The Midnight Train Podcast

Skin Walkers?

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Info take from:

https://allthatsinteresting.com/skinwalker

 

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/navajo-skinwalkers/

 

https://www.wjhl.com

 

The Uinta Basin is a section of the Colorado Plateaus province, part of the enormous Intermontane Plateaus division. It is also a geologic structural basin in eastern Utah, east of the Wasatch Mountains and south of the Uinta Mountains.

For as long as humans have lived in the Uintah Basin, they’ve seen strange things in the sky. In the 1970s, Utah State professor Frank Salisbury wrote a detailed, profoundly investigative book about hundreds of UFO sightings seen in the basin, called “The Utah UFO Display: A Biologists Report.”

However, the weird stuff goes way beyond strange flying anomalies. For 15 generations, indigenous tribes, including the Utes, have referred to this ridge as being “in the path of the skinwalker.” 

In the Navajo culture, a skinwalker is a harmful witch who can turn into, possess, or disguise themselves as an animal.

 

The legend of the shapeshifting entity known as the Skinwalker has primarily been seen as a hoax. It’s hard to believe that a human-like figure has been transforming into a four-legged animal and terrorizing families in the American Southwest for centuries.

While not precisely proven, the Navajo Skinwalker has profound roots in Native American lore.

 

So, what is a Skinwalker? As The Navajo-English Dictionary explains, the “Skinwalker” has been translated from the Navajo “Yee Naaldlooshii. The literal translation means “by means of it, it goes on all fours” — and the yee naaldlooshii is just one of many varieties of Skinwalkers, called ‘ánti’jhni and is considered one of the most volatile and dangerous witches.

For the Navajo people, witchcraft is just another part of their spirituality and one of the “ways” of their lives. Witchcraft has long been part of their culture, history, and traditions. Witches exist alongside humans and are not supernatural beings.

The Navajo believe there are places where the powers of both good and evil are present and that those powers can be harnessed for either. Medicine men utilize these powers to heal and aid members of their communities. At the same time, those who practice Navajo witchcraft seek to direct the spiritual forces to cause harm or misfortune to others. This type of Navajo witchcraft is known as the “Witchery Way,” which uses human corpses in various ways such as tools from the bones, and concoctions that are used to curse, harm, or kill intended victims. The knowledge of these powers is passed down from the elders through the generations.

 

The Navajo are part of a larger cultural area that includes the Pueblo people, Apache, Hopi, Ute, and other groups that also have their versions of the Skinwalker. Still, each consists of an evil witch capable of transforming itself into an animal.

Among these tribes, several stories and descriptions have been told throughout the years about the Skinwalkers.

Sometimes, these witches evolved from living their lives as respected healers or spiritual guides, who later chose to use their powers for evil. Though they can be male or female, they are more often male. They walk freely among the tribe during the day and secretly transform at night.

To become a Skinwalker, they must be initiated by a secret society that requires the evilest of deeds – the killing of a close family member, most often a sibling. Kind of like the soul stone. After this horrible task has been completed, the person then acquires supernatural powers, which give them the ability to shape-shift into animals. They are often seen in the form of coyotes, wolves, freddy foxes, cougars, dogs, and bears but can take the shape of any animal. They then wear the skins of the animals they transform into, hence, the name Skinwalker. 

Sometimes, they also adorned animal skulls or antlers atop their heads, which brought them more power. They choose what animal they want to turn into, depending on the abilities needed for a particular task, such as speed, strength, endurance, stealth, claws, teeth, etc. They may transform again if trying to escape from pursuers.

Because of this, the Navajo consider it taboo for its members to wear the pelt of any predatory animal. However, sheepskin, leather, and buckskin are acceptable.

The skinwalkers can also take possession of the bodies of human victims if a person locks eyes with them. After controlling, the witch can make its victims do and say things that they wouldn’t otherwise.

 

Some traditions believe Skinwalkers are born of a benevolent medicine man who abuses indigenous magic for evil. The medicine man is then given mythical powers of sin that vary from tradition to tradition. Still, the power all traditions mention is the ability to turn into or possess an animal or person. Other practices believe a man, woman, or child can become a Skinwalker by committing any deep-seated evil deed.

 

The evil society of the witches gathers in dark caves or secluded places for several purposes – to initiate new members, plot their activities, harm people from a distance with black magic, perform dark ceremonial rites and tickle the taints of ceremonial voodoo dolls. These ceremonies are similar to other tribal affairs, including dancing, feasts, rituals, mutual masturbation, and sand-painting, but were “corrupted” with dark connotations. The evildoers are also said to engage in necrophilia with female corpses, commit cannibalism, incest, and grave robberies. During these gatherings, the Skinwalkers shape-shift into their animal forms or go naked, wearing only beaded jewelry and ceremonial paint. The leader of the Skinwalkers is usually an older man, who is a very powerful and longtime Skinwalker.

Skinwalkers also have other powers, including reading others’ minds, controlling their thoughts and behavior, causing disease and illness, destroying property, getting a woman to make up their mind about where to have dinner, and even death.

Those who have talked of their encounters with these evil beings describe several ways to know if a skinwalker is near. They make sounds around homes, such as knocking on windows, banging on walls, and scraping noises on the roof. On some occasions, they have been spied peering through windows. More often, they appear in front of vehicles in hopes of causing a severe accident.

Some claim that, in addition to being able to shapeshift, the Skinwalker is also able to control the creatures of the night, such as wolves and owls, and to make them do their bidding. Some can call up the spirits of the dead and reanimate the corpses to attack their enemies. Zombies. Boom! Because of this, the Native Americans rarely ventured out alone.

The skin walkers' supernatural powers are uncanny, as they are said to run faster than a car and have the ability to jump high cliffs. They are swift, agile, impossible to catch, and leave tracks that are larger than those of any animal. When they have been seen, they have been described as not quite human and not entirely animal. They are usually naked, but some have reported seeing the creature wearing tattered shirts or jeans, kind of like Bruce Banner.

 

The Skinwalker kills out of greed, anger, envy, spite, or revenge. It also robs graves for personal wealth and collects much-needed ingredients in black magic. These witches live on the unexpired lives of their victims, and they must continually kill or die themselves.

Skinwalkers and other witches have long been blamed for all manner of unexpected struggles and tragedies through the years, including sickness, drought, poor crops, and sudden deaths. Even more minor or individual problems such as windstorms during dances, alienation of affection by mates, the death of livestock, and reversal of fortune, were often believed to be the work of a witch.

This situation was most apparent with the Navajo Witch Purge of 1878, which initially evolved from a cultural response to many people moving across and onto their lands. After a series of wars with the U.S. Army, the Navajo were expelled from their land and forced to march to the Bosque Redondo (Fort Sumner) in New Mexico in what is known as the Long Walk of the Navajo in 1864.

The people suffered from inadequate water, failed crops, illness, and death, reducing their numbers dramatically. After four years, the government finally admitted they had made a mistake, and the Navajo were allowed to return to their homeland in the Four Corners area.

During these years, many of the tribe’s members were said to have turned to shape-shifting to escape the terrible conditions. In the meantime, the rest of the tribe were convinced that their gods had deserted them.

Once the people had returned to their homeland, their conditions improved, but the dreaded skinwalkers, whom they blamed for their years on the bleak reservation, were still among them. Accusations of witchcraft and the hunting of the skinwalkers began. When someone found a collection of witch artifacts wrapped in a copy of the Treaty of 1868, the tribal members unleashed deadly consequences. The “Navajo Witch Purge” occurred in 1878, in which 40 Navajo suspected witches were killed to restore harmony and balance for the tribe.

Today, most of the tales of sightings of these witches do not include death or injury but instead are more “trickster-like.” So, the Native American equivalent of Loki. 

Numerous people have told stories of swift animals running alongside their vehicles, matching their speed. After a short period, however, they run off into the wilderness. Along the way, these animals often turn into a man, who jumps out and bangs on the hood.

Another story tells of a man making repairs on an old ranch home when he began to hear loud laughter coming from the nearby sheep pens. Thinking he was alone, he investigated and found all sheep but one huddled in one corner of the pen. However, a lone ram was separated from the group, standing upright and laughing very human-like. After the man locks eyes with the ram, he sees that his eyes are not an animal but like a human’s. The animal then casually walked away on all four legs. Peyote’s a wonderful drug.

 

Some say they have seen the skinwalker running through the night, sometimes turning into a fiery ball, leaving streaks of color behind them. Others have seen angry-looking humanoid figures looking down on them from cliffs, mountains, and mesas.

In the 1980s, one of the most notable events occurred when a family was driving through the Navajo Reservation. As they slowed to make a sharp curve, something jumped from the ditch. It was described as black, hairy, and wore a shirt and pants. A few days after this event, at their home in Flagstaff, Arizona, the family was awakened to the sounds of loud drumming and chanting. Outside their home were three dark forms of “men” outside their fence. However, these shadowy creatures were seemingly unable to climb the fence and soon left.

These events have occurred in the Four-Corners area of southwest Colorado, southeast Utah, northeast Arizona, and northwest New Mexico.

In the 1990s, a ranch in northeast Utah, far away from the Navajo Reservation, became the partial focus of the Skinwalkers. Called the Sherman Ranch, the UFO Ranch, and most notably, the Skinwalker Ranch, this place has a history of UFOs, aliens, cattle mutilations, and crop circles. Located near the Ute Indian reservation, these people have long thought that the Navajo curse their tribe in retribution for many perceived transgressions. Since then, the skinwalkers have plagued the Ute people. 

 

Witchcraft represents the antithesis of Navajo cultural values and is not tolerated. They work to avoid it, prevent it, and cure it in their daily behaviors. However, when it exists, their laws have always said that when a person becomes a witch, they have forfeited their humanity and their right to exist, so they should be killed.

However, skinwalkers are notoriously hard to kill, and attempts are usually unsuccessful. Trying to kill one will often result in the witch seeking revenge. Successful killing generally requires the assistance of a powerful shaman, who knows spells and rituals that can turn the Skinwalker’s evil, back upon itself. Another alternative is to shoot the creature with bullets dipped into white ash. However, this shot must hit the witch in the neck or the head. Double-tap!

Little more is known about the purported being, as the Navajo are reluctant to discuss it with outsiders — and often even amongst each other. Traditional belief threatens that speaking about the malevolent beings is not only bad luck but makes their appearance all the more likely.

Native American writer and historian Adrienne Keene explained how J.K. Rowling’s use of similar entities in her Harry Potter series affected indigenous people who believed in the Skinwalker.

“What happens when Rowling pulls this in, is we as Native people are now opened up to a barrage of questions about these beliefs and traditions,” said Keene, “but these are not things that need or should be discussed by outsiders.”

 

The rest of us Americans got our first real glimpse into the story of the Navajo legend in 1996 when an article titled “Frequent Fliers?” was published by the Utah-based news outlet, The Deseret News. The story told us of a Utah family’s unsettling experience with the creature that included cattle mutilations and disappearances, UFO sightings, and the appearance of, you guessed it, crop circles.

 

Terry and Gwen Sherman first observed UFOs of varying sizes hovering above their property, then seven of their cows died or disappeared. One was reportedly found with a hole cut into the center of its left eyeball. Another had its rectum carved out. Damn near killed ‘em.

 

The Shermans found dead cattle surrounded by an odd, chemical smell. One was found dead in a clump of trees. The branches above appeared to have been cut off.

One of the vanished cows had left tracks in the snow that suddenly stopped.

“If it’s snow, it’s hard for a 1,200- or 1,400-pound animal to just walk off without leaving tracks or to stop and walk backwards completely and never miss their tracks,” Terry Sherman said. “It was just gone. It was very bizarre.”

 

However, the family’s most traumatizing encounter happened 18 months after moving onto the ranch. Terry Sherman heard voices while walking his dogs late one night. Sherman reported that the voices spoke in a language he didn’t recognize. He estimated that they came from about 25 feet away — but he couldn’t see anything. His dogs went nuts, barked, and ran back hastily to the house.

 

On a different night, Sherman took his dogs for a walk around the ranch late at night when he came upon a wolf. But, of course, this wasn’t an ordinary wolf. It was three times larger than a regular wolf, had glowing red eyes, and just stood there when three close-range shots by Sherman hit its hide.

 

The Shermans dipped the hell out and sold the so-called Skinwalker Ranch in 1996 — after only 18 months of owning it.

 

The Sherman family weren’t the only ones traumatized on the property. After they moved out, several new owners experienced eerily similar encounters with these creatures, and today, the ranch has become a hub of paranormal research that’s aptly renamed Skinwalker Ranch.

While paranormal investigators probe the property with novel inventions, what they're looking for has a history that is centuries old.

 

The ranch is now fortified with barbed wire, private property signs, and armed guards.

UFO enthusiast and Las Vegas realtor Robert Bigelow bought the ranch for $200,000 in 1996. He established the National Institute for Discovery Science and put up substantial surveillance. The goal was to assess what exactly had been going on there.

Dr. John Alexander retired from Army intelligence as a colonel. He was part of the first scientific study of the ranch under the umbrella of NIDS, the National Institute for Discovery Science.

He continues to work as a consultant to the Department of Defense. After earning a Ph.D., Alexander was directly involved with the U.S. Army’s psychic warrior research program and then became one of the first employees of NIDS.

NIDS was a think tank created and funded by Las Vegas aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow. After reading a Deseret newspaper story about UFO activity at the ranch, Bigelow flew to Utah, bought the property, and assigned a team of professionals to study the ranch and the basin.

The rancher and his neighbors told the NIDS team about a crapload of abnormal activity from shadow people appearing in and around the ranch house. In these poltergeist-type events, physical objects moved on their own, strange animals, including giant wolves and sasquatch, have been seen, as well as holes in the sky.

 

The scientists witnessed much of this for themselves, including animals carved up with surgical precision and ghostly images that appeared on camera. In all, they documented hundreds of paranormal events.

“Something else is in control,” John Alexander told Mystery Wire. “And if it wants you to find out, it may allow that, but if it doesn’t, this thing keeps morphing and changing into, you know, new shapes and forms. We had cameras there and things that happened just off-camera , sometimes in front of the camera, but you wouldn’t see them.”

The NIDS investigation was conducted secretly for years but was hindered by buttholes trying to screw with them.

 

A 2005 book, Hunt for the Skinwalker, revealed details about the ranch to the world and came to the attention of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). With the support of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the DIA launched its study of abnormal activity at the ranch and the more significant issue of UFOs.

In all, $22 million was allocated to the research. Reams of documents and reports were generated but have never been made public.

In December 2017 the New York Times revealed the Pentagon’s secret study of UFOs, but that article did not mention the far more mysterious encounters at the ranch.

Lue Elizondo was the intelligence officer in charge of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program – better known as AATIP. This Pentagon group studied the now-famous UFO videos called Tic Tac, Go Fast, and Gimbal, along with other military encounters. Elizondo coordinated with the DIA and the team investigating the ranch.

 

While the strange happenings at the ranch could be considered a spooky Halloween tale, told to scare the bejeezus out of people, it also involves national security.

“Let’s take the nature of Skinwalker Ranch out of the equation and just look at it from an intelligence problem,” Elizondo told Mystery Wire. “You have to ask yourself, ‘is this something that is occurring naturally? Is it something that is being deliberately done? Is it something that another nation could be behind trying to influence us?’”

The public got an inside look at the first two scientific studies of the ranch in a 2018 documentary film, Hunt for the Skinwalker. This film helped inspire a television program about the ranch's new owner, Utah businessman Brandon Fugal, who financed his own scientific study.

 

On March 12, 1997, Bigelow’s employee biochemist Dr. Colm Kelleher spotted a sizeable humanoid figure perched in a tree. Detailed in his book, “Hunt for the Skinwalker,” the creature was 20 feet off the ground and about 50 feet away. Kelleher wrote:

 

“The large creature that lay motionless, almost casually, in the tree. The only indication of the beast’s presence was the penetrating yellow light of the unblinking eyes as they stared fixedly back into the light.”

 

Kelleher fired at the supposed Skinwalker with a rifle, but it fled. It left claw marks and imprints on the ground. Kelleher described the evidence as signs of a “bird of prey, maybe a raptor print, but huge and, from the depth of the print, from a very heavy creature.”

This was only a few days after another scary incident. The ranch manager and his wife had just tagged a calf before their dog began acting strangely.

 

 

“They went back to investigate 45 minutes later, and in the field in broad daylight found the calf and its body cavity empty,” said Kelleher. “Most people know if an 84-pound calf is killed, there is blood spread around. It was as if all of the blood had been removed in a very thorough way.”

The distressing activity continued well into the summer.

.

 

“Three eyewitnesses saw a huge animal in a tree and also another large animal at the base of the tree,” continued Kelleher. “We had videotape equipment, night vision equipment. We started hunting around the tree for the carcass, and there was no evidence whatsoever.”

Ultimately, Bigelow and his research team experienced over 100 incidents on the property — but couldn’t amass the kind of evidence that scientific publication would accept with credulity. Bigelow sold the ranch to Adamantium Holdings for $4.5 million in 2016. Adamantium… I think someone’s screwing with us. 

 

Nevertheless, the research on Skinwalker Ranch is more sophisticated and secretive than ever.

 

There are many stories about Skinwalkers online in such forums as Reddit, which I’ll read through a few in a minute. These experiences commonly occur on Native American reservations and are allegedly only prevented by the blessings of medicine men.

While it’s challenging to figure out just how truthful these accounts are, the descriptions are almost always the same: a four-legged beast with a disturbingly human, albeit marred face, and orange-red glowing eyes.

Those who claimed to have seen these Skinwalkers also said that they were fast and made hellish noises.

 

Skinwalkers have crept back into popular culture through television shows such as HBO’s The Outsider and the History Channel’s “The Secret Of Skinwalker Ranch” documentary series. 

 

Since taking over Skinwalker Ranch, Adamantium has installed equipment all over the property including cameras, alarm systems, infrared, and more. Most alarming, however, are the accounts from company employees.

 

According to VICE, employee Thomas Winterton was one of several who randomly experienced skin inflammation and nausea after working on the grounds. Some had to be hospitalized, with no clear medical diagnosis for their condition.

This, and the following account, parallel some of the inexplicable events featured in Sci-Fi shows like The Outsider. As Winterton reported:

“I take my truck up the road, and as I start to get closer, I start to get really scared. Just this feeling that takes over. Then I hear this voice, as clear as you and me talking right now, that says, ‘Stop, turn around.’ I lean out the window with my spotlight out and start searching around. Nothing.”

The area surrounding Skinwalker Ranch has been dotted with crop circles and littered with UFO sightings and the disappearances of people and livestock.

Despite this dreadful experience, Winterton reported that he isn’t leaving Skinwalker Ranch anytime soon.

“It’s like the ranch calls to you, you know,” he said with a weird ass smile.

 

Reddit user skinwalker stories. Thank you Ranker.com for these

From Redditor /u/Neptune420:

My Father owns a small delivery service that operates out of Farmington, NM. We mostly deliver small packages out to the middle of nowhere that are too much of a hassle for the larger delivery companies to bother with. My Dad is the only employee and we have a few pickup trucks and a trailer.

One day we get a delivery out to Window Rock, AZ, on the Navajo reservation about two hours from Farmington. My Dad gets the call for the job while he is chilling with his Navajo friend, Travis and his girlfriend. Travis mentions how he's got family in Window Rock that he hasn't seen in ages and suggests they go with him.

I was about six or seven at the time and it was the summertime so Dad decides we'll go down together, he can do his delivery really quick, then while Travis sees his family we can go check out the Window Rock (big rock face with a large hole in it that goes to the other side, pretty cool.)

We had to convoy in separate trucks since my Dad's was loaded down with freight. We decided to bring along some talkie talkies so we could communicate with one another.

We spend our time in Window Rock, everything is generally uneventful and we start heading home along the old highway with my Dad and I in front, and Travis and his girlfriend in their truck behind us.

I honestly don't remember most of the Window Rock trip but this next part I can never forget.

We're somewhere on the highway between Window Rock and Gallop, NM. It had just rained earlier in the day and the road was kind of slick so we were taking it pretty slow. On the left of the highway there is nothing but sandstone cliffs and on the right there is a huge field separated from the road by a small barbed wire fence.

We crest the top of this hill and down at the bottom of the hill we see what appears to be a very large dog, sitting back on its haunches in the middle of the road, facing the cliffs.

My Dad calls over the radio "Hey Trav, do you see that big ass dog?" Travis starts yelling back over the radio "That is not a dog! Speed up right now and hit it!" He sounds almost hysterical. He just keeps screaming "Hit it! Jj you have to hit it! Please! PLEASE! Hit that f*cking thing right now!"

So my Dad starts to speed up and as we get a bit closer I can begin to see it a little more clearly. It's covered in this brown, wiry, matted hair that appears to have dried blood all over it. It's still facing the cliffs but the moment our headlights hit it, it turns and looks at us and it has a...face

I don't know how else to describe it other than a mix between a bear's and a humans' face. It looks twisted and distorted and almost in pain. As we get closer to this thing we start to realize it's actually f*cking huge. Though it was still sitting on its' haunches it is about shoulder height with the hood of the truck.

We get literally inches from hitting it when it lets out this scream that sounds like someone screaming as their lungs were filling with water and it leaps backwards, towards the field, landing just on our side of the barbed wire fence. Then with another leap it was gone from sight.

Travis is comes over the radio again, "Holy sh*t! Keep driving! We have to get out of here! We have to go faster!" he kept repeating that last part. We have to get out of here and we have to go faster.

Pretty soon we a speeding like crazy and just as we start to come near the outskirts of Gallup we get pulled over. Travis pulls his truck over with us. Naturally this makes the cop, a Navajo man himself, very on edge and he immediately asks why Travis felt the need to pull over as well. Travis says "We just saw a skinwalker a few miles back and it's been following us!" The officer immediately turns white, stammers something about a verbal warning gets in his car and takes off. We do the same.

We didn't see anything else that night but when we got home Travis refused to let us leave without taking some kind of Navajo totem thing that was supposed to keep it away.

From Redditor /u/Navajo_Joe: 

I was a kid when this happened... My uncle and I were finishing up chopping/gathering firewood for my grandmother because it was getting dark. Driving back on a dirt road at about 30mph (give or take 5mph) I had this awful sense of being watched. Before I could turn to look out my window (passenger side) my uncle quickly shouted, "Don't!" I completely froze. My heart felt like it was beating out of my chest then completely stopped when I heard a tap tap on my window. My uncle sped up and was loudly praying in my native language. I didn't know what was going on and thought it was over till our truck suddenly dipped from the bed. My uncle then started saying, "Look at me" and "Don't turn away" over and over. Then I heard it again, tap tap but from the window behind me. It was getting harder for me to breathe and I wanted to cry. A minute or two passed and the truck dipped again. My uncle looked around and sighed. It was quiet besides the truck and the road. He looked at me and said, "We will ask your father to do a prayer in the morning. So the evil will forget our faces." (Navajo to English equivalent). I remember curling up on the seat and just staring at the radio watching the time. Listening to my uncle sing an old prayer till we got to my grandmother's house.

