoner to be executed for his involvement with a cattle duffing gang. From 1861 to 1883, 13 prisoners were executed on portable gallows erected between the Gaol's inner and outer walls. Executions were moved to the "New Building" in 1894 where a further 21 prisoners were executed. The "Hanging Tower" was converted to that use in 1950 and used for the last four executions before capital punishment was abolished in 1976. From 1840 to 1964, 45 of the 66 people executed in South Australia were executed by hanging at the Gaol. William Ridgway was the youngest at 19 in 1874, Elizabeth Woolcock the only woman in 1873 and the last was Glen Sabre Valance in 1964.

 

Possibly one of the most haunted places in Australia. Adelaide Gaol is said to be regularly visited by some of the inmates and prison officers who once wandered its halls. It is believed that these ghost sightings are possibly innocent people who were hanged, seeking exoneration still to this very day. More ominous is the reported sightings of Adelaide Gaol's hangman.

 

Ghost sighting of Frederick Carr

Frederick 'Fred' Carr was hanged at Adelaide Gaol on 12 November 1927 for the murder of his wife, Maude. He protested his innocence, even up until the final moments before his death.

 

Maude Carr was found with her throat cut. Medical experts at the time noted the wound could not have been self-inflicted because of the angle of the cut. Interestingly, Maude's previous two husbands also died from wounds to the neck and Maude tried to commit suicide the day before she died.

 

Carr is said to have exclaimed, while in the condemned cell, 'the law requires my body, but it cannot have my soul, as I am innocent." 

 

Fred is said to appear regularly near the stairs leading to the upstairs cells of the New Building. He is reported as a happy spirit, always neatly dressed in dark clothes and taking a polite interest in visitors wandering through his former 'home'.

 

Fred's spirit was thought to appear without a face. That is, until November 2000, when his spirit apparently appeared with a face - a smiling, happy face. Why Fred's face was restored is a mystery, but he remains one of the many fascinating folklore ghost sightings of Adelaide Gaol.

 

Ghost sighting of Governor William Baker Ashton

William Baker Ashton was the first Governor of the Adelaide Gaol and despite being a reasonably fair man, he was accused of wrong-doing. The ensuing scandal is said to have hastened his demise.

 

William was a very large man and when he died (in office) in 1854, his body could not be manipulated down his apartment's steep, narrow staircase. Instead, he was unceremoniously lowered out of the front window to the undertakers waiting below.

 

Three months after his death, William was exonerated. Too little, too late to pacify a disturbed spirit. On warm, still nights with a hint of thunder in the air, his footsteps are said to be heard (through walls of solid stone) as he struggles to move furniture in an empty room.

 

Ghost sighting of Ben Ellis - the hangman

Ben Ellis was the Adelaide Gaol hangman for 10 years, from the mid-1860s to the mid-1870s. He lived at Adelaide Gaol in a small apartment below what became the female dormitory.

 

Ben took pride in his work and approached each task with complete professionalism. Each of Ben's executions was precisely - and expertly - carried out. Except in the case of the execution of Charles Streitman in 1877. In his haste to get the job done, Ben neglected to prepare his prisoner properly and Charles not only dropped but rebounded, getting caught on the platform. Instead of instantaneous death it was a further 22 minutes before he finally died.

 

Ben never questioned the right or wrong of his profession until 30 December 1873, when he was required to hang a female prisoner, Elizabeth Woolcock. She was to be the first and last woman executed in South Australia. This event changed the way Ben viewed his profession forever.

 

Ben's restless spirit is said to appear often throughout Adelaide Gaol, perhaps seeking forgiveness for a job too well done.

On top of this we found a personal experience posted online. It goes like this: 

 

            The tour starts with a walk around the entire gaol. Straight away you get a feeling that you are being watched. The immense grounds and the stillness set the scene for a night of ghostly encounters. For those that love their history they will surely learn a lot from Alison in regards to the Gaol’s dark past. From stories about ex prisoners through to information on Adelaide history – you surely get your moneys worth.

 

My Adelaide Gaol ghost story began while walking around (and this was before dark) I could hear voices as well as footsteps. I felt like someone was following the group. It was in the museum that I experienced my first paranormal encounter. While Alison and another tour participant were in the Gaol wing I could here footsteps in the museum. Instead of joining them in the wing I instead investigated where the noises were coming from. At the same time Alison and co were trying to close one of the cell door slots. After looking around the museum (I couldn’t see anything) I decided to join the others in the wing. To my amazement as soon as I reached the wing I could see a hand coming from the cell door slot. This hand forcefully smashed the slot down. You can guess what happened next. I ran for my life. I have never been that scared in my life. Well little did I know what laid ahead for the group.

 

After the tour we made our way back to the old Visiting Justice Room. Here Alison played us examples of EVP and voices from the ghost box. After my experience (I was still shaking like mad) these samples just put me further on edge.

 

Next was the investigation.

 

The investigation itself lasts around two hours. Here you are able to use equipment to track the paranormal as well as visit any location in the prison. Alison took us to places around the prison which have had vast paranormal events. Alas those places would not be the ones that would make me doubt my own sanity.

 

The induction centre looks to be just another building. But by day or night this is indeed is a dark place. As soon as I entered the building I began to feel light headed. It was like it was an extremely hot day. The temperature gauge at that stage read only 22 degrees. That was all about to change. When we sat down on the bench in the induction centre the gauge jumped to over 40 in a little over a few minutes. I then asked if any spirit could lessen the temperature on the gauge. I got a response almost straight away and the gauge dropped by 25 degrees. The group then decided to give the ghost box a go. This is where you ask questions and some times you might get a response. I’m not a great fan and neither is Alison, but I will give anything a go once. During this period the temperature gauge read 68 degrees. All the others in the room were now all complaining about feeling light headed. Alison then asks if anyone present could give us a sign they were there or touch us. Well they did surely show us they were there. It went on for a few minutes. The noise could be best described as footsteps walking through dried leaves. It was the same noise that I had heard all the night. What made this experience worse though was they kept getting closer and closer. Alison tried to radio her husband so that he could bring the video camera but the walkie talkie wouldn’t work. My nerves were shot at this stage. Thank gawd everyone wanted to leave the room.

 

After regrouping outside we checked all the equipment. Both the temperature gauge and walkie-talkies needed their batteries changed. What is weird about this is both of them had just been refreshed before the investigation. These batteries should have lasted days. Another weird thing is another group members recording device stopped when the noises got closer. There was no one near the device. On the way back we heard the jail bell ring twice (Alison stated that it never had happened before) and also the between yards buzzer went off. Very unusual indeed.

 

Let me state that all the above did happen and is real. No gimmicks or pranks. We have audio evidence that all this took place. Thank you Alison for an amazing night. For one that has been searching for such an experience for years, I owe you and the Gaols inhabitants big time. This tour is indeed worth it. Give it a go when you are next in Adelaide. You never know what ghostly things you may encounter.”

 

This account was written by a Nicholas Bishop and posted to Adelaidehauntedhorizons.com.

 

Fu Manchu once told us: King of the road says you move too slow, so it's with great haste we move along to our next stop. We are now heading to Black Mountain!

 

Black mountain national park is a 781 hectare(roughly 1400 acres) protected area in Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. The main feature of the park is the mass of granite boulders, some the size of houses. The absence of soil between the boulders and rocks create a maze of gaps and passages, which can be used to penetrate inside the mountain. These rocks can become extremely hot.

 

The area has a bad reputation as numerous people and those searching for the missing have disappeared without trace. That's why we're heading there. Is it supernatural? Bad luck? Maybe something else sinister? Let's see what we can find. First a bit of Cultural history. The National Park's "Black Mountains" are a heavily significant feature of the Kuku Nyungkal people's cultural landscape known locally to Aboriginal Australians as Kalkajaka (trans: "place of spear").

 

Queensland's Department of Environment and Natural Resources has been advised of at least four sites of particular mythological significance within the "Black Mountains" as follows:

 

There are at least four sites of religious or mythological significance on the mountain. These are the Kambi, a large rock with a cave where flying-foxes are found; Julbanu, a big grey kangaroo-shaped rock looking toward Cooktown; Birmba, a stone facing toward Helenvale where sulphur-crested cockatoos are seen; and a taboo place called Yirrmbal near the foot of the range.

 

The Black Mountain also features strongly in local, more non-Aboriginal cultural landscapes, some of which has also been described by Queensland's Department of Environment and Resource Management as follows

 

When European colonists arrived late last century, they added to the many Aboriginal legends of the area with a few of their own. Stories abound of people, horses and whole mobs of cattle disappearing into the labyrinth of rocks, never to be seen again

 

It is believed that those who vanished most probably fell into one of the chasms under the rocks or after entering one of these places became lost. It is estimated only three in ten would survive such falls, wandering below the Earth's surface with only ground water streams and insects to nourish them.

 

Disappearances are centuries old at Black Mountain with stories beginning as the white settlers began arriving and did not respect the Kuku Yalanji’s warnings. For example, in 1877 a man went out towards the Black Mountain to locate an escaped calf. When the man failed to return searches were conducted for days but no trace of the horse, cow, or man was ever discovered. Several years later Sugarfoot Jack and his criminal companions decided to take refuge near the mountain after a shootout, knowing not many people would venture there. Despite an exhaustive police search in the following days, no bodies were ever recovered.

 

Mr Harold Ludwick believes in Black Mountain's dark forces, which is why he warns people not to enter the site: a mistake his friend from Sydney made during a visit.

 

"I told him, 'Don't go in there', because I know there's a bora ground, but he was headstrong and wanted to go," Mr Ludwick recalled.

 

"After being in that place, he got home and was tormented by what he said was devils and spirits.

 

"After he got better, three or four months later, he came back and said to me, 'I know I've done something wrong on Cape York'.

 

"I said, 'Bloody oath you did, and I told you!'"

 

Some other early stories of disappearances are as follows: 

 

      November, 1882: two cattlemen Harry Owens and George Hawkins disappear while looking for stray cattle around Black Mountain, as does one of the police trackers searching for the missing men. A second tracker returns 'completely unhinged' and unable to provide a coherent report.

 

         1890: Constable Ryan tracks a fugitive to a cave at Black Mountain. He enters to see if the fugitive might be hiding inside. According to those present he never came back out.

 

         1892: prospector James Wren vanishes while fossicking at Black Mountain.

 

       Circa 1920: two young explorers determined to solve the mysterious disappearances go missing themselves, along with some of the trackers who go looking for them.

 

       1928: prospector Q. Packer goes missing while fossicking at Black Mountain. His body is later found next to his rifle with a bullet wound to his head.

 

      1932: traveller Harry Page goes missing while hiking on Black Mountain and was later found dead from unknown causes. Well into modern times Black Mountain has been ground zero for a wide variety of high strangeness. It is said that animals are spooked by the mountain, and that it exudes some evil force that has been reported to disrupt the navigational equipment of airplanes flying nearby. In fact, planes mostly avoid flying near the mountain due to these unexplained anomalies as well as the strange air turbulence that is experienced within the vicinity. A 1991 aerial survey conducted by the Bureau of Mineral Resources to test for magnetic disturbances and radiation levels on the mountain turned up nothing unusual, yet the reports of these phenomena from pilots persist. It may not be so surprising that Black Mountain is also home to a good amount of UFO activity and reports of strange lights. 

 

Black Mountain is also said to have cavernous underground chambers that are purported to hold everything from alien bases to lost civilizations, ancient tombs and priceless lost treasures. Some of the treasures said to reside within the depths of the many caves are lost stockpiles of gold, historic artifacts, and ancient texts. One of the stranger things said to lie under the mountain is a secret alien base from which UFOs emerge and which is inhabited by a race of reptilian alien humanoids that keep human slaves. Those who buy this far out idea further explain that the arrangement of the boulders is obviously artificial and that the entire mountain was built by the aliens themselves. Others speculate that the boulders were laid down by some ancient lost civilization millennia ago, and that this society thrived deep under the mountain in an enormous hollowed out domain. Some think such a civilization is still there.

 

Other bizarre tales revolve around the strange beasts said to inhabit the mountain. Although it is true that the area is home to many unique and endemic species, there are tales of creatures lurking here that are far weirder than one might imagine. Within the craggy maze of intertwined boulders are said to lurk enormous pythons that are not shy about attacking human beings. There is also an enigmatic large, cat-like predator known as the Queensland tiger that is thought to prowl the area and has been blamed for cattle mauling and mutilations that have occurred in the surrounding area. Occasional reports of large, reptilian humanoids emerging from the underground tunnels and crevices have also surfaced from the mountain. Additionally, there are numerous stories of fleeting, shadowy shapes that stalk the mountain, but it is unclear whether these represent some type of real animal, a more supernatural phenomenon, or merely a trick of shadow and light upon the black boulders.

 

One experienced bushman who penetrated into the mountain armed with a pistol and flashlight gave a harrowing account of his experience within:

 

I stepped into the opening, like other Black Mountain caves it dipped steeply downwards, narrowing as it went. Suddenly I found myself facing a solid wall of rock, but to the right there was a passageway just large enough for me to enter in a stooping position. I moved along it carefully for several yards. The floor was fairly level, the walls of very smooth granite. The passage twisted and turned this way and that, always sloping deeper into the earth. Presently I began to feel uneasy. A huge bat beat its wings against me as it passed, however I forced myself on, to push further. Soon my nostrils were filled with a sickly musty stench. Then my torch went out. I was in total darkness. From somewhere, that seemed the bowels of the earth I could hear a faint moaning which was then followed by the flapping of wings of thousands of bats. I began to panic as I groped and floundered back the way I thought I had come. My arms and legs were bleeding from bumps with unseen rocks. My outstretched hands clawed at space, I expected solid walls and floors, but could not find it. At one stage where I had wandered into a side passage, I came to the brink of what was undoubtedly a precipice-judging by the echoes. The air was foul and I felt increasing dizziness. Terrifying thoughts were racing through my mind about giant rock-pythons I have seen around this mountain. As I crawled along, getting weaker and loosing hope of ever coming out alive, I saw a tiny streak of light. It gave me super strength to worm my way towards a small cave mouth half a mile from the one I had entered. Reaching the open air I gulped in lungfuls of it and fell down exhausted. I later found that I had been underground for five hours, most of the time on my hands and knees. A King’s ransom would not induce me to enter those caves again. 

 

Damn!

 

One more tale for you:

 

  In 2001 a tale of a man that had an interesting experience arose. A man named Ivan and his friend Danny decided to camp at the bottom of Black Mountain while on a journey to a different destination. While setting up camp both noticed the complete silence of nature that surrounded them and noted it was a bit off. As the two friends drifted to sleep they were awoken when the sounds of rocks crumbling shattered the silence. Then, they started to hear footsteps that got closer and closer in every step. In a moment of adrenaline-inspired bravery, Danny rushed outside to scare whoever (or whatever) was stalking them away. Ivan, not wanting to leave his friend alone, followed behind him. When they left the tent they saw a huge black mass ambling towards them. Then, it disappeared in front of their eyes. Despite it being the middle of the night the camp as quickly as they could and left the Black Mountain. Any up for a trip to Black mountain?

 

There are many many many more places in Australia we can talk about, which is why we will be working on a creepy Australia part 2 in the future. Given the Aboriginal history and culture and the circumstances with which the country was founded, and just the age of since if these structures, it's no wonder there are tons of creepy haunted places in Australia. For now though.. As ozzy said Mama I'm comin home! Thanks for the memories!

Australian horror movies

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#76 The Cleveland Torso Murders

Episode 76

Torso Murders

 

What do an ancient riverbed, Elliot Ness, and at least 12 headless torsos have in common? They are all involved in tonight's episode! Tonight we are diving into our first real foray into true crime. We discuss one of the nation's craziest unsolved serial murder cases ever. And the best part is… It takes place in our own backyard! Tonight we discuss the Kingsbury Run Torso Slayings, better known as the Cleveland Torso Murders. 

 

The Kingsbury Run area of Cleveland Ohio is actually built on an ancient riverbed that once fed into the Cuyahoga river, long before it caught on fire of course. This area is just south of downtown Cleveland and within the area known as the Flats.  While the first body attributed to the Torso Killer was found in September 1934, there are questions as to when the killings actually started as the first mention of a headless body in The Run was in the Cleveland Leader on November 13,1905. A woman scavenging in the Case avenue dump for saleable scrap came across the headless body of a man who was shot in the chest. In early September Frank LaGossie was walking along the beach near his house cleaning up the beach and collecting driftwood when he saw something that didn't really look right sticking out of the sand. As he got closer La Gossie realised what he was seeing wear the lower half of a human torso. Severed at the waist, it was still attached to the thighs but missing it's lower legs. La Gossie ran to his friends house and called the police. It was determined that the body was that of a woman in her mid thirties, about five foot six and weighing 120 pounds. There was evidence that a chemical was used on the body and the coroner claimed the killer tried to use something like quicklime to destroy the body but used slaked lime instead which accidentally helped preserve the body. The body was not water logged so it was determined there Torso was not in the water that long. No other clues were found so police began looking through the missing persons files for women who may match the description they could come up with. 

 

     Having read the reports of the murder, Joseph Hedjuk phone Cleveland police reporting that he had found human remains along the beach in North Perry, which is about 40 miles east of Cleveland, two weeks earlier. Hedjuk said he'd reported the find to lake county deputy Melvin Keener who determined that the remains were animals and convinced Hedjuk to bury the find on the beach. On September 7 extensive digging unearthed Hedjuks find, part of a shoulder blade,a partial spinal column and 16 vertebrae. All these pieces matched the Torso found by La Gossie and showed similar exposure to lime based chemical preservatives. The next day two brothers digging in the sand near the first torso discovery found a compatible collarbone and shoulder blade. Safety five days of sensational headlines, tons of worthless leads and clues, and tons of conjecture, the nameless Torso, dubbed Lady Of The Lake, residentially disappeared from the headlines. Her remains were buried in the Potter's Field section of Highland park cemetery on September 11 and Clevelanders seemingly just moved right on from the grisly discovery. And we've still yet to hear mention of Kingsbury Run!

 

September 23, 1935 brings us the story of 16 year old James Wagner and 12 year old Peter Costumes. The two boys played that day among the waste and rubble of Kingsbury Run near E.49th and Praha Avenue. Kingsbury Run was a neglected area that was full of weeds, trash, and debris left by drifters and homeless people that dwelt in the area. Around 5 on the boys decided to have a race down a 60ft but known as jackass hill. James got to the bottom first, he asked something strange in the brush nearby. A minute later he was running back up the hill telling Peter that there was "a dead man with no head down there"! They ran to find an adult and called the police. When police arrived they found the headless emasculated corpse of a young white male. The christ was nude except for black socks. While searching the area, detectives soon found another corpse about thirty feet away. It was the headless and emasculated torso of an older man that had a strange orange reddish tinge and unlike the first corpse which was relatively fresh, this one was badly decomposed.  They searched the area for more clues and found the severed genitals of both corpses and actually found the head of the first torso found. Their first corpse was eventually identified by fingerprints and Edward Adrassy. The second body has no fingerprints and was never identified. The reddish huge suggested that the body was exposed to some sort of preservatives similar to the first body found a year earlier, but that was not something investigators put together. Andrassy was well known to police as " a drunkard, marijuana user, pornography peddler, gambler, pimp, bellicose barroom brawler, bunko artist and all around snotty punk". He ran in tough circles around many undesirables, which meant there were possibly many people with motive. This includes a man who supposedly visited Andrassys house when he was away and told his parents that he would kill Adrassy if he didn't stop paying attention to the man's wife.

 

Detectives drew the measure implications from the clues and bodys. First, the victims knew each other and the body of the unidentified victim was held until the bodies could be dumped together. Second, the bodies were drained of blood and washed before being dumped, there was no other explanation for the complete absence of blood around the bodies at the scene. Three, a park of motor oil found at the scene was most likely there to  burn the bodies. The oil had traces of blood and hair in it. Also they suggest that the careful placement of the body suggests that the body's were not dumped hastily but placed carefully and purposefully. Some suggested that the castration was some sort of criminal ritual like a mafia gesture. Beyond this this police had nothing and soon Clevelanders began to forget about this horrific crime. One last thing about this crime: detective Orly May uttered something to his partner that would end up being somewhat prophetic, he told his partner " I've got a bad feeling about this one."

 

1936 rolled around and we find Elliot Ness fresh off his celebrated fight against the Capone crime syndicate. He was the newly appointed Director of Public Safety in Cleveland. On the night of January 25th into the morning of the 26th, several dogs were raising the alarm around the Hart Manufacturing Company. At one point a resident decided to do something about one of the barking dogs. As she entered an alert where the dog was she found the dogs straining at it's leash trying to get to a bushel basket that was laying against the back wall of the building. The resident looked into the woman walked back out and found a local butcher named Charles page and told him there were some hams in a basket in the alley. Page went to investigate believing this may be evidence that a butcher shop may have been robbed in the area. What he found was something completely different. He found body parts in the basket. More specifically an arm, two thighs, and the lower half of a female Torso. The body parts bite evidence of coal dust and coal lump imprints. They also found a burlap sack nearby with a pair of cotton underwear wrapped in newspaper in it. Also another sack was found nearby containing chicken feathers. The body was identified after an expert named George Koestle looked through more than 10,000 possible matching fingerprints to finally find a match to a  Florence Polilo. She had been married at least twice and was divorced from her second husband Andrew Polilo in the late twenties. As with our last victims Ms. Polilo was no stranger to police. According to police she figured in a number of barroom brawler and vice activities. She was arrested for soliciting in 1930 and occupying tons for immoral purpose in 1931. She was also arrested for prostitution in Washington D.C. in 1934 and again in Cleveland in 1935 for illegally selling intoxicating beverages. She'd been reportedly going downhill fast in the time leading up to her death. The police find that she had many aquaintances but no one really knew her. They looked for a man she lived with when she moved back from D.C. who reportedly beat her. They also had reports she was in a barroom brawl with a black man in the night of her death. They sought men locked to her with amazing names such as Captain Swing and One Armed Willie, but nothing came off these queries. The police determined the body was place where it was found at around 2:30am which is when all the dogs were heard barking. Police surmised that a very sharp knife in the hands of an amateur was used. A couple weeks later, on February 7th the rest of Ms. Polilos relative were found… Minus the head. Detectives were quick to mention there was no connection between this and the Andrassys killings.

 

We're going to kind of run through the rest of the victims here somewhat quickly for the sake of time.

 

June 1936: Early one morning in Kingsbury Run, two young boys discovered the head of a white male wrapped in a pair of trousers close to the East 55th Street bridge.

 

Police found the body of the twenty-some-year-old man the next day dumped in front of the Nickel Plate Railroad police building. Clean and drained of blood, the corpse was intact except for the head. Pierce again determined the death had been caused by decapitation. In spite of a fresh set of fingerprints and the presence of six distinctive tattoos on various parts of the body, police were never able to identify the victim. There was no evidence of drugs or alcohol in his system. And the contents of his stomach showed his last meal was baked beans and judging by the state of suggestion he was killed a day or two before the body was found. Day after three Torso was found the head was out on display the county morgue in hopes that someone could identify him. A plaster reproduction of the man’s head, along with a diagram of the kind and location of the tattoos, were made to display at the Great Lakes Exposition of 1936. More than one hundred thousand people saw the “Death Mask” and tattoo chart. The “Tattooed Man” was never identified. The original Death Mask, along with three others from the case are on display at the Cleveland Police Museum. This would be the murder that would spark the legend of the Cleveland Torso Murders and the hubby for The Mad Butcher Of Kingsbury Run. Police and experts still differed on opinions on the case including whether the first body was part of this whole messed and some even doubted whether Polilo was part of it. As Parents began telling their children to stay away from the Run, city editors started giving serious thought to a Cleveland Jack the Ripper!

 

July 1936: A teenage girl came across the decapitated remains of a forty-year-old white male while walking through the woods near Clinton Road and Big Creek on the near west side. The victim had been dead about two months and his head, as well as a pile of bloody clothing, was found nearby. Judging by the enormous quantity of blood that had seeped into the ground, this man had apparently been killed where his body was found. He had no distinguishing marks. Although authorities didn't know it yet, this would be the only torso vision to turn up on the west side of Cleveland. Judging by the clothes going and other clues, police determined the victim to be a resident at a hobo camp in the Big Creek woods not far from the crime scene. Oddly enough Elliot Ness, still basking in the headlines he made for fighting police corruption and organized cringe remained silent on the subject.