I called my uncle because I had a nightmare about that night. We talked about it for a bit. He said, “I didn’t see faces. Just eyes. Like brake lights you see on the road. It watched you.” (Navajo to English equivalent) Before hanging up I tried joking with him about it. "Why didn’t you just step on the brake when it was in the back?" No laughter. Just a pause. “Because it wasn’t alone.”

 

From Redditor /u/Iron_Jesus:

Anybody that has been on the Navajo reservation has either probably heard of some creepy things or have experienced pretty creepy things. Namely skinwalkers. I have only seen one. Here is my story.

I come from a small town in northern Arizona that’s sandwiched between the Paiute reservation to the north and the US’s largest Navajo reservation to the south. My high school being so small (a 1A high school that has, on average, 80 students enrolled every year.) always had to travel south about five to 10 hours one way to play another high school in any sport. This means that we traveled A LOT on the Navajo rez. And we also usually stayed at hotels when we would head out to play and come home in the morning but this trip was a little bit different. I remember the basketball coach saying that the school didn’t have enough money to put up the teams in a hotel that trip so we were going to be on the road for a total of about 12 hours.

I was the only male senior to play basketball that season. We had just got done playing our game and headed home on our bus “Big Blue.” We were headed out and it wasn’t long, about two hours of driving, before we had entered the rez. By this time, everyone was asleep with it being about two in the morning. When we had crossed the rez’s border I noticed the bus driver had sped up and was now going about 85 mph. I thought this was a little weird because he never exceeded the speed limit, at least not in my high school career. For some reason, I couldn’t fall asleep like the rest of my teammates, and I just sat at the back of the bus staring out across the desolate desert landscape that was lit up by the full moon.

As I looked out, I could see a figure running towards the bus at an angle of pursuit…and keeping up with the bus at 85 mph. As the figure got closer I saw that it was a humanoid form. As a matter of fact it looked exactly like a human, only that the face was painted half black and half white with glowing eyes. Glowing eyes like a rabbit’s eyes reflecting light from a spotlight. I immediately thought, “Holy crap! It’s a skinwalker!!” The skinwalker ran up to the edge of the road and just kept up pace with the bus hurdling sage brush and rocks while staring at me. After I made eye contact with the thing, I COULD NOT look away.

It was as if something was holding my head and eyes in place. The skinwalker just smiled at me this inhuman smile that went ear-to-ear, showing crooked, yellow, pointed teeth. I felt like I was going to throw up and I was panicking through the whole ordeal. The skinwalker started to crumple down on to all fours, still keeping up with the bus. I could see his bones crack and reform, hair started appearing all over the skinwalker’s body and in about 3 seconds was now a coyote and it ran off back into the desert out of view. As soon as it was gone, I ran to the onboard bathroom and puked a mixture of food and blood.

I didn’t want to tell anyone for fear they would think I was crazy. I confided in my Navajo friend. She told me that I needed to see the chief, who also happened to be a friend of mine, and get a blessing. I saw him the next school day in the parking lot. He just came up to me and mumbled something in Navajo while waving a feathered scepter-like thing, turned around, got in his truck and drove away. To this day, I haven’t seen another skinwalker. It might be due to the fact I moved away from that town and rez, and, if I do have to go south, I go around... WAY around.

 

From Redditor /u/jibbyjam1:

This all happened about five years ago. One night, a few of my friends decided after a night of hanging out that we’d go on an adventure at about 3 AM. We took a ride about 50 miles to this old Spanish ruin (in New Mexico), that was once the seat of the Inquisition. I can’t for the life of me remember what the place is called.

So we jump the front gate to the place and start exploring. One of my friends brought a flute with him and he started playing it and about 30 seconds into his (mediocre) playing, something started screaming really really loud on the tops of the long-destroyed walls of the place. It was going from wall to wall really quick, screaming the most blood-curdling scream you’ve ever imagined. We noped the f*ck out of there (one of my friends pissed his pants) and drove for a few hours to Bandelier National Monument where we planned to camp out at for the rest of the weekend.

We got to bandelier at probably like 6 or 7am and set up our camp. After a few hours just talking about what the hell happened at the ruins, I went to talked a piss behind a probably only like 300 feet from our camp. This is where everything starts getting a little fuzzy. I remember seeing 2 dust devils coming my way and when I turned around again, 2 of my friends were there and they were motioning me to follow them. I couldn’t help but to follow them, like I was being pulled behind them in shackles.

I followed them for what seemed like 10 or 15 minutes and then I snapped out of it. These weren’t my friends they had bright red hair, with my friends faces and cat eyes. Both of these friends were brunette. I stopped walking and they looked at me with probably the most terrifying gaze I’ve ever seen. Monsters in movies are nothing compared to this. I turned around and ran as fast as I could back the way I came from.

After like 5 minutes of a full sprint, I got back to that rock that I pissed at and found our camp. Everyone was there, still sitting around talking and didn’t even notice that I was gone. I told them what happened with the look-alike skinwalkers and we packed up everything and left probably within like 10 minutes and got the hell back to Albuquerque.

 

Ok, last one!

 

From Redditor /u/NordicAlchemist: 

As many of you might already know, many Navajo people (including my own family), are very reluctant to speak about skinwalkers because it is believed to attract their attention. Well, I however, grew up away from the Navajo Nation and was very naive about the subject. When it came to skinwalkers, I was an absolute skeptic. My mom used to tell a story of how back in the 80's when she lived with her siblings and my grandparents (still in Shiprock, but the southern outskirts) about how she and my aunt saw a skin walker just outside their driveway under a street light. She described it as a black dog with dirty fur, a twisted noodle-like front leg, and these unnatural eyes with a soft burnt orange glow. Me being my own closed minded self doubted every word, but I never said my doubts aloud.

BUT, these doubts totally changed last year when I went to my grandparents house last October. Me and my family had just finished scourging the carnival at the Navajo Nation Fair and called it night. The house was close enough where we could walk home in just 10 minutes, so we did. When we got there it was about 9 at night where we stayed up until about 2 catching up about family affairs and the local news. It was during that time that I just decidedly opened my mouth and blurt out the question, "Hey are skinwalkers real?". "guys?", I asked. "You shouldn't be speaking about that!" my grandma said with almost a disturbed yell in her voice. So she and my grandfather both decide to go to bed. After being scolded by my mom, one of my aunts chimes in with a very cautious tone and says, "They're real alright, had a few start screaming outside of my trailer in Farmington just a few night ago. You're cousin had nightmares the whole night and woke up crying that morning." Not wanting to push the discomfort any further, we all decided to go to bed. Now the trailer/home is pretty old and it was a really nice night, so we slept with the windows open with screens to prevent bugs coming in. Everyone had drifted off to sleep except me, because my mind was still going a million miles a minute about skinwalkers and wondered if I ever encounter one while here on the reservation (As a kid I was told its taboo to think about skinwalkers because it can still call their attention). That's when the sh*t totally hit the fan.

Just as I was settling and finally getting relaxed for sleep, I started to hear something moving outside. I get up from the couch and start wandering over to the kitchen window. In the trailer, all of the rooms have the lights out so the only visible light that can be seen is from the porch light out front. I was thankful for this because I told myself if it really was a skin walker outside then hopefully it wouldn't notice me seeing it. So I muster up the courage and take a quick scan of outside. From the porch light all I can see is the dusty ground and the vehicles that my family drove along with some old metal trashcans that stood beside the road. Looking for about a good 5 seconds, I wasn't able to see anything so I was getting ready to turn around and walk back to bed thinking it was just a stray cat or something. Only have taken two steps, I hear what sound like a distorted scream coming from outside, definitely close by. Fear rising, I look outside again and there I see it! A coyote-like figure was staring at my direction from behind the cars, just outside of the reach of the porch light. Only it looked, awfully wrong, and gave off an evil vibe just from seeing it. It was grey with very disheveled hair and a horrific orange-red soft glow came from its eyes. I noped the hell out and ran back to the bedroom. It was at this moment I had begun to also notice an awful stench in the air that smelled like rotting meat. I started trying to wake up my mom who was like, "omg, its almost 3am, what do you want?". I immediately began in a shaken voice, "there's something scary outside!". Then she said (now annoyed because I woke her up), "Ugh it's probably just a stray animal or something, it's the rez, animals wander all the time at night." She obviously wasn't getting the drift of what I was saying so I screamed, "THERE'S SOME BLAIR WITCH PROJECT SH*T GOING ON OUTSIDE, MA!!!"

that got her attention

"What?! What the hell are you talking about??" she said. Then we heard it, the thing outside started making more of it's dreadful like screams and started what sounded like thrashing outside on the ground. "Hear that?! That's what I'm talking about!" So both her and I got back up looked outside the window and the coyote-thing was making it's way to the door. It walked with an odd limp and dragged it's back right leg as if it has handicapped. We could hear it start to scratch against the door and make this odd muffled moaning sound. My mom went and got my dad and they both started shouted in Navajo all sorts of words telling the thing to go away and saying it's not welcome here. Well all this commotion was enough to get the rest of the trailer up as they came out into the hallway. The only thing my mom did was turn to them and said "skin walker" while proceeding to point to the door (noises STILL happening). Apparently they already knew exactly what to do as my grandfather got out a handgun from a drawer and a bag of ashes. He coated a few bullets and loaded them into the gun and went straight to the door. Yelling out more Navajo that was too fast for me to comprehend he swung open the door and fired twice. Nothing. The thing managed to escape before my grandpa could put a bullet in it. "That's the fastest one I've ever seen", said my grandpa. Next thing you know my aunts and my parents are freaking out about what just happened saying stuff like, "What if it comes back tomorrow?" and "It saw us, does that mean we're targets now?". Afterwards my grandparents calmed everyone down (myself included) saying we'll be fine and we all went to bed (around 3-ish)

Morning comes and my grandparents call one of their neighbors and explain to them what happened. Apparently one of them was a medicine man who used to partake in Yei Bi Chei's (Navajo ceremonies used for healing and curing sickness) and came over to bless each family member and the grounds outside.

The Keddie Cabin Murders

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In July of 1979, Glenna Susan "Sue" Sharp and her five children, John, fifteen,  Ohhhhh Sheila, fourteen, Tina, twelve, Ricky, ten, and Greg, five, left her home in Connecticut after separating from her abusive husband, James Sharp, and their excessively turbulent marriage. She decided to take her children to northern California, where her brother Don lived. She began renting a small one-bedroom trailer formerly occupied by her brother at the Claremont Trailer Village in Quincy. Obviously, the cramped trailer wasn't working for the family so, the following fall, she moved to house #28 in the rural Sierra Nevada resort town of Keddie. 

 

The resort was having financial troubles and had converted its once massively successful cabins into low-income housing. The house was much larger than the trailer and had become available when Plumas County's then-sheriff, Sylvester Douglas Thomas, moved out. The cabin was a bit beat up, but there were three rooms and plenty of other families nearby. The oldest son Johnny took the unfinished basement, her youngest boys, Rick and Greg, took a bedroom, Sue and Tina shared a room, and Sheila had a bedroom. The kids all had friends their own ages to hang out with, and, at least for that moment, everyone seemed happy and content.

 

Sue's ex-husband, James, had been in the Navy so, the family was familiar with moving a lot, and they looked forward to being in one place for a while. However, sue had a hard time making ends meet. She received $250 from her ex-husband, food stamps, and social welfare. She was also enrolled in a federal education program that gave her money to attend classes at the local community college.

Sue was taking business classes. Her classmates said she was a good student. Sue worked hard and obtained excellent grades. However, her classmates also said she was a loner; she didn't join in on coffee breaks and preferred studying alone rather than in a group setting. Perhaps years of abuse had taken a toll on her.

 

Sue faced a lot of stigmatism in the community. People didn't seem like she was on welfare and appeared to date many men. People gossiped, as nosy assholes always do, and accused her of dealing drugs or sleeping with men for money.

A significant reason for the gossip was that Sue just kept to herself. She didn't make many friends; this was most likely because she had spent most of her adult life moving and wasn't accustomed to establishing lasting friendships. Coming from someone that moved around a lot, it's always easier to distance yourself than to create relationships that could disappear at any given moment.

Sue didn't seem to mind being alone, and she didn't care what the Bridgettes and Mikes of the neighborhood had thought about her. She just looked forward to building her life. She wanted to own a small business, buy a house suitable for the kids and, most importantly, keep them safe.

 

On April 11, 1981, around 11:30 am, Sue, Sheila, and Greg drove from their friends' residence, the Meeks family, to pick up ten-year-old Ricky, who was attending baseball tryouts at Gansner Field in Quincy. They happened upon the oldest son, John, and his friend, Dana Hall Wingate hitchhiking from Quincy to Keddie and picked them up, then drove about 6 miles (9.7 km) toward Keddie. Two hours later, around 3:30 pm, John and Dana hitchhiked back to Quincy, where they may have had plans to visit friends for a party. Around this time, the two were seen in the city's downtown area.

 

That same evening, fourteen-year-old Sheila had plans to spend the night with the Seabolt family, who lived in a nearby cabin. At the same time, Sue remained at home with Rick, Greg, and the boys' young friend, Justin. The three boys had spent most of the day riding bikes and playing outside. Damn, I miss those days. Sheila left their home shortly after 8:00 pm, leaving her mother alone with the younger children. Twelve-year-old Tina, who had been watching television at the Seabolt's, returned home around 9:30 pm after Sheila arrived at the Seabolts' to spend the night. So, mom's at home with  Ricky, Greg, their friend Justin and Tina on a Saturday night, just hanging out. John and his buddy were supposed to come home that night, but it was never apparent when.

 

Little Greg was the first to go to bed around 8:30 pm. Then Tina around 9:30. Ricky and Justin joined Sue to watch Love Boat, and then they went to bed around 10:00 pm. Sue remained on the couch watching TV, dozing off, but not ready to turn in. More than likely, she was waiting for John and Dana to return before calling it a night.

 

Around 7:00 am on Sunday, April 12, Sheila returned home to change clothes and head to church with the Seabolt's. What she discovered was something out of a nightmare; the dead bodies of Sue, John, and Dana in the house's living room. She recognized her brother John lying face up, covered in blood. Another boy was face down, and they were both tied at the feet. She saw a yellow blanket covering what she thought looked like another body, but she didn't know who. She ran out of the cabin, screaming, back to the Seabolt's who called the police. All three had been bound with medical tape and electrical cords. Tina was absent from the home, while the three younger children—Rick, Greg, and Justin—were unharmed in an adjacent bedroom. Initial reports stated that the three young boys had slept through the incident, though later contradicted. Sheila and James Seabolt Jr. went back to Cabin 28 to find the rest of the family. Looking into the cabin's windows, they saw the youngest boys and Justin sleeping in their bedroom. They woke them up by tapping on the window and insisted that they crawl through it, so they didn't have to see the horrors in the living room. James Seabolt later admitted to having briefly entered the home through the back door to see if anyone was still alive, potentially contaminating evidence in the process.

 

The murders of Sue, John, and Dana were incredibly ferocious. Two bloodied knives and one hammer were found at the scene. One of the knives (a steak knife later determined to have been used in the murders) had been bent at roughly 30 degrees, demonstrating the amount of aggression administered in the slayings. Blood spatter evidence from inside the house indicated that the murders of Sue, John, and Dana had all taken place in the living room. Tina was still unaccounted for.

 

This shit is pretty rough, so you've been warned. 

 

Sue was found lying on her side near the living room sofa, nude from the waist down. She had been gagged with a blue bandana and her own panties, which had been secured with tape. She had been stabbed in the chest, her throat was stabbed horizontally, the wound going so deep that it went through her larynx and nicked her spine. On the side of her head was an imprint matching the butt of a Daisy 880 Powerline BB/pellet rifle. John's throat was slashed. Dana had multiple head injuries and had been manually strangled to death. In addition, John and Dana suffered blunt-force trauma to their heads caused by a hammer or hammers. Autopsies determined that Sue and John died from knife wounds and blunt-force trauma. Dana had died by asphyxiation.

 

Sheila and the Seabolt family (remember, Sheila had spent the night in the with them) heard no commotion during the night; a couple living in nearby house #16 was awakened at 1:15 am by what sounded like muffled screaming. Tina's jacket, shoes, and a toolbox containing various tools were missing from the house. There were no signs of forced entry, meaning the family possibly knew the killer or killers. The house's telephone had been taken off the hook and the cord cut from the outlet. The drapes were pulled closed.

 

The crime scene wasn't contained. The Plumas County Sheriff's Office initially handled it. Unfortunately, it was riddled with errors and oversights. Deputy Hank Klement was first on the scene, and he confirmed all three bodies were deceased.

Sergeant Jerry Shaver was next on the scene and spoke to a group of people outside, taking their statements. At some point, Shaver and Klement walked through the house, "reviewing the scene."

Sheriff Sylvester Stillbone Doug Thomas and assistant Sheriff Ken Shanks came to the scene, and then Don Stoy joined them. The scene now had five men walk through it (seven if you consider that James and Sheila had also entered the scene), none of whom knew how to preserve a crime scene.

It wasn't until all five men had walked through the home that photographs of the scene were taken. Next, officers did house-by-house welfare checks and interviewed potential witnesses, and it wasn't until several hours that officers noticed Tina was unaccounted for.

 

Original composite sketches of two suspects based on testimony from Justin, who claimed to have witnessed the crimes.

Justin gave conflicting stories of the evening, including that he had dreamed details of the murders. However, he later claimed to have actually witnessed them. In his later account of events, told under hypnosis, Justin claimed to have awoken to sounds coming from the living room while asleep in the bedroom with Rick and Greg. Investigating these sounds, he saw Sue with two men: one with a mustache and short hair, the other clean-shaven with long hair; both wore glasses. According to Justin, John and Dana entered the home and began heatedly arguing with the men. A fight ensued, after which Tina entered the room and was taken out of the cabin's back door by one of the men.

Based on Justin's descriptions, composite sketches of the two unknown men were produced by Harlan Embry, a man with no artistic ability and no training in forensic sketching. It was never explained why, with access to the Justice Department's and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's top forensic artists, law enforcement chose to use an amateur who sometimes volunteered to help local police. In press releases accompanying the sketches, the suspects were described as being in their late 20s to early 30s; one stood between 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m) to 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) tall with dark-blonde hair, and the other between 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m) and 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) with black, greased hair. Both wore gold-framed sunglasses.

 

Rumors regarding the crimes being ritualistic or motivated by drug trafficking were dismissed by Plumas County Sheriff Doug Thomas. In the week following the murders, he stated that no drug paraphernalia or illegal drugs were found in the home. Carla McMullen, a family acquaintance, later told detectives that Dana Wingate had recently stolen an unknown quantity of LSD from local drug dealers. However, she was unable to provide proof of this claim. About 4,000 man-hours were spent working the case, which Thomas described as "frustrating." In December 1983, detectives ruled out serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole as potential suspects. (Bonus)

 

Tina's disappearance was initially investigated by the FBI as a possible abduction. However, it was reported on April 29, 1981, that the FBI had "backed off" the search as the California State Department of Justice was doing an "adequate job" and "made the FBI's presence unnecessary." A grid pattern search of the area covering a 5-mile (8.0 km) radius around the house was conducted with police canines, but the efforts were fruitless.

 

The hope at the time was that Tina was hiding in the woods. She was known to create forts and hideouts. However, On April 22, 1984, three years and eleven days after the murders, roughly 100 miles (160 km) from Keddie, a bottle collector discovered the top of a human skull and part of a jaw bone at Camp Eighteen near Feather Falls in neighboring Butte County. Shortly after announcing the discovery, the Butte County Sheriff's Office received an anonymous call that identified the remains as belonging to Tina. Still, the call was not documented in the case. However, a deputy assigned to the case in 2013 found a recording of this call. It was at the bottom of an evidence box. The remains were confirmed by a forensic pathologist to be those of Tina in June 1984. Near the remains, detectives discovered a blue nylon jacket, a blanket, a pair of Levi Strauss jeans with a missing back pocket, and an empty medical tape dispenser.

 

According to truecrimemysteries.medium.com,

 

The most confusing thing about the homicide was that three young boys slept through the entire ordeal. The killers just left them as potential witnesses. Ricky and Greg supposedly had no recollection, and the first thing they remembered was Sheila waking them.

Justin reported telling his mother that he had dreamed he had heard noises in the living room. When he opened the bedroom door, he saw Sue talking to two men, and Johnny and Dana walking in the front door and began arguing with the men, a fight broke out, and Tina came into the room but was quickly taken outside by one of the men.

It is important to note that Justin's testimonies changed at various points in his life, and the most detailed recount he gave was under hypnosis. So his statement also doesn't quite align with the evidence, but it is strongly believed that he was a witness, and the trauma of the ordeal is why he doesn't have a robust and consistent memory.

 

As we mentioned, investigators found two bloody kitchen knives used with such force that one was severely bent, a hammer, and a pellet gun. In addition, each victim had been bound with medical tape and electrical cords taken from various appliances around the home and extension cords.

 

Evidence collected by investigators were drops of blood on Tina's bed, a bloody footprint in the yard, knife marks on various walls in the home, and a bloody fingerprint on the inside of a door frame and a railing.

It is strongly believed that at least two people would have been needed to control the chaos. The killers were also in no rush. The victims died of their wounds, except for Dana. There were lone pools of blood on the living room floor, indicating the boys had been moved and repositioned. The bottoms of Sue's bare feet and one of the boy's shoes were covered in blood, suggesting that they were mobile and had walked in blood at one point.

Detectives noted a lack of fingerprints and identifiable DNA left at the scene. This led the detectives to believe that the suspects wore gloves and were prepared. Forensic evidence wasn't collected until the mid-1980s, so hair, skin cells, and other DNA transfers weren't gathered from the scene. All blood at the scene was determined to belong to the victims.

 

The Plumas County Sheriff's department interviewed everyone in the Keddie cabins and anyone else who knew the victims. Among those interviewed was Justin Eason's stepfather, Martin Smartt. A neighbor and main suspect, Martin Smartt, claimed that a claw hammer had inexplicably gone missing from his home. Plumas County Sheriff Sylvester Thomas, who presided over the case, later stated that Martin had provided "endless clues" in the case that seemed to "throw the suspicion away from him." In addition to interviewing the Smartts, detectives interviewed numerous other locals and neighbors; several, including members of the Seabolt family, recalled seeing a green van parked at the Sharps' house around 9:00 pm.

 

According to Smartt, on the night of the murder, he, his friend John "Bo" Boubede, and his wife Marilyn had stopped at Sue's cabin to invite her to the bar with them. Sue declined, and they went to the bar. Smartt complained to the manager about the music being played at the bar. They left shortly afterward and headed back to the Smartt cabin, walking by cabin 28. Marilyn went to bed around 11 pm, and the men went back to the bar to have more drinks.

He said that he and Bo had returned home around midnight. Since the police hadn't released information that a hammer was missing from the crime scene, this put Martin at the top of the suspect list.