 

September 1936: A transient trips over the upper half of a man's torso while trying to hop a train at East 37th Street in Kingsbury Run. Police searched a nearby pool, which was nothing more than a big open sewer, and found the lower half of the torso and parts of both legs. Police sent a diver in to make the recovery. The number of onlookers that turned out to watch the grim spectacle was estimated at over six hundred, and the killer may well have been among them. Victim number six was in his late twenties and the cause of death, yet again, was decapitation. Coroner Pierce noted that the lack of hesitation marks in the disarticulation of the body indicated a strong, confident killer, very familiar with the human anatomy. The head had been cut off with one bold, clean stroke. The victim died instantly. Identification was never made. Six brutal killings in one year and the police had neither clues nor suspects. The Cleveland Press, The Cleveland News and The Cleveland Plain Dealer all reported almost daily on the killings and the lack of a suspect. Tension was high. Who was the "Mad Butcher" of Kingsbury Run?

 

Giving in to mounting pressure from Mayor Harold Burton, recently appointed Safety Director Eliot Ness gets more involved in the case. Coroner Pierce calls for what the newspapers dub a “Torso Clinic”: a meeting of police, the Coroner and other experts to discuss information and to “profile” someone who could be responsible for these gruesome killings.

 

The police department put detectives Peter Merylo and Martin Zelewski on the case full time. They move deftly through the seedy underworld that constitutes the Run and the Roaring Third, often dressing the part, often on their own time. By the time the case had run its course, the two had interviewed more than fifteen hundred people, the department as a whole more than five thousand. This would be the biggest police investigation in Cleveland history.

 

The November elections return Harold Burton as Mayor, but Coroner Pierce is replaced by the young democrat, and now legendary, Sam Gerber. Gerber’s fierce dedication to medicine, along with his degree in law, put him at the forefront of the investigation.

 

February 1937: A man finds the upper half of a woman's torso washed up on shore east of Brahtenahl. Unlike all previous victims, the cause of death had not been decapitation; this had happened after she was already dead. The lower half of the torso washed ashore three months later at about East 30th Street. The woman was in her mid-twenties. She was never identified.

 

June 1937: A teenage boy discovered a human skull under the Lorain-Carnegie bridge. Next to it was a burlap bag containing the skeletal remains of what turned out to be a petite black women about forty years old. Dental work allowed for the unofficial identification of one Rose Wallace of Scovill Avenue. Police followed every lead they had on her – they led nowhere.

 

July 1937: There were labor problems in the Flats that summer and the National Guard had been called in to maintain order. A young guardsman standing watch by the West 3rd Street bridge saw the first piece of victim #9 in the wake of a passing tugboat. Over the next few days, police recovered the entire body, except for the head, from the waters of the Cuyahoga River. The abdomen had been gutted and the heart ripped out, clearly indicating a new element of viciousness in the killer’s approach. The victim was in his mid to late thirties; he was never identified.

 

April 1938: A young laborer on his way to work in the Flats saw, what he at first thought was a dead fish, along the banks of the Cuyahoga River. Closer inspection revealed it to be the lower half of a women’s leg, the first piece of victim #10. A month later police pulled two burlap bags out of the river containing both parts of the torso and most of the rest of both legs. For the first time Coroner Gerber detected drugs in the system. Were the drugs used to immobilize the victim or was she an addict? The answer might come when they found the arms; they never did. She was never identified.

 

August 16, 1938: Three scrap collectors foraging in a dump site at East 9th and Lakeside found the torso of a woman wrapped in a man’s double breasted blue blazer and then wrapped again in an old quilt. The legs and arms were discovered in a recently constructed makeshift box, wrapped in brown butcher paper and held together with rubber bands. The head had been similarly wrapped. Gerber noted that some of the parts looked as if they had been refrigerated.  While searching for more pieces, the police discover the remains of a second body only yards away. These two bodies had been placed in a location that was in plain view from Eliot Ness’s office window, almost as if taunting him.  Both victims #11 and #12 were never identified.

 

August 18, 1938: At 12:40 A.M., Eliot Ness and a group of thirty-five police officers and detectives, raid the hobo jungles of the Run. Eleven squad cars, two police vans and three fire trucks descend on the largest cluster of makeshift shacks where the Cuyahoga River twists behind Public Square. Ness’s raiders worked their way south through the Run eventually gathering up sixty-three men. At dawn, police and fireman searched the deserted shanties for clues. Then, on orders from Safety Director Ness, the shacks were set on fire and burned to the ground.

 

The press severely criticized Ness for his actions. The public was afraid and frustrated. Critics said the raid would do nothing to solve the murders. They were right, but for whatever reason, they did stop.

 

July 1939: County Sheriff Martin O’Donnell arrested fifty-two-year-old Bohemian brick layer Frank Dolezal for the murder of Flo Polillo. Dolezal had lived with her for a while, and subsequent investigation revealed he had been acquainted with Edward Andrassy and Rose Wallace.

 

His “confession” turned out to be a bewildering blend of incoherent ramblings and neat, precise details, almost as if he had been coached. Before he could go to trial, Dolezal was found dead in his cell. The five foot eight Dolezal had hanged himself from a hook only five feet seven inches off the floor. Gerber’s autopsy revealed six broken ribs, all of which had been obtained while in the Sheriff’s custody. To this day no one thinks Frank Dolezal was the torso killer. The question is: why did Sheriff O’Donnell.

 

Other suspects:

Most investigators consider the last canonical murder to have been in 1938. One suspected individual was Dr. Francis E. Sweeney. Born May 5, 1894, Sweeney was a veteran of World War I who was part of a medical unit that conducted amputations in the field. Sweeney was later personally interviewed by Eliot Ness, who oversaw the official investigation into the killings in his capacity as Cleveland's Safety Director. During this interrogation, Sweeney is said to have "failed to pass" two very early polygraph machine tests. Both tests were administered by polygraph expert Leonarde Keeler, who told Ness he had his man. Ness apparently felt there was little chance of obtaining a successful prosecution of the doctor, especially as he was the first cousin of one of Ness's political opponents, Congressman Martin L. Sweeney, who had hounded Ness publicly about his failure to catch the killer. After Sweeney committed himself, there were no more leads or connections that police could assign to him as a possible suspect. From his hospital confinement, Sweeney sent threatening postcards and harassed Ness and his family into the 1950s. Sweeney died in a veterans' hospital in Dayton on July 9, 1964.

 

In 1997, another theory postulated that there may have been no single Butcher of Kingsbury Run because the murders could have been committed by different people. This was based on the assumption that the autopsy results were inconclusive. First, Cuyahoga County Coroner Arthur J. Pearce may have been inconsistent in his analysis as to whether the cuts on the bodies were expert or slapdash. Second, his successor, Samuel Gerber, who began to enjoy press attention from his involvement in such cases as the Sam Sheppard murder trial, garnered a reputation for sensational theories. Therefore, the only thing known for certain was that all the murder victims were dismembered.

 

Black dahlia connection:

 

The gruesome 1947 murder of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short, THE BLACK DAHLIA, which inspired countless books and films, remains unsolved. Yet, Short’s killer, many believe, may have been the Cleveland Torso Killer. On January 15, 1947, her nude body was discovered cut in half and severely mutilated in a vacant lot near Leimert Park in Los Angeles.

 

The killer not only cleaved the body in twain and mutilated the corpse, but Short had also been drained entirely of blood and the remains scrubbed clean. Short’s face had also been slashed from the corners of her mouth to her ears, creating a chilling effect known as the “Glasgow Smile”- resembling The Joker.

 

“It was pretty gruesome,” Detective Brian Carr of the Los Angeles Police Department said. “I just can’t imagine someone doing that to another human being.”

Dubbed “The Black Dahlia” by the press, the case made headlines for weeks as every aspect of Short’s brief life was examined by LAPD detectives and the media.

 

The closest thing they had to a clue was that Short had been working as a waitress before meeting her untimely end.  A round-up of the café’s habitues yielded nothing.

 

Dahlia_Map

 

The exhaustive homicide investigation went nowhere. As per usual in a high profile murder case, there were several confessions by kooks and a plethora of sketchy witnesses looking to get their names bold-faced in the tabloids.

 

Black Dahlia Evidence

 

The Elizabeth Short murder remains one of the most bizarre cold cases in history, fueling a true crime cottage industry of novels and films that purport to solve the crime.

 

Yet, The Black Dahlia may have been a victim of an infamous serial killer who terrorized America’s heartland: The Cleveland Torso Murderer.

 

As the bodies piled up, The Torso Murderer always chopped the heads from his victims’ bodies, often cleaving the torsos in half. Several of the male victims were castrated and others were cleaned with a chemical solvent. The victims’ remains were inevitably found months or years after they had been mercilessly butchered. Identification by police was often impossible as the victims’ heads were rarely found. Often it was truly “a hank of hair, a piece of bone…”

 

Initially, LAPD investigators probing the Elizabeth Short murder conducted a reexamination of the Cleveland Torso Murderer case files. While the similarities were uncanny, the link to the Dahlia case proved inconclusive at first.

 

In 1980, a former Cleveland Torso murder suspect, Jack Anderson Wilson, was under investigation by renowned LAPD homicide detective “Jigsaw” John P. St. John.

 

St. John claimed he was close to proving Wilson had not only been the Cleveland Torso Murderer but had also butchered, Elizabeth Short – the Black Dahlia. Before St. John could arrest him, the suspect died in a fire in 1982.

 

A local Cleveland man who studied the case for years named James Nadal is certain that the aforementioned doctor Frances Sweeney is indeed the killer. He lays out evidence in an interview with Cleveland magazine in 2014. He puts forth on his 2001 book that there was a vagrant named   Emil Fronek who claimed a Cleveland doctor tried to drug him in 1934 — right around the time the murders may have begun. Badal also believes he's identified the butcher's laboratory, the place where he disarticulated his victims.

 

You can find the Cleveland magazine interview online if you're interested. It's good reading and definitely interesting. The story of the vagrant being poisoned we are going to include here because it's pretty interesting and it's definitely an intriguing part of the tale: 

 

     In November 1934, Fronek supposedly was walking up Broadway Avenue, looking for food. He said he found himself on the second floor of a doctor's office. The doctor said, "I'll give you a meal."

 

While Emil was shoveling the food down, he began to feel woozy and wondered if he'd been drugged. So he ran down the steps, onto Broadway and into Kingsbury Run, got into a boxcar, fell asleep and awoke three days later. He said he went back to Broadway and East 55th, but couldn't find the doctor.

 

He decided Cleveland was pretty dangerous, so he went to Chicago and got a job as a longshoreman. In August 1938, his story got back to Cleveland. Detective Peter Merylo was sent to Chicago to bring him back.

 

Two policemen drove Fronek up Broadway slowly. When he got to the area around East 50th and East 55th, he says, "It's here someplace." They walked up and down the street several times, but he couldn't find anything that looked like a doctor's office.

 

Ness interviewed him. Officially, they decide — this is what the papers report — that they didn't think it had anything to do with the butcher. They were convinced the butcher's laboratory was close to downtown.

 

Another interesting theory involves a series of killings actors the pond. They were also dubbed The Torso Murders. They happened forty years earlier, in London.  While Jack the Ripper was terrorizing Whitechapel, a second serial killer was dismembering bodies and dumping the body parts.  Most of them ended up in the Thames, but a few were found in secluded parks… Near Whitechapel.  At one point during the Ripper investigation, the two murderers were even compared and it was decided that The Torso Murderer of London and Jack the Ripper were not the same serial killer.  It is unlikely that the killer from 1888 in London dismembering bodies was the same killer doing it in Cleveland in 1936.  Even if the London murderer was 18 at the time, he would have been 58 when the first body turned up in Cleveland.  However, there has been speculation that the two sets of murders could have been committed by a father/son.  It is possibly the earliest mention of a father passing along his desire to kill to a son.  At the time of the Torso Murders in Cleveland, this was dismissed as farfetched, but recent research has revealed that some of the details of the crimes are almost exact matches for each other.  In 1937 however, it was proposed by a coroner who was aware of the Torso Murders in London and Ness made the coroner swear to never repeat the theory or he’d fire him for being incompetent.

Do there were have it, the most chilling, crazy, headless serial killer you've probably never heard of.. Unless you're from Cleveland is a big time serial murder enthusiast. Was it related to the black dahlia? Was it a deranged doctor? Was it actually a group of people it a bunch of copycat killers disposing of bodies so as to throw off authorities? We may never know. Cleveland's very own Jack the Ripper. 

 

There are many books as one might expect written about this subject. Much of the information for this episode was gathered from two places. First a book entitled "Maniac in The Bushes and more Tales Of Cleveland Woe" written by John Stark Bellamy II. It contains numerous stories of true crime and disasters from Cleveland throughout the years. He had a series of these books which are great reading even if you're not from Cleveland which detail other major crimes like the Sam Shepherd murder trial and disasters like the Collinwood highschool fire and the May Day riots. The second source was the Cleveland police museum website. 

 

As far as the top ten movies for tonight… There are several documentaries based on these murders. A movie called Kingsbury Run was released in 2018. The movie is about a killer who is basing his crime spree off of the Torso Murders. It's currently got a 5.9 star rating on IMDB .

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OUR YOUTUBE

REANIMATION - IT'S ALIVE!

Season 4

Ep 18

Reanimation

 

Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil, as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave, or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay?- Dr. Victor Frankenstein

 

    From mummies to zombies to the creature himself, Frankenstein's monster, the tales of reanimating the dead span thousands of years.  For many people Mary Shelly's Frankenstein is or was their introduction to the subject of reanimation. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a cautionary tale about the abuses of science — in particular, the potential pitfalls of screwing around with corpses and lightning. If you're not familiar with the story of Frankenstein then see yourself the hell out right now. Are they gone? Good fuck em. If there are any untrustworthy folks left that are still here even though they don't know the story, here's a recap. The actual title, which most of you probably don't know, is "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus''. Shelly began writing the story when she was 18. The first edition was published anonymously in 1818 when she was 20. It began as a short story that unfolded into a novel. Although later versions of the tale popularly have the creature (he is referred to as the Creature, and as we all should know, the creature isn't Frankenstein) he’s essentially sewn together from various bodies parts and reanimated during a science experiment using lightning, this is not how the creature was originally written and conceived. In the original novel the creature was also not a big dumb lumbering idiot as he is usually portrayed. In Shelley's original work, Victor Frankenstein discovers a previously unknown but elemental principle of life, and that insight allows him to develop a method to imbue vitality into inanimate matter, though the exact nature of the process is left largely ambiguous. After a great deal of hesitation in exercising this power, Frankenstein (that’s the doctor for you slower passengers) spends two years painstakingly constructing the creature's proportionally large body (one anatomical feature at a time, from raw materials supplied by "the dissecting room and the slaughter-house"), which he then brings to life using his unspecified process. All of that aside, and all the differences and nuances aside, the idea is the same, the goal of reanimation of dead or inanimate things. While Shelly may have written an early example of the concept, process, and consequences of reanimation, she was not the first to think of this concept. There were scientists and thinkers earlier than her dreaming up ideas of reanimating animals and even humans.

 

Science behind reanimation

 

Okay Jeff, bear with us here, it's gonna get a little nerdy from time to time. You've all heard the old saying, there's nothing sure in life but death and taxes, but what if death wasn’t such a sure thing? Scientists have been attempting to restore life to the dead for hundreds of years. People have used water, electricity, chemicals and other things to try and reanimate dead animals and people. 

 

      A basic example of reanimation using water could be that of the ever popular sea monkey! Sea monkeys are actually brine shrimp. Their dried eggs, sold in pet stores, contain embryos that will revive when put in salt water, hatch, swim about, grow to be a quarter-inch long and make good fish food. Another example is the tardigrade.

 It is so small -- the size of a sand grain -- that most people are unaware of its existence, yet several times a year it performs one of the most astonishing feats known to science. When there has been no rain for a long time and its habitat dries out, the little animal's body loses its own water, shriveling and curling into a wrinkled kernel. Without water, the animal plunges into a profound state of suspended animation. The creature stops eating or crawling. It does not breathe. Its internal organs shut down, no longer digesting food or sending signals through its nervous system. Even metabolic processes inside cells shut down -- the usually busy genes going dormant and the enzymes that normally carry out thousands of biochemical reactions every second cease to function. Its body dries to a crisp. So profound is the loss of activity that, according to a common textbook definition of life, which says metabolism is a hallmark of life, the little animal is… dead. And yet, after days or even months, if moisture returns, the animal soaks up the water and resumes all normal activities. The creature is informally called a water bear or, more formally, a tardigrade, which means "slow walker." On the evolutionary tree, it lies between worms and insects, one of the many small but remarkable life forms on Earth known almost solely to those who study biology. So there is one issue with these guys and others like them. There's an argument on whether they are truly being reanimated or if there is just some weird sort of hibernation going on. The chief hallmark of life, textbooks often say, is metabolism, the sum of all genetic and enzymatic processes that go on inside cells and in interactions among cells. If one accepts that definition, then an organism in suspended animation is not alive. That conclusion, however, raises a semantic problem because if it is not alive, it is dead. If so and if it revives, then life has been created, a phenomenon that would violate a cardinal principle of biology -- that complex life forms cannot be spontaneously generated but only come from living parents. To avoid this logical trap, the few biologists who have studied the phenomenon generally refer to it as cryptobiosis, meaning "hidden life." So strong, however, was the metabolism-centered view of life that until recently most biologists suspected that cryptobiotic organisms were not totally inactive. They argued that enough water remained inside the animals to permit metabolism to continue at a rate too slow to be detected. After all, they knew some higher animals can reduce their metabolic rates by hibernating in winter, and others enter a state of even lower metabolism, called estivation, that allows them to endure dry, summer heat. Cryptobiotic animals, many researchers suspected, were simply extending a familiar capacity to a previously unknown extreme. Recently, however, scientists have established that, although even the driest organisms retain a few water molecules, they constitute only a small fraction of the minimum needed for metabolism. For example, most of the workhorse molecules of metabolism, proteins, must be awakened in water to assume the shape essential to their functions as enzymes. Tardigrades and nematodes, like most animals, are normally 80 percent to 90 percent water. In the cryptobiotic state, the organisms contain only about 3 percent to 5 percent water. Under laboratory conditions, the water content of some has been reduced to 0.05 percent, and they were revived. Most authorities now agree that no metabolism occurs during cryptobiosis. The term no longer means "a hidden form of ordinary life" but rather "a state of being in which the active processes of life are temporarily suspended." In the cryptobiotic state, all that remains of a living organism is its structural integrity. A dry animal may be shrunken, but it maintains all connections that keep together the structures of its cells. In other words, biologists now hold, molecules hooked together in a certain way will metabolize if given water. Life is not the result of some mystical animating force that inhabits proteins or the nucleic acids that make up DNA. It is the structural arrangement of certain molecules that will behave chemically in specific ways in the presence of water. So what does that all mean? Fuck if we know. But essentially it seems that in these tiny organisms, if the law of the land is followed to a T, then it seems they are dead, dried, shriveled up things with no metabolisms, thus no life, that can actually be reanimated with water. Interesting indeed. There's a ton more cool info on this in an article from the Washington Post titled "Just Add Water" from 1996 that this information was taken from. If you're really into the science behind this stuff we definitely recommend this article! 

 

Electricity

 

Now if one were to think that Frankenstein, despite being an early foray into the world of reanimation, was possibly influenced by real world attempts at the same result, one would be correct. In the late 18th century many doctors and scientists began toying with dead things and electricity. In 1780, Italian anatomy professor Luigi Galvani discovered that he could make the muscles of a dead frog twitch and jerk with sparks of electricity. Others quickly began to experiment by applying electricity to other animals that quickly grew morbid. Galvani’s nephew, physicist Giovanni Aldini, obtained the body of an ox, proceeding to cut off the head and use electricity to twist its tongue. He sent such high levels of voltage through the diaphragm of the ox that it resulted in “a very strong action on the rectum, which even produced an expulsion of the feces,” Aldini wrote.    

 

People outside of science were also fascinated by electricity. They would attend shows where bullheads and pigs were electrified, and watch public dissections at research institutions such as the Company of Surgeons in England, which later became the Royal College of Surgeons.

 

When scientists tired of testing animals, they turned to corpses, particularly corpses of murderers. In 1751, England passed the Murder Act, which allowed the bodies of executed murderers to be used for experimentation. “The reasons the Murder Act came about were twofold: there weren’t enough bodies for anatomists, and it was seen as a further punishment for the murderer,” says Juliet Burba,  chief curator of an exhibit called “Mary and Her Monster” at the Bakken Museum in Minnesota. “It was considered additional punishment to have your body dissected.”

 

On November 4, 1818, Scottish chemist Andrew Ure stood next to the lifeless corpse of an executed murderer, the man hanging by his neck at the gallows only minutes before. He was performing an anatomical research demonstration for a theater filled with curious students, anatomists, and doctors at the University of Glasgow. But this was no ordinary cadaver dissection. Ure held two metallic rods charged by a 270-plate voltaic battery to various nerves and watched in delight as the body convulsed, writhed, and shuddered in a grotesque dance of death.

 

“When the one rod was applied to the slight incision in the tip of the forefinger,” Ure later described to the Glasgow Literary Society, “the fist being previously clenched, that finger extended instantly; and from the convulsive agitation of the arm, he seemed to point to the different spectators, some of whom thought he had come to life.”

 

Ure is one of many scientists during the late 18th and 19th centuries who conducted crude experiments with galvanism—the stimulation of muscles with pulses of electrical current. The bright sparks and loud explosions made for stunning effects that lured in both scientists and artists, with this era of reanimation serving as inspiration for Mary Shelley’s literary masterpiece, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. While most scientists were using galvanism to search for clues about life, Ure wanted to see if it could actually bring someone back from the dead.

 

“This was a time when people were trying to understand the origin of life, when religion was losing some of its hold,” says Burba. “There was a lot of interest in the question: What is the essence that animates life? Could it be electricity?”

 

Lying on Ure’s table was the muscular, athletic corpse of 35-year-old coal miner, Matthew Clydesdale. In August 1818, Clydesdale drunkenly murdered an 80-year-old miner with a coal pick and was sentenced to be hanged at the gallows. His body remained suspended and limp for nearly an hour, while a thief who had been executed next to Clydesdale at the same time convulsed violently for several moments after death. The blood was drained from the body for half an hour before the experiments began.

Andrew Ure, who had little to no known experience with electricity, was a mere assistant to James Jeffray, an anatomy professor at the University of Glasgow. He had studied medicine at Glasgow University and served briefly as an army surgeon, but was otherwise known for teaching chemistry. “Not much is known about Ure, but he was sort of a minor figure in the history of science,” says Alex Boese, author of Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments. One of Ure’s main accomplishments was this single bizarre galvanic experiment, he says.  

 

Others, such as Aldini, conducted similar experiments, but scholars write that Ure was convinced that electricity could restore life back into the dead. “While Aldini contented himself with the role of spasmodic puppeteer, Ure’s ambitions were well nigh Frankesteinian,” wrote Ulf Houe in Studies in Romanticism.

 

Ure charged the battery with dilute nitric and sulphuric acids five minutes before the police delivered the body to the University of Glasgow’s anatomical theater. Incisions were made at the neck, hip, and heels, exposing different nerves that were jolted with the metallic rods. When Ure sent charges through Clydesdale’s diaphragm and saw his chest heave and fall, he wrote that “the success of it was truly wonderful.”Ure’s descriptions of the experiment are vivid. He poetically noted how the convulsive movements resembled “a violent shuddering from cold” and how the fingers “moved nimbly, like those of a violin performer.” Other passages, like this one about stimulating muscles in Clydesdale’s forehead and brow, are more macabre:

 

“Every muscle in his countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action; rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smiles, united their hideous expression in the murderer’s face, surpassing far the wildest representations of a Fuseli or a Kean,” wrote Ure, comparing the result to the visage of tragic actor, Edmund Kean, and the fantastical works of romantic painter Henry Fuseli. He continued: “At this period several of the spectators were forced to leave the apartment from terror or sickness, and one gentleman fainted.”

 

The whole experiment lasted about an hour. “Both Jeffray and Ure were quite deliberately intent on the restoration of life,” wrote F.L.M. Pattinson in the Scottish Medical Journal. But the reasons for the lack of success were thought to have little to do with the method: Ure concluded that if death was not caused by bodily injury there was a probability that life could have been restored. But, if the experiment succeeded it wouldn’t have been celebrated since he would be reviving a murderer, he wrote.

 

Ure is just one of many scientists and doctors at this time experimenting with reanimation. We’ll discuss some others in a bit. In modern times a case can be made that we reanimate people all the time. Without getting into semantics of clinical death versus biological death versus this versus that blah blah, we can look to the use of a defibrillator as a basic use of electricity to revive a person who is technically dead. Would that not be reanimation? There are arguments being made and in  discussions about reanimation it seems like this usually comes up. Then there is a giant sciencey biology fight and much ink is spilled and pocket protectors destroyed and still no consensus.. so we'll spare you the agony of those arguments.  Electricity seems to be the most popular medium in historical attempts at resurrection, mostly because of its effects on muscles and the ability to move body parts after death. These days we know that this is simply a reflex action due to the stimulation of the muscles and nerves and has nothing to really do with reanimation so to speak.

 

CHEMICAL

 

So what about using chemicals? Can chemicals reanimate cells and bring the dead back to life? Well according to many zombie movies yes, but according to a Yale university study...also yes. Yale neuroscientist Nenad Sestan revealed that his team has successfully reanimated the brains of dead pigs recovered from a slaughterhouse. By pumping them with artificial blood using a system called BrainEx, they were able to bring them back to “life” for up to 36 hours. Also you heard that right… The call it fucking BrainEx. If that doesn't Scream B horror movie..I don't know what does. Admittedly, the pigs’ brains did not regain consciousness, but Sestan acknowledged that restoring awareness is a possibility. Crucially, he also disclosed that the technique could work on primate brains (which includes humans), and that the brains could be kept alive indefinitely. This is interesting because it raises some interesting questions. If consciousness could be restored to the brain if a human… Would it be worth it. What would it be like to just be a brain?  Even if your conscious brain were kept alive after your body had died, you would have to spend the foreseeable future as a disembodied “brain in a bucket”, locked away inside your own mind without access to the senses that allow us to experience and interact with the world and the inputs that our brains so crave. The knowledge and technology needed to implant your brain into a new body may be decades, if not centuries, away.

 

So in the best case scenario, you would be spending your life with only your own thoughts for company. Some have argued that even with a fully functional body, immortality would be tedious. With absolutely no contact with external reality, it might just be a living hell. 

 

According to some, it is impossible for a disembodied brain to house anything like a normal human mind. Antonio Damasio, a philosopher and neuroscientist, has pointed out that in ordinary humans, brain and body are in constant interaction with each other. Every muscle, nerve, joint and organ is connected to the brain – and vast numbers of chemical and electrical signals go back and forth between them each and every second. Without this constant “feedback loop” between brain and body, Damasio argues, ordinary experiences and thought are simply not possible.

 

So what would it be like to be a disembodied brain? The truth is, nobody knows. But it is probable it would be worse than being simply tedious – it would likely be deeply disturbing. Experts have already warned that a man reportedly due to have the world’s first head transplant could suffer a terrible fate. They say his brain will be overwhelmed by the unfamiliar chemical and electrical signals sent to it by his new body, and it could send him mad. A disembodied brain would be likely to react similarly – but because it would be unable to signal its distress, or do anything to bring its suffering to an end, it would be even worse.

 

So, to end up as a reanimated disembodied human brain may well be to suffer a fate worse than death. Now maybe if you had a body things wouldn't be so bad, but as stated earlier many think that it would be extremely tedious to live forever if it was possible. None of us expected to make it this long… Fuck living forever. 

 

Another player in the chemical game actually is a mix of chemical and biological attempts at reanimating recently dead brains.  The company Bioquark, plans to initiate a study to see if a combination of stem cell and protein blend injections, electrical nerve stimulation, and laser therapy can reverse the effects of recent brain death. They're literally trying to bring people back from the dead.

 

"It's our contention that there's no single magic bullet for this, so to start with a single magic bullet makes no sense. Hence why we have to take a different approach," Bioquark CEO, Ira Pastor, told Stat News.

 

As Pastor told the Washington Post last year, he doesn't believe that brain death is necessarily a permanent condition, at least to start. It may well be curable, he argued, if the patient is administered the right combination of stimuli, ranging from stem cells to magnetic fields.

 

The resuscitation process will not be a quick one, however. First, the newly dead person must receive an injection of stem cells derived from their own blood. Then doctors will inject a proprietary peptide blend called BQ-A into the patient's spinal column. This serum is supposed to help regrow neurons that had been damaged upon death. Finally, the patient undergoes 15 days of electrical nerve stimulation and transcranial laser therapy to instigate new neuron formation. During the trial, researchers will rely on EEG scans to monitor the patients for brain activity.

 

Sometimes the dead come back on their own! Lazarus syndrome is the spontaneous return of a birthday cardiac rhythm after failed attempts at resuscitation. Its occurrence has been noted in medical literature at least 38 times since 1982. It takes its name from Lazarus who, as described in the New Testament, was raised from the dead by Jesus. Basically this occurs after a person has died and attempts to revive then using cpr or other means have failed and since time will pass and the heart will start back up on its own! The causes of this syndrome are not understood very well. With some hypotheticals being there build up of pressure on the chest following cpr, hyperkalemia (elevated potassium levels in the blood), or high doses of epinephrine. Some of these cases are pretty crazy. Is this spontaneous biological reanimation? Heres a few tales: 

 

• A 66-year-old man suffering from a suspected abdominal aneurysm suffered cardiac arrest and received chest compressions and defibrillation shocks for 17 minutes during treatment for his condition. Vital signs did not return; the patient was declared dead and resuscitation efforts ended. Ten minutes later, the surgeon felt a pulse. The aneurysm was successfully treated, and the patient fully recovered with no lasting physical or neurological problems.
• According to a 2002 article in the journal Forensic Science International, a 65-year-old prelingually deaf Japanese man was found unconscious in the foster home he lived in. CPR was attempted on the scene by home staff, emergency medical personnel and also in the emergency department of the hospital and included appropriate medications and defibrillation. He was declared dead after attempted resuscitation. However, a policeman found the person moving in the mortuary after 20 minutes. The patient survived for 4 more days.
• A 45-year-old woman in Colombia was pronounced dead, as there were no vital signs showing she was alive. Later, a funeral worker noticed the woman moving and alerted his co-worker that the woman should go back to the hospital
• A 65-year-old man in Malaysia came back to life two-and-a-half hours after doctors at Seberang Jaya Hospital, Penang, pronounced him dead. He died three weeks later.
• Anthony Yahle, 37, in Bellbrook, Ohio, USA, was breathing abnormally at 4 a.m. on 5 August 2013, and could not be woken. After finding that Yahle had no pulse, first responders administered CPR and were able to retrieve a stable-enough heartbeat to transport him to the emergency room. Later that afternoon, he again suffered cardiac arrest for 45 minutes at Kettering Medical Center and was pronounced dead after all efforts to resuscitate him failed. When his son arrived at the hospital to visit his supposed-to-be deceased father, he noticed a heartbeat on the monitor that was still attached to his father. Resuscitation efforts were resumed, and Yahle was successfully revived.
• Walter Williams, 78, from Lexington, Mississippi, United States, was at home when his hospice nurse called a coroner who arrived and declared him dead at 9 p.m. on 26 February 2014. Once at a funeral home, he was found to be moving, possibly resuscitated by a defibrillator implanted in his chest.[11] The next day he was well enough to be talking with family, but died fifteen days later.
• And probably the craziest one: Velma Thomas, 59, of West Virginia, USA holds the record time for recovering from clinical death. In May 2008, Thomas went into cardiac arrest at her home. Medics were able to establish a faint pulse after eight minutes of CPR. Her heart stopped twice after arriving at the hospital and she was placed on life support. Doctors attempted to lower her body temperature to prevent additional brain injury. She was declared clinically dead for 17 hours after doctors failed to detect brain activity. Her son, Tim Thomas, stated that "her skin had already started hardening, her hands and toes were curling up, they were already drawn". She was taken off life support and funeral arrangements were in progress. However, ten minutes after being taken off life support, she revived and recovered.

 Again… Spontaneous biological reanimation? Who knows!

 

So these are some of the concepts of reanimation. Let's talk about a couple people that were into the reanimation game:

 

Lazzaro Spallanzani

Spallanzani was a Catholic priest, and a professor of natural history at Pavia University in the late 1700s. He started small, adding water to microscopic animals and announcing that he had managed a resurrection when they came to life. But he wasn't really satisfied. For some reason, Spallanzani turned for spiritual guidance to noted French cynic and atheist Voltaire. Spallanzani asked him what he thought happened to the souls of animals after death. Voltaire must have liked the guy, because he replied gently that he believed Spallanzani about the reanimation, and that the priest himself would be best qualified to answer the question. Although the priest's next trick was cutting the heads off snails to see if they'd grow back, he was definitely the least mad of the mad scientists. He was the first person to prove that chemicals inside the body helped with digestion, and was the first to spot white blood cells

 

Andrew Crosse

Andrew Crosse was messing around with lightning in 1837. He strung about a third of a mile of copper wire around his estate, and concentrated all the electricity it picked up in his laboratory. Specifically, he focused on a sterile dish of a primordial soup that he'd carefully prepared. After zapping the soup, he noticed that crystals were growing in it. Hoping he could graduate to something way cooler, he tried giving the soup long exposures to weak currents. To his amazement, he found that after long weeks, animals shaped like mites began to form, and then move around. He repeated the experiment again and again, and to modern readers it seems that he kept the environment pretty sterile if he followed all the procedures he described. Still, we have to assume it was contaminated. The Victorians assumed the same thing, but they also assumed that Crosse was a jerk. The scientists believed he was making a play for false glory. The theists assumed he was trying to play god. The neighbors just thought he was going to burn his, and subsequently their, house down. He was disliked by all and had to leave his estate, until the scandal cleared.

 

Johann Dippel

This was the actual guy who inspired the Frankenstein legend. He lived in the Frankenstein castle, and signed his name as Frankenstein. Surprisingly, he was less like the good doctor than most people think, since he was more interested in preserving life than reanimating it. He did rob graves in the area — or is said to have — but only because he wanted to mix up an elixir of immortality, and for some reason he thought buried corpse parts might do it for him

My

The Doggie Scientists

In the first half of the 20th century, it was not a good time to be a dog. People were apt to, say, stick you in a tin can and send you into space. But at least, that way, you got to see something. You really didn't want to be in range of the doggie Frankensteins. Robert Cornish would suffocate dogs and attempt to bring them back to life via emergency medical measures. He actually managed to bring two back, although they sustained brain damage. Sergei Bryukhonenko attached his newly-invented heart and lung machine to a dog's head and kept it alive for quite some time, lying on a plate and eating and drinking.

 

Giovanni Aldini

Now this was a Frankenstein extraordinaire that we mentioned earlier. Having learned about how to use electricity to make the muscles of a corpse jump, he took it to the extreme in public. He zapped the heads of slaughtered oxen, in order to get them to twitch in front of audiences. He moved on to the heads of executed prisoners, applying the electrodes to the ears. He cut open corpses so he could zap their spinal cords. He claimed he could zap the suffocated and the drowned, in order to revive them completely. And he bragged that he could "command the vital powers." He also took a sideline into researching whether or not there was a way to make objects and people fireproof. Not much is said about his experiments in the latter area — but perhaps that's for the best. His tireless self-promotion never got him the chance to bring someone back to life, but it got him plenty of attention. He eventually traveled to Austria, where he was made a knight, and awarded a political position. Unlike many of the scientists on this list — and certainly unlike Frankenstein himself — Aldini died a rich and happy man.

 

JAMES LOVELOCK

In the 1950s, the field of cryobiology was so new, it didn't even have a name yet, so budding cryobiologists didn't always have the exact tools they needed for a particular procedure. James Lovelock was one such scientist, and he outlined a method to bring rodents back to life.

Lovelock's procedure involved putting a rat in a bath at minus 5 degrees Celsius for 90 minutes. After the rat was good and frozen, Lovelock would attempt to bring it back to life. Back then there weren't fancy lab tools like rat heart defibrillators, so Lovelock brought the rats' hearts back with a warm spoon.

By restarting the heart, and gradually warming the body, Lovelock brought the mice back to life. Although we can't say that's what the mice would have wanted.

 

One quick sidebar, is there a difference between resurrection and reanimation? The short answer is yes. As verbs the difference between resurrect and reanimate is that resurrect is to raise from the dead, to bring life back to while reanimate is to animate anew; to restore to animation or life; to infuse new life, vigor, spirit, or courage into; to revive; to reinvigorate; as, to reanimate a drowned person; to reanimate disheartened troops; to reanimate languid spirits.

 

As an adjective reanimate is being animated again.

 

Looking into it more than this leads to an exhaustive ordeal involving many many religious websites trying to explain why Jesus is not a zombie. Which is as ridiculous and hilarious as it sounds and is definitely recommended reading. 

 

The subject of reanimation brings up many different facets of not only biology and chemistry but ethics as well. There are lines that are not meant to crossed, is this one? Would you want to be brought back from the dead? The lines between reanimation, resuscitation, and resurrection seem to be thin and sometimes vague. That's why there are such different topics being discussed in this episode.  Either way it's a hell of a trip!

Now with all that being said we are bringing back an old favorite! We are talking top ten movies baby! Today is obviously the top ten movies about reanimation!

 

This list is home to a wide variety of movies that some may consider reanimation related and some may not. But they all involved people coming back in some form.

https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=reanimation

 

Here's a top 8 list that's much better

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/io9.gizmodo.com/8-movies-featuring-reanimation-that-arent-about-zombie-1833752947/amp

 

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2020 Halloween Murder Special (Sorry, Not Sorry)

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Season 4

Episode 17

Halloween murders

 

Halloween Special

Our nephews

Beatrice, Lucille and Gertrude

 

When black cats prowl and pumpkins gleam, may luck be yours on Halloween.”

 

— Unknown

 

      Tonight's episode doesn't deal in Halloween luck. Unfortunately it is the exact opposite. We've dealt with murders and murderers in the past. We've brought you the history of Halloween in the past. Who knows what we'll bring you in the future. As for the present, for our Halloween treat to you, we bring you Halloween murders. Some crazy, some sad, some creepy, all on Halloween. Jeff will be happy to know there is no nerdy stuff to start this episode so we're just gonna jump right the fuck into it! Sit back and enjoy these murderous Halloween tales! 

 

       We're gonna jump right into the fray here with a pretty brutal story. 

 

   Amarillo Texas, October 31 1981: 

John Frank Garret was a mentally impaired man from Texas. This kid had a super fucked up childhood. He was raped by his stepfather and at one point hired out to another man for sex. At the age of ten… Ten… He was introduced to alcohol and other drugs. This would lead him into serious drug abuse at such a young age which involved amphetamines and paint thinner among other brain damaging drugs. At 14 he was forced to perform degrading sex acts and perform in homosexual porn films. He was regularly beaten and at one time was set on a burner of a stove resulting in terrible scarring. Did we mention that this was all before the age of 17? One of the experts described Garrett's case as "one of the most virulent histories of abuse and neglect I have encountered in over 28 years of practice." On the other side of this  story you have the exact opposite type of person, a nun. 76 year old Sister Tadea Benz lived at the convent right across the street from Garret. On Halloween night she was brutally raped and strangled. Garrett was accused and arrested for the horrific murder. He vehemently denied the accusations set on him. Information on Johnny Frank Garrett's abusive upbringing and mental health problems were not made available to the jury. According to three mental health experts who examined him between 1986 and 1982, Garrett was extremely mentally impaired, chronically psychotic and brain-damaged as the result of several severe head injuries he sustained as a child. He suffered from paranoid delusions, including a belief that the lethal injection would not kill him. Garrett was found guilty and sentenced to death. So, as only Texas would do, A 17 year old mentally impaired boy was convicted and put to death. His defense was widely considered extremely incompetent. Following appeals for clemency from Pope John Paul and the nuns from the victim's convent, then-Governor Ann Richards granted Garrett a rare 30-day executive reprieve. However, after a grossly inadequate clemency hearing, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously not to recommend commutation of his death sentence and the execution of Johnny Frank Garrett was allowed to proceed. He was executed by lethal injection on February 11th 1992. His final meal was ice cream. An article from the New York Times the following day summed it up as this:

 

"A month after winning a reprieve from the Governor, a man who raped and killed a Roman Catholic nun when he was 17 years old was executed by lethal injection at the state prison here early today. The execution of the prisoner, Johnny Frank Garrett, 28 years old, came after the United States Supreme Court's rejection of two appeals on Monday night and a third about an hour before he was put to death.

 

Mr. Garrett was convicted of killing Sister Tadea Benz, 76, at the St. Francis Convent in Amarillo in 1981. He came within an hour of execution on Jan. 6 when Gov. Ann W. Richards issued a month's reprieve at the urging of Pope John Paul II. Governor Richards's rare use of her authority to grant a reprieve prompted an equally unusual hearing last week by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to consider whether to recommend to the Governor that Mr. Garrett's sentence be commuted to life. But at the hearing, the board voted by 17 to 0, with one abstention, for the death sentence.

 

Mr. Garrett's case had become the focus of efforts by opponents of the death penalty. The Catholic Diocese of Amarillo, 16 Catholic bishops and the human rights group Amnesty International had opposed his execution. At issue was the contention of his lawyers that Mr. Garrett was insane and suffered from multiple personality syndrome as a result of physical and sexual abuse he had endured as a child. "I think he's simply too crazy to kill," one of those lawyers, Warren Clark, had said. The Supreme Court has ruled that a person who is insane and cannot comprehend an execution or the reasons behind it cannot be put to death. But prosecutors had insisted that while Mr. Garrett might not be normal, he was aware of his crime and understood the punishment.

 

  Mr. Garrett was the 44th killer put to death in Texas since the Supreme Court allowed the resumption of capital punishment in 1976. The total is the highest of any state." 

 

Garrett's last words before he died were as follows "I'd like to thank my family for loving me and taking care of me. And the rest of the world can kiss my ass." which is actually pretty awesome even though it didn't seem like his family loved him much.  But the story doesn't end here. A local lawyer, Jesse Quackenbusch, wasn't really convinced of the guilt of Garrett. Garrett maintained his innocence throughout his ordeal. Quackenbusch believed he had evidence to support that notion. Garrett was originally linked to the crime when his fingerprints were found in the nuns room. The police also claimed a steak knife found in Garrett's house was similar to a weapon found in the driveway of the convent. Hair and semen samples also were collected, but experts testified the samples could not be linked exclusively to Garrett. Quackenbusch also claims that the confession was written by police and not the words of Garrett who refused to sign the confession. Quackenbusch also said that Garrett claims the reason his fingerprints were there was that he was high on lsd one day and broke in and stole a stereo. Quackenbusch also brought up the similarities between the murder of Benz and another murder in the area 3 months prior to the nuns murder. Narnie Box Bryson was a 77 year old woman who was murdered in almost the exact same way as Benz. The similarities were so convincing, in fact, that the district attorney at the time and detectives were convinced the same person committed both murders. Furthermore detectives had concluded that a Hispanic man committed the murders, as well as 8 others in the area,  and black hairs were found at the scenes of both murders, while Garrett was white and had brown hair. Leoncio Perez Rueda was eventually convicted of the murder of Bryson after being linked by a DNA sample taken from semen found on Bryson during her autopsy. The kicker here is that Quackenbusch claimed in recent interviews at the time, Rueda claimed to have raped and killed a nun on Halloween in 1981. Quackenbusch continued his crusade by releasing the documentary "The Last Word" in which he outlines the case for the  innocence of Johnny Frank Garrett. How's that for an appetizer!

 

     October 31, 2010 Sandusky Ohio:

 

16 year old Devin Griffin came home after singing in a church service that morning. He came home and went up to his room to play video games. He was playing for a little while when he realized that the house was pretty quiet and began to wonder what was up. At around 1:30 in the afternoon he went to investigate and see where his parents were. He walked downstairs to his parents room and found his mom and stepfather in bed with the comforter pulled up over their heads. He started talking to his mother to try and wake her up and tapped her on her leg which was sticking out from the comforter. He got no response. He continued talking to her trying to wake her up and pulled the covers down slightly. As he did this is when he noticed his mother's pillow was soaked in blood. At first he thought this was just a Halloween prank, but slowly the realization set in, this was no prank, they were dead. Devin began to cry and ran from the house. He phoned his aunt in a Panic and she in turn phoned the police. What they would find when they arrived was horrific to say the least. 

 

   Investigators found Bill and Susan Liske shot to death in their bed. According to coroner records, Bill Liske was shot five times in the head and face, at a range of about one to two feet. He was lying in a natural sleeping position and had the covers pulled up over him. Susan was sprawled as if she might have been moved, investigators wrote. She was shot three times, again at what investigators suspect was close range. The bullets were small caliber, likely a .22. Upstairs, they found Derek Griffin's, Devon's 23 years old step brother, room locked. Police kicked the door in and found the young man curled up in bed facing the wall. According to the coroner's findings, he suffered blunt force trauma to the head and most likely died within a few minutes of the first blow.

 

Investigators searched and found a bloody claw hammer in the house, which coroners led to be consistent with Derek Griffin's wounds. The weapon and other evidence from around the home were sent to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation for forensic testing.

 

Devon Griffin told investigators the family owned lots of guns, many of which authorities seized for testing.

 

They found muddy footprints along a deck near the family's pond, suggesting the suspect may have disposed of the murder weapon in the pond.

 

Authorities drained the pond but found no gun. Weapons-sniffing dogs tracked much of the property and found nothing.

 

One person in the family was missing from all of the carnage, William Liske Jr., Also known as B.J. B.J.s trouble with the family began around 2002 when law enforcement was called to the Liske home because B.J. had threatened to harm himself. According to police records, B.J. Liske attacked the officers when they arrived and faced charges in juvenile court of assaulting a peace officer. Then, in October 2004, B.J. Liske got into a fight with his stepmother and struck her hard in the chest. Two months later police charged him with felonious assault and robbery for allegedly hitting Susan Liske with a coffee cup and stealing her car keys. He was found incompetent to stand trial on those charges, which were eventually dropped. After several more encounters with police B.J. was moved to a Sandusky group home for mental health patients. B.J. and his father got into a physical altercation after William Sr. Picked his son up from the group home. William Liske kicked his son out of the house after. Liske, then 18, attempted to attack Susan Liske as she showered. B.J. did not like his stepmother as she tried to put new rules in place when she married William to try to get the kids under control and bring order to the house as B.J. was acting out because of his parents divorce. Despite all of the issues and a diagnosis of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, William Sr. sought to get guardianship of B.J. And to try and help his boy. William had taken vacation time and went hunting with B.J. just before the murders. He was with him less than 24 hours before the slaughter at the family's hunting cabin. Neighbors were worried about their safety with B.J. around, but William insisted the family was safe and that "B.J. wouldn't hurt us". The Saturday night before the murders, William and B.J. returned from their hunting trip and had some friends and neighbors over for dinner, beers and a good time. Everyone had fun and things seemed fine. The party broke up around midnight and everyone went to bed with B.J. taking a spot on the couch. According to a neighbor's wife, she thought she heard gunshots around 6:30 am. Devon spent the night at his father's and came home around 9:30 where he encountered B.J. in the home. B.J. asked what devon was up to and how long he'd be gone. He said he was heading to church and that B.J. seemed happy. After this interaction Devon left and B.J. took the family's truck and made his way back to the hunting cabin. He remained there until the police converged on the cabin and took him into custody. B.J. would eventually be convicted of the murders and sentenced to life in prison. In court he blamed his mental illness for the murders saying he doesn't really understand why he did what he did but he loved his father. 4 years later B.J. was found dead in his cell of a self inflicted wound. What a fucking story!

 

—-

 

As a child, What would you have done if someone stole your Halloween candy? What about as an adult? Would you yell? Steal it back? Well, I sure hope you wouldn’t do what this asshole did.

 

Ledell Peoples lost his shit on Halloween night 2011 in a domestic disturbance in Chicago’s South Side that turned pretty nasty. Not able to track down his bag of Hershey’s, Jolly Ranchers and Tootsie Rolls, he accused his partner, 49-year-old Maria Adams, of stealing them from him. As a way of responding to the accusation, she threw a plate at his head. Well, Peoples picked up a knife and repeatedly stabbed her. 

 

She died in hospital and he got 30 years. Over some fucking candy. Jackass.

 

The final victim of the toy box killers

 

Shirley Lynette Ledford was the fifth - and thankfully final - victim of LA serial killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris. The two men are one of the cruellest serial killing duos ever to disgrace the planet. Known as ‘The Tool Box Killers’ because of their vile and perverted penchant for tool-based torture, the sick pair would often tape-record their crimes. 