 

Martin had met Boubede a few weeks before April 11, while in a Veterans hospital where Martin was receiving treatments for PTSD from serving in Vietnam.

The Smartt's moved Boubede into their home until he could get on his feet. Boubede allegedly didn't think highly of Johnny Sharp calling him a "Punk."

Boubede had told the people in Keddie that he had been a cop, and Martin was friendly with most officers. Someone in the sheriff's department allegedly tipped off Martin and Boubede that they were suspects, and both men quickly found work outside of California.

Boubede was thought to have gone back to Chicago, and Smartt found a job in Nevada. Boubede died in Chicago in 1988.

Martin Smartt wasn't the best husband. He was said to have cheated on his wife. He was abusive and prone to violent outbursts and sold drugs. He had worked at the Keddie hotel as a cook but had been fired some weeks before the murders.

Sue, Martin, and Marilyn had all been taking the same business courses, and it was said that Sue had been counseling Marilyn on leaving her husband. After April 11, Martin took work in Nevada, and his marriage to Marilyn began to deteriorate.

He had sent her a letter where it sounds as though he is confessing to the murders. The letter reads as follows:

 

"I've paid the price for your love, and now I've bought it with four lives and you tell me we're through. Great!"

 

They did divorce eventually, and Marilyn got remarried. 

Martin regularly saw a counselor for his PTSD. According to the counselor, Smartt admitted that he had "killed Sue and Tina but had nothing to do with the boys. Tina had to be killed because she had seen everything".

The counselor allegedly told Plumas County Sheriff's Office what Smartt had told her, but there is no evidence of that statement ever taken.

Martin died of cancer in Portland, Oregon, in June 2000. However, Marilyn did go on the record to state she believed her ex-husband and Bo Boubede were responsible for the murders. After she had gone to bed, she said they went back to the bar, and at 2 am, she woke up to find them burning unknown items in the woodstove.

Although there is no evidence to corroborate her statements, it would explain why Justin was left with the younger boys sleeping. It may also explain why Justin's story changed, he could have blocked it from trauma, or he may have been threatened to stay quiet.

 

Keddie and the rest of Plumas County were never the same after April 11. It changed the community, and people were haunted. Many believed that someone among them had or knew who had committed the attacks.

People began locking their doors at night. There were strong beliefs in the community that the Plumas County Sheriff's Office had quietly tucked the case away. Many believed that some leads weren't followed, evidence wasn't checked, some evidence was ignored completely.

 

The house in which the murders occurred was demolished in 2004.

 In 2016, a hammer was found in a pond near Cabin 28 by someone using a metal detector in the area. It matched the description of the hammer Martin had claimed to have lost and it and a knife that was also found at the scene was taken into evidence by Plumas County Special Investigator Mike Gamberg. Plumas County Sheriff Hagwood, who was sixteen years old at the time of the murders and knew the Sharp family personally, stated: "the location it was found... It would have been intentionally put there. It would not have been accidentally misplaced." Gamberg also said that six potential suspects were being examined at that time.

 

In April 2018, Gamberg stated that DNA evidence recovered from a piece of tape at the crime scene matched that of a known living suspect. No word on if they have been any aid to the investigation. There is still a $5,000 reward for any leads leading to an arrest and prosecution. The lead investigators currently working on the case are confident that they will have this solved soon. They are quoted as saying,

"There are persons of interest still living who knew or participated in this crime and should now be worried."

Sheila Sharp continues to work with law enforcement and the media to keep her family's cold case alive.

Gamberg and his partner Hagwood say they are closer now to solving this case than ever before.

"I think it would lift an incredible weight to clear the dark skies that have hung over that community and the surviving family members," Hagwood said. 

The surviving family members have been severely impacted by this case. 

"Things came to an abrupt screeching halt. Opportunities and experiences that were denied. By such a cruel heinous act. It's unforgivable," Hagwood said. 

To solve this case, a weight would be lifted. Darkness would no longer cloud Keddie and the minds of all those involved.

"I believe in one-way shape or form we are going to pull this together," Detective Gamberg said. 

Anyone with information is asked to call the Plumas County Sheriff's office at (530) 283-6360.

Creepy Ireland

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Creepy Ireland

Today's episode is on Creepy Ireland. To kick it off right, we wanted to say "top of the mornin' to ye '’' but seeing as how that's just a silly Hollywood invention, we are instead going to say "A hundred thousand welcomes." 

 

Before we get into the meat and potatoes of this episode, I reached out to a friend of ours, Katie, who’s father is directly from Ireland. I asked her to see if he had any sort of creepy interactions over there. She also reached out to a cousin who lives over there and I received this message, this morning:

 

Oh boy I hit the jackpot reaching out to my cousins in Ireland I had no idea about this but here’s her message. 

 

Ohhh some that I've heard, well as it happens 😅 Our cousin Sibeal, your cousin too (Shib-ale) her dad is part of PSI Ireland, Paranormal Study Investigations they have a whole Facebook/Tiktok following so he could have some good stuff

Yes, they have a website and everyone should go check it out and tell them we sent you. It’s http://psiireland.com/

 

Oh, and the response from Katie’s father:

(From her mother)

Dad said he can’t think of anything.  I asked him about the fairies and the bancheez and he said he never saw any of them.  The only thing we can think of was when they had to break his dead great uncles legs to get him in his coffin because they died at home and rigor mortis set in.

Amazing.

 

Well, it's not much like the Irish or us to beat around the bush, so if you don't like that then, "Fuck off while you still got the legs to carry ya."

 

First off, let's do what we do and talk about the country of Ireland and its history. 

Ireland is a beautiful, lavishly green island in the North Atlantic. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the second-largest island of the British Isles, the third-largest in Europe, and the twentieth-largest on Earth. The first is Greenland. Pretty impressive. By the way, the name "St George's Channel" is said to be recorded in 1578 in Martin Frobisher's record of his second voyage. It derives from a legend that Saint George had voyaged to Roman Britain from the Byzantine Empire, approaching Britain via the channel that bears his name. The name was popularized by English settlers in Ireland after the Plantations.

Funny story about Martin Frobisher; He was a privateer that used to rob French ships. Frobisher also found what he thought was gold ore and carried 200 tons of it home on three ships. They initially determined it to be worth a profit of £5.20 per ton (Roughly $7 U.S. Dollars), Which today would equate to around $237 per ton, making the haul worth approximately $47,400. Encouraged by his newfound wealth, Frobisher returned to Canada with an extensive fleet and dug several mines around Frobisher Bay. He carried 1,350 tons (approximately $319,950 today) of the ore back to England, where, after years and years of smelting, they realized that the ore was an utterly worthless rock called hornblende, which is typically dark green and shows how dumb people were back in the 16th Century.

Ireland is divided between the Republic of Ireland, which covers five-sixths of the island, and Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom. In 2011, the population of Ireland was about 6.6 million, ranking it the second-most populous island in Europe after Great Britain. As of 2016, 4.8 million people lived in the Republic of Ireland, and 1.8 million in Northern Ireland.

Ireland has low-lying mountains surrounding a central plain, with several rivers extending inland. Its lush vegetation is a product of its mild but changeable climate, free of extremes in temperature. Not too hot, not too cold. Sounds nice. Much of Ireland was primarily forests until the end of the Middle Ages. Today, woodland makes up about 10% of the island, compared with a European average of over 33%. There are twenty-six land mammal species native to Ireland; this includes the Red Deer, which is believed to have been present in Ireland for at least 12,000 years. The mighty red deer is Ireland's most significant land mammal and the only current species of deer considered "native" to the country. The Irish climate is influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and thus very moderate, and winters are milder than expected for such a northern area. However, summers are cooler than those in continental Europe. Rainfall and cloud cover are abundant. Like, a lot.

Gaelic Ireland had emerged by the 1st century AD. The island was Christianised from the 5th Century forward. Following the 12th century Anglo-Norman invasion, England claimed supreme power over Ireland. However, English rule did not extend over the entire island until the 16th–17th century Tudor conquest, which led to colonization by settlers from Logan and my distant relatives, the Brits. In the 1690s, a system of Protestant English rule was designed to materially screw over the Catholic majority and Protestant protesters and was extended during the 18th Century. Finally, with the Acts of Union in 1801, Ireland became a part of the United Kingdom. In the early 20th Century, the island's partition followed a war of independence, thus creating the Irish Free State, which became increasingly on its own over the following decades, and Northern Ireland, which remained a part of the United Kingdom. 

Ok, that is a little history on the country of Ireland, and just a little side note, the wife and I are actually looking into going over to Ireland with my best pal and Patreon POOPR, Bill Birch, to visit his girlfriend's awesome family!

Now, let's get into the CREEPY side of Ireland.

What would a creepy episode be without a haunted castle or two or 30,000? Yes, there is approximately 30,000 muffin farmin' castles in Ireland, and, HELL NO, we're not talking about them all. 

Loftus Hall, County Wexford.

Known as the most haunted house in Ireland and said to be haunted by the Devil himself, the fate of Loftus Hall as one of the most haunted places in Ireland was perhaps set in stone due to its construction in 1350 during the time of the Black Death. (head back and listen to that episode) However, the legend of Loftus Hall actually dates from the 18th Century, when a mysterious stranger came calling on the Tottenham family, who occupied the house at the time. Legend has it that the Tottenham daughter, Anne, soon realized that this mysterious stranger was none other than the mother fuckin Devil due to the apparent fact that he had a cloven hoof in place of his foot. Good catch, Anne. 

Soon after, the mysterious stranger disappeared when he flew up and through the roof. Having disgraced the family due to her supposed hysterics, Anne was subsequently locked away in her room, where she died several years later. Psilocybin, anyone? Odd side note, in 2006, Minister for Health Mary Harney banned the sale and possession of magic mushrooms containing psilocybin following the tragic death of a 33-year-old Dublin man who jumped from a balcony while hallucinating. Oof

It is said that mushroom Anne actually haunts Loftus Hall, which is said to be a hive of poltergeist activity, even today. That sonofabitch Devil also left his mark on Loftus Hall, where he left a mysterious mark on the roof, which visitors could view via a pre-booked guided tour of the hall if it were still functioning as a ghost trap. Yep, as far as I know, it's still for sale.

As with most ghost stories, especially ones from forever ago, there are always variations to the story, and, of course, I found one.

 

One evening Charles was resting in his home in 1775 with his second wife and daughter from his first marriage, Anne, while the Loftus family were away on business. A ship unexpectedly arrived at the Hook Peninsula during a storm, where the mansion was located. A young man was welcomed into the mansion. Anne and the young man became very close. One night, the family and the mysterious man were in the Game Room playing cards. Each player received 3 cards apart from Anne, who was only dealt 2 by the mystery man in the game. A butler serving the Tottenham family at the table was just about to question the man when Anne bent down to pick another card from the floor, which she must have dropped. It is said that when Anne bent over to pick up the card, she looked beneath the table to see that the mysterious man had a cloven foot.

It was then that Anne stood up and said to the man: "You have a cloven foot!" So the man went up through the roof, leaving behind a large hole in the ceiling. Soon Anne became mentally ill. It is believed that the family was ashamed of Anne and locked her away in her favorite room, where she would be happy, yet out of everyone's view, which was known as the Tapestry Room. Anne refused food and drink and sat with her knees under her chin, looking out the Tapestry Room window across the sea to where Dunmore East is today, waiting for her mysterious stranger to return until Anne died in the Tapestry Room in 1775. It is said that when she died, they could not straighten her body, as her muscles had seized, and she was buried in the same sitting position in which she had died.

 

Ballygally Castle, County Antrim.

Said to be one of the most haunted places in all of Ulster, the picturesque Ballygally Castle, which sits on the coast, is haunted by several different ghosts. The most well-known of these entities is the ghost of Lady Isabella Shaw. This so-called 'Ghost of Ballygally' has a penchant for knocking on bedroom doors in the dead of night. Though restless, Lady Isabella is a friendly ghost who roams the halls looking for the child taken from her at birth by her cruel husband, Lord James. Once in possession of his child, legend has it that Lord of buttholes James locked his wife away in a tower, where she fell –or was pushed – to her death sometime later. Today, visitors can climb a spiral staircase to view the 'Ghost Room' where Lady Isabella lived her tragic final days.

In 2003, manager Olga Henry mentioned that after spending time in the hotel, "I'm sort of very skeptical about the whole supernatural Thing and ghosts. But the more I stay here and work here, the more I think there's definitely something in this hotel." According to Olga, a guest was staying in one of the rooms, located in the tower beneath the "Ghost Room." In the middle of the night, he awoke, half asleep, believing he was at home and that one of his children had laid their tiny hands on his back. He woke up, realizing where he was, and said that he could hear a child running about the room and laughing, but nothing could be seen, so he ran into the lobby wearing nothing but his boxers, scared to shit. In December 2003, Olga had set up the "Dungeon Room" in the tower, as they were expecting guests and requested that the table be neatly prepared for dinner service. She locked the room and later checked on it. The table was a complete mess with unfolded napkins glasses with an unusual scum around them and was now arranged on the table in a circle. Mediums spending the night at the castle have often reported that they've detected more active ghosts than guests actually staying at the hotel.

Ross Castle

Ross Castle is now run as a B&B and was initially built in 1536 by local ruling clan the O'Donoghues Mór (Ross), though ownership changed hands during the Second Desmond Rebellion of the 1580s to the MacCarthy Mór. He then leased the castle and the lands to Sir Valentine Browne, ancestor of the Earls of Kenmare. The castle was the last to surrender to Oliver Cromwell's Roundheads during the Irish Confederate Wars. It was only taken when a boat brought artillery via the River Laune. Lord Muskerry held the castle against Edmund Ludlow, who marched to Ross with 4,000-foot soldiers and 200 horses; however, it was by water that he attacked the stronghold. The Irish had a prophecy that Ross could never be taken until a warship could swim on the lake, an unbelievable prospect. 

"Ross may all assault disdain. Till on Lough Lein strange ship shall sail."

Guests often wake at night hearing voices and doors banging and shutting on their own. Paranormal believers say the spirit of an English lord's daughter haunts the castle. So does the ghost of Myles "The Slasher" O'Reilly, the Irish chieftain folk hero, spent his last night here before dying in battle in 1644.

 

Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin

More than 1.5 million people are buried in Dublin's Glasnevin Cemetery, none arguably more prominent than Michael Collins, the nationalist leader killed in the Irish Civil War in 1922, among the most visited sites in Glasnevin. At least 183 soldiers of the Irish Free State were buried around him. In 1967 their names were recorded on a memorial around Collin's grave. 

In 1993, a mass grave containing the remains of 155 women was uncovered at the site of a "Magdalene laundry" in High Park, Drumcondra. "Magdalene laundries" were institutions used to house "fallen women" (primarily referring to prostitutes). The Sisters from the Convent arranged to have the remains cremated and reburied in a mass grave at Glasnevin Cemetery, splitting the cost of the reburial with the developer who had bought the land.

The cemetery also offers a view of the changing style of death monuments in Ireland over the last 200 years: from the austere, simple, high stone erections of the period up until the 1860s, to the elaborate Celtic crosses of the nationalistic revival from the 1860s to the 1960s, to the plain Italian marble of the late 20th Century.

So, obviously, tales of ghosts and paranormal happenings shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. But it's the story of one Newfoundland dog that seems to get the most notice. When his master died, the faithful canine companion refused to leave the gravesite, eventually starving to death. Sad as fuck. But! The dog's apparition has been spotted at the tombstone.

 

Loughcrew, Neolithic Cemetery

The Loughcrew Cairns are passage tombs. 32 of them, in fact, were built over 5,000 years ago, and no one knows who made them. The Irish name for the cairns is Sliabh na Cailli, or "the Hills of the Witch." Legend has it that a witch built them by jumping from one hill to the next, dropping stones from her apron to form the cairns.

 

Castle Leslie, County Monaghan

Built in 1870, Castle Leslie's Red Room is supposedly inhabited by Norman Leslie, who died abroad in 1914 and returned to the castle as a ghost. 

This actually comes from their official website:

"The Red Room has been at the centre of family life at Castle Leslie Estate for centuries – a doorway in and out of this life, so to speak. Anita Leslie King gave birth to her daughter Leonie in this room.

Norman Leslie was seen by Lady Marjorie Leslie beside the chest of drawers in 1914, a few weeks after he had been killed on the battlefields of France. He appeared as if in a cloud of light, reading through some of his letters as if he was searching for one in particular. Lady Marjorie sat up in bed with a start and said, `Why Norman – what are you doing here?' He simply turned to her and smiled, then faded away.

Lady Marjorie held court and received visitors in the Red Room until her death in 1951. At the very moment of her departure, she appeared in Desmond Leslie's London flat where his son Sean, then a baby, was dying of a poisoned mastoid. She came up the corridor in a gust of wind touched Sean, who suddenly said, "pain gone." He was perfectly cured.

About the same time, Desmond's mother-in-law, Emmy Bernauer, had a vision of Marjorie pointing across the lake to a fantastic palace glowing in the sky. Marjorie said to her, `Look where I am going to live now.'"

 

Castle Leslie gained media attention in 2002 when Sir Paul McCartney married Heather Mills in the family church located on the estate.

 

The Hell Fire Club, County Dublin

Montpelier Hill, or the Hell Fire Club, is an old hunting lodge set in the Dublin mountains, with an extraordinary past indeed. Founded in the 18th Century by Richard Parsons, a Freemason and the first Earle of Rosse, the Hell Fire Club invited its members to deviate from the social norms of the day and take a walk on the wild side of life. If the Hell-Fire Club had a motto, it was probably 'Anything Goes.' From debauched behavior to satanic rituals, it seems that nothing was off-limits for members of the Hell Fire Club. Indeed, it is said that the ultimate aim for members of the Hell Fire Club was to summon Satan to their meetings. To this effect, members of the club, led by their president 'The King of Hell,' dabbled in black magic and conducted black masses. If legend is to be believed, the Hell Fire Club also sacrificed animals and even dabbled in cannibalism, offering and then consuming a servant girl in their quest to summon the Dark Lord.

One pretty creepy tale refers to a young man, a visitor to a local farmhouse. Hearing stories about it, he goes to investigate the club's activities. The following day he is found dead. His host and the local priest, believing him to have been murdered, go to the club to investigate. The priest enters only to see a banquet laid out and a black cat prowling the room. But this is no ordinary cat. It's friggin huge, and the priest notices that its ears are shaped like horns. Having a small bottle of holy water in his pocket, as one does, the priest decides to attempt an exorcism. The result tears the beast apart. Outside, the young man's host is found lying on the ground, his face and neck deeply scratched by strong claws.

 

Leamaneh Castle, County Clare

There are a lot of haunted castles in Ireland; however, Leamaneh Castle in County Clare might be the castle with the most popular dark history of all. Red Mary, known for her flaming locks and fiery temper, ruled Leamaneh Castle with her husband and an iron fist. She often hung servant girls from the windows by their hair until they died. Married at least twenty-five times, it's said that one of Mary's many (and possibly last) husbands met an untimely end when she kicked him in the stomach until he died. Not surprisingly, Mary made a shit load of enemies, some of whom eventually captured the ginger widow, throwing her into a hollowed-out tree, where she ultimately starved to death. Today, Red Mary is said to haunt the ruins of Leamaneh Castle with her tormented screams and sightings of a fiery red-headed apparition stalking the area.

 

Hill of Tara

Yes, the Hill of Tara is a hill and an ancient ceremonial burial site near Skryne in County Meath, in Ireland. The Hill of Tara is one of the most important ancient sites in Europe and an important symbolic and mystical landscape in Ireland itself. It's believed the site was first used for burials around 3200 BC: the oldest passage tomb dates back to this point. An additional 33 Bronze Age burial sites have been discovered, and all were used for high-status individuals.

The Iron Age is when Tara became truly important. By early Christianity, it was the site of over 100 coronations of High Kings of Ireland: all roads in Ireland led back to Tara in this period of its prominence. The Lia Fáil, or Stone of Destiny, reportedly would let out a roar when it was touched by the rightful king. They say it still emits a vibration to this day.

St Patrick is said to have visited the site, and evidence suggests that by the 11th Century, a church had been built on the site.

Early 20th century Israelites came to Tara to unearth the Ark of the Covenant, which they were convinced was buried on this famous site. Digging in the Mound of the Synods, their unsuccessful efforts (shocker) found only some Roman coins. An official archeological dig in the 1950s revealed circles of post holes that indicated the construction of substantial buildings there. A new theory has arisen that Tara was, you ready for it? The ancient capital of the lost kingdom of Atlantis and that Atlantis was actually Ireland.

 

Charleville Castle, County Offaly

A Gothic-style castle (meaning it wears all black, loves Morrisey, and most likely has Daddy issues), it is located in County Offaly, Ireland, bordering the town of Tullamore, near the River Clodiagh. It is considered one of the finest of its type in the country. The castle itself has been claimed to be the most haunted building and grounds in Europe, appearing on Living TV's Most Haunted and Fox's Scariest Places on Earth. The most famous of these ghosts is a little girl called Harriet, who died after a fall on a staircase in 1961. She's been heard Singing in the middle of the night, screaming and laughing -- this strange mix of sounds has been reported by numerous visitors to the castle. It has also been visited by multiple paranormal investigators and psychics. The castle was photographed by Sir Simon Marsden. It also appeared on Ghost Hunters International. It was also used as a filming location for Becoming Jane (2007), Northanger Abbey (2007), and The Green Knight (2020). 

 

Wicklow Gaol, County Wicklow

 Is a former prison, now a museum. There has been a prison on the site since the late eighteenth Century. Prisoners were held at Wicklow Gaol during the 1798 Rebellion, the Great Famine, and many were held there before penal transportation. I just put that last bit in there because of the word "penal." When a paranormal group visited and broadcast their investigation on TV, Wicklow Gaol became known as one of the most haunted places in Ireland. Some of the strange unexplained events and encounters reported include:

• A man walked in front of the bars to the holding cell/dayroom on the ground floor.
• A woman in a full-length black velvet cloak with the hood up has been seen walking towards the two rooms on the ground level.
• A smell of roses or, at other times, bad smells sometimes emanate from Cell 5.
• A green mist floating around the main floor.
• A man was seen walking from cell 19 to the end of the walkway. Some people have commented that he held his hands behind his back.
• A man has been seen standing in the far corner of the ship's upper deck.
• Some women have reported feeling extremely uneasy on the upper deck, experiencing a sense of fear or apprehension.
• On the lower deck, people often report seeing shadows out of the corner of their eye.
• Some visitors have reported seeing or hearing children crying on the top floor.

 

Leap Castle

Probably the most popular one thus far, fierce family squabbles have plagued this castle, built in the 15th-century. First, brother turned against brother; one was killed as he held Mass in the chapel. Then, centuries later, a gruesome discovery was uncovered: a dungeon filled with human bones – the remains of those imprisoned and executed in the castle. Today, several apparitions have been reported. Among them is "It," a small gray human figure with a skeletal face.