On Halloween night 1979, Bittaker and Norris snatched 16-year-old Shirley from a gas station, where she was hitchhiking home after a Halloween party. They beat her, raped her, tortured her externally and internally with pliers and eventually strangled her with a wire coat hanger. Finally, as a final insult, they dumped her lifeless body on a random front lawn.

Both men were caught a month after killing Shirley. They are still imprisoned in maximum security institutions to this day. Both remain unrepentant. 

 

The man who killed Halloween

 

Ever heard the old wives tale about checking your candy for poison or razor blades or small pieces of human remains? Ok, I made that last one up but we’ve all heard the stories. Luckily, it’s bullshit. well, for the most part. Except In Texas in 1974.

Ronald Clark O’Bryan laced five Pixy Stix with potassium cyanide, which closely resembles sugar and is highly poisonous, and planned on killing five local kids. Among them, his own son. Why the hell would anyone do this? Well, the plan was to blame the poisonings on a neighbour, see him imprisoned and O’Bryan could collect the insurance policy he’d taken out on his young son. Yeah. He’s a piece of shit.

11-year-old Timothy ate his cyanide-filled sour candy on his dad’s suggestion. It had enough poison in it to kill two people. Within an hour he was hospitalised and declared dead. Luckily for the other four children, the quick actions of local detectives figured out what had happened due to the smell on Timothy’s breath and confiscated the other Pixy Stix before they could be eaten.

On the 31st of March 1984, Ronald Clark O'Bryan - aka 'The Man Who Killed Halloween' - was rightfully put to death by the state in Huntsville, Texas. As the liquid chemicals entered his veins, a gathering of 300 people shouted ‘Trick or treat!' and threw hard candy at a small group of anti-death penalty protesters.

 

Peter Fabiano

 

It was late on Halloween night of 1957 in Los Angeles.  Beauty shop owner, Peter Fabiano and his wife, Betty were turning out all the lights in their home to go to bed for the night when their doorbell rang.  Mr. Fabiano went downstairs to answer the door, thinking it was a late trick-or-treater.  Mrs. Fabiano, still upstairs, heard her husband ask “Isn’t it late for this sort of thing?”  There was a muffled reply followed by a loud pop and then a thump.  As Betty ran downstairs she heard the squeal of tires on pavement as a vehicle sped off.  She found her husband sprawled on the floor, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the chest.  Mrs. Fabiano called for help, but unfortunately her husband died on the way to the hospital.

 

It took investigators nearly two weeks to identify a person of interest in the case.  The person they named was Joan Rabel, who at one time worked for Mr. Fabiano in his beauty shop.  Rabel had become good friends with Mrs. Fabiano and Betty even lived with Rabel for a short time during which she was having problems in her marriage.  Mr. Fabiano became jealous of the relationship between the two women.  He ultimately decided to work things out with Betty, but there were conditions that had to be agreed to.  Betty was not to ever see Rabel again and to not even say her name in Mr. Fabiano’s presence.

 

Rabel was arrested under the suspicion that she killed Mr. Fabiano because she wasn’t too keen on the demands he made that kept her from seeing Betty.  Rabel denied any involvement saying she was home the whole night and her car in her driveway was proof of that.  This was a partial truth.  In fact, her car was in her driveway the entire night, but after interviewing her acquaintances, detectives learned that she was most definitely not at home.  A friend of hers told investigators that she let Rabel borrow her car that night and that about 37 miles were put on it.

 

When caught in the lie, Rabel admitted that she did borrow the car to get groceries.  With no hard evidence to go on, the police had to let Rabel go.

 

About a month later an anonymous tip was called in about a lockbox in a department store that should be checked.  When officials followed up on the tip they found a .38 caliber gun, which ballistics later confirmed matched the weapon used to kill Mr. Fabiano.  Upon further investigation of sales records at local gun shops, they found that the gun belonged to Goldyne Pizer, a lab technician at an Los Angeles children’s hospital.

 

Pizer was a meek woman and almost immediately confessed to the shooting.  She insisted that it wasn’t her fault, however, and that someone had put her under a “spell”.  That person would turn out to be none other than Joan Rabel.

 

Rabel and Pizer had been good friends, possibly lovers for a few years.  Rabel would always tell Pizer what an awful person Peter Fabiano was.  It became an obsession and their favorite topic of conversation.  Though Pizer didn’t know Mr. Fabiano herself, she began to hate him.  Talk of murder began between the two women and Rabel gave Pizer money to buy a gun.

 

The night of the murder Pizer attempted to disguise herself, wearing a hat, gloves, mask and face paint with the gun hidden in a paper bag.  It was Halloween and wouldn’t look suspicious at all to anyone who may see her.

 

Rabel and Pizer arrived at the Fabiano house around 9 pm and sat outside waiting hours for the lights to be turned off inside the house to make their move.  Pizer went to the door while Rabel waited in the car.

 

After the deed was done, Pizer ran back to the car and when she got inside Rabel kissed her and said “Thank you.”  After dropping the car off Rabel told Pizer “Forget you ever knew me.”  The pair walked off in different directions.

 

Rabel pleaded not guilty.  Pizer claimed insanity.  In the end they each accepted a plea deal for second-degree murder and were sentenced to life in prison.

 

Lisa French

 

This is a rough one. 

 

Halloween night 1973, 9-year-old Lisa French wanted to wear a butterfly costume, but her mother convinced her to wear something a bit warmer for the Fond du lac, Wisconsin weather. Lisa ended up dressing like a hobo.

After eating dinner, she ran out of the door and started to trick-or-treat. She made plans to meet up with her friend and go to the Pumpkin Place, a safe area some of the parents had put together for the children. But her friend had gotten in trouble and wasn’t allowed to go. Lisa was left to go out alone.

She only made it to three houses that night. The first two, a teacher and a classmate home’s, gave her candy and sent her on her way. The third held more sinister motives.

Something was Wrong

Lisa was to be home by 7 pm, and when she didn’t return, her mother started to worry. By the time 10 pm arrived, the neighborhood had already begun searching for the little girl.

The neighborhood rallied together, posting signs in their windows, telling others that Lisa was missing. Police started a search party that lasted all night. The next day over 5,000 people joined in and widened the search area.

The national guard was called in, and private plane owners volunteered to search from the sky. All-terrain vehicles drove through the marshes, creeks, and fields. All the bodies of water around town had been dragged.

A local photoshop printed 6,000 copies of Lisa’s school photo that was passed around and posted throughout town. Gas stations were giving free gas to anyone using a vehicle to search for Lisa. Eventually, a farmer on his tractor found two garbage bags on his property. He stopped and inspected them, finding the body of Lisa French.

When the news circulated that Lisa had been found dead, the whole community seemed to mourn her loss. They all came out in support of her family for the funeral.

Myron Medin Jr spoke to the mourners who had gathered. “We are here . . . the entire city in spirit is here . . . to share your sorrow.”

Turner had been questioned starting the day after Lisa had been reported missing. By elimination, they could prove she had gone to two homes before coming to his, then no one else had seen her. At first, he denied any involvement. But finally, after nine months of being pulled in for questioning, he cracked and confessed. He would change his story during the trial, saying he only confessed to stop the police from harassing him, that he was completely innocent. The story that unfolded was as follows. Turner used to share a duplex with Lisa’s family, so she knew him quite well. When he lived next door, she was fond of talking with him. So nothing would have seemed strange for him to invite her inside that night.

After he had Lisa inside, he took her back to his bedroom, where he sexually assaulted her. He claimed that at some point, he realized she wasn’t breathing and tried to resuscitate her. But his girlfriend came home and interrupted him. So he put socks on his hands and moved Lisa’s body into the master bathroom to deal with later.

He went out wrapped in a bathrobe, telling his girlfriend he didn’t feel well. While she was there, he kept returning to the bedroom, was he revisiting Lisa’s body?

His girlfriend ended up leaving again to go to her mother’s. After she left is when Turner put Lisa’s body in a trash bag and her belongings in another. He took both bags a few miles out of town and dumped them in a field.During the trial, the medical examiner testified about the cause of death. Lisa French died from asphyxiation. But she wasn’t smothered or strangled. She had died due to shock while she was sexually assaulted.

The jury found Turner guilty of second-degree murder, enticing a child for immoral purposes and acts of sexual perversion.

Robert Owens, the chief psychologist at Taycheedah Correctional Institute, had met with Turner. “He has a cold disregard for people, mainly females. He does not have conscience control to inhibit his impulses for pleasure and to confront to society’s laws.”

During his sentencing, Circuit Court Judge Milton saw Turner for who he was. “He impressed me as showing no remorse . . . no feeling of repentance.”

It doesn't end there… This dude got released but once but twice. The first time, citizens in the area threatened a civil lawsuit against the state and parole board for allowing the release of a dangerous sex criminal. The authorities admitted their mistake and sent Turner back to prison. But a few years later he was released again for some ridiculous reason. He was fairly quiet for a couple years when a routine parole check uncovered graphic pornography on his computer which was a major cousin. He was then sent back to prison where he sits. He is eligible for parole as of 2018 but had been denied each year since. Here's to hoping this sick fuck never gets out!

 

ALL TRICK, NO TREAT

When 12-year-old trick or treater T.J. Darrisaw knocked on Quentin Patrick's door in the city of Sumter, South Carolina, on Halloween night in 2008 - he expected candy. What he got was 29 bullets through his front door from a fully automatic AK-47. 11 of which hit him, killing him instantly. The poor kid's dad and younger brother were also hit but pulled through and survived. It turns out that Quentin Patrick was a convicted drug dealer that had upset a rival gang of dealers and was fully expecting retribution. What he got was blood on his hands and 30 years inside.

 

This ones not about Halloween, the holiday but… well, you’ll get it.

 

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_2552173

 

YOSHIHIRO HATTORI

 

Yoshihiro Hattori was a Japanese exchange student living in Baton Rouge as part of the American Field Service program. On Halloween night 1992, Hattori and the young son of his host family went to a Halloween party for AFS students. Unfamiliar with the neighborhood where the party was, the boys rang the doorbell of the wrong house.

 

When they got no answer, they started walking back to their car. The owner of the home, Rodney Peairs, then opened the door armed with a .44 Magnum. Hattori turned around and said, "We're here for the party." Claiming he feared for his life and that the exchange student was "scary," Peairs shot Hattori, ending his life.

 

Only when both the governor of Louisiana and the Japanese consulate got involved was Peairs arrested, after which he was acquitted of manslaughter. Peairs used the old cake doctrine defense… We think he's just a fucking dick that for away with murder.

 

This last one opens an entirely different can of worms that we plan on discussing in a bonus episode. Chris Jenkins died on Halloween in 2002. He turned up four months later in the Mississippi River still wearing his Halloween costume. Authorities believe his death was an accident or suicide but many people believe he is connected to the Smiley face killer. We don't have the time to get into the Smiley Face Killer theory on this episode but it's pretty crazy and we'll dive into it as a bonus because it's very intriguing. That's the main reason this story made it into this episode… We like to set stuff up… You know foreshadowing and shit.

FEARS AND PHOBIAS, BLEH!

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"The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."

--Nelson Mandela

 

Today on the Midnight Train we're going to get personal with some of you out there. We're going to talk about things that will hit close to home for some. Things that will make some of you uneasy and maybe squirm a bit. Some of you may get triggered. Some may just turn us off, completely. We're discussing the top fears and phobias around the world. We've found the top ten fears around the globe and added a couple more fun ones and weird ones for you and a special one Moody added at the end, just for me. So sit back, grab your emotional support animal, your weighted blankets...perhaps a barf bag, and let's see what makes you fuckers tick while listening to me ruin words! Thanks moody!

 

10. First up we have trypophobia. Biological revulsion and culturally learned fears are the primary causes of Trypophobia, which is the extreme and irrational fear of holes. While this fear might seem irrational to ‘normal’ people, the mere sight or thought of holes can set off a panic attack in the Trypophobe. 

Common things that can trigger trypophobia include:

Holes or pebbles in concrete

Air holes in a slice of bread

Patterns in the frosting of a cake or pie

The head of a lotus flower

The holes in an old hockey mask

Skin problems like sores, scars, and spots

Spotted animals

Shower heads

LEDs in traffic lights

 Holes seem disgusting and gross to the sufferer and s/he goes to all lengths to avoid it. Recently American horror story used this phobia to market one of their upcoming seasons and it worked wonderfully by getting  people discussing the poster/ads all over the internet. It's seems like a strange phobia but it's is actually very prevalent in society. Celebs such as Kendell jenner and Sarah paulson ( who's phobia actually inspired the American horror story usage of the phobia) have admitted to having this fear. And it seems around 16% of people admit to having this phobia. But, some scientists are now saying, maybe it's not a phobia after all.

That's because, well, it might be rational - and rooted in disgust rather than fear.

 

Trypophobia is poorly understood, and not recognised by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). So researchers at Emory University set out to study the fear response in relation to clusters of holes.

 

But they found that the pupillary response - the involuntary movement of the pupils in the eye - was closer to disgust than the pupillary response to fear.

 

"Some people are so intensely bothered by the sight of these objects that they can't stand to be around them," explained Stella Lourenco, the Emory University psychologist whose lab conducted the study.

 

"The phenomenon, which likely has an evolutionary basis, may be more common than we realise."

 

Previous research conducted in 2013 concluded that the response may be related to the speckled patterns of dangerous animals, such as snakes. But in January 2017, a different explanation was put forward.

 

Researchers at the University of Kent proposed that a pattern of holes, like those that can be found in a lotus pod or honeycomb, arouse our aversion because they resemble parasite infestations, infectious diseases, and decomposition.

"We're an incredibly visual species," said lead author of this latest study, Vladislav Ayzenberg. "Low-level visual properties can convey a lot of meaningful information. These visual cues allow us to make immediate inferences - whether we see part of a snake in the grass or a whole snake - and react quickly to potential danger."

 

Phobia or not… Many people seem to be affected by this… Are you?

 

9: Picture the following: you're sitting back settling in for the next few hours. You have a drink, adult or otherwise, a little snack, a good book. A few minutes later you look out the window to see you're 30,000 feet in the air above the countryside cruising along at 500 miles per hour. Crammed into a big metal tube with a hundred or two other people, babies crying, fat guy next to you, crabby flight attendant, drunk pilot…. Sorry I digress. If this is a less than appealing situation for you, the actual flying part anyways, you may have the next phobia on our list. We're talking aerophobia here! Aerophobia is the fear of flying which affects nearly 6.5% of the world’s population. The phobia is usually associated with other fears including Agoraphobia (fear of being unable to escape) and Claustrophobia (fear of small and restricted spaces). Naturally, the fear affects the person’s professional and personal life as air travel is nearly impossible for him/her. The mere thought of an upcoming flight can cause intense distress in the sufferer including nausea, panic attacks, etc. The alcohol and Xanax industry love this phobia. Aerophobia can also mean an irrational fear of fresh air or drafts of air. Again this is a very common fear, the 6.5% seems a bit low to us. Many celebrities are afraid of flying which sucks cus they fly...a fucking lot. Some include Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, R. “pee on young girls” Kelly, Sandra bullock, Colin Farrell, among others. Long time Monday night football announcer and video game namesake John Madden hated flying so much that he had his own personal bus that he would take to his Monday night gigs and wherever else he needed to travel. Breaking Benjamin frontman Benjamin Burnley had to sail from the US to the UK due to his fear of flying. He stated, “It’s just something I’m really not comfortable with. I’d rather die some other way.”  Movies and tv shows often play on this fear to cause unease in the audience. Twilight Zone and Final destination are a couple of the more known examples! For comedy you have the classic Airplane and the classic Airport disaster movie series from the 70s. Also...Alive… Don't watch that before a flight!

 

So what do you guys think… Flying...go or no go?

 

8: Are you a clean freak? Everything must be clean, sanitized, washed out whatever else, constantly? Constantly using baby wipes and hand sanitizer. Don't think the 5 second rule is a real thing? You may suffer from number 8 on the list. Mysophobia is the irrational fear of germs! If you're like Moody and lick doorknobs to keep your immune system up to snuff you'll be fine, if not… Well sucks for you cus there are germs literally every fucking where. Mysophobia is often closely related to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Many people suffer from both OCD as well as Mysophobia, as a result of which they might indulge in excessive bathing or hand washing. The unhealthy fear of germs causes the phobics to also fear contamination of food or exposure to bodily fluids from those around them. Mysophobia might lead to many complications since the person goes to extreme lengths to avoid all kinds of social situations. Contrary to popular belief, Jeff didn't have mysophobia, he just hates people. Isolation is a common symptom of this phobia. The condition might also give rise to other phobias such as Agoraphobia as well as various anxiety disorders. Howie Mandel, Cameron Diaz, Donald Trump, and Howard Hughes are a few of a bunch of celebrities that suffer from this condition. If you're a mysophobic, we recommend staying away from movies like Cabin Fever, Outbreak, and 12 Monkeys! Not to mention Germ Z from 2013, 28 Days Later, Contagion, The Stand, and if you wanna get crazy you can combine germs and aliens and you have The Andromeda Strain.

 

So listeners… Do you get down and dirty or do you prefer a nice sanitized life?

 

7: Ever got stuck in an elevator? Did you freak the fuck out? Ever had an mri and have a panic attack? You may be experiencing claustrophobia number 7 on our list of things to fuck with your head. 5-7% of the world population are said to suffer from this phobia. Claustrophobia is a situational phobia triggered by an irrational and intense fear of tight or crowded spaces. It can be triggered by things like being locked in a windowless room, being stuck in a crowded elevator, or driving on a congested highway.

 

Claustrophobia is one of the most common phobias. If you experience claustrophobia, you may feel like you’re having a panic attack, although claustrophobia isn’t a panic disorder. For some people, claustrophobia may disappear on its own. Others may need therapy to manage and cope with their symptoms. 

 

    Symptoms of claustrophobia appear following a trigger for the phobia, such as being in a closed room or a crowded space. What you consider a small space can vary depending on the severity of your phobia.

 

When experiencing symptoms of claustrophobia, you may feel like you’re having a panic attack. Symptoms of claustrophobia can include:

 

sweating

trembling

hot flashes

feeling intense fear or panic

becoming anxious

shortness of breath

hyperventilation

rapid heartbeat

chest tightness or pain

nausea

feeling faint or lightheaded

feeling confused or disorientated

These symptoms can be mild or severe. 

Little is known about what causes claustrophobia. Environmental factors may play a big part. People typically develop claustrophobia during childhood or in their teenage years.

 

Claustrophobia could be related to dysfunction of the amygdala (/əˈmɪɡdələ) which is the part of the brain that controls how we process fear. The phobia can also be caused by a traumatic event. Dave Grohl plays in arenas, good thing as he has claustrophobia. Uma Thurman, Woody Allen, Deadpool’s Ryan Reynolds, The Beebs( Justin bieber), and rocker Liam Gallagher are all claustrophobic as well. I bet Uma Thurman loved the coffin scene in Kill Bill. Speaking of movies to avoid if you're a claustrophobic… You may want to steer clear of The Descent (amazing movie), Buried (with Ryan Reynolds of all people), Devil, Phone Booth, and anything involving bunkers like 10 Cloverfield Lane. Then you have the likes of Panic Room, Green Room, the hole, and the cube.

 

How many of you guys like being stuck in small spaces? Moody gets stuck in small spaces all the time… But that's cus he's… Well… You know. 

 

6: Do you find yourself inexplicably afraid of Thor? If so you may be like the 2-5% of the world population that suffers from astraphobia or alternately brontophobia. This is the fear of thunder and lightning.  It can affect people of all ages, though it may be more common in children than adults. It’s also seen in animals.

 

Many children who have this fear will eventually outgrow it, but others will continue to experience the phobia into adulthood. Astraphobia can also manifest in adults who didn’t have it as children.

 

Being caught in a thunderstorm or preparing for extreme weather conditions can create reasonable levels of anxiety or fear. In people with astraphobia, thunderstorms cause an extreme reaction that can be debilitating. For people with this phobia, these feelings may be overwhelming and feel insurmountable.

 

Astraphobia is also called:

 

astrapophobia

tonitrophobia

brontophobia

keraunophobia

 

Astraphobia is a treatable anxiety disorder. Like many other phobias, it’s not officially recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as a specific psychiatric diagnosis.

 

In people without this phobia, news of an impending storm may lead you to cancel or relocate outdoor plans. Or if you find yourself in a lightning storm, you may seek shelter or move away from tall trees. Even though the chances of getting hit by lightning are slim, these actions represent an appropriate response to a potentially dangerous situation.

 

A person with astraphobia will have a reaction that goes beyond these seemingly appropriate acts. They may have feelings of panic, both before and during a storm. These feelings can escalate into a full-blown panic attack, and include symptoms such as:

 

all-over body shaking

chest pain

numbness

nausea

heart palpitations

trouble breathing

Other symptoms of astraphobia may include:

 

sweaty palms

racing pulse

obsessive desire to monitor the storm

the need to hide away from the storm, such as in a closet, bathroom, or under the bed

clinging to others for protection

uncontrollable crying, particularly in children

The person may also understand that these feelings are overblown and irrational without the ability to curtail them. The only two celebrities we could find with this phobia are the human skeleton herself, Madonna and Rafael nadal. She's afraid of thunderstorms, and food maybe. She's a nut job. And he… Well… He plays tennis. At any rate if you suffer from this you may want to avoid movies like Twister, the day after tomorrow, any of the Thor movies, and The Perfect Storm. Also skip these bangers: super cyclone, weather wars, polar storm, final storm and airspeed. 

 

5: Dogs or cats? It's the age old debate! If you you say dogs… Well done. If you say cats… Well you're wrong… and you may have cynophobia. The fear of dogs is another popular fear. Cynophobia comes from the Greek words that mean “dog” (cyno) and “fear” (phobia). A person who has cynophobia experiences a fear of dogs that’s both irrational and persistent. It’s more than just feeling uncomfortable with barking or being around dogs. Instead, this fear may interfere with daily life and trigger a number of symptoms, like trouble breathing or dizziness. Cynophobia affects some 7 to 9 percent of the population. It is formally recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). Cynophobia falls under the “animal” specifier. Around a third of people who seek treatment for specific phobias have an irrational fear of either dogs or cats.

 

Researchers estimate there are more than 62,400,000 dogs living in the United States. So your chances of running into a dog are relatively high. With cynophobia, you may experience symptoms when you’re around dogs or even when you’re just thinking about dogs.

 

Symptoms associated with specific phobias are highly individual. No two people may experience the fear or certain triggers in the same way. Your symptoms may be physical, emotional, or both.

 

Physical symptoms include:

 

trouble breathing

rapid heart rate

pain or tightness in your chest

shaking or trembling

dizziness or lightheadedness

upset stomach

hot or cold flashes

sweating

 

Emotional symptoms include:

panic or anxiety attacks

intense need to escape situations that trigger fear

detached feeling from self

loss of control

feeling you may pass out or die

feeling powerless over your fear

Children have specific symptoms as well. When exposed to the thing the child fears they may:

 

have a tantrum

cling to their caregiver

Or cry

 

For example, a child may refuse to leave a caregiver’s side when a dog is around. Nearly 36% of sufferers seek treatment for Cynophobia and the majority of these are also known to be afraid of cats. The extreme fear of dogs is actually even more debilitating than the fear of spiders and the fear of snakes due to the fact that dogs are commonly present in most residential areas. Nearly 75% of Cynophobes are women, though the fear also affects men. One of those men was the king of pop… Michael Jackson himself. Sharing his fear are: Bobby Brown, cus damnit it's his prerogative(correct spelling, blew my mind), and Woody Allen. Pretty sure Woody Allen has every one of these by the way. If you're a cynophobe we  would strongly recommend skipping the movie Cujo. Also should probably skip Man's Best Friend, The Breed, and everyone's favorite Frankenweenie.  You may also want to take a flyer on Marley and Me, Adventures of Milo and Otis, Beethoven, Balto, Turner and Hooch and Air Bud. Fuck Air Bud. Guys there is a metric shit ton of dog movies… So you know be warned.

 

4: Do you feel uneasy in a big crowd? Hate going to concerts? Big festivals and sitting events freak you out? Are you anxious when you find yourself in wide open spaces? There's a good chance you could be agoraphobic. Agoraphobia is a type of anxiety disorder in which you fear and avoid places or situations that might cause you to panic and make you feel trapped, helpless or embarrassed. You fear an actual or anticipated situation, such as using public transportation, being in open or enclosed spaces, standing in line, or being in a crowd. The anxiety is caused by fear that there's no easy way to escape or get help if the anxiety intensifies. Most people who have agoraphobia develop it after having one or more panic attacks, causing them to worry about having another attack and avoid the places where it may happen again.

 

People with agoraphobia often have a hard time feeling safe in any public place, especially where crowds gather. You may feel that you need a companion, such as a relative or friend, to go with you to public places. The fear can be so overwhelming that you may feel unable to leave your home.

 

Agoraphobia treatment can be challenging because it usually means confronting your fears. Typical agoraphobia symptoms include fear of:

 

Leaving home alone

Crowds or waiting in line

Enclosed spaces, such as movie theaters, elevators or small stores

Open spaces, such as parking lots, bridges or malls

Using public transportation, such as a bus, plane or train

These situations cause anxiety because you fear you won't be able to escape or find help if you start to feel panicked or have other disabling or embarrassing symptoms.

 

In addition:

 

Fear or anxiety almost always results from exposure to the situation. Your fear or anxiety is out of proportion to the actual danger of the situation. You avoid the situation, you need a companion to go with you, or you endure the situation but are extremely distressed. You experience significant distress or problems with social situations, work or other areas in your life because of the fear, anxiety or avoidance. Your phobia and avoidance usually lasts six months or longer. 

 

Maybe Jeff is actually agoraphobic… Probably just hates people still though.

 

 It doesn't seem like many celebrities would be able to be celebrities and have agoraphobia, maybe that's why most of the ones we've found are artists and poets, with a couple actors mixed in. Writer Philip K. Dick who's novels were adapted into awesome sci-fi movies like, total recall, blade runner, a scanner darkley, and minority report was extremely agoraphobic. Same can be said of fellow writers Emily dickinson, Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House), and sci-fi writer  H.L. Gold. Artist Edvard Munch of The Scream fame suffered as well. Musician Brian Wilson,  actress Kim Basinger, tv chef and noted racist who loves butter Paula Dean, and everyone's favorite child actor Macaulay Culkin also all suffer from agoraphobia. 

 

Just remember, just cus you hate people doesn't mean you're agoraphobic!

 

3: Do you get shakey on top of a ladder? Do you loath doing roofing? Tightrope walking over Niagara falls a no go? Sounds like you suffer from acrophobia, the fear of heights! Acrophobia is an extreme or irrational fear or phobia of heights, especially when one is not particularly high up. It belongs to a category of specific phobias, called space and motion discomfort, that share both similar causes and options for treatment. Most people experience a degree of natural fear when exposed to heights, known as the fear of falling. On the other hand, those who have little fear of such exposure are said to have a head for heights. A head for heights is advantageous for those hiking or climbing in mountainous terrain and also in certain jobs such as steeplejacks or wind turbine mechanics. By the way, A steeplejack is a craftsman who scales buildings, chimneys, and church steeples to carry out repairs or maintenance. Steeplejacks erect ladders on church spires, industrial chimneys, cooling towers, bell towers, clock towers, or any other high structure.

 

People with acrophobia can experience a panic attack in high places and become too agitated to get themselves down safely. Approximately 2–5% of the general population has acrophobia, with twice as many women affected as men. Traditionally, acrophobia has been attributed, like other phobias, to conditioning or a traumatic experience. Recent studies have cast doubt on this explanation. Individuals with acrophobia are found to be lacking in traumatic experiences. Nevertheless, this may be due to the failure to recall the experiences, as memory fades as time passes. To address the problems of self report and memory, a large cohort study with 1000 participants was conducted from birth; the results showed that participants with less fear of heights had more injuries because of falling. More studies have suggested a possible explanation for acrophobia is that it emerges through accumulation of non-traumatic experiences of falling that are not memorable but can influence behaviours in the future. Also, fear of heights may be acquired when infants learn to crawl. If they fell, they would learn the concepts about surfaces, posture, balance, and movement. Cognitive factors may also contribute to the development of acrophobia. People tend to wrongly interpret visuo-vestibular discrepancies as dizziness and nausea and associate them with a forthcoming fall. A traumatic conditional event of falling may not be necessary at this point.

 

    Another possible contributing factor is a dysfunction in maintaining balance. In this case the anxiety is both well founded and secondary. The human balance system integrates proprioceptive, vestibular and nearby visual cues to reckon position and motion. As height increases, visual cues recede and balance becomes poorer even in normal people. However, most people respond by shifting to more reliance on the proprioceptive and vestibular branches of the equilibrium system. We're not sure which one of these causes Matt Damon to be afraid of heights… But he is… well… a pussy. Also suffering from acrophobia are Sheryl crow, toby Macguire, Liam Neeson, and maybe Sly Stallone but that hasn't been confirmed. There are many movies that you should probably avoid if you have this phobia, including Cliffhanger, the Walk, Man On A Wire, and a bunch of scenes from the mission impossible movies and die hard films, Not to mention the classics Vertigo and High Anxiety!

 

2: This next fear is a very common one. Bunch of scaredy cats out there that can't deal with creatures that don't have any legs. That's right… worms… oh wait… Sorry wrong notes… Snakes!! Number two on our list slithers right into your hearts. It's known as ophidiophobia, and it affects nearly a third of the adult human population… That's crazy… a third of the adult human population!!! So Moody ran the numbers and came up with roughly 1.8 billion people give or take, that's for people in the world over the age of 15. Most people with Ophidiophobia can lead normal lives as they do not have to confront the object of their fears under normal circumstances. However, for people with severe Ophidiophobia, the mere mention, or an image of a snake in books or on TV can lead to an intense fear response, the reactions of which can even include heart attacks and death. 

 

Snakes are fascinating creatures that have always had myths associated with them. These myths are the major reason why humans fear them. This and the fact that some snakes are deadly and venomous and can lead to deaths have probably led to Ophidiophobia.

 

Some causes are: 

Ignorance and lack of education is one of the most common reasons why humans fear snakes.

Traumatic episodes in the past such as accidently stepping on a snake or being bitten, hissed at or otherwise threatened by snakes might have led to one’s Ophidiophobia.

Seeing or witnessing an incident wherein another person, a close friend or family member was hissed at, or bitten by a snake can also lead to the fear of snakes

Media reports and TV shows can also lead one to believe that snakes are always dangerous leading to Ophidiophobia.

Genetic traits, family history with ophidiophobic persons etc can also lead other family members to have an intense fear of snakes.

Evolution is another reason behind this phobia. Many evolutionary psychologists explain Ophidiophobia as a ‘disgust response’ to snakes that have always been associated with death, disease or poison. The American Psychiatric Association has described the following symptoms of Ophidiophobia which can be categorized as mental, physical or emotional:

 

Uncontrollable anxiety especially when one is about to be exposed to snakes

Feeling that one must do anything to avoid snakes

Screaming, crying or experiencing the difficulty to breathe, or trembling or shaking violently when one encounters snakes, their pictures or images on TV etc.

Feeling anxious or experiencing increased heart rate when taken to locations where snakes may be present.

 

Ophidiophobia can affect a person’s normal life especially when he/she avoids zoos or friends’ homes where there are pet snakes. Ophidiophobics refuse to leave their homes in places that have a high snake population. Now it's safe to say that a bunch of our listeners are afraid of snakes given the numbers, but as stated you're obviously not alone. You keep good company as Matt Damon makes another appearance on our list alongside Justin Timberlake and his one time gal Brittney spears. As far as movies go there's the obvious… All those muthafuckin snakes on that muthafuckin plane! Also there's the one about that tiny snake called anaconda. You should take a flyer on Jaws Of Satan, King Cobra, Piranahconda, and Python. Also skip Hiss, Venom(not the superhero flick) and Vipers. And who could forget the cinema masterpiece Mega python vs. Gatoroid!!! At any rate there's a shitload of movies to avoid if you hate snakes… So good luck.

 

1: that brings us to number 1…. The big numero uno. They're creepy… They're crawly… They're sometimes hairy… sometimes venomous, some eat bugs… some eat birds… Some are barely visible while some are as big as dinner plates.. That's right… Spiders! Arachnophobia is the fear of spiders! Arachnophobia means more than being scared of spiders and other forms of arachnids. It is an intense, paralyzing fear where someone actively avoids contact with spiders. This fear extends beyond meeting an arachnid in real life. Even mentioning or seeing pictures of spiders can trigger a fear response in people with arachnophobia. Although someone may fear a spider’s appearance, research suggests many people primarily fear how they move.

 

Arachnophobia is an extreme fear of spiders and other arachnids. It is one of the more common types of phobias.

 

Arachnophobia, like many phobias, often develops during childhood.

A specific phobia is an irrational fear of something unlikely to cause danger.

This fear extends beyond meeting an arachnid in real life. Even mentioning or seeing pictures of spiders can trigger a fear response in people with arachnophobia.

 

Although someone may fear a spider’s appearance, research suggests many people primarily fear how they move.

 

Causes

Specific phobias, such as arachnophobia, tend to develop in childhood. Although there is no single trigger for arachnophobia, there are theories that suggest why it might develop. Some of these are:

 

Evolutionary

Evolutionary theory suggests people develop arachnophobia due to an evolved preparedness in dealing with potential threats.

 

One study tested this to see if arachnophobia is inherent in our nature. Researchers presented a group of 6-month old infants with images of flowers, birds, spiders, and snakes. Upon seeing the pictures of spiders and snakes, the infants’ pupils dilated, which indicated their fear responses had activated.

 

Social theories

Another theory is that people’s fear of spiders is learned. For example, the media often depicts spiders as scary and potentially dangerous.

 

In addition, if a person grows up in an environment where their parents are scared of spiders, this may become a learned behavior, and the child could also develop the same fear.

 

Past experience

If a person has a previous unpleasant or traumatic experience with a spider, this may cause arachnophobia to develop.

 

Symptoms

There are several symptoms that accompany arachnophobia, and they are typically similar to those of a panic attack. Some of the physical signs include:

 

dizziness

nausea

sweating

shaking

increased heart rate

fainting

breathing difficulty

A person with arachnophobia may also show some of the following behaviors:

 

avoiding situations where spiders may be, such as television shows, forests, or sheds

overestimating the chances of encountering a spider

running, screaming, or crying if they see a spider

becoming so scared, they freeze in place. Y'all being afraid of funny little things that you can squish with a shoe are silly.. But then again you're in good company! Justin Timberlake is back again, Halle Berry makes an appearance, Johnny Depp is afraid of spiders… Among other things, Rafael Nadal is afraid of a ton of shit including Spiders, and there are more but that list would probably take awhile. You know who's not afraid of Spiders… John Goodman… And really the only movie worth mentioning here would be the fucking mother of all spider flicks… arachnophobia. I mean are there any others? I mean there are but whatever. Ok fine… Don't watch the following if you're spiderly challenged: 8 legged freaks, the 2013 modern classic Big Ass Spider, Lavalantula and it's phenomenal sequel 2 Lava 2 Lantula( yes those are real), Ice Spiders, 1958s Earth vs. The Giant Spider, Tarantula, and possibly the most frightening movie involving Spiders… Charlotte's Web. 

 

Also, some crazy shit! scientists have recently discovered that spiders have started moving into cars and houses at an alarming rate since the Covid 19 pandemic began. According to a recent Harvard study, you are 78% more likely to have a spider crawling on or around you at this very moment as opposed to one year ago. The study also says that most of you probably looked around and feel like a complete asshole for believing my bullshit! I’m a liar… but that felt good. Sorry, not sorry.

 

Well there it is… The top ten fears and phobias around the world. But you know us… That's not good enough around here. We gotta find some of the strangest fears and phobias. Let's give you a quick run down of some of the craziest ones. There's going to be a bunch of fun words for Me to fuck up plus, apparently Mr Moody put a treat at the end for me. Oh boy.

 

Ablutophobia is the fear of bathing, washing, or cleaning. At least you'd know who has this one….

 

Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. While the phenomenon has happened to everyone at one point or another, people with arachibutyrophobia are extremely afraid of it. The severity of arachibutyrophobia varies from person to person. Some with this condition may be able to eat small amounts of peanut butter while others will avoid eating peanut butter or anything with the consistency of peanut butter altogether.

 

Nomophobia is the fear of being without your mobile phone. People with nomophobia experience excessive anxiety about not having their phone with them, their battery being low or their phone being out of service. Regardless of the circumstances, not being able to use their phone causes people with nomophobia to become panicked and experience extreme symptoms of anxiety.

 

Optophobia is a fear of opening one’s eyes. This fear can be extremely debilitating, as it is hard for an individual to carry out daily activities without opening their eyes. People with optophobia may prefer to stay indoors or in dimly lit areas. This phobia is usually associated with a generalized anxiety disorder. Like so many other phobias, this fear is usually the result of a traumatic incident.

 

Omphalophobia is a fear of belly buttons. People with omphalophobia will avoid seeing or touching belly buttons, even their own. They might even put a bandage over their belly button to avoid looking at it. They will sometimes avoid places where belly buttons might be exposed, like the beach.

 

Pogonophobia is a fear of beards. This usually stems from an alarming incident with a bearded person. It could also arise from a person not liking that a beard hides someone’s face.

 

People with pogonophobia will avoid people with beards and may even have anxiety when looking at a picture of someone with a beard. They usually will not be friends with someone who has a beard and will feel extremely nervous when talking to someone who does.

 

Vestiphobia is a fear of clothing. For many people, this manifests as a fear of a specific garment. For others, it might come from a fear of tight-fitting clothing that causes them to feel restrained. In other cases, it is a fear of all clothing. Vestiphobia can arise from an allergy to a specific type of fabric or a traumatic event associated with a certain piece of clothing. For example, there have been cases where former soldiers develop a fear of military clothing.

Eisoptrophobia is a fear of mirrors, sometimes also referred to as spectrophobia or catoptrophobia. People with this fear are unable to look at themselves in a mirror. This fear may also extend to any reflective surface. This fear may stem from superstitions about mirrors. For instance, a person may be afraid of breaking a mirror as they believe it will cause them bad luck. Others may fear that they will see something supernatural in a mirror, such as a ghost. In some cases, eisoptrophobia develops from low self-esteem, where a person is ashamed of their physical appearance and therefore does not want to see it in a mirror. In some cases, it can lead to depression.

 

Then there's good ol phobophobia. Phobophobia is a fear of phobias. This can be described as free-floating anxiety, where a person spirals in a circle of anxiety from fearing fear itself. In that respect, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Phobophobia is commonly co-diagnosed with other types of specific phobias and is often associated with anxiety disorders. People with phobophobia will often avoid social situations or other situations that can lead to anxiety. When extreme, it will greatly interfere with an individual’s everyday life.

 

And finally we get to Moody’s gift to me and my favorite phobia of all time:

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is a fear of long words. Ironically, it is also the longest word in the dictionary. Another name for this phobia is sesquipedalophobia. This phobia is thought to develop from being embarrassed by pronouncing long words incorrectly. This may occur while reading aloud in front of the class as a child. The phobia can also be common in people with dyslexia. Fuck you, Moody!!

Near Death Experiences

Near Death Experiences

 

Near death experience, or NDE is an unusual, profound, personal experience taking place on the brink of death and recounted by a person after recovery, typically an out-of-body experience or a vision of a tunnel of light. Supposedly, when these experiences are positive, they may encompass a variety of sensations including detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, the experience of absolute dissolution, and the presence of a light. When they’re considered negative, these experiences may include sensations of anguish distress or peeing your pants. 

 

Of course, we’re going to get super nerdy here so bear with us while Jeff snores in the background. Some explanations for NDEs range from scientific to religious. Oh boy! Neuroscience research suggests that an NDE is a subjective phenomenon resulting from "disturbed bodily multisensory integration" that occurs during life-threatening events, as per Olaf Blanke’s 2009 book, “The Neurology of Consciousness”, while some transcendental and religious beliefs about an afterlife include descriptions similar to NDEs.

 

The French term “expérience de mort imminente” which isn’t a delicious French dip sandwich, actually means “experience of imminent death” and was proposed by French psychologist and epistemologist Victor Egger as a result of discussions in the 1890s among philosophers and psychologists concerning climbers' stories of the panoramic life review during falls. Yes. falls. In 1892 a series of subjective observations by workers falling from scaffolds, war soldiers who suffered injuries, climbers who had fallen from heights or other individuals who had come close to death (like driving in a car with Moody) was reported by Albert Heim. This was also the first time the phenomenon was described as clinical syndrome. In 1968 Celia Green published an analysis of 400 first-hand accounts of out-of-body experiences in her book, boringly and obviously called “Out-of-the-body Experiences”.  This was the first attempt to provide a classification of such experiences, viewed simply as anomalous perceptual experiences, or hallucinations. In 1969, Swiss-American psychiatrist and pioneer in near-death studies Elisabeth Kubler-Ross published her groundbreaking book On Death and Dying: What the dying have to teach doctors, nurses, clergy, and their own families. Fuck! These book names are so long! These experiences were also popularized by the work of psychiatrist Raymond Moody, which may or may not be Moody’s drunken uncle,  in 1975 coined the term "near-death experience" (NDE) as an umbrella term for the different elements (out of body experiences, the "panoramic life review," the Light, the tunnel, or the border). Also, The term "near-death experience" had already been used by John C. Lilly in 1972.

 

Ok, let’s talk about some common traits of near death experiences.

 

Researchers have identified the common traits that define near-death experiences, according to Mauro, James Mauro in his book "Bright lights, big mystery.” Bruce Greyson argues that the general features of the experience include impressions of being outside one's physical body, visions of deceased relatives and religious figures, and transcendence of egotic and spatiotemporal boundaries. At this point, Some if you and especially Jeff are asking “what in the fuck is spatiotemporal boundaries!?!” Well, that shit refers to perception of continuous contours, shape, and global motion from sequential transformations of widely separated surface elements. How such minimal information in SBF can produce whole forms and the nature of the computational processes involved remain mysterious. YA GOT ALL THAT?! 

 Many common elements have been reported, although the person's interpretation of these events, obviously, often corresponds with the cultural, philosophical, or religious beliefs of the person experiencing it. For example, in the US, where 46% of the population believes in guardian angels, they will often be identified as angels or deceased loved ones (or will be unidentified), while Hindus will often identify them as messengers of the god of death, according to the Bruce Greyson book “The handbook of near-death experiences thirty years of investigation” and Mary J. Kennard‘s book, "A Visit from an Angel". Interestingly, NDEs are no more likely to occur in devout believers than in secular or nonpracticing subjects.

 

A 2017 study by two researchers at the University of Virginia raised the question of whether the paradox of enhanced cognition occurring alongside compromised brain function during an NDE could be written off as a flight of imagination. The researchers administered a questionnaire to 122 people who reported NDEs. They asked them to compare memories of their experiences with those of both real and imagined events from about the same time. The results suggest that the NDEs were recalled with greater vividness and detail than either real or imagined situations were. In short, the NDEs were remembered as being “realer than real.”

 

Ok, now! Some Common traits that have been reported by NDErs are as follows:

 

A sense/awareness of being dead.

 

A sense of peace, well-being and painlessness.

 

Positive emotions. A sense of removal from the world.

 

An out-of-body experience. A perception of one's body from an outside position, sometimes observing medical professionals performing resuscitation efforts.

 

A "tunnel experience" or entering a darkness. A sense of moving up, or through, a passageway or staircase.

 

A rapid movement toward and/or sudden immersion in a powerful light (or "Being of Light") which communicates with the person.

 

An intense feeling of unconditional love and acceptance.

 

Encountering "Beings of Light", "Beings dressed in white", or similar. Also, the possibility of being reunited with deceased loved ones.

 

Receiving a life review, commonly referred to as "seeing one's life flash before one's eyes".

 

Approaching a border or a decision by oneself or others to return to one's body, often accompanied by a reluctance to return.

 

Suddenly finding oneself back inside one's body.

 

Connection to the cultural beliefs held by the individual, which seem to dictate some of the phenomena experienced in the NDE and particularly the later interpretation thereof.

 

Let’s now talk about the Stages of a NDE

Kenneth Ring subdivided the NDE on a five-stage continuum. The subdivisions were:[21]

 

Peace

Body separation

Entering darkness

Seeing the light

Entering the light

 

Charlotte Martial, a neuropsychologist from the University of Liège and University Hospital of Liège who led a team that investigated 154 different NDE cases, concluded that there is not a fixed sequence of events. So, basically, she’s like “fuck that other guy.”

 

Kenneth Ring also argues that attempted suicides do not lead more often to unpleasant NDEs than unintended near-death situations. But, you know how Charlotte Martial feels about that dude and his shitty opinions. 

 

In one series of NDE's, 22% occurred during general anesthesia.

 

The underlying neurological sequence of events in a near-death experience is difficult to determine with any precision because of the dizzying variety of ways in which the brain can be damaged. Furthermore, NDEs do not strike when the individual is lying inside a magnetic scanner or has his or her scalp covered by a net of electrodes! Interesting…

Ok so what exactly happened to your brain during an NDE? 

 

It is possible to gain some idea of what happens by examining a cardiac arrest, in which the heart stops beating (the patient is “coding,” in hospital jargon). The patient has not died, because the heart can be jump-started via cardiopulmo-nary resuscitation.

 

    Modern death requires irreversible loss of brain function. When the brain is starved of blood flow (ischemia) and oxygen (anoxia), the patient faints in a fraction of a minute and his or her electroencephalogram, or EEG, becomes isoelectric—in other words, flat. This implies that large-scale, spatially distributed electrical activity within the cortex, the outermost layer of the brain, has broken down. Like a town that loses power one neighborhood at a time, local regions of the brain go offline one after another. Similar to Jon's brain on a Saturday night after drinking alot or maybe like all of us when we do our high movie review! The mind, whose substrate is whichever neurons remain capable of generating electrical activity, does what it always does: it tells a story shaped by the person’s experience, memory and cultural expectations.

 

Given these power outages, this experience may produce the rather strange and idiosyncratic stories that make up the corpus of NDE reports. To the person undergoing it, the NDE is as real as anything the mind produces during normal waking. When the entire brain has shut down because of complete power loss, the mind is extinguished, along with consciousness. If and when oxygen and blood flow are restored, the brain boots up, and the narrative flow of experience resumes.

 

Scientists have videotaped, analyzed and dissected the loss and subsequent recovery of consciousness in highly trained individuals—U.S. test pilots and NASA astronauts in centrifuges during the cold war (recall the scene in the 2018 movie First Man of a stoic Neil Armstrong, played by Ryan Gosling, being spun in a multiaxis trainer until he passes out). Or like Jon on the Tilt A Whirl.  At around five times the force of gravity, the cardiovascular system stops delivering blood to the brain, and the pilot faints. About 10 to 20 seconds after these large g-forces cease, consciousness returns, accompanied by a comparable interval of confusion and disorientation (subjects in these tests are obviously very fit and pride themselves on their self-control).

 

The range of phenomena these men recount may amount to “NDE lite”—tunnel vision and bright lights; a feeling of awakening from sleep, including partial or complete paralysis; a sense of peaceful floating; out-of-body experiences; sensations of pleasure and even euphoria; and short but intense dreams, often involving conversations with family members, that remain vivid to them many years afterward. These intensely felt experiences, triggered by a specific physical insult, typically do not have any religious character (perhaps because participants knew ahead of time that they would be stressed until they fainted).

 

By their very nature, NDEs are not readily amenable to well-controlled laboratory experimentation, cus you know, who the fuck would willingly want to be killed just to try and be brought back and see if they have any NDE. This isn't Flatliners people come on. It may be possible, however,  to study aspects of them in the humble lab mouse—maybe it, too, can experience a review of lifetime memories or euphoria before death.

 

Many neurologists have noted similarities between NDEs and the effects of a class of epileptic events known as complex partial seizures. These fits partially impair consciousness and often are localized to specific brain regions in one hemisphere. They can be preceded by an aura, which is a specific experience unique to an individual patient that is predictive of an incipient attack. The seizure may be accompanied by changes in the perceived sizes of objects; unusual tastes, smells or bodily feelings; déjà vu; depersonalization; or ecstatic feelings. Episodes featuring the last items on this list are also clinically known as Dostoyevsky’s seizures, after the late 19th-century Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who suffered from severe temporal lobe epilepsy. More than 150 years later neurosurgeons are able to induce such ecstatic feelings by electrically stimulating part of the cortex called the insula in epileptic patients who have electrodes implanted in their brain. This procedure can help locate the origin of the seizures for possible surgical removal. Patients report bliss, enhanced well-being, and heightened self-awareness or perception of the external world. Exciting the gray matter elsewhere can trigger out-of-body experiences or visual hallucinations. This brute link between abnormal activity patterns—whether induced by the spontaneous disease process or controlled by a surgeon’s electrode—and subjective experience provides support for a biological, not spiritual, origin. The same is likely to be true for NDEs. Why the mind should experience the struggle to sustain its operations in the face of loss of blood flow and oxygen as positive and blissful rather than as panic-inducing remains mysterious, especially since life sucks so bad. It is intriguing, though, that the outer limit of the spectrum of human experience encompasses other occasions in which reduced oxygen causes pleasurable feelings of jauntiness, light-headedness and heightened arousal—deepwater diving, high-altitude climbing, flying, the choking or fainting game, and, in Jeff's case, sexual asphyxiation.