Of the many haunted castles in Ireland, Leap Castle, with a history steeped in betrayal and murder, is possibly the most notorious. However, the castle is also one of the most well-known symbols of haunted Ireland, having achieved fame the world over due to appearances in TV shows such as 'Ghost Adventures' and 'Most Haunted.' From the 'Red Lady' who roams the castle clutching a blade (yikes! This one has a knife!) to the discovery of hundreds of skeletal remains, this is a building with a past that is really high up on the "Nah, I'm good" list.

One of the most unsettling tales is the story of brothers Thaddeus and Teighe O' Connell. Following their father's death, the two brothers found themselves locked in a battle to determine the leadership of their clan. Thaddeus, the older brother, and a priest, was saying Mass when Teighe entered the chapel and fatally stabbed him, thus inheriting the title of Chief. From that day on, the chapel where Thaddeus was brutally slain has been known as the Bloody Chapel, with Thaddeus haunting the creepy-ass building.

Surprisingly, Musician Sean Ryan, who bought Ireland's most haunted castle in the 1990s, still lives there today. We may not have any idea who this dude is, but the fact that he lives there with his family is pretty badass.

Here's a little story from a woman who used to live in the castle:

"On the November 25th, 1915 two of our servants, knowing the 'master' would be late and that I was driving that afternoon, had invited 'friends' two soldiers from the Barracks at Birr distant the other side six miles. They came rather late and my husband came home early so the visitors had to be kept out of his sight in the lower regions of one of the wings (the Priests House) and were unable to be shown the centre tower – the very lofty hall. At 7:15 my husband and I went up to dress for dinner, my room in the extremity of the house from the kitchens, his dressing room next door to me. 

"Whilst dressing I was startled by a loud yell of terror stricken male and female voices coming apparently from the hall — and ran out to see the cause. My husband was out ahead of me at his heels. I passed through the corridor of the wing and onto the gallery …. On the gallery leaning with 'hands' resting on its rail I saw the Thing – the Elemental and smelt it only too well. At the same moment my husband pulled up sharply about ten feet from the Thing, and half turning let fly a volley of abuse at me ending up 'Dressing up a thing like that to try and make a fool of me. And now you'll say I've seen something and I have not seen anything and there is nothing to see, or ever was.' This last speech without a pause, begun waving one hand at the Thing and ended up stalking back to his dressing room still abusing me for trying to give him a fright. As he was speaking the Elemental grew fainter and fainter in its outlines until it disappeared. He never made any enquiry as to the yell that called us both out, and from that day to this has not mentioned the incident to me.

I heard from our servants that when we went to dress for dinner they had brought their friends just to show them the hall, when all four had suddenly seen and smelt the Elemental looking down at them from the gallery. They all got such a turn, they couldn't help letting out a bawl then fled to servants quarters where all four were very sick."

 

Athcarne Castle

Six miles from this 16th-century castle, the tortured cries of soldiers once rose up: At the Battle of Boyne, 1,500 men -- and King James -- died in a bloody sectarian conflict. Athcarne was built for William Bathe in 1590. The Bathe family produced many well-known legal and political personalities around the 16th and 17th centuries. It originally consisted of an Elizabethan tower house, a three-storied mansion, and a corner turret but was renovated around 1830 with a sizeable three-story turret. It lies just six miles from the Battle of the Boyne site, and it is said that James II stayed here on the night before the event in 1690. The last occupant was James Gernon, who lived there until the 1950's when the building was partly demolished. It has stayed in a state of dangerous ruin since. Legends about the castle include cries of dying soldiers heard at night and the specter of a hanged soldier on the great oak tree adjacent. A recent disturbing tale told by a local worker claims to have seen the face of "a demented girl with blood-covered hands."

 

Kilmainham Jail, Dublin

Opened in 1796 as Dublin's new county jail. It was modern for its time, but conditions were appalling. Prisoners included women and children, crammed into tiny cells, sometimes five at a time. Men could have an iron bed, but women and children slept on straw pallets. A candle had to last two weeks, and there were no windows or heat. However, during the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1852, people would commit crimes to be jailed—at least it was a roof over their heads. In 1960, the Kilmainham Gaol Restoration Committee was formed, and workers immediately encountered paranormal phenomena.

Governor Dan McGill lived at Kilmainham in the old warden's quarters, overseeing the restorations. One night he looked out the window and saw the old chapel lights on—which was weird because he had just turned them off. When the Govna investigated, the chapel was empty. So he turned the lights off again and went back to his room. When he looked out the window, the lights were on. He went back and forth with the lights and finally said, "fuck you, ghost!" and gave up. 

The most famous ghostly visitation took place around the same time. A volunteer was painting the dungeon area. Suddenly, an unseen force blew him across the room and pinned him against the far wall. The man had to fight to free himself and escape the dungeon. He refused to go back.  

Other restoration stories include a man who was renewing the Echoing Corridor. He heard footsteps climbing the stone stairs and walking the hall behind him. The footsteps would stop and then start again throughout the day. Another worker heard footsteps approaching and as he looked up, didn't see anyone, but felt an icy chill. Footsteps trudging along the corridor, echoing with the sound of a soldier's brigade, were also familiar and creepy as shit.

 

Alright, now it's time for our infamous "quick hitters." When I say “infamous”, of course I mean more than famous. 

Drink, fuckers

 

Ghost River

Home to the first-ever witch trial in Ireland, Kilkenny is no stranger to the supernatural. During a great flood in 1763, a crowd was crossing John's Bridge when it collapsed, drowning 16 people in the swollen Nore below. Ever since, locals and visitors tell of mysterious ghostly figures in the river, scratching at the banks, leaning where the current structure stands, and rising on the morning mist.

 

The White Lady

Charles Fort, an impressive star-shaped garrison in Cork, has seen its share of bloodshed. But despite the battles, sieges, and rebellions embedded in its walls, the story of the White Lady is the one that really chills the blood. The daughter of the fort's commander was set to wed an officer stationed there, but when her father shot her betrothed, the bride-to-be threw herself into the ocean. Her lost soul continues to wander the grounds, wedding dress and all.

 

Bishop Higgins' Grave

Don't disturb the dead – unless you want to be haunted. Such was the case at St Columb's Cathedral when renovations in 1867 upset the grave of former bishop William Higgins. His tomb was moved inside the cathedral, and that's when things started to get weird. Workers began hearing footsteps in the locked gallery, apparitions appeared in photographs, the organ would sound without a soul near it, and the light echoes of flatulence could be heard bellowing from inside.

 

A Jester's Curse

Y'all like clowns?? How about a murdered jester. Just look at Malahide Castle, a medieval fortress on Dublin's coast, where the spirit of one of these sons of bitches can be seen roaming the grounds. Puck was his name, and stories say he'd fallen in love with one of Malahide's prisoners, Lady Elenora Fitzgerald. Puck was found out, stabbed in the heart and with his last breath, swore to haunt the castle.

 

Hangman's Noose

Crumlin Road Gaol is a historic Victorian-era prison that once held some of Belfast's most notorious characters. It also happens to be one of Northern Ireland's most haunted places. Here, tortured souls of deceased inmates pace the wrought iron walkways and wail in the night. One was an American executed for a crime he didn't commit, another a teenager who took his own life to avoid the hangman's noose.

 

This last one is something Logan found that isn't so much creepy as sad.

 

Miscarriage of Justice

While Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, a highly controversial trial took place over the death of a local family in Maamtrasna, which is on the border of County Mayo and County Galway. It was believed that the reason for the murders was over sheep rustling and the Land War.

The Land War was a debacle between 1879 and 1882. It began during a downward spiral due to economic depression, so to speak. This pretty much halted the post-famine economic progress of many of Ireland's farmers and increased the worries of lower-class families and people that resided under landlords. As a result, some Irish farmers started a movement to "fix" so-called landlordism in Ireland.

In short, due to the famine, many people who were starting to get their lives back in order afterward were not making enough to adjust to the rise in living costs. Some were being forced out of the homes they didn't directly own or were blatantly abandoned to deal with the crappy living conditions they were forced to deal with. 

Known as the Maamtrasna Murders, which took place in August of 1882, a family was found slaughtered in a mountainside cottage In Maamtrasna. Unfortunately, John Joyce, his wife Bridget, his daughter Peigi, and his Mother Margaret were found murdered. His son Michael had survived only to perish the next day from his injuries. Two others had survived the murders. One was there when it happened, and the other was absent from their home. Patsy was injured but did survive, and Martin was at service in Clonbur during the family's demise.

Several men were arrested and charged, one of which being the prime suspect and the most prominent person in the murders, Maolra Seoighe. (Malra Soy). Otherwise known as Myles Joyce in English. The men were as follows, Myles' brothers Martin and Paidin, his nephew Tom; Pat Michael and John Casey, Pat Joyce and Tom Casey. Sadly most of these men only spoke Irish but were tried in a court before a judge and jury without any of them knowing or understanding Irish. During the trials, two men were afraid for their lives and became informants, giving information and evidence on their neighbors and friends.

Myles Joyce was one of the first three men tried and sentenced to death for the murders. The others were Pat Joyce and Pat Casey. The other men were advised by their priest, Father Micheal Mac Aoidh, to plead guilty to avoid being hanged. They were sentenced to death, but the queen's deputy, Earl Spenser, sentenced the men to penal servitude for life, although it is reported that Queen Victoria herself wanted all men hanged.

After the trial, the three convicted men sentenced to death were brought back to Galway. Before being hanged, Pat Casey and Pat Joyce admitted they were guilty, but they also revealed that Myles Joyce was utterly innocent. BASTARDS! This evidence was unfortunately not substantial enough to change the decision of Earl Spenser. In a telegram he sent to the prison's governor the night before the hanging, he stated, "The law must take its course."

The three men were hanged on December 15th, 1882, buried in the prison grounds, known as the Cathedral car park.

On Myles' way to the scaffold, it has been reported that he said in Gaelic, a bunch of very hard-to-say words. So to save me the trouble of trying to read them aloud, Logan found an English translation which is just as disheartening, and it goes as follows; "I will see Jesus Christ in a short while - he too was unjustly hanged … I am going … God help my wife and her five orphans". Holy shit.

There are records from the hangman himself that explain that Myles' hanging did not go as planned. Instead of a quick death, Myles' died from strangulation. This means that his neck did not snap from the hanging, but rather, he hung there, choking to death for several minutes; a torturous and painful death for a man who was to be later, and by later, I mean over a hundred years later, pardoned for the crime of the Joyce Murders.

A couple years after the trials, new evidence was brought forth that was concealed from the initial trial that would have absolved Myles from all wrongdoing. In 2018, President Michael D. Higgins said, "Maolra Seoighe was wrongly convicted of murder and was hanged for a crime that he did not commit ." He later called the trial a "miscarriage of justice ." He pointed to a history of systemic discrimination and linguistic differences, which apparently Ireland still deals with today. Makes sense when a man who spoke only Gaelic was brought forth to a court among his so-called peers who didn't speak a lick of Gaelic. Unfortunately, as it is, at least the family of Myles Joyce, aka Maolra Seoighe, can continue to live knowing that he was indeed an innocent man.

 

https://screenrant.com/best-irish-movies-imdb/

The Shocking History of Execution.

Tonight we are going to tell you a tale. A superb tale. A tale as old as time that takes us from the beginnings of civilization until today. This tale will thrill you and chill you. It may elicit feelings of dread and sadness. It may make you angry.  At times it may make you uneasily laugh like the friend at school that was kicked in the balls but couldn’t show his weakness. It's a subject that people continually argue about and debate with savage ferocity. Tonight we are talking about executions! We'll talk about the methods and the reasons behind executions throughout the years. Then we'll talk about some famous executions, as well as some of the more fucked up ones. And by fucked up, we mean botched. Bad stuff. This episode isn't meant to be a debate for or against executions but merely to discuss them and the crazy shit surrounding them. So with all that being said, Let’s rock and roll!

 

        Capital punishment has been practiced in the history of virtually all known societies and places. The first established death penalty laws date as far back as the Eighteenth Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes.  The Code of Hammurabi was one of the earliest and most complete written legal codes and was proclaimed by the Babylonian king Hammurabi, who reigned from 1792 to 1750 B.C. Hammurabi expanded the city-state of Babylon along the Euphrates River to unite all of southern Mesopotamia. The Hammurabi code of laws, a collection of 282 rules, established standards for commercial interactions and set fines and punishments to meet the requirements of justice. Hammurabi’s Code was carved onto a massive, finger-shaped black stone stele (pillar) that was looted by invaders and finally rediscovered in 1901. The text, compiled at the end of Hammurabi’s reign, is less a proclamation of principles than a collection of legal precedents, set between prose celebrating Hammurabi’s just and pious rule. Hammurabi’s Code provides some of the earliest examples of the doctrine of “lex talionis,” or the laws of retribution, sometimes better known as “an eye for an eye the greatest soulfly song ever!
  The Code of Hammurabi includes many harsh punishments, sometimes demanding the removal of the guilty party’s tongue, hands, breasts, eye, or ear. But the code is also one of the earliest examples of an accused person being considered innocent until proven guilty. The 282 laws are all written in an “if-then form.” For example, if a man steals an ox, he must pay back 30 times its value. The laws range from family law to professional contracts and administrative law, often outlining different standards of justice for the three classes of Babylonian society—the propertied class, freedmen, and slaves.

 

A doctor’s fee for curing a severe wound would be ten silver shekels for a gentleman, five shekels for a freedman, and two shekels for a slave. So, it was less expensive when you were a lower-class citizen. Penalties for malpractice followed the same scheme: a doctor who killed a wealthy patient would have his hands cut off, while only financial restitution was required if the victim was a slave. Crazy!

 

Some examples of the death penalty laws at this time are as follows: 

 

     If a man accuses another man and charges him with homicide but cannot bring proof against him, his accuser shall be killed. Holy shit.

 

      If a man breaks into a house, they shall kill him and hang him in front of that same house.

 

       The death penalty was also part of the Hittite Code in the 14th century B.C., but only partially. The most severe offenses typically were punished through enslavement, although crimes of a sexual nature often were punishable by death. The Hittite laws, also known as the Code of the Nesilim, constitute an ancient legal code dating from c. 1650 – 1500 BCE. The Hittite laws were kept in use for roughly 500 years, and many copies show that other than changes in grammar, what might be called the 'original edition' with its apparent disorder, was copied slavishly; no attempt was made to 'tidy up' by placing even apparent afterthoughts in a more appropriate position. 

 

The Draconian constitution, or Draco's code, was a written law code enforced by Draco near the end of the 7th century BC; its composition started around 621BC. It was written in response to the unjust interpretation and modification of oral law by Athenian aristocrats. Aristotle, the chief source for knowledge of Draco, claims that he was the first to write Athenian laws and that Draco established a constitution enfranchising hoplites, the lower class soldiers. The Draconian laws were most noteworthy for their harshness; they were written in blood rather than ink. Death was prescribed for almost all criminal offenses. Solon, who was the magistrate in 594 BCE, later repealed Draco’s code and published new laws, retaining only Draco’s homicide statutes.

 

In the 5th century B.C., the Roman Law of the Twelve Tables also contained the death penalty. Death sentences were carried out by such means as beheading, boiling in oil, burying alive, burning, crucifixion, disembowelment, drowning, flaying alive, hanging, impalement, stoning, strangling, being thrown to wild animals, and quartering. We'll talk more about that later. The earliest attempt by the Romans to create a code of law was the Laws of the Twelve Tables. A commission of ten men (Decemviri) was appointed (c. 455 B.C.) to draw up a code of law binding on patrician and plebeian and which consuls would have to enforce. The commission produced enough statutes to fill ten bronze tablets. 

 

Mosaic Law codified many capital crimes. There is evidence that Jews used many different techniques, including stoning, hanging, beheading, crucifixion (copied from the Romans), throwing the criminal from a rock, and sawing asunder. The most infamous execution of history occurred approximately 29 AD with the crucifixion of that one guy, Jesus Christ, outside Jerusalem. About 300 years later, Emperor Constantine, after converting to Christianity, abolished crucifixion and other cruel death penalties in the Roman Empire. In 438, the Code of Theodosius made more than 80 crimes punishable by death. 

 

Britain influenced the colonies more than any other country and has a long history of punishment by death. About 450 BC, the death penalty was often enforced by throwing the condemned into a quagmire, which is not only the character from Family Guy, and another word for dilemma but in this case is a soft boggy area of land.

By the 10th Century, hanging from the gallows was the most frequent execution method. William the Conqueror opposed taking life except in war and ordered no person to be hanged or executed for any offense. Nice guy, right? However, he allowed criminals to be mutilated for their crimes. 

 

During the middle ages, capital punishment was accompanied by torture. Most barons had a drowning pit as well as gallows, and they were used for major as well as minor crimes. For example, in 1279, two hundred and eighty-nine Jews were hanged for clipping coins. What the fuck is that you may be wondering. Well, Clipping was taking a small amount of metal off the edge of hand-struck coins. Over time, the precious metal clippings could be saved up and melted into bullion (a lump of precious metal) to be sold or used to make new coins.

Under Edward I, two gatekeepers were killed because the city gate had not been closed in time to prevent the escape of an accused murderer. Burning was the punishment for women’s high treason, and men were hanged, drawn, and quartered. Beheading was generally accepted for the upper classes. One could be burned to death for marrying a Jew. Pressing became the penalty for those who would not confess to their crimes—the executioner placed heavy weights on the victim’s chest until death. On the first day, he gave the victim a small quantity of bread, on the second day a small drink of bad water, and so on until he confessed or died. Under the reign of Henry VIII, the number of those put to death is estimated as high as 72,000. Boiling to death was another penalty approved in 1531, and there are records to show some people cooked for up to two hours before death took them. When a woman was burned, the executioner tied a rope around her neck when she was connected to the stake. When the flames reached her, she could be strangled from outside the ring of fire. However, this often failed, and many were burnt alive.

 

In Britain, the number of capital offenses continually increased until the 1700’s when two hundred and twenty-two crimes were punishable by death. These included stealing from a house for forty shillings, stealing from a shop the value of five shillings, robbing a rabbit warren, cutting down a tree, and counterfeiting tax stamps. However, juries tended not to convict when the penalty was significant, and the crime was not. Reforms began to take place. In 1823, five laws were passed, removing about a hundred crimes from the death penalty. Between 1832 and 1837, many capital offenses were swept away. In 1840, there was a failed attempt to abolish all capital punishment. Through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, more and more capital punishments were abolished, not only in Britain but also all across Europe; until today, only a few European countries retain the death penalty.

 

The first recorded execution in the English American colonies was in 1608 when officials executed George Kendall of Virginia for supposedly plotting to betray the British to the Spanish. In 1612, Virginia’s governor, Sir Thomas Dale, implemented the Divine, Moral, and Martial Laws that made death the penalty for even minor offenses such as stealing grapes, killing chickens, killing dogs or horses without permission, or trading with Indians. Seven years later, these laws were softened because Virginia feared that no one would settle there. Well, no shit.

 

In 1622, the first legal execution of a criminal, Daniel Frank, occurred in, of course, Virginia for the crime of theft. Some colonies were very strict in using the death penalty, while others were less so. In Massachusetts Bay Colony, the first execution was in 1630, but the earliest capital statutes did not occur until later. Under the Capital Laws of New England that went into effect between 1636-1647, the death penalty was set forth for pre-meditated murder, sodomy, witchcraft, adultery, idolatry, blasphemy, assault in anger, rape, statutory rape, manstealing, perjury in a capital trial, rebellion, manslaughter, poisoning, and bestiality. A scripture from the Old Testament accompanied early laws. By 1780, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts only recognized seven capital crimes: murder, sodomy, burglary, buggery, arson, rape, and treason. And for those wondering, The Buggery Act of 1533, formally An Act for the punishment of the vice of Buggerie, was an Act of the Parliament of England that was passed during the reign of Henry VIII. It was the country's first civil sodomy law.

 

The Act defined buggery as an unnatural sexual act against the will of God and Man. This term was later determined by the courts to include only anal penetration and bestiality.

 

The New York colony instituted the so-called Duke’s Laws of 1665. This list of laws directed the death penalty for denial of the true God, pre-meditated murder, killing someone who had no weapon of defense, killing by lying in wait or by poisoning, sodomy, buggery, kidnapping, perjury in a capital trial, traitorous denial of the king’s rights or raising arms to resist his authority, conspiracy to invade towns or forts in the colony and striking one’s mother or father (upon complaint of both). The two colonies that were more lenient concerning capital punishment were South Jersey and Pennsylvania. In South Jersey, there was no death penalty for any crime, and there were only two crimes, murder, and treason, punishable by death. Way to go, Jersey Raccoons!

 

Some states were more severe. For example, by 1837, North Carolina required death for the crimes of murder, rape, statutory rape, slave-stealing, stealing banknotes, highway robbery, burglary, arson, castration, buggery, sodomy, bestiality, dueling where death occurs, (and this insidious shit), hiding a slave with intent to free him, taking a free Negro out of state to sell him, bigamy, inciting slaves to rebel, circulating seditious literature among slaves, accessory to murder, robbery, burglary, arson, or mayhem and others. However, North Carolina did not have a state prison and, many said, no suitable alternative to capital punishment. So, instead of building a fucking prison to hold criminals, they just made the penalty for less severe crimes punishable by death. What the shit, North Carolina?!?

 

The first reforms of the death penalty occurred between 1776-1800. Thomas Jefferson and four others, authorized to undertake a complete revision of Virginia’s laws, proposed a law that recommended the death penalty for only treason and murder. After a stormy debate, the legislature defeated the bill by one vote. The writing of European theorists such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Bentham had a significant effect on American intellectuals, as did English Quaker prison reformers John Bellers and John Howard.

 

Organizations were formed in different colonies for the abolition of the death penalty and to relieve poor prison conditions. Dr. Benjamin Rush, a renowned Philadelphia citizen, proposed abolishing capital punishment. William Bradford, Attorney General of Pennsylvania, was ordered to investigate capital punishment. In 1793 he published “An Enquiry How Far the Punishment of Death is Necessary” in Pennsylvania. Bradford strongly insisted that the death penalty be retained but admitted it was useless in preventing certain crimes. He said the death penalty made convictions harder to obtain because in Pennsylvania, and indeed in all states, the death penalty was mandatory. Juries would often not return a guilty verdict because of this fact, which makes sense. In response, in 1794, the Pennsylvania legislature abolished capital punishment for all crimes except murder “in the first degree,” the first time murder had been broken down into “degrees.” In New York, in 1796, the legislature authorized construction of the state’s first prison, abolished whipping, and reduced the number of capital offenses from thirteen to two. Virginia and Kentucky passed similar reform bills. Four more states reduced their capital crimes: Vermont in 1797 to three; Maryland in 1810, to four; New Hampshire in 1812, to two and Ohio in 1815 to two. Each of these states built state penitentiaries. A few states went in the opposite direction. Rhode Island restored the death penalty for rape and arson; Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut raised death crimes from six to ten, including sodomy, maiming, robbery, and forgery. Many southern states made more crimes capital, especially for slaves. Assholes.