 

(After-effects)

NDEs are often associated with changes in personality and outlook on life, according to James Mauro. Ring has identified a consistent set of value and belief changes associated with people who have had a near-death experience. Among these changes, he found a greater appreciation for life, higher self-esteem, greater compassion for others, less concern for acquiring material wealth, a heightened sense of purpose and self-understanding, desire to learn, elevated spirituality, greater ecological sensitivity and planetary concern, and a feeling of being more intuitive. However, not all after-effects are beneficial according to the book by RM Orne titled "The meaning of survival: the early aftermath of a near-death experience" and Greyson describes circumstances where changes in attitudes and behavior can lead to psychosocial and psychospiritual problems.

 

Here are some actual near death experiences taken from the book “Beyond The Light” by P.M.H Atwater

 

1. Jazmyne Cidavia-DeRepentigny of Hull Georgia.  She died on the operating table during surgery in late 1979. 

 

"I must say that this experience was quite unsettling to say the least.  I was floating over my body.  I could see and hear everything that was being said and done.  I left the room for a short while and then returned to where my body lay.  I knew why I died.  It was because I couldn't breathe.  There was a tube down my throat and the medical staff did not have an oxygen mask on my nose.  I had also been given too much anesthetic.

 

"In my out-of-body state, I'm using my mind to try and make my right arm and hand move - my arms are extended parallel to my physical body.  I want my right hand to move, any thing to move.  I was trying to pull the tube out of my mouth.  I looked down at my face and tears were streaming.  One of the nurses blotted the tears from my face but she didn't notice my breathing had stopped, nor did she see me next to her.  At this point, I'm trying really hard to make my physical arm move, but it's like my whole body is made of lead."

 

"I could see my spirit standing before me.  My spirit was so beautifully perfect, dressed in a white gown that was loose, free-flowing, and below the knee.  From my spirit there emanated a bright, soft-white halo.  My spirit was standing six to eight feet from my body.  It was so strange, for I could see my spirit and my spirit could see my pathetic body.  I had not an ounce of color and I looked all withered and cold and lifeless.  My spirit felt warm and so, so celestial.  As my spirit slowly moved away, my spirit told my body goodbye, for my spirit saw the light and wanted to go into it.  The light was like a circular opening that was warm and bright."

 

1. Robin Michelle Halberdier of Texas City, Texas, her near-death episode took place in a hospital when she was between one and two months of age.  Born prematurely, and with Hyaline Membrane disease, she was not expected to live

 

"My first visual memory was looking forward and seeing a brilliant bright light, almost like looking directly at the sun.  The strange thing was that I could see my feet in front of me, as if I were floating upward in a vertical position.  I do not remember passing through a tunnel or anything like that, just floating in the beautiful light.  A tremendous amount of warmth and love came from the light.

 

"There was a standing figure in the light, shaped like a normal human being, but with no distinct facial features.  It had a masculine presence.  The light I have described seemed like it emanated from that figure.  Light rays shone all around him.  I felt very protected and safe and loved.

 

"The figure in the light told me through what I now know to be mental telepathy that I must go back, that it was not time for me to come here.  I wanted to stay because I felt so full of joy and so peaceful.  The voice repeated that it wasn't my time; I had a purpose to fulfill and I could come back after I completed it.

 

"The first time I told my parents about my experience was right after I began to talk.  At the time, I believed that what happened to me was something everyone experienced.  I told my mom and dad about the big glass case I was in after I was born, and the figure in the light and what he said to me.  They took my reference to the glass case to mean the incubator.  My father was a medical student at the time, and he had read a book about near-death experiences.  From comparing the information in the book with what I told them, they decided that's what I was describing.  My mom told me all of this years later when I brought the subject up again.

 

"I began attending church at the age of five, and I would look at the picture of Jesus in the Bible and tell my mom that's who it was in the light.  I still have many physical difficulties with my health because of being premature.  But there is a strong need inside me that I should help others with what death is, and talk to terminally ill patients.  I was in the other world and I know there is nothing to be afraid of after death."

 

1. Bryce Bond, a famous New York City media personality turned parapsychologist, once collapsed after a violent allergic reaction to pine nuts and was rushed to a hospital. 

 

"I hear a bark, and racing toward me is a dog I once had, a black poodle named Pepe.  When I see him, I feel an emotional floodgate open.  Tears fill my eyes.  He jumps into my arms, licking my face.  As I hold him, he is real, more real than I had ever experienced him.  I can smell him, feel him, hear his breathing, and sense his great joy at being with me again.

 

"I put my dog on the ground, and step forward to embrace my stepfather, when a very strong voice is heard in my consciousness.  Not yet, it says.  I scream out, Why?  Then this inner voice says, What have you learned, and whom have you helped?  I am dumb-founded.  The voice seems to be from without as well as within.  Everything stops for a moment.  I have to think of what was asked of me.  I cannot answer what I have learned, but I can answer whom I have helped.

 

"I feel the presence of my dog around me as I ponder those two questions.  Then I hear barking, and other dogs appear, dogs I once had.  As I stand there for what seems to be an eternity.  I want to embrace and be absorbed and merge.  I want to stay.  The sensation of not wanting to come back is overwhelming."

 

"I heard a voice say, 'Welcome back.'  I never asked who said that nor did I care.  I was told by the doctor that I had been dead for over ten minutes."

 

1. Julian A. Milkes, almost hit by a car

 

"My mother and I were driving out to the lake one afternoon.  My dad was to follow later when he finished work.  We were having company for dinner, and, as we rode along, my mother spotted some wild flowers at the side of the road.  She asked if I wouldn't stop the car and pick them as they would look nice on the dinner table.  I pulled over to the right side of the road (it was not a major highway), parked the car, and went down a small incline to get off the road to pick the flowers.  While I was picking the flowers, a car came whizzing by and suddenly headed straight for me.

 

"As I looked up and saw what I presumed would be an inevitable death, I separated from my body and viewed what was happening from another perspective.  My whole life flashed in front of me, from that moment backwards to segments of my life.  The review was not like a judgment.  It was passive, more like an interesting novelty.

 

"I can't tell you how many times I think of that near-death experience.  Even as I sit here and write my story for you, it seems as though it happened only yesterday."

 

1. Ernest Hemingway, wounded by shrapnel while fighting on the banks of the river Piave, near Fossalta, Italy.

 

"Dying is a very simple thing.  I've looked at death and really I know."

 

"A big Austrian trench mortar bomb, of the type that used to be called ash cans, exploded in the darkness.  I died then.  I felt my soul or something coming right out of my body, like you'd pull a silk handkerchief out of a pocket by one corner.  It flew around and then came back and went in again and I wasn't dead anymore."

 

"I ate the end of my piece of cheese and took a swallow of wine.  Through the other noise I heard a cough, then came the chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh - then there was a flash, as when a blast-furnace door is swung open, and a roar that started white and went red and on and on in a rushing wind.  I tried to breathe but my breath would not come and I felt myself rush bodily out of myself and out and out and out and all the time bodily in the wind.  I went out swiftly, all of myself, and I knew I was dead and that it had all been a mistake to think you just died.  Then I floated, and instead of going on I felt myself slide back.  I breathed and I was back."

 

1. John R. Liona of Brooklyn, New York

 

"Mine was a difficult birth, according to my mother.  She said she didn't hear me cry after I was born because I was a 'blue baby.'  They did not bring me to her for two days.  My face was black and blue, and she said the skin was all cut up on the right side of my face.  That's where the forceps slipped.  I was given a tracheotomy to help me breathe.  I am totally deaf in my right ear.  Also, the right side of my face and head is less sensitive than the left.  When I get tired, the right side of my face droops a little, like Bell's palsy.

 

"I am forty years old now.  All my life going back to my childhood I can remember having this same recurring dream.  It is more vivid than any other dream.  It starts and ends the same - I am kneeling down and bent over, frantically trying to untie some kind of knots.  They almost seem alive.  I am pulling on them and they are thick and slippery.  I am very upset.  Pulling and snapping.  I can't see what they're made of.  I remember getting hit in the face while trying to untie or break free of the knots, and waking up crying.  Then I would go back to sleep thinking it was only a dream or a nightmare.  When the dream would happen again on another night, I would sleep through it longer, as I began to get used to it.

 

"After I am able to sleep through the knotty part, suddenly my struggling stops.  I feel like a puppet with all the strings cut.  My body goes limp.  All the stress and struggle is drained right out of me.  I feel very calm and peaceful, but wonder what caused me to lose interest in the knots.  They were important one minute; the next minute I am floating in this big bright light.  I know I can't touch the ground because there is light there, too.  I look at the light and try to move toward it.  I can't, and this upsets me.  There is a woman in a long, flowing gown floating away to my left.  I call and call to her but the light is so bright sound does not travel through it.  I want to talk to the woman.  My dream ends there.

 

"About a year ago, I walk out of my house to go to work.  The ground is wet from rain, yet I find this book lying there - dry.  No one is around, so I pick it up.  The book is called 'CLOSER TO THE LIGHT,' by Melvin Morse, M.D., and Paul Perry.  It is on the near-death experiences of children.  That night I start reading it and cannot put it down.  For the first time in my life, I now understand my dream.  Those knots were when I struggled in the womb with the umbilical cord; getting hit in the face is when the doctor grabbed me with the forceps, then I died.  After that, I went into the light.

 

"But, wait a second.  You're not supposed to remember being born.  We don't just sit around at parties and talk about what we remember of our birth.  We only talk about what our parents tell us.  I look forward to having my dream again.  I'm ready now to experience more of it than before, and without being upset."

 

1. Jeanne L. Eppley of Columbus, Ohio

 

"My experience happened during the birth of my first child.  For many years I blamed it on the anesthetic.  I had three more children without pain because I believed that if there wasn't any pain, I wouldn't have to have anesthetics that caused experiences like this.  Living proof of mind over matter, right?

 

"What happened was this: Everything was bright yellow.  There was a tiny black dot in the center of all the yellow.  Somehow I knew that the dot was me.  The dot began to divide.  First there was two, then four, then eight.  After there had been enough division, the dots formed into a pinwheel and began to spin.  As the pinwheel spun, the dots began to rejoin in the same manner as they had divided.  I knew that when they were all one again, I would be dead, so I began to fight.  The next thing I remember is the doctor trying to awaken me and keep me on the delivery table, because I was getting up.

 

"When my daughter was born, her head was flattened from her forehead to a point in back.  They told me that she had lodged against my pelvic bone.  But the doctor had already delivered two others that night and was in a hurry to get home.  He took her with forceps.  I've often wondered if my experience was actually hers, instead."

 

"I survived and became very strong.  Before it happened I was a very weak person who had depended on others all my life.  It constantly amazes me that people talk about how much they admire my strength.  I developed a lot of character having lived this life and raising four children alone.  I can honestly say that I like and respect myself now.  I did not when the near-death experience happened.  I believe maybe it was sent to show me that I could be strong.  I certainly needed that strength in the years that came after."

 

1. Gloria Hipple of Blakeslee, Pennsylvania

 

"My incident took place in August of 1955.  I had been taken to Middlesex Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, due to a miscarriage.  Placed in a ward because I was a military dependent, the doctor who was to care for me never came.  I was placed at a forty-five-degree angle due to bleeding and was left that way for almost eight days.  No one heard my pleas.  By the eighth day, I could not hear anyone, my eyes could not see, and I was later told that my body temperature registered 87.6 degrees.  I should have been dead.

 

"I recall being pulled down into a spinning vortex.  At first, I did not know what was happening.  Then I realized my body was being drawn downward, head first.  I panicked and fought, trying to grab at the sides of the vortex.  All I could think of was my two children.  No one would care for them.  I pleaded, Please, not now, but I kept moving downward.

 

"I tried to see something, but all there was to see was this cyclonic void that tapered into a funnel.  I kept grabbing at the sides but my fingers had nothing to grasp.  Terror set in, true terror.  I saw a black spot, darker than the funnel and like a black curtain, falling in front of me.  Then there was a white dot, like a bright light at the end of the funnel.  But as I grew closer, it was a small white skull.  It became larger, grinning at me with bare sockets and gaping mouth, and traveling straight toward me like a baseball.  Not only was I terrified, I was really livid, too.  I struggled to grab hold of anything to keep me from falling, but the skull loomed larger.  'My kids, my baby is so little.  My little boy, he's only two years old.  No!'  My words rang in my head and ears.  With a bellowing yell, I screamed: 'No!  damn it, no!  Let me go.  My babies need me!  No!  No!  No!  No!'

 

"The skull shattered into fragments and I slowed in movement.  A white light, the brightest light I have ever known or will ever see again was in place of the skull.  It was so bright yet it did not blind me.  It was a welcome, calming light.  The black spot or curtain was gone.  I felt absolute peace of mind and sensed myself floating upward, and I was back.  I heard my husband calling me, off in the distance.  I opened my eyes but could not see him.  Two doctors were at the foot of my bed - both were angry and compassionate at the same time.  I was taken to the operating room, given several pints of blood, and was released one week later.

 

"No one would believe my handshake with the grim reaper.  Scoffers almost put me in tears.  Everyone laughed at me, including my husband, so I never told my story again - until I wrote to you.  It was the most horrendous, yet the most gratifying experience I've ever had in my life."

 

And another  in 1943 during a tonsillectomy 

 

"Ether was the sedation used to put me to sleep.  I recall being terrified by the mask and the awful smell.  I can still taste it as I think about it.  As the sedation took hold, there was the vortex, the dizzy spinning sensation, as I was dragged downward into sleep.  I screamed, not knowing what was happening to me."

 

"My near-death experience has made me quite sensitive to many more things than my mind understands.  It also helped me to be less serious about myself.  I'm dispensable.  I have discovered I do not value 'things' as I once did.  I befriend people in a different way.  I respect their choices to be the people they want to be.  The same for my own family.  I will guide, but not demand.  As for the "Light" - it was then and remains so, my encounter with the most powerful of all entities.  The giver of life on both sides of the curtain.  After all, I was given a second chance.  I am blessed and cannot ask for more."

 

1. Sandra H. Brock of Staunton, Virginia

 

"I had a stomach stapling in 1980 and, in the process, had to have a deformed spleen removed.  I hemorrhaged on the operating table, and the doctor said that at three times he thought he was going to lose me.  The first day after surgery I had to have transfusions.  During one of the transfusions I started feeling really weird.  I felt like if I shut my eyes I would never open them again.  I called a nurse.  Of course, she said it was all in my head, and left the room.  I remember she just walked out the door and I started being pulled through a tunnel.  It was a terrible experience because all I could see were people from my past, people who were already dead, who had done or said something to me that had hurt me in one way or another.  They were laughing and screaming, until I thought I could not stand it.  I begged and begged that I be allowed to go back.  I could see a light at the end of the tunnel but I never really got close to it.  All of a sudden I was back in my bed, just thankful I had not died."

 

She’s had other NDE’s, as well.

 

"My mother told me that when she found she was pregnant with me, she prayed that I would die.  They were just coming out of the depression and they already had a baby and could not afford another.  When I was born, I was born with a harelip.  Mother thought that was her punishment for wanting me dead.  Within several days, and without any surgery, my harelip healed itself, and to this day I do not carry a scar.  She also told me that when I was only a few weeks old, she came to my bassinet and found me not breathing.  I had already turned purple.  She grabbed me, shook me, and blew in my face until I started breathing again.  I don't remember this experience, but I do remember being in a bassinet that had no liner.  I remember studying my hands and what my hands looked like as an infant.  My mother said I couldn't possibly remember this, but I did, and I was right."

 

1. Alice Morrison-Mays New Orleans, Louisiana

 

"From my position near the ceiling, I watched as they began to wrap both my legs from tips of the toes up to my hips, then my arms and hands up to the shoulders.  This was to keep what blood remained for my heart and lungs.  Then they tilted my body so my legs were up in the air and I was standing on my head!

 

"I was furious about the way they had handled Jeff's birth and now they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off squawking loudly; and here I was looking at that silent, bandaged body lying on a tilt table, head to the floor, legs and feet in the air.  I was venting my anger and frustration from the corner of the ceiling on the right side of my body.  I can remember the anger vividly, fury at the powerless position this whole event put me in, and I was very 'verbal' about it - silently - up there, as my mind raced to express its reaction, worry, and concern.  Their statements 'We're losing her!  We're losing her!'  frightened me and I'd get pissed all over again.

 

"The scene changed and I was no longer in that room.  I found myself in a place of such beauty and peace.  It was timeless and spaceless.  I was aware of delicate and shifting hues of colors with their accompanying rainbows of 'sound,' though there was no noise in this sound.  It might have felt like wind and bells, were it earthly.  I 'hung' there - floating.  Then I became aware of other loving, caring beings hovering near me.  Their presence was so welcoming and nurturing.  They appeared 'formless' in the way I was accustomed by now to seeing things.  I don't know how to describe them.  I was aware of some bearded male figures in white robes in a semicircle around me.  The atmosphere became blended as though made of translucent clouds.  I watched as these clouds and their delicate shifting colors moved through and around us.

 

"A dialogue softly started with answers to my unfinished questions almost before I could form them.  They said they were my guides and helpers as well as being God's Messengers.  Even though they were assigned to me as a human and always available to me - they had other purposes, too.  They were in charge of other realms in creation and had the capacity of being in several places simultaneously.  They were also 'in charge' of several different levels of knowledge.  I became aware of an ecstasy and a joy that permeated the whole, unfolding beyond anything that I had experienced in my living twenty-five years, up to that point.  Even having my two previous children, whom I wanted very much, couldn't touch the 'glow' of this special experience.

 

"Then I was aware of an Immense Presence coming toward me, bathed in white, shimmering light that glowed and at times sparkled like diamonds.  Everything else seen, the colors, beings, faded into the distance as the Light Being permeated everything.  I was being addressed by an overwhelming presence.  Even though I felt unworthy, I was being lifted into that which I could embrace.  The Joy and Ecstasy were intoxicating.  It was 'explained' that I could remain there if I wanted; it was a choice I could make.

 

"There was much teaching going on, and I was just 'there' silently, quietly.  I felt myself expanding and becoming part of All That Was in Total Freedom Unconditionally.  I became aware again that I needed to make a choice.  Part of me wanted to remain forever, but I finally realized I didn't want to leave a new baby motherless.  I left with sadness and reluctance.

 

"Almost instantly I felt reentry into my body through the silver cord at the top of my head.  There was something skin to a physical bump.  As soon as I entered, I heard someone near me say, 'Oh, we've got her back.'  I was told I had two pieces of placenta as large as grapefruits removed."

 

1. Steven B. Ridenhour of Charlottesville, Virginia

 

"We smoked another joint and then headed toward the rapids.  Debbie begins laughing, and the next thing I know we're overtaken by laughter.  The giggling stops as we're swept off our feet and dragged downriver.  Debbie cries out, 'Steven I can't swim.  I'm drowning.'  I feel powerless because I can't get to her and I'm yelling, 'Hang on, don't panic,' when I take a tremendous mouthful of water.  Without any warning, time, as I know it, stops.

 

"The water has a golden glow and I find myself just floating as without gravity, feeling very warm and comfortable.  I'm floating in a vertical position with my arms outstretched and my head laying on my left shoulder.  I feel totally at peace and full of serenity in this timeless space.  Next I go through a past-life review.  It was like looking at a very fast slide show of my past life, and I do mean fast, like seconds.  I don't quite understand the significance of all the events that were shown to me, but I'm sure there is some importance.  When this ended, it was as if I was floating very high up and looking down at a funeral.  Suddenly I realized that I was looking at myself in a casket.  I saw myself dressed in a black tux with a white shirt and a red rose on my left lapel.  Standing around me were my immediate family and significant friends.

 

"Then, as if some powerful force wrapped around me, I was thrust out of the water, gasping for air.  There was Debbie within arm's reach.  I grabbed her by the back of her hair and I was able to get us both over to the rocks and out of the water.  After lying on the rocks for a while, I glance over at Debbie and it's like looking at a ghost.  As she describes what she went through, it became apparent that we both had the same experience underwater - the golden glow, the serenity, seeing our lives flash before us, floating over a funeral, and seeing ourselves in a casket.  That is the only time we ever talked about it.  I haven't seen or talked with Debbie since."

 

Passenger Justin Kowalczyk

 

“my near death experience: December 8th 2006 I got attacked by a pitbull. Tore my upper lip in half and off my face. got rushed to the ER, put under and into emergency surgery to  try and reconnect what they could find and stop the bleeding. While under anesthesia I found myself watching the doctors work on me. my viewpoint seemed to be from the ceiling of the room. No sound. but they seemed frantic. came too and brought up my "dream" to doctors and family. i was told you do not dream under anesthesia. 

 

fast forward 2 years and while going over the medical records for the lawsuit i stumble upon the fact that they couldnt get the bleeding to stop and couldnt keep my airway clear. for a brief period i had died on the table.  pretty sure this is what I saw in my "dream"”

 

Her name is Winnie:

Four years ago, I was on the I-10 highway in Arizona, making my daily commute from work. This is also a huge truck route, so traffic got pretty brutal at times. All seemed fine for once, traffic was flowing smoothly and we were all cruising at about 75. Out of nowhere, everyone jumps to the right lanes and comes to a screeching halt. There is an ADOT (Arizona Department of Transportation) car in the far left lane, seemingly parked in the lane with the worker on his phone. I hit my hazard lights and slam on my brakes and miss the pickup truck in front of me by an inch. I check behind me, and a few people have thrown their cars into the shoulder to avoid hitting the car in front of them. Thats when I see it- I remember it as vividly as if it happened yesterday-I watched my rear view in horror as a red, Volvo semi with a refrigerated trailer is still going full speed. The driver has his head turned, talking to his passenger. They're not slowing down, they don't see me. I see his passenger turn his head and point frantically as they barrel closer and closer. I hear his brakes engage, I hear his tires squeal, but they're still not stopping. I contemplate fleeing my vehicle, but there's no time. Suddenly, I saw a flash of my life play out before me." I didn't get to tell my boyfriend goodbye this morning. When was the last time I called my mother? What am I going to do? There's nowhere to run, I'm going to die, the person in front of me is going to die, and the person in front of them is at the very least going to be really messed up. Oh my God. Fuck. Fuck. This is going to hurt. I'm not ready to go." All of these thoughts occurred in the same 5 seconds. 

 

I felt my car get hit, and I see the semi on the side of me, scraping down the guard rail. He threw his truck into the shoulder to avoid hitting me head on.. The truck finally stopped about a football field away from me, and I realize I'm alive. Immediately after I realize I'm not only alive but in one piece, I look out my window and see that my car is surrounded by people, frantically trying to get me to unlock the vehicle. I unlock my door, and Immediately after that I blacked out. Was it stress? Trauma? I don't know. But I have first hand accounts from law enforcement and paramedics that I drove my car off the freeway as instructed and sat down to be looked over by paramedics after giving my statement. I have severe pain in my back to this day, but considering what should have happened, I'll take it. I don't believe in angels, divine intervention or even fate. But *something* or someone was looking out for me that day.

 

Celebrity Near Death Experiences

 

 https://people.com/celebrity/stars-open-up-about-their-near-death-experiences/?amp=true

 

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OUR YOUTUBE

S4E14 CIRCUS FREAKS AND SIDESHOW ODDITIES

Season 4 

Ep. 14

Circus freaks/side shows

 

"When you're born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat." 

-- George Carlin

    The “freak show,” or “sideshow,” rose to prominence in 16th century England. For centuries, cultures around the world had interpreted severe physical deformities as bad omens or evidence that evil spirits were present; by the late 1500s, these stigmas had translated into public curiosity.

       

            Businessmen scouted people with abnormalities, swooped them up, and shuttled them throughout Europe, charging small fees for viewings. One of the earliest recorded “freaks” of this era was Lazarus Colloredo, an “otherwise strapping” Italian whose brother, Joannes, protruded, upside down, from his chest. The conjoined twins “both fascinated and horrified the general public,” and the duo even made an appearance before King Charles I in the early 1640s. Castigated from society, people like Lazarus  capitalized on their unique conditions to make a little cash -- even if it meant being made into a public spectacle. Whether it was a person with dwarfism acting as a jester or clown for an individual monarch, or a person with a unique physical impairment displaying her body for the eyes of a curious and gawking public, freaking—exploiting the perceived peculiarities of your own body for an audience—was a means of support for some disabled people who might otherwise have died or struggled to survive. But until the 19th century, freak shows catered to relatively small crowds and didn’t yield particularly healthy profits for showmen or performers. It was in the mid nineteenth and early 20th centuries that freak shows had become a viable commercial enterprise in England and the U.S. alike. 

America and England both had men who would come into prominence by employing (or exploiting depending on whom you talk too)these types of folks for profit purposes. In England it was a man named Tom Norman. 

TOM NORMAN

Tom Norman was born on 7 May 1860 in Dallington, Sussex and was the eldest of 17 children. His real name was Noakes and his father Thomas was a butcher who resided at the Manor House in Dallington. According to his autobiography he left home at the age of fourteen to seek fame and fortune on the road and before long he had found employment as a butcher’s assistant in London. Tom first became involved in showbusiness a year later when he went into partnership with a showman who had a penny gaff shop in Islington, exhibiting Mlle Electra(not a typo). However, as is often the case with Tom Norman, the facts are difficult to piece together from the legend and the first record we have for a showman called Norman from this time can be traced to the Agricultural Hall in Islington, the venue for The World’s Fair. Some of the showmen on view that day included the famous Tommy Dodd and his wife, "The smallest people in the world;" and a giant boy aged seventeen. Other showmen presenting attractions were Williams's Ghost Show; Chittock and Testo's dog and monkey circus and Mander’s Huge Collection of Wild Beasts. However, both The Era newspaper report and the handbill for the event note the presence of Norman's performing fishes, which reputedly could not only talk but also play the pianoforte; and Norman’s French Artillery Giant Horse. In his autobiography which was incomplete before his death in 1930, Norman states that he was fifteen when he first appeared at the World’s Fair. Therefore, the Norman mentioned could either have been a showman whose name Tom Noakes went on to use, or he was actually 13 years old when he first left home.

By the 1870s the young aspiring showman had been involved in a number of careers including exhibiting Eliza Jenkins, the Skeleton Woman, a popular novelty show at the time, the Balloon Headed Baby and a whole range of freak show attractions as he stated in his autobiography:

“But you could indeed exhibit anything in those days. Yes anything from a needle to an anchor, a flea to an elephant, a bloater you could exhibit as a whale. It was not the show, it was the tale that you told.”

Perhaps one of the more gruesome shows he was involved with, was 'the woman who bit live rat heads off. '

In his autobiography Tom Norman describes the act a the most gruesome he had ever seen:

“Dick Bakers wife, who used to be with me and gave I think now, the most repulsive performance, that I have ever had or seen, during the whole of my long career. it consisted of Mrs Baker, putting her naked hand into a cage, fetch out a live rat and proceed to bite its head off.”

The effect on the audience was such wrote Tom that:

“More than once, have I seen a member of either sex of the audience, fall forward in a faint during this extraordinary performance.”

Tom Norman’s ability to tell the tale was the scene of one of his greatest compliments when in 1882 he was performing at the Royal Agricultural Hall. Unaware that the great showman P. T. Barnum(well get to him don't worry) was in the audience, Tom informed the crowd that none other than the greatest showman on earth had booked the show for its entire run. Upon meeting Tom Norman, Barnum pointed to the large silver Albert chain which he wore and said 'Silver King eh'. Despite being found out, Tom Norman took this as a compliment and from then on he became known as The Silver King.

Throughout the 1880s his fame as a showman grew and by 1883 he had thirteen penny gaff shops throughout London including locations such as Whitechapel, Hammersmith, Croydon and Edgeware Road. He still continued to travel with his shows and Norman’s Grand Panorama was a highlight of the Christmas Fair for the 1883/84 season in Islington. It was at this time that Norman came into contact with Joseph Merrick through a showman called George Hitchcock who proposed that Norman took over the London management of the Elephant Man. This episode in Norman’s life is shrouded in controversy as Sir Frederick Treeves, the surgeon who reputedly rescued Joseph Merrick or John as he calls him, blackened the character of Norman in his autobiography published in 1923. There are differing accounts of the way Merrick was treated by Norman. Treeves maintains that he was treated poorly by Norman and simply exploited. There are others who claim that Norman treated Merrick extremely well and that Merrick was never healthier or happier than with Norman. The Elephant Man was managed by Tom for only a few months and after the London shop was closed by the police, Joseph Merrick was taken back by the consortium of Leicester businessmen and placed in the hands of Sam Roper, a travelling showman.

Tom Norman’s career continued after the Elephant Man and over the next ten year he became involved with managing a troupe of midgets, exhibiting the famous Man in a Trance show at Nottingham Goose Fair, Mary Anne Bevan the World’s Ugliest Woman, John Chambers the Armless Carpenter and Leonine the Lion Faced Lady. In January 1893, the following advertisement appeared in The Era newspaper and seems to imply that Tom was thinking of leaving England for the Worlds’ Fair which was being held in Chicago. The advertisement appeared for the following weeks and although no details are available as to their final outcome they do give us a glimpse into the type of shows Tom Norman was exhibiting at the time.

 

“Wanted, to Sell, 10ft Living Carriage, Light, One-horse Load, already Fitted for Road, £25, worth £35; also Novelty Booth, good as new, Size, 9ft by18ft, with Novelty and Four New Brass Lamps, with Filler and Oil Drum, by Mellor and Sons, £4; also Piano Organ, nearly New, scarcely soiled, TenTunes, by Capra, suit Waxworks or any Shop Exhibition, £7, worth £18; also Two Fat Paintings, Best on the Road, by Leach, Size 9ft by 10ft, ditto One, same size of Skeleton Girl, all good as new; also Two others of Fats, size 6ft by Thornhill, with large Case to carry the lot, £5, cost £20; also 9ft Square Booth for Performing Fleas, with Two Grand Oil Paintings for same, price £1; also Aerial Suspension for Child 15s; also the Largest Silver Albert in England, made expressly for me, £3, cost £6. The whole of the above to be sold together or separate. Can be seen any time. Reason, I am leaving for Chicago. Apply any Morning before 12.0 to TOM NORMAN, Silver King, Pearce's Temperance Hotel, Elephant and Castle, SE”.

In 1896 Tom met and married Amy Rayner at the Royal Agricultural Hall and their marriage lasted until his death in 1930. At that time Tom was travelling his famous Midget show and the Ghost show he had bought from John Parker. Their first son Tom was born in 1899 and was soon followed by Hilda, Ralph, Jimmy, Nelly, Arthur, Amy, Jack, Daisy and George.

Soon after the birth of his first son, Tom became an auctioneer and the first show he sold belonged to Fred and George Ginnett. His career as an auctioneer prospered and some of the most famous shows he sold included Lord George Sanger and Frank Bostock's.

He advertised in both The Era and The Showman newspapers as the recognised Showman’s Auctioneer and Valuer throughout 1901 and early clients in 1902 included W. T. Kirkland who had concessions at Southport, Morecambe and New Brighton. He instituted the annual Showman and Travellers’ Auction Sales in London, Manchester and Liverpool from 1903 onwards and negotiated sales for showman such as Walter Payne, Edwin Lawrence and many others. His most famous sale to date place in 1905 when he organised the disposal of Lord George Sanger’s Zoo at Margate. This was followed by what Tom Norman described as the crowning point in my life as regards the auctioneering business, when he was called upon by Sanger to auction the whole of his travelling circus effects. The following tribute published in 1901 demonstrates the esteem in which he was held by the fairground fraternity:

'Mr Norman believes in catering for modern tastes - brilliancy; brightness, cleanliness and order are Tom’s strong points'

Tom Norman continued to travel with his shows and maintained his penny gaff shops in London while basing the auctioneering side of the business at his family home the Manor House Dallington. Although Tom did not reveal in his autobiography the reasons for changing his name, he obviously maintained links with his place of birth in order to base this part of his business activities there.

In the period leading up the First World War, Tom was now the father of ten children, nine surviving and his sons Tom, Ralph, Jimmy, Arthur and George had inherited their father’s showmanship. Ralph Van became known as Hal Denver and travelled throughout Europe and America as a wild west performer, George and Arthur found fame as clowns in many of the world’s greatest circuses and Tom and Jim Norman remained on the fairground.

By 1915 the family were firmly based in Croydon and Tom was starting to dispose of some of his business concerns when his eldest son Tom Jnr enlisted. The shops for sale included Tom Norman's New Exhibition with waxworks and novelty museum and the Croydon Central Auction Rooms. Tom slowly retired from the fairground business and although he maintained his auctioneering concerns, he mainly concentrated on buying and selling caravans and dealing in horses for circuses and pantomimes. After the end of the first World War, Tom became restless again and appeared at the Olympia Circus in 1919 with Phoebe the Strange Girl and exhibited at Birmingham and Dreamland, Margate in 1921. Tom also returned to the venue where he had first started, The Royal Agricultural Hall and worked there throughout the 1920s although he was living in semi-retirement at the family base in Beddington Lane, Croydon.

Tom Norman left behind a comfortable professional birthright to become one of the leading travelling showmen of his day. The benevolence he showed to his fellow showmen, his association with the newly formed Van Dwelling’s Association and his role in the United Kingdom Temperance Association demonstrate the injustice done to his reputation by inaccurate accounts of The Elephant Man. He died in Croydon on 24 August 1930, while according to his son George Van Norman, making plans to travel to a large auction show around the country.

The following tribute was published in the World’s Fair.

'There are very few showmen who have not met the famous showman’s auctioneer, “The Silver King”, He has been a conspicuous and charismatic figure in our business for the past half a century and has conducted more showman’ sales than any other auctioneer in the country... During his fifty years with us, he has endeared himself to all section from the humblest to the highest. He was a charming personality with a commanding appearance that left a lifetime impression upon anyone that he met. All his life he has been a showman and as such he died.'

So that's England's great showman, the man who really helped bring freak shows to prominence ther. But as i mentioned earlier, the U.S. had one as well. He was brought up earlier and I'm sure you all know who it is.. Good old Phineas Taylor Barnum, better known as P.T. Now, now i'm sure most of you know at least a little about him, or have at some point as a kid been to a circus with his name somewhere in the title. Some of you younger listeners may have missed out on the joys of the circus. Were gonna take a loom at his life and how he rose to prominence.

P.T. BARNUM

Barnum was born in Bethel, Connecticut, the son of innkeeper, tailor, and store-keeper Philo Barnum (1778–1826) and his second wife Irene Taylor. His maternal grandfather Phineas Taylor was a Whig, legislator, landowner, justice of the peace, and lottery schemer who had a great influence on him.Barnum was 15 years old when his father died, and the support of his mother and his five sisters and brothers fell largely upon his shoulders. After holding a variety of jobs, he became publisher of a Danbury, Connecticut, weekly newspaper, Herald of Freedom. Arrested three times for libel, he enjoyed his first taste of notoriety.

In 1829, at age 19, Barnum married a 21-year-old Bethel woman, Charity Hallett, who was to bear him four daughters. In 1834 he moved to New York City, where he found his vocation as a showman. He began his career as a showman in 1835 when he was 25 with the purchase and exhibition of a blind and almost completely paralyzed slave woman named Joice Heth, whom an acquaintance was trumpeting around Philadelphia as George Washington's former nurse and 161 years old. Slavery was already outlawed in New York, but he exploited a loophole which allowed him to lease her for a year for $1,000, borrowing $500 to complete the sale. Heth died in February 1836, at no more than 80 years old. Barnum had worked her for 10 to 12 hours a day, and he hosted a live autopsy of her body in a New York saloon where spectators paid 50 cents to see the dead woman cut up, as he revealed that she was likely half her purported age.

 It was very common for Barnum's acts to be schemes and not altogether true. Barnum was fully aware of the improper ethics behind his business as he said, 

"I don't believe in duping the public, but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them." 

During the 1840s Barnum began his museum, which had a constantly rotating acts schedule, which included The Fat Lady, midgets, giants, and other people deemed to be freaks. The museum drew in about 400,000 visitors a year.

THE AMERICAN MUSEUM

 During the 1840s Barnum began his museum, which had a constantly rotating acts schedule, which included The Fat Lady, midgets, giants, and other people deemed to be freaks. The museum drew in about 400,000 visitors a year.[14]

P.T. Barnum's American Museum was one of the most popular museums in New York City to exhibit freaks. In 1841 Barnum purchased The American Museum, which made freaks the major attraction, following mainstream America in the mid-19th century. Barnum was known to advertise aggressively and make up outlandish stories about his exhibits. The façade of the museum was decorated with bright banners showcasing his attractions and included a band that performed outside. Barnum's American Museum also offered multiple attractions that not only entertained but tried to educate and uplift its working-class visitors. Barnum offered one ticket that guaranteed admission to his lectures, theatrical performances, an animal menagerie, and a glimpse at curiosities both living and dead.

One of Barnum's exhibits centered around Charles Sherwood Stratton, the dwarf billed as "General Tom Thumb" who was then 4 years of age but was stated to be 11. Charles had stopped growing after the first 6 months of his life, at which point he was 25 inches (64 cm) tall and weighed 15 pounds (6.8 kg). With heavy coaching and natural talent, the boy was taught to imitate people from Hercules to Napoleon. By 5, he was drinking wine, and by 7 smoking cigars for the public's amusement. During 1844–45, Barnum toured with Tom Thumb in Europe and met Queen Victoria, who was amused and saddened by the little man, and the event was a publicity coup. Barnum paid Stratton handsomely - about $150.00 a week. When Stratton retired, he lived in the most esteemed neighborhood of New York, he owned a yacht, and dressed in the nicest clothing he could buy.

In 1860, The American Museum had listed and archived thirteen human curiosities in the museum, including an albino family, The Living Aztecs, three dwarfs, a black mother with two albino children, The Swiss Bearded Lady, The Highland Fat Boys, and What Is It? (Henry Johnson, a mentally disabled black man). Barnum introduced the "man-monkey" William Henry Johnson, a microcephalic black dwarf who spoke a mysterious language created by Barnum and was known as Zip the Pinhead . In 1862, he discovered the giantess Anna Swan and Commodore Nutt, a new Tom Thumb, with whom Barnum visited President Abraham Lincoln at the White House. During the Civil War, Barnum's museum drew large audiences seeking diversion from the conflict.

Barnum's most popular and highest grossing act was the Tattooed Man, George Contentenus. He claimed to be a Greek-Albanian prince raised in a Turkish harem. He had 338 tattoos covering his body. Each one was ornate and told a story. His story was that he was on a military expedition but was captured by native people, who gave him the choice of either being chopped up into little pieces or receive full body tattoos. This process supposedly took three months and Contentenus was the only hostage who survived. He produced a 23-page book, which detailed every aspect of his experience and drew a large crowd. When Contentenus partnered with Barnum, he began to earn more than $1,000 a week($31,000 in 2020). His wealth became so staggering that the New York Times wrote, "He wears very handsome diamond rings and other jewelry, valued altogether at about $3,000 [roughly $93,000 in 2020 dollars] and usually goes armed to protect himself from persons who might attempt to rob him." Though Contentenus was very fortunate, other freaks were not. Upon his death in 1891, he donated about half of his life earnings to other freaks who Barnum retired in 1865 when his museum burnt to the ground. Though Barnum was and still is criticized for exploitation, he paid the performers fairly handsome sums of money. Some of the acts made the equivalent of what some sports stars make today. Between 1842, when he took over the American Museum, and 1868, when he gave it up after fires twice had all but destroyed it, Barnum’s gaudy showmanship enticed 82 million visitors—among them Henry and William James, Charles Dickens, and Edward VII, then prince of Wales—into his halls and to his other enterprises. 

 

Barnum did not enter the circus business until he was 60 years old. He established "P. T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan & Hippodrome" in Delavan, Wisconsin, in 1870 with William Cameron Coup; it was a traveling circus, menagerie, and museum of "freaks". It went through various names: "P. T. Barnum's Travelling World's Fair, Great Roman Hippodrome and Greatest Show on Earth", and "P. T. Barnum's Greatest Show on Earth, And The Great London Circus, Sanger's Royal British Menagerie and The Grand International Allied Shows United" after an 1881 merger with James Bailey and James L. Hutchinson, soon shortened to "Barnum & Bailey's". This entertainment phenomenon was the first circus to display three rings.[25] The show's first primary attraction was Jumbo, an African elephant that Barnum purchased in 1882 from the London Zoo. The Barnum and Bailey Circus still contained acts similar to his Traveling Menagerie, including acrobats, freak shows, and General Tom Thumb. Barnum persisted in growing the circus in spite of more fires, train disasters, and other setbacks, and he was aided by circus professionals who ran the daily operations. He and Bailey split up in 1885, but they came back together in 1888 with the "Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show On Earth", later "Barnum & Bailey Circus" which toured the world.

Barnum was one of the first circus owners to move his circus by train, on the suggestion of Bailey and other business partners, and probably the first to own his own train. Given the lack of paved highways in America at that time, this turned out to be a shrewd decision that vastly expanded Barnum's geographical reach. In this new industry, Barnum leaned more on the advice of his partners, most of whom were young enough to be his sons.

Barnum became known as the "Shakespeare of Advertising" due to his innovative and impressive ideas.

 

    Barnum went on to write his autobiography and do something interesting, more interested in publicity than profits, he made his biography public domain. This meant that anyone who wanted to publish his biography could do so without having to secure rights for it. In his 81st year, Barnum fell gravely ill. At his request, a New York newspaper published his obituary in advance so that he might enjoy it. Two weeks later, after inquiring about the box office receipts of the circus, Barnum died in his Connecticut mansion. The Times of London echoed the world press in its final tribute: “He created the métier of showman on a grandiose scale.…He early realized that essential feature of a modern democracy, its readiness to be led to what will amuse and instruct it.…His name is a proverb already, and a proverb it will continue

Those are the stories, for the most part of two of the major players in the freakshow game. There were more, and maybe we will revisit the rest of the stories and the other folks involved at a later date but for now we are going to move on to what you all want…some of the coolest  freaks there were!!!

LAZARUS COLLOREDO

We mentioned this fellow a bit earlier and it was time to bring him back. Born in 1617 in Genoa, Italy, Colloredo would exhibit himself all across Europe during his lifetime. Colloredo is among the earliest—and most extraordinary—recorded cases of parasitic twins. We found this description of Lazarus by Danish anatomist Thomas Bartholinus, as detailed in the 19th-century book, Kirby’s Wonderful and Eccentric Museum:

 

“I saw, saith Bartholinus, Lazarus Colloredo, the Genoese, first at Copenhagen, after at Basil, when he was twenty-eight years of age, but in both places with amazement. This Lazarus had a little brother growing out at his breast, who was in that posture born with him. If I mistake not, the bone, called xyphoideus, in both of them grew together; his left foot along hung downwards; he had two arms but only three fingers upon each hand: some appearance there was of the secret parts: he moved his hands ears and lips, and had a little beating in the breast. This little brother voids no excrements but by the mouth, nose, and ears, and is nourished by that which the greater takes: he has distinct animal and vital parts from the greater, since he sleeps, sweats, and moves when the other wakes, rests and sweats not. Both received their names at the font; the greater that of Lazarus, and the other that of Johannes Baptista. The natural bowels, as the liver, spleen, &c. are the same in both. Johannes Baptista hath his eyes for the most

 

part shut: his breath small, so that holding a feather at his mouth it scarcely moves, but holding the hand there we find a small and warm breath. His mouth is usually open, and wet with spittle; his head is bigger than that of Lazarus, but deformed; his hair hanging down while his face is in an upright posture. Both have beards; that of Baptista is neglected, but that of Lazarus very neat. Lazarus is of a just stature, a decent body, courteous deportment, and gallantly attired: he covers the body of his brother with his cloak, nor would you think a monster lay within at your first discourse with him. He seemed always of a constant mind, unless that now and then he was solicitous as to his end, for he feared the death of his brother, presaging that when it came to pass, he should also expire with the stench and putrefaction of his body; and therefore he took greater care of his brother than himself.”

Well then! That sounds like a fucking insane thing to see!!

TARRARE

The walking manifestation of one of the seven deadly sins prowled the cobbled streets of 18th-century Paris, seeking only to indulge his endless hunger. Earlier in life, his dietary needs started out robustly, but were otherwise innocuous. However, things would soon take a sinister turn so far as this overzealous diner was concerned. According to contemporary accounts and existent medical records, his quenchless appetite continued growing to the point that his legendarily gluttonous gorging caused this ravenous Frenchman to ingest live animals and maraud morgues for sustenance. He was once even suspected of kidnapping and devouring a toddler.

The crack team at Ripleys.com was able to speak with a doctor who specializes in science-based nutrition in search of a possible diagnosis, but first, let’s chew the fat on the life of this legendary cannibal and his strange circumstances of existence. Be warned, this is not for the weak of heart—but if you think you can stomach it, then strap in!

 

PARIS, CIRCA 1788

With a large, lip-less mouth stretched wide beyond human regularity and filled with stained teeth, he ate corks, stones, entire baskets of apples—one at a time in quick succession—and live animals (his favorite was snake) for the morbid amusement of repulsed onlookers that were challenged to satiate his seemingly interminable appetite.

Like most modern competitive binge-eaters, Tarrare was diminutive in stature, weighing no more than one hundred pounds—prior to eating, at least. Despite all of his daily intake, he never seemed to keep any of the weight on. When empty, his stomach was loosely distended to the point that he could wrap it around his waist as if it were a belt made of his own, still-attached flesh. When full, it was inflated like a balloon—not unlike a pregnant woman in her final trimester. His hair was fair and soft, while his cheeks, when not engaged at capacity—allegedly able to hold so much as a dozen eggs—were wrinkled and hung slack to create premature jowls.

Prior to life as a successful street performer, the individual is known only by his stage name, Tarrare, lived in destitution as part of a traveling caravan of criminal misfits. Born in the rural countryside surrounding the epicenter of the booming silk-weaving trade in Lyon, France in approximately 1772, his rapacious appetite was readily apparent from an early age. As the legend goes, a young Tarrare was capable of eating his own bodyweight in cow meat within a 24-hour period. Sadly, this boundless craving forced him out of his family’s home as a teenager, as they could no longer afford to feed him.

After several years of touring the country as a vagabond begging for food, for a time Tarrare became the opener for a snake-oil peddling mountebank before taking off to Paris to perform as a solo act. With success came risk. Tarrare once collapsed mid-performance with what was later discovered to be an intestinal obstruction, requiring his audience to carry him to the nearby Hôtel-Dieu hospital. After being treated with laxatives, a grateful Tarrare offered to demonstrate his talents by eating the surgeon’s pocket watch. The surgeon agreed, but only under the condition that he be allowed to cut Tarrare open to retrieve it. Wisely, Tarrare declined.

It was during the French War of the First Coalition when respected military surgeon Dr. Pierre-François Percy first made the acquaintance of the inexplicable Tarrare, now a soldier for the French Revolutionary Army. Barely twenty years old, this peculiar patient proved to be quite extraordinary. Unable to subsist off of military rations alone, Tarrare began doing odd jobs around the base for other soldiers in exchange for their rations and, when that proved to be insufficient, foraged for food scraps in dunghills. Despite all of his scrounging, Tarrare succumbed to exhaustion and was admitted to a military hospital under the care of Dr. Percy.

There, even being granted quadruple rations failed to satiate his hunger. Tarrare began to eat out of the garbage, steal the food of other patients, and even chow down on the hospital’s bandage supply. Psychological testing found Tarrare to be apathetic, but otherwise sane.

Percy’s report described Tarrare as having bloodshot eyes and constantly being overheated and sweating, with a body odor so rancid that he could be smelled from twenty feet away—and that’s by 18th-century French military surgeon standards. Woof. The smell only got worse after eating. Percy described it as being so bad he literally had visible stink lines.

After eating, Tarrare would succumb to the itis and pass out. Percy observed this after preparing a meal made for fifteen to test Tarrare’s limits, which he predictably porked down. Percy continued this experiment by feeding Tarrare live animals: a cat—which he drank the blood of and after consuming, like an owl, he only regurgitated its fur—lizards, snakes, puppies, and an entire eel.