 

The first profound reform era occurred between 1833-1853. Public executions were attacked as cruel. Sometimes tens of thousands of eager viewers would show up to view hangings; local merchants would sell souvenirs and alcohol. Which, I’m not sure if I hate or absolutely love. Fighting and pushing would often break out as people jockeyed for the best view of the hanging or the corpse! Onlookers often cursed the widow or the victim and would try to tear down the scaffold or the rope for keepsakes. Violence and drunkenness often ruled towns far into the night after “justice had been served.” People are fucking weird, dude.

Many states enacted laws providing private hangings. Rhode Island (1833), Pennsylvania (1834), New York (1835), Massachusetts (1835), and New Jersey (1835) all abolished public hangings. By 1849, fifteen states were holding private hangings. This move was opposed by many death penalty abolitionists who thought public executions would eventually cause people to cry out against execution itself. For example, in 1835, Maine enacted what was in effect a moratorium on capital punishment after over ten thousand people who watched a hanging had to be restrained by police after they became unruly and began fighting. All felons sentenced to death would have to remain in prison at hard labor and could not be executed until one year had elapsed and then only on the governor’s order. No governor ordered an execution under the “Maine Law” for twenty-seven years. Though many states argued the merits of the death penalty, no state went as far as Maine. The most influential reformers were the clergy, of course. Ironically, the small but influential group that opposed the abolitionists was the clergy. 

 

Ok, let’s talk about electrocution. Want to know how the electric chair came to be? Well, Electrocution as a method of execution came onto the scene in an implausible manner. Edison Company, with its DC (direct current) electrical systems, began attacking Westinghouse Company and its AC (alternating current) electrical systems as they were pressing for nationwide electrification with alternating current. To show how dangerous AC could be, Edison Company began public demonstrations by electrocuting animals. People reasoned that if electricity could kill animals, it could kill people. In 1888, New York approved the dismantling of its gallows and the building of the nation’s first electric chair. It held its first victim, William Kemmler, in 1890, and even though the first electrocution was clumsy at best, other states soon followed the lead.

 

Between 1917 and 1955, the death penalty abolition movement again slowed. Washington, Arizona, and Oregon in 1919-20 reinstated the death penalty. In 1924, the first execution by cyanide gas took place in Nevada, when Tong war gang murderer Gee Jon became its first victim. Get this shit. The frigging state wanted to secretly pump cyanide gas into Jon’s cell at night while he was asleep as a more humanitarian way of carrying out the penalty. Still, technical difficulties prohibited this, and a special “gas chamber” was hastily built. Other concerns developed when less “civilized” methods of execution failed. In 1930, Mrs. Eva Dugan became the first female to be executed by Arizona. The execution was botched when the hangman misjudged the drop, and Mrs. Dugan’s head was ripped from her body. More states converted to electric chairs and gas chambers. During this time, abolitionist organizations sprang up all across the country, but they had little effect. Several stormy protests were held against the execution of certain convicted felons, like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. The couple was convicted of providing top-secret information about radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and valuable nuclear weapon designs. At that time, the United States was supposedly the only country with nuclear weapons. Convicted of espionage in 1951, they were executed by the United States federal government in 1953 in the Sing Sing correctional facility in Ossining, New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to receive that penalty during peacetime.

However, these protests held little opposition against the death penalty itself. In fact, during the anti-Communist period, with all its fears and hysteria, Texas Governor Allan Shivers seriously suggested that capital punishment be the penalty for membership in the Communist Party.

 

The movement against capital punishment revived again between 1955 and 1972.

 

England and Canada completed exhaustive studies which were largely critical of the death penalty, and these were widely circulated in the U.S. 

Death row criminals gave their moving accounts of capital punishment in books and films. Convicted robber, kidnapper, and rapist Caryl Chessman, published “Cell 2455 Death Row” and “Trial by Ordeal.” Barbara Graham’s story was utilized in the book and movie “I Want to Live!” after her execution. She was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison on the same day as two convicted accomplices, Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins. All of them were involved in a robbery that led to the murder of an elderly widow. 

Television shows were broadcast on the death penalty. Hawaii and Alaska ended capital punishment in 1957, and Delaware did so the following year. Controversy over the death penalty gripped the nation, forcing politicians to take sides. Delaware restored the death penalty in 1961. Michigan abolished capital punishment for treason in 1963. Voters in 1964 abolished the death penalty in Oregon. In 1965 Iowa, New York, West Virginia, and Vermont ended the death penalty. New Mexico abolished the death penalty in 1969.

 

The controversy over the death penalty continues today. There is a strong movement against lawlessness propelled by citizens’ fears of security. Politicians at the national and state levels are taking the floor of legislatures and calling for more frequent death penalties, death penalties for more crimes, and longer prison sentences. Those opposing these moves counter by arguing that harsher sentences do not slow crime and that crime is slightly or the same as in the past. FBI statistics show murders are now up. (For example, 9.3 persons per 100,000 were murdered in 1973, and 9.4 persons per 100,000 were murdered in 1992, and as of today, it's upwards of 14.4 people per 100,000. This upswing might be because of more advanced crime technology, as well as more prominent news and media.

 

Capital punishment has been completely abolished in all European countries except for Belarus and Russia, which has a moratorium and has not conducted an execution since September 1996. The complete ban on capital punishment is enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (EU). Two widely adopted protocols of the European Convention on Human Rights of the Council of Europe are thus considered a central value. Of all modern European countries, San Marino, Portugal, and the Netherlands were the first to abolish capital punishment, whereas only Belarus still practices capital punishment in some form or another. In 2012, Latvia became the last EU member state to abolish capital punishment in wartime.

 

Ok, so now let's switch gears from the history of capital punishment and executions in general and get into what we know you beautiful bastards come here for. Let's talk about some methods used throughout the years, and then we'll talk about some famous executions and some fucked and messed up ones.

 

Methods:

 

We've discussed a few of these before, but some are so fucked up we're going to discuss them again.

 

Boiling To Death:

 

A slow and agonizing punishment, this method traditionally saw the victim gradually lowered — feet-first — into boiling oil, water, or wax (although uses of boiling wine and molten lead have also been recorded).

 

If the shock of the pain did not render them immediately unconscious, the person would experience the excruciating sensation of their outer layers of skin, utterly destroyed by immersion burns, dissolving right off their body, followed by the complete breakdown of the fatty tissue, boiling away beneath.

 

Emperor Nero is said to have dispatched thousands of Christians in this manner. At the same time, in the Middle Ages, the primary recipients of the punishment were not killers or rapists but coin forgers, particularly in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. In Britain, meanwhile, King Henry VIII introduced the practice for executing those who used poison to commit murder.

 

Shockingly, the practice is believed to have been carried out as recently as 2002, when the government of Uzbekistan, led by Islam Karimov, was alleged to have tortured several suspected terrorists to death by boiling.

 

The Blood Eagle:

 

A technique ascribed to ancient Norse warriors, the blood eagle, mixed brutality and poetic imagery that only the Vikings could. First, the victim’s back would be hacked open, and the skin ripped apart, exposing the spinal column.

 

The ribs would then be snapped from the spine and forcibly bent backward until they faced outwards from the body, forming a pair of bloody, shattered eagle’s wings. As a horrifying finale, the lungs would then be pulled from the body cavity and coated with stinging salt, causing eventual death by suffocation.

 

There is some question whether this technique was ever actually used as the only accounts come from Norse literature. Odin did this shit, you know it.

 

Several scholars claim that the act we know of today is simply a result of poor translating and misunderstands the strong association of the eagle with blood and death in Norse imagery. That said, every account is consistent in that in each case, the victim is a nobleman being punished for murdering his father.

 

The good news for any poor soul who might have suffered this brutal death? The agony and blood loss from the initial wounds would probably have caused them to pass out long before the lungs were removed from their bodies. 

 

Impalement:

 

Most famously used by Vlad the Impaler, 15th-century ruler of Wallachia (in present-day Romania) and inspiration for Count Dracula, the act of impalement has a long, grim history. While images tend to depict people skewered through the midsection and then held aloft — in a manner that would almost certainly bring about a rapid death — the actual process was a much longer, horrifically drawn-out ordeal.

 

Traditionally, the stake would be partially sharpened and planted, point up, in the ground. The victim would then be placed over the spike as it was inserted partway into the rectum or vagina.

 

As their body weight dragged them further onto the pole, the semi-greased wooden stake would force its way up through their body, piercing organs with agonizing slowness as it eventually penetrated the entire torso, finally tearing an exit wound through the skin of the shoulder, neck or throat. Holy shishkabob. Or bill. Or Karen.

 

The earliest records of the torture come from 1772 B.C. in Babylon, where the aforementioned King Hammurabi ordered a woman be executed in this way for killing her husband. But its use continued until as recently as the 20th century when the Ottoman government employed the technique during the Armenian genocide of 1915-1923. Which is super fucked up.

 

According to some accounts, it could take the victim — exposed, bleeding, and writhing in tormented agony — as long as eight whole days to die. Oh my hell!

 

Keelhauling:

 

Walking the plank might not be the most pleasant of deaths, but it seems moderately more humane than the other favored maritime punishment of keelhauling.

 

A punishment that often ended in death due to the severity of the wounds sustained (or was simply carried out until the point of death), it saw the victim, legs weighted and suspended from a rope, dropped from the bow of the ship, and then rapidly pulled underwater along the length of the hull — and over the keel (the beam that runs longitudinally down the center of the underside to the stern.

 

In the age of old, old wooden sailing ships, the hull of a vessel would generally be coated in a thick layer of barnacles, whose shells could be rock hard and razor-sharp.

 

As the drowning sailor was yanked relentlessly through the saltwater, these barnacles would strip the skin from his body, gouging out raw chunks of flesh and even, by some accounts, tearing off whole limbs or severing the head.

 

If the sailor was still alive, they might be hung from the mast for 15 minutes before going in again. In some cases, the victim would have an oil-soaked sponge — containing a breath of air — stuffed into their mouth to prevent a “merciful” drowning.

 

Employed mainly by the Dutch and the French from the 1500s until it was abolished in 1853, accounts of its use date back to Greece in 800 B.C.

 

The Roman Candle:

 

Many of the worst execution methods ever devised involve fire — from burning witches at stake in medieval Britain to roasting criminals alive in the hot metal insides of the brazen bull in Ancient Greece — but few match the sheer lack of humanity as the Roman Candle.

 

A rumored favorite of the mad Roman Emperor Nero, this method saw the subject tied to a stake and smeared with flammable pitch (tree or plant resin), then set ablaze, slowly burning to death from the feet up.

 

What sets this above the many other similar methods is that the victims were sometimes lined up outside to provide the lighting for one of Nero’s evening parties.\

 

Being Hanged, Drawn, And Quartered:

 

First recorded in England during the 13th century, this unusually extreme — even for the time — mode of execution was made the statutory punishment for treason in 1351. Though it was intended to be an act of such barbarous severity that no one would ever risk committing a treasonous act, there were nevertheless plenty of recipients over the next 500 years.

 

The process of being hanged, drawn, and quartered began with the victim being dragged to the site of execution while strapped to a wooden panel, which was in turn tied to a horse.

 

They would then experience a slow hanging, in which, rather than being dropped to the traditional quick death of a broken neck, they would instead be left to choke horribly as the rope tore up the skin of their throat, their body weight dragging them downwards.

 

Some had the good fortune to die at this stage, including the infamous Gunpowder Plot conspirator Guy Fawkes, who ensured a faster death by leaping from the gallows.

 

Once half-strangled, the drawing would begin. The victim would be strapped down and then slowly disemboweled, their stomachs sliced open, and their intestines and other significant organs hacked apart and pulled — “drawn” — from the body.

 

The genitals would often be mutilated and ripped from between their legs. Those unlucky enough to still be alive at this point might witness their organs burned in front of them before they were finally decapitated.

 

Once death had finally claimed them, the recipient’s body would be carved into four pieces — or “quartered” — and the parts sent to prominent areas of the country as a warning to others.

 

The head would often be taken to the infamous Tower of London, where it would be impaled on a spike and placed on the walls “for the mockery of London.”

 

Rat Torture:

 

As recently depicted in that horrible show, Game Of Thrones, rat torture is ingenious in its disgusting simplicity. In its most basic form, a bucket containing live rats is placed on the exposed torso of the victim, and heat is applied to the base of the bucket.

 

The rats, crazy with fear from the heat, tear and gnaw their way into the abdomen of the victim, clawing and ripping through skin, flesh, organs, and intestines in their quest to escape.

 

Possessing the most powerful biting and chewing motion of any rodent, rats can make short work of a human stomach. Along with the unimaginable pain, the victim would also suffer the sick horror of feeling the large, filthy creatures writhing around inside their guts as they died.

 

While associated with Elizabethan England — where the Tower of London was said to have housed a “Dungeon of Rats,” a pitch-black room below high watermark that would draw in rats from the River Thames to torment the room’s inhabitants — the practice has been used far more recently.

 

General Pinochet is said to have employed the technique during his dictatorship of Chile (1973-1990), while reports from Argentina during the National Reorganization Process in the late 1970s and early ’80s claimed victims were subjected to a version in which live rats — or sometimes spiders — were inserted into the subject’s body via a tube in the rectum or vagina….yep.

 

Bamboo Torture

 

Forcing thin shards of bamboo under the fingernails has long been cited as an interrogation method, but bamboo has been used to creatively — and slowly — execute a person, too. Allegedly used by the Japanese on American prisoners of war, it saw the victim tied down to a frame over a patch of newly sprouting bamboo plants.

 

One of the fastest-growing plants in the world, capable of up to three feet of growth in 24 hours, the sharp-tipped plants would slowly pierce the victim's skin — and then continue to grow. The result was death by gradual, continuous, multiple impalements, the equivalent of being dropped on a bed of sharpened stakes in terrible slow motion.

 

Despite the practice having roots in the former areas of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Siam (now Thailand) in the 19th century, there are no proven instances of it being used during WWII.

 

It’s certainly possible, however, and it has been shown that the technique, among the worst execution methods ever, works: A 2008 episode of MythBusters found that bamboo was capable of penetrating a human-sized lump of ballistic gelatin over three days.

 

https://m.imdb.com/list/ls059738828/

Pro Wrestling Deaths

Today we're entering the world of sports. That's right, we're talking about everyone's favorite sport… Curling! Curling is a sport in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area segmented into four concentric circles. It is related to bowls, boules, and shuffleboard. Two teams, each with four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite rocks, also called stones, across the ice curling sheet toward the house, a circular target marked on the ice. Each team has eight stones, with each player throwing two. The purpose is to accumulate the highest score for a game; points are scored for the stones resting closest to the center of the house after each end, which is completed when both teams have thrown all of their stones. A game usually consists of eight or ten ends… 

Um...What the fuck.. Fucking Moody… This is why we can't trust him to do research while hunting Sasquatch in Canada… Hold on, let me find the right notes… Son of a bitch, where are they… Ah, here we go. Today we are actually going into the wonderful world of… WRESTLING!!! But you know us… we're actually not looking at the wonderful part… No sirs and madams, we take it to the not-so-wonderful side. We'll be discussing some crazy and tragic wrestler Deaths. Many of our beloved childhood wrestling favorites have passed on over the past decade or so. Many were related to the job's rigors, leading to drug use and overdose, heart attacks, suicides, and a host of other causes. Today, we're going to look at some more… "interesting," if you will... wrestler deaths. Some of these guys you'll know, some only hardcore wrestling fans will know, and some, none of you may know, at all. Also, we're going to skip some of the biggest ones because they've been covered more times than podcasts covering Ted Bundy and in much more detail within the time we have, so you won't be hearing about some of the more popular ones. So without any more curling bullshit (fucking Moody). Let's get to it! 

 

First up is an old-timer that primarily wrestled in Australia… We love you beautiful sumbitches in Australia, so we wanted to throw this one in. Also, maybe you guys have some stories about this guy if you're old enough to remember him. His name is Brute Bernard! He initially made his name as tag team partner of Skull Murphy in the WWF. Brute toured the world with Skull until he died in 1969. Brute won the IWA World Tag titles in Australia with Murphy 6 times. They defeated Mark Lewin & Dominic de Nucci, Lewin & Bearcat Wright, Mario Milano & Billy White Wolf, Mario Milano & Antonio Pugliese, and Lars Anderson & Dick Murdoch. They lost to Lewin & Wright twice, Milano & Pugliese twice, Don Leo Jonathan & Antonio Pugliese, and Mario Milano & Spiros Arion. Brute continued as a solo wrestler in Australia, where he had his most tremendous success, winning the Austro-Asian title from Spiros Arion before dropping it back to him. He also wrestled extensively in the Carolinas, teaming up with the Missouri Mauler in Texas. Brute was also married to pro wrestler Betty Joe Hawkins.

 

He was famous for his 'camel walk.' I tried to look it up but couldn't find anything about it, but I think it was probably something like the iron Shiek's "Camel Clutch." 

 

So when you look up the cause of death of this guy, you get a common reason of "shot while cleaning gun," which is still fucked up. The thing is, if you do a little more digging, it doesn't seem so simple. While there isn't an incredible amount of information on his death, if you look, you can find enough people that are suspicious of the "accidental" death ruling. Some think it was an intentional self-inflicted gunshot. There is a small amount that believes it was murder. And then some say that he was drunk and decided to play a game of Russian roulette. So what is the real story? Who knows? But there are enough people asking questions and spewing theories to make this an exciting appetizer for the show! Suicide? Russian roulette? Courtney Love? Who knows! And if that's "too soon", fuck off... she had SOMETHING to do with it.

 

Ok, so who's next? Oh, how about Neil Allen Caricofe. His ring name "Neil Superior" was better known, and he was born on April 6, 1963, in Hagerstown, Maryland. He was at one point a corrections officer, and he also served in the army reserve. He was trained by one of the Wild Samoans, who you definitely remember if you're Chainsaw's age. Superior made his pro debut in 1989. He and his father, Dick Caricofe, founded the All-Star Wrestling League (later known as the National Wrestling League) in Hagerstown, Maryland, that same year. Caricofe formed a tag team with fellow Wild Samoan graduate Doug Stahl called The Superior Brothers, "Nasty" Neil, and "Desirable" Doug Superior. At some point, the two also wrestled under the team name...The Satanic Warriors… yea… Anyway.

After splitting with Stahl, Superior embarked on a singles career. One of his first significant opponents was "The Honky Tonk Man" (who I loved as a kid) and who he faced in Hagerstown on August 10, 1991. Superior also feuded with Rasta the Voodoo Mon. Later that year, Superior defeated Helmut Hesler to win the NWL Heavyweight Championship. After that, he worked for many other independent companies throughout the 90s. Finally, he became the south Atlantic pro wrestling heavyweight champion in 1992 and held the belt for 4 months until the promotion folded. He would then go back and finish his career in the NWL until his death… Which is why we're here. 

 

Early on the morning of August 23, 1996, Caricofe, who had left his hotel room around 4:00 A.M., was observed acting erratically and running naked on the seventh floor of the Fenwick Inn in Ocean City, Maryland. Which, of course, we've all done at some point in our lives. It was believed that Caricofe had left his room accidentally and was unable to find his way back. Caricofe may have suffered from a medical condition caused by seizures, which made him sleepwalk. According to the Caricofe family, it wasn't unusual for him to sleep either in his underwear or nude. The night desk clerk, Lisa Mulvihill, became aware of the situation when a concerned guest called the front desk. When Mulvihill investigated, she saw Caricofe "jumping around and banging himself against the wall ."She briefly attempted to communicate with Caricofe but returned to the front desk and called the police, finding him unresponsive. Mulvihill received a second call that Caricofe was banging on the doors of several rooms. Mulvihill then made a second call to the police, informing them that she was returning to the seventh floor and requesting that officers meet her there. Officers would arrive and find Superior roaming the hallway, and when they approached him, they said he appeared to be in a boxer's stance, dancing around on his tiptoes and doing some kind of shadowboxing. They say he was not responding to their commands, and they called for backup when they assumed he was under the influence and dangerous. An attempt by two officers to handcuff Superior failed. They continued shouting commands to lay down on the ground and, when Caricofe failed to respond, all four officers used pepper spray, which they later claimed had no effect. Caricofe then moved toward the officers, pinning Officer Freddie Howard up against the wall, and held the officer by his shirt. Sergeant Braeuninger and Officer Alban radioed for backup, the latter calling in a "Signal 13," indicating an officer needed emergency assistance. Alban, Braeuninger, and Jones began hitting Caricofe on his lower back and legs with nightsticks to free Howard. Caricofe would run away and mash his way down 7 flights of stairs; along the way, police say he ran into a vending area and began beating his head and shoulders into the vending machines. Once he made it down the stairs, he headed into the parking lot, where more police were waiting. They sprayed him with pepper foam and beat him with nightsticks in another attempt to subdue him. Finally, the over officer grabbed him and held him long enough for the others to restrain him. The group held Caricofe down while attempting to handcuff him and place the "violent prisoner restraining device" on his legs. While police were waiting for paramedics to arrive, the officers observed that Caricofe was no longer breathing. They assisted paramedics in performing CPR on Caricofe but could not revive him. He was pronounced dead at the hospital a short time later. The story does not end there, though. 

 

The circumstances surrounding Caricofe's death were questioned during the next few weeks. It was not learned until afterward that Caricofe had been diagnosed with a medical condition two years earlier, a neurological problem possibly resulting from a wrestling-related injury that caused seizures and made him appear to be sleepwalking. Ya know, CTE... for those that don't know, Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive brain condition that's thought to be caused by repeated blows to the head and repeated episodes of concussion. It's mainly associated with contact sports, such as boxing or American football. The Caricofe family was given little information from authorities regarding the death of their son. They learned from Gerald Minnich, director of Minnich Funeral Home in Hagerstown, who described their son's injuries, that Neil Caricofe had sustained "a possible broken nose, swelling around his eyes and a bruise on the back of his head ." Caricofe's father did not initially hold Ocean City police liable for the death of his son. He was told by a Maryland State Police investigator and a friend who was a state trooper at the Berlin police barracks that his son had hit his head on a vending machine as he was running from police. The family believed that the responding police officers, three of whom were temporary, seasonal patrolmen, were inexperienced and had overreacted due to Neil Caricofe's size. In an article from the Washington Post, shortly after the incident, a woman who said she was staying at the hotel and witnessed the incident said Caricofe "didn't yell back or attack but refused to lay down and kept running around."

 

The woman, who spoke on the condition that her name not be used, said she believes that officers put something resembling a dog collar around Caricofe's neck just before he became unconscious. "There were at least 10 of them on top of him," she said. "When they were finished, he was unconscious." 

 

City spokesman Jay Hancock said he had "not heard about anything being placed around {Caricofe's} neck at all." He said officers are trained to use a baton to strike someone in "the extremities."

 

The witness also said police officers did not attempt to revive Caricofe by giving him CPR, contradicting police statements that officers had done so.