Months of experimentation passed before the military discovered a way to put Tarrare’s unique ability to use: Tarrare was commissioned as a spy for the French Army of the Rhine. His first mission was to secretly courier a document across enemy lines in a place that it could not easily be detected if caught: his digestive tract. After being paid with a wheelbarrow full of thirty pounds of raw bull viscera—which he ate immediately upon presentation directly in front of what we can only imagine to be the incredibly revolted generals and other commanding officers—Tarrare swallowed a wooden box containing a document that could pass through his system completely in-tact and be delivered to a high-ranking prisoner of war in Prussia.

 

As one might expect, an individual who smells like a foot and compulsively eats from the garbage would likely attract attention—not exactly the ideal, hallmark makings of a spy.

Compound this with the fact that Tarrare did not speak any German and he was quickly caught, beaten, imprisoned, and forced to undergo the psychological torment of a mock execution before being returned to France.

Again under the care of Dr. Percy, the trauma Tarrare endured left him incapable of continuing his military service and desperate to find a cure for his condition. Laudanum opiates, wine vinegar, tobacco pills, and a diet of soft-boiled eggs were all employed, but Tarrare was still forced to walk the streets fighting stray dogs for discarded slaughterhouse cuisine, drink the blood of patients who were being treated with bloodletting, and was even caught consuming cadavers from the hospital morgue multiple times. Eventually, a toddler went missing from the hospital and Tarrare, the suspected culprit, was chased from the premises before disappearing into the city.

Dr. Percy is contacted by a physician of Versailles hospital at the behest of a patient on their deathbed. Sure enough, it was Tarrare, now brought to death’s door by what he professed to be a golden fork he had swallowed two years previously and was now lodged inside of him. It had been four years since Percy had last seen Tarrare, who hoped he could save his life by removing the fork. Unfortunately for Tarrare, it was not a fork that was killing him, but end-stage tuberculosis. Within a month, he passed.

A curious colleague intended to inspect Tarrare’s corpse. However, fellow surgeons refused to partake and it quickly became a race against the clock as the body began to rot rapidly. Findings from the autopsy revealed that Tarrare possessed a shockingly-wide esophagus which allowed spectators to look directly from his open mouth into his stomach, which was unfathomably large and lined with ulcers. His body was full of pus, his liver and gallbladder abnormally large, and the fork was never recovered.

 

So, what was the cause of Tarrare’s insatiable hunger? In short, we don’t know for sure. When contemporary medical procedures of the time included drinking raw mercury to clear out head demons (probably), should it come as a surprise that Tarrare received no suitable diagnosis or treatment in his own lifetime?

However, some interesting theories have been suggested over the years. Ripleys.com was able to speak to Dr. Don Moore, a chiropractor certified in science-based nutrition and owner and operator of Synergy Pro Wellness, to get his take on things.

Now, granted, there is a possibility that Dr. Percy’s personal documentation in the years following Tarrare’s death were exaggerated or falsified, but they were considered credible enough at the time of their publication to be featured in reputable medical texts such as The Study of Medicine, Popular Physiology, and London Medical and Physical Journal. Plus, Dr. Percy is considered the father of military surgeons, was Chief Surgeon to the French Army, a university professor, inventor of important battlefield medical implements, and is considered an all-around highly reputable guy. So, given we accept the above tale as an accurate representation of Tarrare’s symptoms, what does Dr. Moore have to say about it?

“It can be broken down by category: He didn’t suffer from psychosis, so he was completely aware and cognitive. But that doesn’t rule out hyperactivity of hormones and dysfunction of components of the brain. His sensor that would let him know he was full was damaged. If he underwent a brain study, he would have probably been identified as having had an enlarged hypothalamus.”

 

The hypothalamus regulates the body’s temperature and is responsible for causing the sensation of hunger. Given Tarrare was constantly overheated and in dire search of food, it’s a perfect fit. Dr. Moore also suspects a possible case of pica, which causes the eating of non-edible objects.

As for why Tarrare never weighed more than one hundred pounds, Dr. Moore adroitly theorizes, based on his habitually eating raw meat: “He most likely had a parasite as well. The fact that he was of normal size means something else is being nourished, and the fact that he was constantly hungry leans towards him feeding a secondary organism. A parasite like a hookworm or roundworm, perhaps.”

 

 

FANNIE MILLS

This next one...i had to put in for obvious reasons! As far as freak shows go, Fanny Mills was one of the most unusual performers to ever step foot inside the sideshow tent. Known as the “Ohio BigFoot Girl,” Fanny seemed normal in every respect…except for her massive feet. Fanny was born in Sussex, England in 1860, and then immigrated with her family to Sandusky, Ohio. The condition that brought her notoriety was Milroy Disease, a rare disorder that causes lymphedema, in which the lower legs and feet swell with lymph fluid. Neither of Fanny’s sisters were born with the disease.

Fanny was a petite woman who only weighed 115 pounds. Her feet, however, were 19 inches long and 7 inches wide. She wore a size 30 shoe made of three goatskins.

Fanny started touring the country in 1885 as “that girl from Ohio” with the “biggest feet on Earth.” She traveled with a nurse named Mary Brown, who helped her get around. Her promoters advertised her to unwed men as “a boon for poor bachelors,” offering $5,000 and a well-stocked farm to any respectable man who would marry her.

“Don’t permit two big feet to stand between you and wedlock tinged with fortune,” the ad read.

 

Fanny eventually married William Brown, Mary’s brother, in 1886.

She retired from show business in 1891 because of an illness, and died later that year

GRADY STILES JR.

This guy is another famous guy. But you may not know his whole, incredibly crazy story! He’s the mutha fuckin lobster boy!!! The Stiles family was suffering from a peculiar physical condition known as Ectrodactyly, which is a rare congenital deformity that makes the hand look like lobster claws as the middle fingers are either missing or seemingly fused to the thumb or pinky finger.

The family has been afflicted for over a century with ectrodactyly, a condition commonly known as the Lobster claw. It is an uncommon inherent distortion of the hand where the center digit is missing and the hand is parted where the metacarpal of the finger ought to be.

This split regularly gives the hands the presence of lobster hooks in spite of the fact that cases run in seriousness. Frequently this condition happens in both the hands and the feet and, while it is an acquired condition, it can skirt an age. While the term ectrodactyly sounds medicinally clean when contrasted with ‘Lobster Claw Syndrome’.

While many have viewed Ectrodactyly as a handicap, for the Stiles family it came with an opportunity. The physical condition stayed within the family and any newcomer to the family came out with unusual hands and feet.

But one member from the family, Grady stiles Jr., would give the Stiles’ family a different reputation when he became a serial abuser and murderer.

The home of Gardy Stiles, or popularly known as the lobster boy was an unpleasant place to be. During the carnival season in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Grady was one of the many sideshow performers who people came to gawk at some time in wonder and sometimes out of rudeness.

Grady never concerned himself too much with the opinions of onlookers, he was only there to put on a show, his audience was impressed or not. Grady was born with a severe deformity that gave him the name, The Lobster Boy.

GRADY STILES JR. A.K.A THE LOBSTER BOY (CREDIT: YOUTUBE)

Lobster Boy was born in Pittsburgh in 1937, at that point his father was already part of the “freak show” circuit, adding his kids with the peculiar physical condition to the act.

Because of the deformity Grady couldn’t walk and was confined to a wheelchair, his legs were almost flipper-like and unable to bear weight this resulted in him using his upper body to maneuver around usually in a wheelchair.

All of the locomotion provided by his arms turned Grady into a rather strong man despite his downfalls but he didn’t only utilize his to make his life easier for himself but also to make other’s life harder.

For most of his life, Gary primarily used a wheelchair — but also learned to use his power to use his upper body to pull himself across the floor with impressive strength.

As Grady grew up he would become immensely strong, something which will cost his family later in life.

At age 19 Mary ran off to join the carnival, escaping her old life, oddly enough she felt she belonged best there. Despite the fact that she was surrounded by people with shocking abilities and deformities but for her this was normal.

Mary Theresa wasn’t there for the same reasons the performers were but the carnival always needed staff to keep the shows running. It was here that she met Grady Stiles.

Mary Theresa didn’t see the monster in Grady as others had, she quickly fell in love with Grady and the two were married within no time. Together they had two children and, like his father before him, introduced the children with ectrodactyly to the family business.

Grady added his children into his sideshow with him traveling as an act known as the Lobster Family, of the many issues that were in the family, money wasn’t one of them. The family would make $50,000-$80,000 per season and Grady was considered the major star of the show.

There were no gimmicks with the lobster family no tricks or illusions, What the crowd saw is what the crowd got.

Once the winter set in the show’s closed down and many of their performers including the Stiles family resided in Florida until the new season came around.

Despite the pleasant weather and more free time, Grady still didn’t hesitate to inflict physical and emotional pain on his family.

If Many only would have known when she was younger what she knew after marrying Grady perhaps it would have made a difference.

Mary recollected that Grady was the best anybody could be, a genuinely honorable man however as soon he poured the liquor in his body, something in his brain changed and he would abandon a nobleman to a harsh spouse and father. He turned into a much more alarming man, a genuine beast, more noteworthy than the one others considered him to be. He was a real nightmare come to life.

Marry was impacted in ways that she would never forget. She remembered that her husband was a great guy when he woke up in the morning by 8:00 am and started drinking by 10 and would be miserable for the rest of the day.

In 1973, Grady-Mary’s marriage hit its first end when Mary decided that she couldn’t take the abuse any longer after Grday launched himself at her, took her to the floor, ripped her pantyhose, reached his clawed hand and ripped out the intrauterine device, a device used to prevent pregnancy, and used her hands to choke her – something they were seemingly designed to do well.

Mary was so disgusted, horrified, and emotionally wounded that she wisely left him.

The worst was yet to come after Mary was gone, Grady started drinking even more and when her teenage daughter, Donna fell in love with a young man that he didn’t approve of, he didn’t take the decision very well.

Donna and Jack Lane were in loved and wanted to marry but Grady forbade the marriage threatening to kill Jack numerous times. Donna was unhappy with her drunk and abusive father and wanted an escape.

Donna told Grady that if he didn’t approve the underage marriage, she would live with Jack anyway. This further enraged Grady who prided himself in the way he dominated his family and controlled them.

Grady was home when Jack came home to see him on the night before Jack and Donna were to be married, thinking that maybe Grady has changed his mind and is now happy with our marriage.

Instead of agreeing, Stiles picked up his shotgun and murdered his daughter’s fiance in cold blood. HE sat there while his daughter came and said ‘I told you I would kill him.’

Grady went to trial where the defense attempted to get the jury to pity Grady and his condition. The defense played heavily into the fact that Grady had an unfortunate life driven to drinking and violence by the incessant struggles he faced.

Grady even managed to shed some tears in the courtroom, his daughter Donna took the stand and told him that “she would see him at his grave.”

The jury took three hours in deciding that Grady was guilty of third-degree-murder, Grady received a sentence of 15 years but not in prison but 15 years of probation.

The state believed that their prison system even in their handicap accessible facilities weren’t equipped to handle the specific need for Grady Stiles: no prison could deal with his handicap and to restrict him to jail would be merciless and irregular discipline. He additionally, at this point, had procured liver cirrhosis from drinking and had emphysema from long stretches of cigarette smoking.

So Grady got to serve his sentence from home where he continued to drink heavily and beat his children.

For reasons that no one — either in the Stiles family or outside of it — has been able to understand, his first wife agreed to remarry him in 1989.

Mary who left Grady earlier came back in his life again in 1989 and surprisingly enough forgave the monster for all his wrongdoings.

As earlier Grady was decent for a while but after some time the monster in him came back to haunt the lives of Mary and her children. The violence surged back to the surface as did copious amounts of sexual assault.

A couple of years after she remarried Stiles, she paid her 17-year-old neighbor, Chris Wyant, $1,500 to murder him. Mary Teresa’s child from another marriage, Glenn, helped her imagine the thought and complete the arrangement.

One night, Wyant took a .32 Colt Automatic he had a companion buy for him. He went into Stiles’ trailer, Grady was watching television in his underwear, Wyant put 2 round in the back of his head at the point-clear range, killing him instantly.

Freedom But with A Cost

Police arrested Mary, her son Harry and the killer Wyant. The jury convicted Wyant of second-degree murder and sentenced him to 27 years in prison.

Not one of them denied that they had intended to kill Grady Stiles. During the trial, his wife spoke at length of his abusive history. “My husband was going to kill my family,” she told the court, “I believe that from the bottom of my heart.”

Unfortunately for Mary’s child Glenn, self-defense isn’t applicable when hiring a hitman and Glenn was convicted of first-degree murder and was given life-sentence without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

At least one of their children, Cathy, testified against him as well.

Mary was also charged with first-degree murder and her conviction was reduced to manslaughter and she was sentenced to 12 years behind bars.

She unsuccessfully appealed her conviction and began to serve her sentence in February of 1997. She had tried to get Glenn to take a plea bargain but he refused. The court sentenced him to life in prison.

Just as a significant portion of his living family was being tried for his murder, Grady Stiles’ body was put to rest. Or unrest, as it were: Lobster Boy was so disliked, not just in his family but within the community, that the funeral home could not find anyone willing to be pallbearers.

That's a story that most people don't know about the Lobster Boy!!

ELLA HARPER

Most sources indicate that Ella Harper was born in Hendersonville, Tennessee around 1870 – although there are some conflicting reports. It has also been revealed that Ella had a twin brother, who died quite early. What is not argued, however, is the fact that Ella was born with an unusual orthopedic condition resulting in knees that bent backwards.  The nature of this unusual affliction is exceedingly rare and relatively unknown, however most modern medical types would classify her condition and a very advanced form of congenital genu recurvatum – also known as ‘back knee deformity’. Her unusually bent knees, coupled with her preference of walking on all fours resulted in her moniker of ‘The Camel Girl’.

In 1886, Ella was the star of W. H. Harris’s Nickel Plate Circus, often appearing accompanied by a camel when presented to audiences and she was a feature in the newspapers of every town the circus visited. Those newspapers touted Ella as ‘the most wonderful freak of nature since the creation of the world’ and that her ‘counterpart never did exist’.

The back of Ella’s 1886 pitch card is far more modest in its information:

 I am called the camel girl because my knees turn backward. I can walk best on my hands and feet as you see me in the picture. I have traveled considerably in the show business for the past four years and now, this is 1886 and I intend to quit the show business and go to school and fit myself for another occupation. 

It appears that Ella did indeed move on to other ventures, and her $200 a week salary likely opened many doors for her. For quite some time no further information was available on Ella following 1886, but recently a genealogist managed to not only trace Ella’s family tree, but also provide some information regarding her life after sideshow.

On 28 June 1905 Ella Harper married a man named Robert L. Savely. Savely was a school teacher and later a bookkeeper for a photo supplies company.  A 1910 Census shows Ella and her husband living in Nashville, Tennessee with Ella’s mother and it also revealed that Ella and her husband had adopted a 3 month old child, but that the child passed away only 18 days later.

We also now know that Ella died of colon cancer on 19 December 1921 in Nashville, Tennessee and that she was buried at Spring Hill Cemetery in Nashville. A simple gravestone marks her plot, but she is surrounded by family.

LEONARD TRASK THE WONDERFUL INVALID

Some human marvels are made, not born. Often their manufacture is accidental and painful, such is the case of Leonard Trask. Born on June 30, 1805 in Hartford, Maine Trask suffered a major neck injury in his 20’s when he was thrown from his horse. The story was that a pig ran under the hooves of his horse and, after being thrown from the back of his steed, Trask spent several days crawling back home. Despite the serious injury, Trask continued to work as a farm hand until his spine began to bow.

Soon, Trask’s chin was pressed into his chest permanently, and subsequent injuries only exasperated his misery. In 1840 he took a nasty fall and in 1853 he was thrown from his wagon and broke 4 ribs and his collarbone. On May 24, 1858 Trask was involved in a high-speed coach accident, in which he and several passengers where thrown to the ground. In the accident, Trask struck his head and opened ‘a gash in his head five inches long’. The injury was severe, and he was not expected to survive, but he did and was even more disabled and miserable as a result of the injury.

Through much of his adult life, his wife took care of him, and despite his physical limitations he fathered seven children with her. Unable to work, Trask was eventually able to spin his status as a medical curiosity into small career as a human oddity attraction to the general public. As “The Wonderful Invalid”, Trask was able to capture a small measure of fame. His 1860 self-published story A Brief Historical Sketch of the Life and Sufferings of Leonard Trask, the Wonderful Invalid, which included accounts of his activities like ‘Mr. Trask at the Circus’ and ‘Mr.Trask Going to Drink’ that were both amusing and sad.

At the time of his death on April 13, 1861 Trask’s condition was still not officially diagnosed despite seeing more than 22 doctors during his lifetime. Today Trask would be diagnosed with Ankylosing spondylitis, a condition that affect less than 0.2% of the general population

JOSEPHINE MYRTLE COARBIN

For all intents and purposes, Josephine Myrtle Corbin was a normal girl. Her birth was not marked by anything out of the ordinary, and her mother claimed to have had a typical labor and delivery, apart from the baby being momentarily in the breech position.

The doctors who examined the baby after birth reported her to be strong and healthy, adding that she was growing at a good rate. A year later she was found to be nursing “healthily” and “thriving well.”

Overall, Myrtle Corbin was a perfectly healthy, active, and thriving baby girl. All in spite of having four legs.

Perfectly Ordinary (Almost)

After being born with four legs, two normal sized ones on either side of a pair of diminutive ones, the doctor who delivered Myrtle Corbin felt it necessary to point out the factors they felt could have resulted in her deformity. First, the baby’s parents, the doctors said, were about 10 years apart in age. William H. Corbin was 25, and his wife Nancy was 34.

 

Second, the doctors noted that the couple bore a striking resemblance to each other. Both of them were redheads, with blue eyes and very fair complexions. They actually looked so similar that the doctors felt it necessary to explicitly point out that the two were not “blood kin” in their medical reports.

Despite the two factors the doctors listed, it seemed that the young girl was simply an oddity – her parents had had seven other children, all of whom were perfectly ordinary.

Later, it would be determined that she was born with dipygus and her condition was likely the result of her body’s axis splitting as it developed. As a result, she was born with two pelvises side by side.

With each pelvis, she had two sets of legs, one normal sized, and one small. The two small legs were side by side, flanked on either side by two normal legs, though one with a clubbed foot.

According to medical journals written by the physicians that studied Myrtle Corbin throughout her life, she was able to move her smaller inner legs, though they weren’t strong enough for her to be able to walk on. Which, of course, didn’t really matter, as they were not long enough to touch the ground.

In 1881 at age 13, Myrtle Corbin joined the sideshow circuit under the moniker “The Four-Legged Girl From Texas.” After showing her to curious neighbors and charging them a dime each, her father realized her potential for publicity and for cash. He had promotional pamphlets made up and began placing ads in newspapers for people to come see her.

The promotional pamphlets described her as a girl with “as gentle of disposition as the summer sunshine and as happy as the day is long.” And, indeed, that appeared to be true.

Throughout her time as a sideshow attraction, she became wildly popular. Eventually, rather than bringing the curious onlookers to her she began traveling. By visiting small towns and cities and performing for the public, she ended up earning up to $450 a week.

Eventually, famed showman P.T. Barnum heard about her and hired her for his show.

For four years, she continued to work for Barnum and even inspired several other showmen to produce fake four-legged humans for their own shows when they couldn’t get her.

 

At 18 years old, Myrtle Corbin retired from the sideshow business. She’d met a doctor named Clinton Bicknell and fallen in love. At 19, the two were married.

About a year later in the spring of 1887, Myrtle Corbin discovered she was pregnant. She’d gone to a doctor in Blountsville, Ala., complaining of pain in her left side, fever, headache, and a decreased appetite. Despite her unique anatomy (she had two sets of internal and external reproductive anatomies), doctors did not believe there was a reason she couldn’t carry to term.

 

Though she became gravely ill during the first three months of her pregnancy, resulting in her doctor performing an abortion, she ended up giving birth to four more healthy children in her life.

After performing in the sideshow and giving birth to her children, Myrtle Corbin’s life was rather normal. Though her case continued to pop up in medical journals around the country, she maintained a quiet existence in her Texas home with her husband and children.

Eventually in 1928, she died as the result of a streptococcal skin infection. Though antibiotics make the condition easily treatable today, in the 1920s there was no such treatment available.

SEALO

Stanislaus Berent  was an American freak who performed at many freak shows, including the World Circus Sideshow in 1941 under the stage name of Sealo the Seal Boy (often stylized to just Sealo). He was known for his seal-like arms, which were caused by a congenital medical condition known as phocomelia. In 2001, Mat Fraser's play inspired by Sealo called Sealboy: Freak debuted. Berent was born November 24, 1901 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  He was brought up as a Polish Catholic and suffered from an extremely rare congenital disorder known as phocomelia, which caused his "seal arms".  He had no arms; his hands grew from his shoulders. Sealo started off his career as a newspaper seller, then was discovered by freak scouters.He  was a regular feature at Coney Island's freak show from circa 1920 to 1970[4] and was exaggerated as a human with a seal body on some promotional sideshow posters. Despite his genetic disability, Sealo was still able to carry out feats like sawing a crate in half and shaving with a straight razor on his own, as well as moulding animal figurines out of clay. His partner on-stage was Toby, a chimpanzee. Sealo had trouble getting up and down the performance stage due to his weak legs. He would spend the time in which he was not performing on stage selling pitch cards. After performing, he preferred resting at hotels to sleeping at the fairground. He performed at the World Circus Sideshow in 1941. He also toured around the world and performed at many other freak shows.

Sealo's freak show career lasted for thirty-five years; he retired in 1976 and moved to Showmen's Retirement Village in Gibsonton, Florida. He returned to his hometown of Pittsburgh afterwards when his health started to decline.  He spent his final days at a Catholic hospital and died in 1980.

GEORGE AND WILLIE MUSE

The Muse brothers had an incredible career. The story of the two black albino brothers from Roanoke, Virginia is unique even in the bizarre world of freaks and sideshows. They were initially exploited and then later hailed for their unintentional role in civil rights.

Born in the 1890’s the pair were scouted by sideshow agents and kidnapped in 1899 by bounty hunters working in the employ of an unknown sideshow promoter. Black albinos, being extremely rare, would have been an extremely lucrative attraction. They were falsely told that their mother was dead, and that they would never be returning home.

The brothers began to tour. To accentuate their already unusual appearance, their handler had the brothers grow out their hair into long white dreadlocks. In 1922 showman Al G. Barnes began showcasing the brothers in his circus as White Ecuadorian cannibals Eko and Iko. When that gimmick failed to attract crowds the brothers were rechristened the ‘Sheep-Headed Men’ and later, in 1923, the ‘Ambassadors from Mars’.

As the ‘Men from Mars’ the two traveled extensively with the Barnes circus. Unfortunately, while they were being fed, housed and trained in playing the mandolin, they were not being paid.

In the mid 1920’s the Muse brothers toured with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. In 1927, while visiting their hometown, their mother finally tracked them down. She fought to free her sons, some 20 years after their disappearance. She threatened to sue and the Muse brothers were freed.

The brothers filed a lawsuit for the wages they earned but were never paid. They initially demanded a lump-sum payment of 100,000. However, as time passed the Muse brothers missed the crowds, the attention and the opportunities sideshow provided. Their lawyer got them a smaller lump-sum payment and a substantial contract with a flat monthly wage. The pair returned to show business in 1928.

During their first season back they played Madison Square Garden and drew over 10,000 spectators during each of their performances. They made spectacular money as their new contract allowed them to sell their own merchandise and keep all the profits for themselves. In the 1930’s they toured Europe, Asia and Australia. They performed for royals and dignitaries including the Queen of England. In 1937 they returned to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for several years and finally ended their career in 1961 with the Clyde Beatty Circus.

The brothers returned to their hometown and lived together in a house they originally purchased for their mother. Neither brother married, though they were well known for their many extravagant courtships.

George Muse died in 1971 and many expected Willie to quickly follow his brother. Those people were wrong as Willie continued to play his mandolin and enjoy the company friends and family until his death on Good Friday of 2001.

He was 108 years old.

These are just a few of the many many many circus freaks throughout history. We purposefully did not cover guys like The Elephant Man and other more popular ones as we wanted to bring you some interesting ones you may not know about, except maybe the lobster boy but that shit is crazy! There are some more interesting stories and Coney Island deserves its own discussion...can you say….BONUS episode!!!