 

The autopsy ruled the cause of death was heart disease combined with the ingestion of drugs and alcohol. A toxicology report found the presence of ephedrine, gamma hydroxybutyrate, anabolic steroids, and ethanol in his system. The family would challenge this ruling, though, as they believed he was perfectly healthy and that the police used excessive force, which caused his death. A year after Caricofe's death, his parents were still unable to find out the details of what occurred that night. The family's Baltimore attorney, Gerald Ruter, believed his clients were being stonewalled by law enforcement. So the family began their own investigation. On June 2, 1998, Caricofe's parents filed a $350 million federal lawsuit against the Ocean City Police Department, claiming that their son had died due to police brutality. The case was heard in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. Gerald Ruter, an attorney for the Caricofe family, claimed that the officers "jumped on him and knocked him down and emptied several cans of pepper spray into his face," causing him to suffocate to death. It was further claimed their use of nightsticks and pepper spray to subdue Neil Caricofe was unnecessary and constituted excessive force. Among those named in the lawsuit included former mayor Roland F. Powell, Police Chief David Massey, and 13 Ocean City police officers charged with wrongful death, excessive force, inadequate training and supervision of police, and false arrest. 

 

The case was dismissed by Judge Frederic Smalkin, who believed the officers had appropriately responded. The ruling was upheld by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on April 1, 2002, concluding that the officers had never resorted to deadly force.

 

Sounds pretty fucked up. More police bullshit? Justified force? Who knows, but that's a crazy tale!

 

Next is one of the more prominent wrestlers we're gonna talk about. He started out as the Blue Angel, which transformed him into the Blue Blazer, the character that first brought him success. He is none other than the legendary Owen Hart. This is another one that's been covered a ton, but we wanted to talk about it because some of us here at the train remember watching this happen live. A member of the Hart wrestling family, he was born in Calgary, Alberta, the youngest of twelve children of Stampede Wrestling promoters Stu and Helen Hart. Among other accolades, Owen was a one-time USWA Unified World Heavyweight Champion, a two-time WWF Intercontinental Champion, a one-time WWF European Champion, and a four-time WWF World Tag Team Champion, as well as the 1994 WWF King of the Ring. He headlined multiple pay-per-view events for the WWF and was widely regarded as one of the company's best in-ring performers. And if you've never seen him in action, the guy was an absolute specimen in the ring. On May 23, 1999, Hart fell to his death in Kansas City, Missouri, during the Over the Edge pay-per-view event.

Hart was in the process of being lowered via harness and grapple line into the ring from the rafters of Kemper Arena for a booked Intercontinental Championship match against The Godfather. In keeping with the Blazer's new "buffoonish superhero" character, he began a dramatic entrance, being lowered to just above ring level. At that time, he would act "entangled," then release himself from the safety harness and fall flat on his face for comedic effect—this necessitated the use of a quick-release mechanism. It was an elaboration on a Blue Blazer stunt done previously on Sunday Night Heat before Survivor Series in 1998. While being lowered into the ring, Hart fell 78 feet (24 m), landing chest-first on the top rope (approximately a foot from the nearest turnbuckle), throwing him into the ring. Hart had performed the stunt only a few times before. Hart's widow Martha has suggested that Hart unintentionally triggered an early release by moving around to get comfortable with both the harness and his cape. Television viewers did not see the incident. Instead, a pre-taped vignette was being shown on the pay-per-view broadcast and on the monitors in the darkened arena during the fall. A vignette is any piece of video footage featuring characters or events shown to the audience for entertainment or edification. It is usually meant to introduce a debuting character, get a wrestler over before their TV wrestling debut, or signify an impending return. Afterward, while medical personnel worked on Hart inside the ring, the live event's broadcast showed only the audience. Meanwhile, WWF television announcer Jim Ross repeatedly told those watching live on pay-per-view that what had just transpired was not a wrestling angle or storyline and that Hart was hurt badly, emphasizing the seriousness of the situation. Jim Ross would later say in an interview.

 

                  "Being at ringside the night he fell [and announcing live on air that he had died] was the toughest thing I ever did. To this day, I've still never seen the tape. I was pretty numb. Everyone was in shock that night. I still have nightmares about it. Owen was as warm-hearted as any human being I have ever known. He loved to laugh, and he loved to make other people laugh. He had a great spirit, a good soul, and a good heart."

 

Five months before his tragic death, Owen Hart opened up to Slam Wrestling about his desire to soon leave wrestling:

 

"When my contract is up, I'm out of wrestling. I've made plans. I've been smart with my fiscal affairs. Financially, I'll be set. I really want to devote a lot of time to my family. I've bought some property on a lake. I plan on doing a lot of boating and fishing. I want to continue to stay in shape. And who knows, I might do ten weeks a year in Japan. Something just to motivate me to keep in shape, keep involved a little bit but not have to deal with the politics, the pressures that are so intense right now. I've paid my dues for twelve years now. If I continue for five more, that's seventeen years working at a pretty hard clip. I think that at that point, my family, my wife, and my kids, have been compromised enough. I would like to kind of just disappear from wrestling fans and stuff. I don't want to forget the fans and what they've done. They've supported me and stuff, but at the same time, I'd like to just — I don't want to be hanging on like one of these wrestlers who's sixty years old, saying, 'Hey, I'm a wrestler.' Let it go. Make your money out of it and get on. Going out and performing- it's an art. I'd like fans to remember me as a guy who would go out and entertain them, give them quality matches. Not just the same old garbage every week."

 

There was a lot of controversy over the incident. One of the main things that people talked about was how they went on with the show that night after the fall. So many people were upset that they would do this. 

 

Vince McMahon would say of the decision:

 

           "Knowing Owen as the performer he was, it is my belief that he would have wanted the show to go on. I didn't know if it was the right decision. I just guessed that it was what Owen would want." This is bullshit and just shows the kind of person McMahon was, in my personal opinion.

 

Referee Jimmy Korderas, who Hart almost landed on when he fell, would say:

 

"It's easy for us to say afterward, 'Well, the show should have stopped…' I was kind of on the fence with that. I kind of liken it a little bit to a Nascar race, where the race continues even after a tragic accident. Again, it's a tough call. I'm just glad I'm not the one who had to make that call."

 

There were lawsuits filed by Hart's wife against the WWE and the harness company. A settlement was reached with the WWE for 18 million dollars which his wife used much to set up the Owen Hart Foundation. The lawsuit against the harness company was dropped after the settlement. 

 

A traffic end to the life of a great wrestler.

 

Next up Adolfo Bresciano! You may know him better as Dino Bravo! After training under Gino Brito, he started his career in Montreal in the 1970s, working for Lutte Internationale. He became one of Canada's top professional wrestling stars, winning several major titles, including the Canadian International Heavyweight Championship six times, the NWA Canadian Heavyweight Championship (Toronto version), and the NWA Mid-Atlantic Tag Team Championship. He later signed with the World Wrestling Federation, where, as a partner to Dominic DeNucci, he won the WWF World Tag Team Championship. He was also the sole holder of the WWF Canadian Championship before the title was abandoned in 1986. 

Bravo returned to the WWF in late 1986 with a new look. He was now noticeably more muscular and almost immediately began bleaching his brown hair blonde. Again, he was a heel and began working as part of Luscious Johnny Valiant's stable with Greg "The Hammer" Valentine and Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake. Bravo was known as more of a technical wrestler in his days of wrestling in Canada. Still, with his strongman gimmick, his technical side was pushed into the background and his style changed to using power (brawling) moves such as bodyslams, clotheslines, punches, kicks, and other power holds such as the bearhug.

In contrast, his finishing move changed from an airplane spin to a sidewalk slam. Bravo left the WWF and retired from wrestling following a European tour in April 1992. After retiring, he helped train wrestlers in Montreal. 

 

After retiring from the WWF, Dino reportedly struggled to make ends meet. Related by marriage to Montreal mobster Vic Cotroni, Dino became involved with crime. Using his status as a wrestling celebrity, he smuggled and sold illegal cigarettes in Canada, mainly to Aboriginals. The story goes that while his wife was taking his daughter to ballet class, he sat down to watch a hockey game on television and ended up shot 17 times with seven hits to the head and 10 to his torso. The crime remains an unsolved murder; however, it is widely accepted that Dino's involvement in smuggling was the reason for his death. As there were no signs of a break-in and no footprints outside the home's windows, there is speculation that Dino knew his killer, that the person was watching hockey with him when the assassination happened. While this can't be confirmed, what is certain is that Dino's wife found him later that evening when she returned home with their daughter. Dino Bravo was killed on Wednesday, March 10, 1993. 

 

In an interview, his former opponent Bret "The Hitman" Hart revealed that Bravo confided to friends shortly before his death that he knew his days were numbered.

 

Canadian Mafia… Not gonna lie… Didn't know that was a thing! 

 

Speaking of murdered wrestlers, it's time for everyone's favorite…. The midnight train's quick hits!

 

John Meek wrestled under the name "Iron" Mike Steele, and in his career, he shared the ring with the likes of Marc Mero and Dean Malenko. Unfortunately, his wrestling career and life came to an end on August 29, 2007.

 

Harry Brian Taylor intentionally ran over Steele from behind with his van while he was riding his motorcycle. Steele passed away two hours later next to his damaged motorcycle.

 

On July 10, 2008, Taylor was found guilty of second-degree murder for killing Mike Steele. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

 

Frank' Bruiser Brody' Goodish found success as a main eventer and became one of the most talented big men in wrestling. Brody was scheduled to face Dan Spivey in Puerto Rico, but he was called into the shower area by wrestler José Huertas González to talk about some business.

 

Brody was stabbed in the gut by González and died in the hospital from his stab wounds. He was only 42. González was charged with murder but pleaded self-defense and was acquitted. 

 

Tank Morgan was born in 1933, and his name died down following his tenure in WWF (now WWE) from 1966-1967.

 

On December 12, 1966, he lost to former WWE Champion Bruno Sammartino in a two out of three falls match inside Madison Square Garden's, the world's most famous arena.

 

This was the most notable moment in Morgan's entire career, but sadly, he was gunned down in a drive-by shooting on August 15, 1991, while walking his dog. Unfortunately, the details concerning his death are pretty scarce.

 

Many people believed that Morgan was caught up in the crossfire and was a victim of mistaken identity. What we do know, however, is that he was murdered.

 

"Gentleman" Chris Adams had a successful wrestling career. He's also the man who trained a guy named Steven James Anderson, aka Steve Williams "The Ringmaster," aka "Stunning" Steve Austin, aka... you guessed it! Stone Cold Steve Austin. Adams worked for World Class Championship Wrestling as a mid-carder in the late 1990s.

 

After Adams' short-term girlfriend Linda was found dead in 2000 following a drug or alcohol overdose, Adams was charged for manslaughter. However, he was passed out too, but he survived the overdose.

 

He waited to find out whether or not the court found him guilty, but he never lived to hear the verdict. Adams was shot in the chest after a heated argument with his friend on October 7, 2001.

 

The charges were acquitted after the friend claimed that he shot Adams in self-defense.

 

Ricky Lawless was considered an excellent technician during his career in the '80s. He trained a lot of independent wrestlers such as Joey Maggs, Bobby Starr, and Axl Rotten.

 

Lawless was discovered dead at the age of 28 after he, too, was shot. It was determined by the police that Raymond Swartz, the husband of the woman Lawless had reportedly had an affair with, was the man responsible for the shooting.

 

There you have it… murdered wrestler quick hits.

 

No wrestling family has been through more tragedy than the Von Erichs. The family's actual last name is Adkisson. However, every member of the family who joined the wrestling business used the Von Erich name. This was in dedication to the patriarch of the family, Jack (Fritz Von Erich) Adkisson.

 

Fritz lived to the age of 68, though unpleasantly, five of his six sons preceded him in death, three by suicide.

 

The firstborn son, Jack Jr., was electrocuted at the age of six in 1959 in a household accident.

 

In 1984, David Von Erich died in Japan from an unconfirmed cause, although it is widely believed he died from a drug overdose.

 

On April 12, 1987, Mike Von Erich left a suicide note for his family, then went to Lewisville Lake, where he drank alcohol and overdosed on the sleeping aid Placidyl. A few days before his death, Mike was arrested after a DUI. His body was found four days later and buried at Grove Hill Memorial Park in Dallas.

 

On September 12, 1991, at about 9 P.M., Chris Von Erick was found by his brother Kevin and mother outside of their family farm in Edom, suffering from a self-inflicted 9mm gunshot wound to the head. According to Kevin, he discovered Chris sitting alone on top of a hill. Chris reassured him, and after Kevin left, he shot himself in the head. Although Chris was hospitalized at the East Texas Medical Center shortly after 10 P.M., he died 20 minutes after arriving, eighteen days before his 22nd birthday. Toxicology reports also revealed cocaine and valium were in his system at his death. Kevin had talked to Chris earlier that day about 100–150 yards north of their home where an apparent suicide note had been left. After the 1987 suicide of brother Mike, Chris began to experience depression and drug issues. He was also frustrated by his inability to make headway as a wrestler due to his physical build. His interment was located at Grove Hill Memorial Park in Dallas.

 

On June 4, 1986, Kerry von Erich was in a motorcycle accident that nearly ended his life. He suffered a dislocated hip and a badly injured right leg. Doctors were unable to save his right foot, eventually amputating it. According to his brother Kevin, Kerry injured the foot following surgery by attempting to walk on it prematurely, thus forcing the doctors to amputate it. He continued wrestling after the accident with a prosthesis. He kept the amputation secret to most fans and fellow wrestlers, even going to the extreme of showering with his boots on. His amputation was kept secret from the public until after his death. However, Roddy Piper stated in his autobiography: "We were the best of friends. In fact, he felt comfortable enough to sit with me in a hotel and shoot the breeze with his prosthetic off".

 

After the amputation of his foot, Kerry became addicted to pain killers, followed by several drug problems. Among the many of them were two arrests, the first of which resulted in probation. Kerry died by suicide with a single gunshot to the heart with a .44 caliber pistol on February 18, 1993, on his father's ranch in Denton County, Texas, just 15 days after his 33rd birthday. His death came just one day after being indicted for the second drug charge, which would have more than likely resulted in extensive jail time (being a violation of his probation),

 

In his autobiography, "My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling", Brett "the Hitman" Hart stated that Kerry had told him that he had decided to join his late brothers in heaven and was waiting for God to tell him when. Bret told Kerry that his living daughters would need him more than his late brothers. Kerry mostly convinced Bret that he had changed his mind, but Bret feared that it was only words. Kerry told Bret again in the summer of 1992 that he wanted to follow his three late brothers David, Mike, and Chris and that they were calling him. Kerry's marriage had fallen apart earlier in 1992, and according to Hart, Kerry believed that his death was inevitable.

 

Fritz lived to the age of 68 and had to bury 5 of his sons. 

 

Kevin Von Erich talks about being the last Von Erich brother left alive in an interview from 1994. He says:

 

"My brothers and I lived real dangerously.

 

"We were a really reckless group always showing off for each other – like walking on bridges in Japan and taking every chance we could. We were just young kids. I'm really surprised that I survived…

 

"We used to have this thing called the 'chance of the day,' where every day we'd take a chance on our lives. Dave was always too smart for that, so he'd just watch. We'd jump on wild bulls' backs, jump on trains going fast. "We'd get on the roof of a car at highway speed. You start thinking nothing can get you, and you're indestructible. That's part of being in sports. We were blessed with good bodies and good balance. We felt like we could do anything, and nothing would hurt us."

 

He goes on about the pain killers and drugs:

 

         "Mike was into painkillers. All the brothers had painkillers prescribed by doctors. Kerry was the only one who got into illegal drugs [that weren't prescribed].

 

"Kerry figured he didn't have anything to live for. He was rootless. He had no home. Seeing me with my family made his pain greater. It reminded him of what he was missing. It was such a sad, tragic thing.

 

"He had his two beautiful daughters and a wife he loved, but then he'd come home, and all his stuff would be moved out. She'd move all his stuff out. Kerry was no saint [but] they both treated each other kind of rough.

 

"He had pretty much come to an understanding the day he killed himself. He just left having lunch with Kathy, his wife. Kerry was going to jail*, and he was afraid of never seeing his girls again.

 

"He said, 'Kevin, I'm about to kill myself…'

 

"We had talked for about an hour. We told some good dirty jokes, we laughed, and he told me, 'I'm going to kill myself.' I thought I had him talked out of it.

 

"He said, 'I didn't want to be like Mike and not say goodbye.'

 

"That's when I begged him. I said, 'Don't do this. Don't leave me alone. You're my only brother. Don't leave me.'

 

"I thought I had talked him out of it.

 

"Thirty minutes later, they found his body. He must have gone right out and done it.

 

If you want to talk about tragic wrestler deaths, there you go. We can't even imagine going through something like that. And remember, if you or someone you know are having thoughts of harming yourself or someone else, please reach out to your local mental health professionals. It takes a stronger person to get help than to do something you can't take back.

 

Those are some of the crazier deaths we found. This list is but a small fraction of the tragic deaths from the world of wrestling. Tons of guys we grew up watching have died recently due to health complications and drug issues. There have been some younger guys that have passed on recently as well. There have been tons of suicides in wrestlers under the age of 50. Also, as we've seen, a pretty good amount of murders. As we stated earlier, we stayed away from many more prominent names, mainly because they were health-related and covered extensively in recent years. Also, we don't want to talk about a guy who decided it was best to end his wife's and son's lives, as well as his own. CTE is a raging bitch. We'd like to hear what you guys think and maybe some crazy ones we've missed since we're not perfect! But before we talk about anything else, I am going to show you wonderful listeners some of my favorite moves in the ring on my boy Logan and check this out on our youtube page!

Top wrestling movies

 

https://www.ranker.com/list/wrestling-movies-list-of-all-wrestling-films/ranker-film

What happened to the Jeff Davis/Jennings 8?

www.themidnighttrainpodcast.com 

Hello, you crazy, beautiful bastards. And happy new year. We hope your Christmas or whatever holiday you chose to celebrate was a great one. As you probably know, we took the week off to be with our families, and this week we're back with another banger, as the cool kids say. We are hopping back into the dark, twisted world of UNSOLVED true crime—the best and only way to serve that horrible cold dish. We know you guys love that shit, and so do we. Of course, not in a weird "sitting alone in front of my computer masturbating to unsolved terrible crimes" sort of way, but in more of a "gee-whiz Mr. Wilson, that's interesting, I'd like to learn more" kind of way. And with that out of the way, let's get into today's episode on the Jennings 8!

 

The Jennings 8, sometimes also referred to as the Jeff Davis 8, is a series of unsolved murders in Jefferson Davis Parish in Louisiana between 2005- 2009. And for those of you wondering, no, Moody wasn't living there yet. So he's been cleared of this one. This one. 

Two of the victims had their throats slit; the other six were in such a bad state of decay that a cause of death could not be determined, but asphyxiation is thought to be the cause. Law enforcement would have you believe a serial killer was on the loose but is that really what happened? Or was something crazier going down? 

Let's take a look at the unfortunate victims first. 

 

The first body found was that of Loretta Lynn Chaisson Lewis. She was 28 and last seen on 05/17/05 in Jennings, Louisiana. Her body was found in the Grand Marais Canal 05/20/05 and floating in Grand Marais Canal's east fork, a few miles southwest of Jennings. She was partially clothed and shoeless. The advanced decomposition caused difficulty identifying and collecting evidence, and an autopsy found Loretta had no physical injuries. A toxicology report showed "high levels of drugs and alcohol" in her system, but no cause of death was determined. Investigators believe she may have been in the canal for three to four days. 

 

The second victim, Ernestine Patterson, was a mother of four and a lifelong Jennings resident. The 30-year-old was last seen on June 16, 2005. On June 18, her body was discovered in a drainage canal off LA Highway 102. She was partially clothed, and her throat had been slit. The death was ruled a homicide, and two people were arrested and charged with 2nd-degree murder but were later released due to "lack of evidence." She worked at Iota State University.

 

The third victim was Kristen Elizabeth Gary-Lopez. Kristen was last seen alive by friends and family on March 6, 2007. By all published accounts, Kristen was involved in a high-risk lifestyle of drugs and prostitution. Because it was not unusual to not hear from her for extended amounts of time, she was not reported missing until ten days later.

 

On March 18, a fisherman discovered Lopez's utterly nude body in the Petitjean Canal, a rural area near Cherokee Road right off LA 99, about 10 miles south of the town of Welsh. Investigators felt her body had been placed in that location but killed elsewhere. According to autopsy results, the cause of death for Kristen Gary Lopez is undetermined. However, toxicology results showed elevated levels of drugs and alcohol in Lopez's system. In May 2007, Frankie Richard and his niece, Hannah Conner, were arrested in connection with Lopez's death. Richard and Conner were also questioned about the other deaths before Lopez's body was found. Richard was reportedly seen with three of the victims in the last days of their lives. Charges were eventually dropped due to insufficient evidence and conflicting witness statements.

 

Also arrested in May 2007 was Tracee L. Chaisson. The police booked her on Accessory After the Fact charges. Chaisson was the person who reported Kristen missing. Investigators believed she knew where the body was when she made the report. Like Richard and Conner, charges were dropped against Tracee Chaisson due to lack of evidence and conflicting statements.

 

    Whitnei Charlene Dubois, 26, was last seen on 05/10/07. Her remains were found 05/12/07 at the intersection of Bobby and Earl Duhon Roads, approximately five miles outside of Jennings, Louisiana.

 

According to the family, "Whitnei enjoyed listening to music, absolutely adored her daughter, was tough on the outside despite her vulnerabilities within, and left a lasting impression on all those who knew and loved her."

 

The nude body of Whitnei Dubois was found 05/12/07 near the intersection of Bobby and Earl Duhon Roads, approximately five miles outside of Jennings. Investigators believe she had been dead "a couple of days." Officials never determined the cause of death, but high levels of alcohol and drugs were found in her body. 

 

Her family has doubts about the investigation into her death. Whitnei's sister Brittney Jones wonders, "why haven't we been questioned? Why haven't we been asked when was the last time we saw our sister? Where her whereabouts was? Why haven't we been asked about the evidence? Why haven't we been contacted?"

 

Lolita Doucet, her aunt, believes Whitnei and the other victims were dismissed as women who lived high-risk lifestyles involving drugs and prostitution.

 

23-year-old LaConia Shontel "Muggy" Brown was last seen on May 27, 2008. Around 2 am on May 29, a Jennings police officer discovered her body lying on Racca Road, leading to the police firing range. Although in a rural area, Brown's body was the first found within the city limits of Jennings. She would become the 5th victim of the Jennings 8. LaConia was clothed but had no shoes on. Her throat had been slit, and someone had doused her body with bleach. Brown was wearing a white, tank-top style shirt stained from white to pink. Police believed the stain to be blood and that some type of liquid had diluted it from red to pink. They discovered more evidence and potential leads in this case than in any of the previous deaths since Brown's body was found about six hours after it was left on the road.

 

LaConia's family stated that she may have known something horrible was about to happen to her and that she was living in fear just days before her death. She was a lifelong resident of Jennings and attended Jennings High School.

 

Crystal 'Shay' Benoit Zeno, 23, was last seen 08/29/08. Her remains were found on 09/11/08 near a dry irrigation canal a few miles from Jennings, Louisiana.

 

Crystal was employed with Sonic in Lake Arthur until May 2008, when she moved to Jennings. She enjoyed spending time with her daughter, fishing, singing, and listening to music. She was a people-person, who also enjoyed spending time with friends.

 

According to her parents, Shay was diagnosed with bipolar at 12 and started using drugs early to cope with the illness.

 

On 09/11/08, hunters reported a foul smell in a wooded area to authorities. The remains of Crystal Shay were found around 3:00 pm on the LaCour Road levee, off LA Highway 1126, a few miles southeast of Jennings. Due to the advanced state of decomposition, she was not identified with DNA until nearly two months later, on 11/07/08. Her death was ruled a homicide, although the cause of death and toxicology reports have not been released to the public.

 

Crystal, who went by "Shay," was married and had a young daughter. She also knew many of the other victims, including Brittney Gary.

 

17-year-old Brittney Gary became the 7th and youngest victim. Brittney walked out of the Family Dollar Store in Jennings, never to be seen alive again; sometime after 5:30 pm that day, she was abducted. Thirteen days passed as her family, and a concerned public held out hope that Brittney was safe and would be located soon. Sadly, on November 15, 2008, her deceased body was found in a grassy area outside Jennings. According to her family, Brittney loved to swim, hang out with her friends, and listen to music. She enjoyed spending time with her friends and family and was a friendly and loving person. She was also trusted by the third victim Kristine Gary Lopez. She also knew several of the other victims.

Necole Jean Guillory, 26, was last seen on 08/16/09. Her remains were discovered on 08/19/09 near the westbound I-10 exit in Egan, Louisiana.

 

She was a resident of Lake Arthur, and according to her family, enjoyed listening to music and loved being outdoors.

 

Necole's remains were discovered on 08/19/09 by a highway worker mowing grass. She was left between mile markers 72 & 73, near the westbound I-10 Egan exit (between Crowley and Jennings) in Acadia Parish. Mark Dawson, Acadia Parish Coroner, ruled the death of Necole murder by probable asphyxia. 

 

According to Necole's mother, shortly before her daughter's disappearance, she'd asked her what kind of icing she wanted for her birthday cake. Necole replied it didn't matter because she wouldn't see her birthday. Unfortunately, her premonition was correct: her body was found just days before her birthday. She also confided in her Mom that police killed the other young women, and it would only be a matter of time before she ended up dead too. Holy shit! What the hell is going on down there?

 

Ok, so those are the unfortunate victims in the case. Did a serial killer kill them? In December 2008, Officials formed a multi-agency investigative team (MAIT) of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to solve the killings. At the time, there were seven dead women, and the reward for information leading to the guilty party's arrest was increased from $35,000 to $85,000. From the outset, the task force was searching for a serial killer.

"It is the collective opinion of all agencies involved in this investigation," said then Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff Ricky Edwards, who was flanked by FBI agents, Louisiana State Police, and sheriffs from neighboring parishes at a press conference announcing the task force's inception, "that these murders may have been committed by a common offender." 

 

In 2012 the new Jefferson Davis sheriff claimed they still had no evidence that these deaths were all related or even homicides. Now, he may be technically correct, but most find this incredibly hard to believe, given the evidence and connections. At the time, most people chalked this up to the work of a serial killer preying on sex workers. If you're interested in serial killers, you'll know that this is not unusual. Many serial killers get started by killing sex workers as they are viewed as less important and less likely to be missed. Killers believe they can easily get away with murders of women who partake in this work line because nobody cares about them. As far as suspects go, some were arrested and released, as we've mentioned earlier.  

 

However, one man believes that this was not the work of a serial killer. Writer Ethan Brown spent several years investigating this case and had discovered some interesting things in the process. 

 

Buckle up bitches. This is about to be a crazy ride!

 

In one article he wrote for medium.com, Brown says, "Over the past two years, I have obtained and reviewed hundreds of pages of task force witness interviews, the homicide case files on several of the victims, the Jeff Davis Parish sheriff's office's and Jeff Davis Parish district attorney's files on all of the victims, federal and state court records, and the complete personnel files of the cops and sheriff's deputies at the center of the case. I have interviewed friends and family of all eight victims, as well as some of the possible suspects.

 

The details of the Jeff Davis 8 case can be murky; the connections between victims, suspects, and police tangled. My investigation, however, casts serious doubt on the theory that the Jeff Davis 8 is the work of a serial killer."

 

Brown goes on to say, "One fact is clear: local law enforcement is far too steeped in misconduct and corruption—and this extends to the task force, which is dominated by detectives and deputies from the sheriff's office—to run an investigation with the integrity that the murdered women and their families deserve after nearly a decade in which no one has been brought to justice."

 

One reason Brown doesn't believe this was the work of a serial killer is the connections between all of the victims. Generally, serial killers kill victims who have no relation to other victims. However, the women themselves all knew one another intimately. Some were related by blood (such as cousins Kristen Gary Lopez and Brittney Gary) or lived together (Gary bunked down with Crystal Benoit in South Jennings just before being killed in 2008). They solicited prostitution at the Boudreaux Inn, a now-shuttered motel in Jennings that, with its sloping blue metal roof and nondescript white façade, could be mistaken for a storage facility. The inn was ideally situated in Jennings's heady drugs and sex trade—just off a 400-mile stretch of Interstate 10 connecting Houston to New Orleans, favored by marijuana and cocaine traffickers and prescription-pill "doctor shoppers"—and cops were there on a near-nightly basis for busts. Loretta Lewis, the first victim, was the subject of several complaints to the police based on her activity at the inn.

 

Brown also says, "It wasn't simply that they traded their bodies at the same address. According to my reporting, all but one of the victims—Ernestine Patterson—were associated with the same fixture of the Jennings underworld: a 58-year-old oil-rig worker turned strip-club owner named Frankie Richard. "We shared something," he said of the murdered women, his voice so raspy it sounded as though he had been gargling rocks. "When we were at the lowest point of our life, and no one wanted to have anything to do with us, we had something to do with each other. And that means something to me. Them girls were my friends no matter how fucking low my life was. And I was their friend no matter how fuckin' low their life was."

 

Richard described the city of Jennings when the killings began: "It was wide open… The drugs, the prostitution, the bars, the crooked cops." Since the early 1990s, there have been nearly 20 unsolved homicides, including the slain eight women, in Jefferson Davis Parish, a statistic any competent sheriff's department would regard as both a shallow clearance rate and an astonishingly high murder rate for a small area.

 

As for suspects, Brown had found several while going through the reports from the task force and interviewing witnesses. In 2007, Frankie Richard himself was briefly charged in the Lopez killing, but those charges were dropped after witnesses provided conflicting statements and an essential piece of physical evidence was mishandled. Richard died in 2020. 

 

Byron Chad Jones and Lawrence Nixon (a cousin of the fifth victim, Laconia Brown) were briefly charged with second-degree murder in the Ernestine Patterson case. But despite several witnesses implicating them, the sheriff's office did not test the alleged crime scene until 15 months after Patterson's murder and found it "failed to demonstrate the presence of blood." That messed-up crime scene work contributed, in part, to the collapse of the case against the two men. According to case files, Jennings street hustlers with connections to Richard were suspected in the deaths of some of the other women. 

 

Brown claims no credible suspects outside the Jennings drug circle have been found, yet the official narrative is still that of a serial killer. 

 

Another strange connection is that the murdered women of the Jeff Davis 8 (aka, the Jennings 8) provided information to law enforcement about other Jeff Davis 8 victims—and then turned up dead themselves. For example, Laconia Brown (the fifth victim) was interrogated about the 2005 killing of Ernestine Patterson (the second victim). Brown, the article author, obtained by a task force report in which one witness claims that Brown, the murder victim, spotted the body of Loretta Lewis (the first victim) floating in the Grand Marais Canal before Jerry Jackson discovered her there in May 2005. In 2006, detectives investigating Lewis's murder interrogated Kristen Gary Lopez (the third victim).

 

"She knew what was going on," Melissa Daigle, Lopez's mother, told Brown. She trailed off, tearing up at the memory. "They were scared, them girls. I think she knew about it and was too scared to say."

 

Brown also claims that he discovered that all of the women at one point had been informants for local law enforcement regarding the Jennings drug trade. 

 

When Brown confronted Sheriff Edwards with the allegation that the Jeff Davis 8 were informants, the sheriff stammered a non-denial. "I wouldn't respond," he told me. "If they were informants, I would still continue to protect their anonymity. I don't know that's the truth. I won't comment on it."

 

Brown writes that at the end of 2008, a Jennings prostitute warned task force investigators that Necole Guillory "might be the next victim."

 

Guillory was known for her street savviness, and in 2006, when she was 24, she savagely attacked a sex customer with the handle of a sledgehammer. 

 

Brown says of Guillory," I've reviewed the parish district attorney office's case files on Guillory, and in at least six cases, the charges against her ended in a nolle prosequi (a legal term meaning "be unwilling to pursue" on the district attorney's part). Though there is no record of Guillory's cooperation—excluding a theft case in which she agreed to testify against her codefendant—snitches routinely have charges nolle prossed in exchange for their off-the-record cooperation."

 

"Necole knew a whole lot," said Frankie Richard, "about a whole lot."

 

Necoles mother Barbara would tell Brown, "She was always paranoid," "It got to the point where she did not want to go anywhere by herself," she said. "I think she could feel that they were closing in on her." With her 27th birthday approaching, Guillory refused even to entertain the idea of celebrating. "I bought some icing and cake for her birthday," Barbara recalled. "She said, 'Momma, it doesn't matter—I'm not gonna be here.'"

Guillory also had her four kids placed with relatives. A task force witness supports the claim that in her final days, she "was scared of someone," but she would not say who and that she "knew who killed the girls."

 

Barbara believes that her daughter was murdered because she witnessed local law enforcement corruption or misconduct or worse. "She used to tell us all the time it was the police killing the girls," Barbara said. "We'd say, 'Necole, a name. Something. Write a letter and leave it somewhere. Let us know. We can help you.' No, momma. It's too far gone. It's too big. I'd rather y'all not know nothing, that way nothing can happen to y'all… She knew, she knew, she knew, and that's why they killed her."

 

Brown writes that several other families of victims have similar stories. 

 

He says, "Gail Brown, a sister of the fifth victim, Laconia "Muggy" Brown, told me that just before Muggy was killed, she worriedly informed her family that "she was investigating a murder with a cop; the cop wanted to give her $500 to tell what happened." Gail put it as bluntly as Barbara Guillory: "She knew what was going on," she told me, referring to her sister's work as a cooperator. "I think it was a cop that killed my sister."

 

Taskforce witness interviews corroborate the Brown family accounts; one was noted as saying that "Laconia Brown told her that…three police officers were going to kill her."

 

According to Brown, the Jennings police force and Jeff Davis sheriff's offices have been plagued by misconduct for years. 

 

Veterans of Jennings' streets trace the unwinding of local law enforcement back to the '70s when they say cops began getting involved in drug trafficking. But this is not merely street gossip. In March 1990, two local men burglarized the sheriff's office, making off with a staggering 300 pounds of marijuana. According to court documents, investigators interviewed one of the burglars. He named a surprising pair of accomplices—Frankie Richard and a man named Ted Gary, who was then chief deputy sheriff. (Officials brought no charges against Richard and Gary.)

 

From sheriff's using parish funds to purchase personal items illegally, to unlawfully and purposefully stopping cars with out-of-state plates, to improper dealings with inmates, and even the murder of one officer and his wife by another officer, things were getting pretty nuts. 

 

In October 2003, eight female Jennings cops filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against Jennings police chief Donald "Lucky" DeLouche, a gaggle of male cops, and the City of Jennings, alleging widespread acts of sexual violence and harassment. Among the allegations in the complaint: a captain who shook his penis at female officers, saying, "You know I like to lick pussy, I can numb it all night," and forced oral sex on a female officer, as well as a lieutenant who waved a knife at a female officer, warning, "Girl, I'll cut you."

In January 2013, former Jennings police chief Johnny Lassiter was hit with a battery of charges after a Louisiana State Police audit found $4,500 in cash, 1,800 pills, more than 380 grams of cocaine, and several pounds of marijuana missing from the department's evidence room.

 

In December 2007, Sergeant Jesse Ewing received word that two female inmates at the city jail wanted to talk about the unsolved homicides (at the time totaling four). He was stunned by what he heard: Ewing said both women told him that "higher-ranking officers" had been directly involved in covering up the murders.

 

Brown claims Ewing had long been wary of his fellow cops, and he feared that the audiotapes would simply vanish, just as drugs and cash had a way of disappearing from evidence. So Ewing handed the interview tapes over to a local private investigator named Kirk Menard, who rushed copies to the FBI's office in nearby Lake Charles.

 

Brown goes on to write, "Ewing's gambit to grab the attention of the feds backfired. The tapes ended up right back with the sheriff's office–dominated task force, and Ewing's fears of retaliation turned out to be justified. As a result, the parish district attorney charged Ewing with malfeasance in office and sexual misconduct. (One of the female inmates claimed that Ewing touched her inappropriately during the interview. Ewing denies it, and that charge was dismissed.)

 

Brown says, "Ewing and I sat in his trailer in the Paradise Park development in Jennings in July 2011. He is a short, wide-shouldered man with a cleanly shaved head, a graying goatee, and the bulky frame of a rugby player. Ewing decorated the trailer with little more than a TV set and a couch—a no-frills lifestyle that he blamed on employment troubles since his termination after 20 years on the job. "I felt screwed for doing the right thing," he said."

 

Although the tapes were never made public, Brown says he had listened to them in their entirety. He claims they provide highly specific information about the murders of two of the prostitutes—Whitnei Dubois and Kristen Gary Lopez—as well as local law enforcement's alleged role in covering up Frankie Richard's role in at least one of the killings.

 

The first inmate says that a prostitute named Tracee Chaisson had told her that she was there when Richard and his niece Hannah Conner killed Dubois. They'd all been getting high, and when Dubois refused Richard's sexual advances, he "got aggressive, he started fighting with her, and when she started fighting back he got on top of her and started punching her." According to the inmate, Chaisson then said that Hannah held her head back and drowned her. 

 

The two inmates told another story about a truck and a conspiracy between Richard and a top sheriff's office investigator to destroy evidence in the Lopez case.

 

The second inmate said Richard put Lopez's body "in a barrel," and used a truck to transport it. The truck, she said, was later purchased by "an officer named Mr. Warren, I don't know his exact name, he bought the truck to discard the evidence."

 

By "Warren," the inmate meant the sheriff's office chief criminal investigator, Warren Gary. The first inmate had also spoken of Lopez's body, a truck, and an officer named Warren.

 

Public records would seem to corroborate the second witness' account. On March 29, 2007, Warren Gary purchased a 2006 Chevy Silverado truck for $8,748.90 from Connie Siler, a Richard associate who had just been hauled into the sheriff's office for questioning in the case of a bad check.

On April 20, Gary resold Siler's Silverado for $15,500, a nearly 50 percent profit in less than one month. (Siler, in turn, used profits from the sale, $3,207.13, to pay the parish district attorney's office for the bad checks she had issued.)

Gary's truck purchase was possibly illegal and definitely unethical—the Louisiana Board of Ethics fined him $10,000 in the incident. "What [Gary] did with that was wrong," former sheriff Ricky Edwards told Brown. "Buying from an inmate, that's what was ethically wrong." He insisted, however, that his office "had no clue that [the truck] was even part of evidence [in the Lopez case]. That didn't come out until way after the fact."

 

Brown says there is some reason to doubt this claim. According to their reports, investigators knew that Siler was one of the last to see Lopez alive. In addition, Paula Guillory, a former detective in the sheriff's office who was later investigated for her ties to the Jennings drug scene, recently spoke to Brown and told him, "We knew that Connie Siler's vehicle was probably involved."

 

In a town where everyone was related and where the atmosphere had the feeling of a vicious family feud, it was Paula's then-husband Terrie Guillory, the warden at the jail, who brokered the Siler truck deal, according to the ethics board report on Gary. (Note: That he shares a last name with one of the victims is not a coincidence: Necole Guillory was his cousin.)

 

Because of Warren Gary and Terrie Guillory, two members of law enforcement, the Lopez case lost an essential piece of physical evidence. Because of Terrie Guillory, one suspect found herself with an alibi. And because Conner refused to flip on Richard, and Chaisson had changed her story repeatedly, the charges against all of them were dropped.

 

Brown writes, "Put simply: The statements from the two female inmates portrayed Richard and his associates working with the sheriff's office to dispose of evidence in the Lopez case. Yet the sergeant who took the statements was forced out of his job, and the allegations were ignored by law enforcement." 

 

A review of hundreds of pages of task force investigative reports by Brown reveals a series of witness interviews where local law enforcement was implicated in the murders. However, these allegations have never been made public.

 

Danny Barry, a 12-year veteran of the sheriff's office when he died in 2010 at the age of 63, was named a suspect by at least three separate task force witnesses in a single day of interrogations in November 2008. "Deputy Danny Barry would ride around on the south side with his wife," one witness said. "And they would try to pick up girls….[Barry's vehicle was] a small blue sports car…Barry would drop off his wife, Natalie, and she would get the girls. The couple would 'spike' a drink and then take the girls back to the Barrys' house…."

 

One witness even told investigators that "Danny Barry had a room in his trailer that had chains hanging from the ceiling and that a person could not see in or out of the room." What the fuck?

 

There was only one task force interview with Barry on February 25, 2009. He wasn't questioned about the abundance of allegations against him, and there hasn't been any substantive follow-up investigation.

 

Brown goes on to write, "As the murders in the parish crescendoed in 2009, Guillory participated in a raid on Frankie Richard's family home. This was part of a sprawling investigation by the sheriff's office into a drugs and theft ring that Richard, his mother, and Teresa Gary (the mother of the seventh victim, Brittney Gary) were later charged with running, in which guns, jewelry, and rare coins had been pilfered from residences across Jennings. Yet when Guillory turned over evidence, nearly $4,000 was missing. So the theft case collapsed under the weight of serious law enforcement misconduct."

 

"Guillory denies that she stole or disposed of evidence in the case. She told me that she realized the money was missing when she was cataloguing the evidence from the raid and immediately contacted her superiors. (Warren Gary, the former chief investigator who had purchased the truck allegedly used to dispose of Lopez's body, helped catalogue the evidence, which is another troubling coincidence.) She was sent home from work and, even though she offered to take a polygraph test regarding the missing money, she was promptly fired by Sheriff Edwards. "I never even gave my own side of the story," she told Brown.

 

Yet again, the charges against Richard were dropped. It was a break that he relishes to this day. "I'm not mad at that," Richard told Brown when he asked him about the missing evidence in his case. "In fact I thank her for doing that. If she had handled her business right, my momma would still be in jail."

 

Most of the murdered women seemed to know about the other prostitute killings. But at least one victim from the Jeff Davis 8 witnessed a killing at the hands of state and local law enforcement during a drug bust in Jennings that went awry.

 

During a drug bust brought on by a tip from a snitch, Leonard Crochet, a pill dealer, was shot and killed by Probation and Parole agent John Briggs Becton. Briggs Becton told Crochet to show his hands, and, according to a statement he gave later to investigators, Crochet "then made a sudden movement with his hands toward his belt line." Believing that Crochet was reaching for a weapon, Briggs Becton fired his departmentally issued Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun, with a single shot striking Crochet in the chest. 

 

According to a later statement by a fellow Probation and Parole agent at the raid, Briggs Becton approached Crochet's body, muttering, "Oh shit." Briggs Becton called an ambulance to the scene, and the inhabitants at 610 Gallup were taken into custody and transported to the Jennings Police Department for questioning. Police investigators concluded that they were "unable to locate any items near Crochet's location in the residence which could have been construed as a weapon. Further, no persons inside the residence at the time of the shooting, whether law enforcement or civilian, could provide any evidence that Crochet had brandished a weapon."

That July, a parish grand jury heard prosecutors make their case that Briggs Becton committed the crime of negligent homicide. However, they came back with a decision of "no true bill"—no probable cause or evidence to show that Briggs Becton had committed a crime.

 

Could this be the reason the Jennings 8 we're killed? It is one theory suggested by some in the parish. "The victims were being killed because they were present when Leonard Crochet was killed by the police," one witness told task force investigators. "The girls were being killed because they had seen something they were not supposed to see." Even Richard connected the Crochet killing to the murdered women: "Most of them girls was at a raid…when that Crochet boy got killed. Most of the girls that are dead today were there that night."

 

Brown obtained a witness list from the Louisiana State Police on the incident. He says, "it reads like a who's who of players in the Jeff Davis 8 case, including the third victim Kristen Gary Lopez, Alvin "Bootsy" Lewis (the boyfriend of the fourth victim, Whitnei Duboisi, and the brother-in-law of the first victim, Loretta Lewis), and Harvey "Bird Dog" Burleigh, who later told Dubois' older brother Mike that "I'm close to finding out who killed your sister" and was then found stabbed to death in his Jennings apartment. His murder, too, remains unsolved."

 

The slaying of witnesses appears to be a pattern in Jefferson Davis Parish. Soon after Crystal Shay Benoit Zeno (the sixth victim) was found in a wooded area in South Jennings in September 2008, a tip was called into the parish district attorney's office from a 43-year-old Lafayette man named Russell Carrier. Carrier said that he had seen three African-American men exiting the woods. Richard associate Eugene "Dog" Ivory, Ervin "Tyson" Mouton (who is named as another possible suspect in the Lopez homicide in the task force documents), and Ricardo "Tiger" Williams.

On October 10, 2010, Carrier was struck and killed by a Burlington Northern Santa Fe Train in Jennings early in the morning. Police Chief Todd D'Albor said that "for whatever reason," Carrier laid on the tracks and was run over.

 

God damn, this shit is nuts! 

 

Brown concludes his article with information about one of the leading players in the case, Frankie Richard, whom we've talked about a lot. 

 

Brown writes of Frankie, "Though Richard was well aware that I was deeply investigating the Jeff Davis 8, he never turned me down for an interview and didn't flinch when I confronted him with my reporting—he has a knack for explaining away bad facts and constructing theories on alternative suspects." Deceased deputy Danny Barry is also a favorite. "All these girls or most of these girls was found within a three-mile radius of Danny Barry's house," Richard told Brown. "Since he been dead, nobody died. All these motherfuckers on the sheriff's department are some crooked sons of bitches."

 

Brown describes one interview with Frankie as follows "On an unusually warm and muggy late spring night in 2012, Richard sat shirtless, exposing his meaty upper body, on a pair of rockers on the front porch of his family home in Jennings. He has expressionless brown eyes, a thick head of black hair streaked with gray, and a salt-and-pepper goatee. He was trying very hard to project the image of a wrongly accused, down-on-his-luck, sobered-up former hustler. "I was a dope addict, a coke head, meth head, alcoholic, no-good sonofabitch," Richard told me. "But I'm determined to get my head on right. I'm one year clean from meth and 100 days clean from alcohol and cocaine after 42 years. That's a long fuckin' time for a motherfucker like me." 

 

Brown continues, "Standing nearby, on the ground below, was an associate of Richard's, a towering African-American man in his 30s wearing baggy jeans and a white T-shirt. At one point, he interrupted the conversation to warn me that the story I'm working on will likely put me in the crosshairs of local law enforcement. "You a bold-ass little man, dog," he said. "Don't get caught in Jeff Davis Parish at night."

 

Brown continues about Frankie Richard:

 

"That Richard continues to sit atop what police files and my own reporting suggest is an empire of drugs and prostitution is no spectacular stroke of luck. He is a prized informant who, according to task force documents, has provided a steady stream of intel to investigators. (Richard was debriefed in 2008, which Brown says challenges another official narrative: that no one is talking to the multi-agency investigative team, and that all investigators have is a series of unhelpful dead ends.) He goes on to say, "Criminal activity sanctioned by high-level law enforcement is hardly uncommon; a 2011 FBI report concluded the agency gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times that year.

Richard would push back against the snitch label vigorously. But, in May 2012, Kirk Menard, the private investigator, sent a pair of female witnesses who said they had tips in the killings related to Richard to the task force offices to be interrogated. "Do not worry about Frankie," one high-ranking task force investigator told the stunned women, "because he works for me." According to the witness account, the investigator added that Richard has a task force–issued cellphone. Menard forwarded me an e-mail he sent to the task force outlining his concerns about the interview. Nearly two years later, he has yet to receive a response."

 

Brown says that the possibility that Richard is just circumstantially connected to all of the eight murdered women has also been undermined again and again. Soon after charges against Richard in the 2007 Lopez slaying were dismissed, he and associate Eugene "Dog" Ivory—who is, according to task force witnesses, a suspect in the murder of Crystal Benoit—beat a rape case in which, according to case files, Richard allegedly told the victim, "If you tell anyone, bitch, you will end up like the others."

 

Brown also recounts another story relayed to him: 

 

"One night, not long before Richard and I met, Beverly Crochet, the sister of slain drug dealer Leonard Crochet, was leaving Tina's Bar, a South Jennings haunt frequented by the Jeff Davis 8. Tracee Chaisson, the former prostitute who was once charged with being an accessory after the fact of second-degree murder in the slaying of Kristen Lopez, approached her in the parking lot.

"When I was walking out with my ride," Crochet told me when we spoke several weeks later on the front porch of her home, which is just down the street from the Richard family home, "she was screaming out the car with some black people, 'You're gonna be number 9.'"

Crochet said she reported the incident to the task force. She cleared her throat nervously. "I could tell you more," she said, "but I'm scared. I'm scared for my own life." The Jeff Davis 8 killings, she said, "started right after" her brother Leonard was killed. "Right after. All them girls were in there at one point. They were all in there for two days in and out."

 

Brown concludes his article by saying The Jeff Davis 8 case is begging for a takeover by the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. They had intervened in a now-notorious New Orleans Police Department case from 2005, where cops shot and killed innocent bystanders on the Danziger Bridge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Brown claims his investigation raises several genuine questions about the prevailing serial-killer theory of these murders. It also indicates that local law enforcement is a hindrance, not a help, to a resolution being reached. Whatever the truth, these eight women, and their surviving families, deserve a fresh inquiry by an outside investigative body.

 

Holy shit! What seemed like a pretty clear-cut case on the outside; Serial killer preying on sex workers turned into THAT fucking crazy story. Wow. What do you all think? Fucking nuts, huh! The case remains unsolved, and if the things Brown uncovered are accurate, we will most likely never get to the bottom of this! 

 

Movies: 

 

Top ten drug horror movies, keeping with the drug theme 

 

http://www.theblood-shed.com/top-10-drug-horror-movies/

A Midnight Carol (Rerelease) Our take on the Christmas classic, A Christmas Carol

Due to popular demand, we've decided to rerelease our epic remake of the the Dickens classic "A Christmas Carol". 

 

WARNING! This isn't exactly PG so listener discretion is always advised.

Happy Holidays! Thank you for listening.

 

Don't miss this years Christmas bonus as well as all of the other amazing content available only at www.patreon.com/themidnighttrainpodcast

Christmas Disasters

For bonuses and to support the show, sign up at www.patreon.com/themidnighttrainpodcast

 

This week is our Christmas special here on the train. First, we've covered Krampus, Christmas killings, and ghost story Christmas traditions. Then, in keeping with our tradition of crazy Christmas episodes, today, we bring you some crazy Christmas disasters! Christmas isn't immune to crazy shit going on, from natural disasters to fires. Not only that, we're giving you guys a pretty good dose of history today. So with that being said, let's get into some crazy Christmas stuff!

 

While this first topic isn't necessarily a disaster in the usual sense, it definitely caused nothing but problems. And yes, it's a disaster. In 1865 on Christmas Eve, something happened that would change things for many people in this country and still causes grief to this day. While most people in the u.s. were settling down for the night with their families, leaving milk out for Santa, and tucking the kids in for the night, a group of men in Pulaski, Tennessee, were getting together for a very different purpose. Frank McCord, Richard Reed, John Lester, John Kennedy, J. Calvin Jones, and James Crowe were all officers with the Confederacy in the civil war. That night, they got together to form a group inspired at least in part by the then largely defunct Sons of Malta. While it started as a social club, within months, it would turn into one of the most nefarious groups around, the Ku Klux Klan. According to The Cyclopædia of Fraternities (1907), "Beginning in April, 1867, there was a gradual transformation. ...The members had conjured up a veritable Frankenstein. They had played with an engine of power and mystery, though organized on entirely innocent lines, and found themselves overcome by a belief that something must lie behind it all – that there was, after all, a serious purpose, a work for the Klan to do." It borrowed parts of the initiation ceremony from the sons of Malta with the same purpose: "ludicrous initiations, the baffling of public curiosity, and the amusement for members were the only objects of the Klan," according to Albert Stevens in 1907.

In the summer of 1867, local branches of the Klan met in a general organizing convention. They established what they called an "Invisible Empire of the South." Leading Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was chosen as the first leader, or "grand wizard," of the Klan; he presided over a hierarchy of grand dragons, grand titans, and grand cyclops. The organization of the Ku Klux Klan coincided with the beginning of the second phase of post-Civil War Reconstruction, put into place by the more radical members of the Republican Party in Congress. After rejecting President Andrew Johnson's relatively lenient Reconstruction policies from 1865 to 1866, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act over the presidential veto. Under its provisions, the South was divided into five military districts. Each state was required to approve the 14th Amendment, which granted "equal protection" of the Constitution to formerly enslaved people and enacted universal male suffrage. From 1867 onward, Black participation in public life in the South became one of the most radical aspects of Reconstruction. Black people won elections to southern state governments and even the U.S. Congress. For its part, the Ku Klux Klan dedicated itself to an underground campaign of violence against Republican leaders and voters (both Black and white) to reverse the policies of Radical Reconstruction and restore white supremacy in the South. They were joined in this struggle by similar organizations such as the Knights of the White Camelia (launched in Louisiana in 1867) and the White Brotherhood. At least 10 percent of the Black legislators elected during the 1867-1868 constitutional conventions became victims of violence during Reconstruction, including seven who were killed. White Republicans (derided as "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags") and Black institutions such as schools and churches—symbols of Black autonomy—were also targets for Klan attacks. By 1870, the Ku Klux Klan had branches in nearly every southern state. The Klan did not boast a well-organized structure or clear leadership even at its height. Local Klan members, often wearing masks and dressed in the organization's signature long white robes and hoods, usually carried out their attacks at night. They acted on their own but supported the common goals of defeating Radical Reconstruction and restoring white supremacy in the South. Klan activity flourished particularly in the regions of the South where Black people were a minority or a slight majority of the population and were relatively limited in others. Among the most notorious zones of Klan activity was South Carolina, where in January 1871, 500 masked men attacked the Union county jail and lynched eight Black prisoners. Though Democratic leaders would later attribute Ku Klux Klan violence to poorer southern white people, the organization's membership crossed class lines, from small farmers and laborers to planters, lawyers, merchants, physicians, and ministers. In the regions where most Klan activity took place, local law enforcement officials either belonged to the Klan or declined to act against it. Even those who arrested Klansmen found it difficult to find witnesses willing to testify against them. 

 

Other leading white citizens in the South declined to speak out against the group's actions, giving them implicit approval. After 1870, Republican state governments in the South turned to Congress for help, resulting in three Enforcement Acts, the strongest of which was the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.

 

For the first time, the Ku Klux Klan Act designated certain crimes committed by individuals as federal offenses, including conspiracies to deprive citizens of the right to hold office, serve on juries and enjoy the equal protection of the law. In addition, the act authorized the president to suspend the habeas corpus, arrest accused individuals without charge, and send federal forces to suppress Klan violence. For those of us dummies that may not know, a "writ of habeas corpus" (which literally means to "produce the body") is a court order demanding that a public official (such as a warden) deliver an imprisoned individual to the court and show a valid reason for that person's detention. The procedure provides a means for prison inmates or others acting on their behalf to dispute the legal basis for confinement.

 

This expansion of federal authority–which Ulysses S. Grant promptly used in 1871 to crush Klan activity in South Carolina and other areas of the South–outraged Democrats and even alarmed many Republicans. From the early 1870s onward, white supremacy gradually reasserted its hold on the South as support for Reconstruction waned; by the end of 1876, the entire South was under Democratic control once again.

 

Now, this was just the first version of the Klan. A second version started up in the early 1900s and later on another revival which is the current iteration of the Klan. We're not going to go into the later versions of the Klan because well…. Fuck 'em! We've already given them too much air time! But… This most definitely qualifies as a Christmas disaster.

 

Next up, we have a couple natural disasters. 

 

First up, Cyclone Tracy. Cyclone Tracy has been described as the most significant tropical cyclone in Australia's history, and it changed how we viewed the threat of tropical cyclones to northern Australia.

 

Five days before Christmas 1974, satellite images showed a tropical depression in the Arafura Sea, 700 kilometers (or almost 435 miles for us Americans) northeast of Darwin.

 

The following day the Tropical Cyclone Warning Center in Darwin warned that a cyclone had formed and gave it the name Tracy. Cyclone Tracy was moving southwest at this stage, but as it passed the northwest of Bathurst Island on December 23, it slowed down and changed course.

 

That night, it rounded Cape Fourcroy and began moving southeast, with Darwin directly in its path.

 

The first warning that Darwin was under threat came at 12:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve when a top-priority flash cyclone warning was issued advising people that Cyclone Tracy was expected to make landfall early Christmas morning.

 

Despite 12 hours' warning of the cyclone's impending arrival, it fell mainly on deaf ears.

 

Residents were complacent after a near-miss from Cyclone Selma a few weeks before and distracted by the festive season.

 

Indeed in the preceding decade, the Bureau of Meteorology had identified 25 cyclones in Northern Territory waters, but few had caused much damage. Severe Tropical Cyclone Tracy was a small but intense system at landfall.

 

The radius of the galeforce winds extended only 50 kilometers from the eye of the cyclone, making it one of the most miniature tropical cyclones on record, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

 

Records show that at least six tropical cyclones had severely impacted Darwin before Tracy.

 

The worst of these was in January 1897 when a "disastrous hurricane" nearly destroyed the settlement, and 28 people died.

 

However, unlike Tracy, it is thought this cyclone did not directly pass over Darwin.

 

And while Tracy was reported as a category four cyclone, some meteorologists today believe it may have been a category five shortly before it made landfall.

 

At midnight on Christmas Day, wind gusts greater than 100 kilometers or over 62 miles per hour began to be recorded.

 

The cyclone's center reached East Point at 3:15 a.m. and landed just north of Fannie Bay at 3:30 a.m.

 

Tracy was so strong it bent a railway signal tower in half. 

 

The city was devastated by the cyclone. At least 90 percent of homes in Darwin were demolished or badly damaged. Forty-five vessels in the harbor were wrecked or damaged.

 

In addition to the 65 people who died, 145 were admitted to the hospital with serious injuries.

 

Vegetation was damaged up to 80 kilometers away from the coast, and Darwin felt eerily quiet due to the lack of insect and birdlife.

 

Within a week after the cyclone hit, more than 30,000 Darwin residents had been evacuated by air or road. That's more than two-thirds of the population at that time.

 

Cyclone Tracy remains one of Australia's most significant disasters.

 

As Murphy wrote 10 years after the cyclone: "The impact of Cyclone Tracy has reached far beyond the limits of Darwin itself. All along the tropical coasts of northern Australia and beyond a new cyclone awareness has emerged."

 

Merry fucking Christmas! Damn, that sucks. The information in this section came from an article on abc.net.au

 

Next up, we are going way back. The Christmas Flood of 1717 resulted from a northwesterly storm, which hit the coastal area of the Netherlands, Germany, and Scandinavia on Christmas night of 1717. During the night of Christmas, 1717, the coastal regions of the Netherlands, Germany, and Scandinavia were hit by a severe north-western storm. It is estimated that 14,000 people died. It was the worst flood for four centuries and the last significant flood to hit the north of the Netherlands.

 

In the countryside to the north of the Netherlands, the water level rose up to a few meters. The city of Groningen rose up to a few feet. In the province of Groningen, villages that were situated directly behind the dikes were nearly swept away. Action had to be taken against looters who robbed houses and farms under the fraudulent act of rescuing the flood victims. In total, the flood caused 2,276 casualties in Groningen. 1,455 homes were either destroyed or suffered extensive damage. Most livestock was lost.

 

The water also poured into Amsterdam and Haarlem and the areas around Dokkum and Stavoren. Over 150 people died in Friesland alone. In addition, large sections of Northern Holland were left underwater and the area around Zwolle and Kampen. In these areas, the flood only caused material damage. In Vlieland, however, the sea poured over the dunes, almost entirely sweeping away the already-damaged village of West-Vlieland.

 

We also found this report from a German website. It's been translated, so our apologies if it's wonky. 

 

"According to tradition, several days before Christmas, it had blown strong and sustained from the southwest. Shortly after sunset on Christmas Eve, the wind suddenly turned from west to northwest and eased a little. The majority of the residents went to bed unconcerned, because currently was half moon and the next regular flood would not occur until 7 a.m. At the time when the tide was supposed to have been low for a long time, however, a drop in the water level could not be determined.

Allegedly between 1 and 2 a.m. the storm began to revive violently accompanied by lightning and thunder. Between 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning the water reached the top of the dike. The current and waves caused the dike caps to break, so that the tide rolled over the dike into the flat land with a loud roar of thunder. Many only had time to save themselves in the dark on the floor under the roof. Most of the time there was not even time to take clothes, drinking water and some food with you. Numerous houses could not withstand the rising water and the current. In the higher and higher water and the increasing current, windows were Doors and entire walls dented. Allegedly the hurricane and the storm surge raged against the coast for three full days, so that it was not until December 28 that the water fell so far that one could come to the aid of one's neighbors with simply built "boats."

In many places, the dykes had been razed to the ground, which meant that in lower-lying areas, every regular flood caused renewed flooding. At the places where the dykes were broken, deep valleys, some of which were large, formed. In many places where the dike is led around in a semi-arch, these walls, also known as pools or bracken, are still visible and testify to the force of the water. At that time, many people are said to have believed that the march was forever lost. In the low-lying areas, the water was later covered with ice floes, sometimes held up for months. Up until the summer months, bodies were said to have been found repeatedly during the clean-up work on the alluvial piles of straw and in the trenches. Many people who survived the flood later fell victim to so-called marching fever. New storm surges in the following years ruined the efforts for the first time to get the dike back into a defensible condition, and many houses, which were initially only damaged, have now been completely destroyed. Numerous small owners left the country so that the Hanover government even issued a ban on emigration."

 

Looks like the Netherlands got a proper Christmas fucking as well! Some towns were so severely destroyed that nothing was left, and they simply ceased to exist. Damn. 

 

Cyclones and floods… What else does mother nature have for us? Well, how's about an earthquake! On Friday, December 26, 2003, at 5:26 a.m., Bam city in Southeastern Iran was jolted by an earthquake registering a 6.5 magnitude on the Richter scale. This was the result of the strike-slip motion of the Bam fault, which runs through this area. The earthquake's epicenter was determined to be approximately six miles southwest of the city. Three more significant aftershocks and many smaller aftershocks were also recorded, the last of which occurred over a month after the main earthquake. To date, official death tolls have 26,271 fatalities, 9000 injured, and 525 still missing. The city of Bam is one of Iran's most ancient cities, dating back to 224A.D. Latest reports and damage estimates are approaching the area of $1.9 billion. A United Nations report estimated that about 90% of the city's buildings were 60%-100% damaged, while the remaining buildings were between 30%-60% damaged. The crazy part about the whole thing… The quake only lasted for about 8 seconds.

 

Now I know what you're thinking… That's not Christmas… Well, there spanky, the night of the 25th, Christmas, people started to feel minor tremors that would preface the quake, so fuck you, it counts.

 

We have one more natural disaster for you guys, and this one most of you guys probably remember. And this one was another that started last Christmas night and rolled into the 26th, also known as boxing day. So we're talking about the Boxing Day Tsunami and the Indian ocean earthquake in 2004. 

 

A 9.1-magnitude earthquake—one of the largest ever recorded—ripped through an undersea fault in the Indian Ocean, propelling a massive column of water toward unsuspecting shores. The Boxing Day tsunami would be the deadliest in recorded history, taking a staggering 230,000 lives in a matter of hours.

 

The city of Banda Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra was closest to the powerful earthquake's epicenter, and the first waves arrived in just 20 minutes. It's nearly impossible to imagine the 100-foot roiling mountain of water that engulfed the coastal city of 320,000, instantly killing more than 100,000 men, women, and children. Buildings folded like houses of cards, trees, and cars were swept up in the oil-black rapids, and virtually no one caught in the deluge survived.

 

Thailand was next. With waves traveling 500 mph across the Indian Ocean, the tsunami hit the coastal provinces of Phang Nga and Phuket an hour and a half later. Despite the time-lapse, locals and tourists were utterly unaware of the imminent destruction. Curious beachgoers even wandered out among the oddly receding waves, only to be chased down by a churning wall of water. The death toll in Thailand was nearly 5,400, including 2,000 foreign tourists.

 

An hour later, on the opposite side of the Indian Ocean, the waves struck the southeastern coast of India near the city of Chennai, pushing debris-choked water kilometers inland and killing more than 10,000 people, primarily women and children, since many of the men were out fishing. But some of the worst devastations were reserved for the island nation of Sri Lanka, where more than 30,000 people were swept away by the waves and hundreds of thousands left homeless.

 

As proof of the record-breaking strength of the tsunami, the last victims of the Boxing Day disaster perished nearly eight hours later when swelling seas and rogue waves caught swimmers by surprise in South Africa, 5,000 miles from the quake's epicenter.

 

Vasily Titov is a tsunami researcher and forecaster with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Center for Tsunami Research. He credits the unsparing destructiveness of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on the raw power of the earthquake that spawned it. The quake originated in a so-called megathrust fault, where heavy oceanic plates subduct beneath lighter continental plates. 

 

"They are the largest faults in the world and they're all underwater," says Titov.

 

The 2004 quake ruptured a 900-mile stretch along the Indian and Australian plates 31 miles below the ocean floor. Rather than delivering one violent jolt, the earthquake lasted an unrelenting 10 minutes, releasing as much pent-up power as several thousand atomic bombs.

 

In the process, massive segments of the ocean floor were forced an estimated 30 or 40 meters (up to 130 feet) upward. The effect was like dropping the world's most giant pebble in the Indian Ocean with ripples the size of mountains extending out in all directions.

 

Titov emphasizes that tsunamis look nothing like the giant surfing break-style waves that many imagine.

 

"It's a wave, but from the observer's standpoint, you wouldn't recognize it as a wave," Titov says. "It's more like the ocean turns into a white water river and floods everything in its path."

 

Once caught in the raging waters, the debris will finish the job if the currents don't pull you under.

 

"In earthquakes, a certain number of people die but many more are injured. It's completely reversed with tsunamis," says Titov. "Almost no injuries, because it's such a difficult disaster to survive."

 

Holy fuck…

That's insane!

 

Well, there are some crazy natural disasters gifted to us by mother nature. So now let's take a look at some man-made disasters… And there are some bad ones. 

 

First up is the 1953 train wreck on Christmas Eve in New Zealand. So this is actually a mix of mother nature fucking people and a man-made structure failing. This event is also referred to as the Tangiwai disaster. The weather on Christmas Eve was fine, and with little recent rain, no one suspected flooding in the Whangaehu River. The river appeared normal when a goods train crossed the bridge around 7 p.m. What transformed the situation was the sudden release of approximately 2 million cubic meters of water from the crater lake of nearby Mt Ruapehu. A 6-meter-high wave containing water, ice, mud, and rocks surged, tsunami-like, down the Whangaehu River. Sometime between 10.10 and 10.15 p.m., this lahar struck the concrete pylons of the Tangiwai railway bridge.

 

Traveling at approximately 65 km per hour, locomotive Ka 949 and its train of nine carriages and two vans reached the severely weakened bridge at 10.21 p.m. As the bridge buckled beneath its weight, the engine plunged into the river, taking all five second-class carriages with it. The torrent force destroyed four of these carriages – those inside had little chance of survival.

 

The leading first-class carriage, Car Z, teetered on the edge of the ruined bridge for a few minutes before breaking free from the remaining three carriages and toppling into the river. It rolled downstream before coming to rest on a bank as the water level fell. Remarkably, 21 of the 22 passengers in this carriage survived. Evidence suggested that the locomotive driver, Charles Parker, had applied the emergency brakes some 200 m from the bridge, which prevented the last three carriages from ending up in the river and saved many lives. Even still, 151 of the 285 passengers and crew died that night in the crash.

 

This information was taken from nzhistory.gov. 

 

Next up is the Italian Hall disaster. 

 

Before it was called Calumet, the area was known as Red Jacket. And for many, it seemed to be ground zero for the sprawling copper mining operations that absorbed wave after wave of immigrants into the Upper Peninsula.

 

Red Jacket itself was a company town for the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, a large firm that in the 1870s was known as the world's largest copper producer. For a time, C&H had the world's deepest copper mines.

 

But the company wasn't immune from the organized labor push that swept across the Keweenaw Peninsula and other parts of the U.P. in 1913. Miners in Montana and Colorado had unionized, and in July of that year, the Western Federation of Miners called a strike against all Copper Country mines. According to a mining journal published that year, they were pushing for a $3 daily wage, 8-hour days, safer working conditions, and representation.

 

"The strike took place in a very complicated time in American history," said Jo Holt, a historian with the National Park Service's Keweenaw National Historical Park. "We had all these different things coming together. An increasingly industrialized country was grappling with worker's rights, gender issues, and immigration. We were moving from a gilded age into a progressive era, and recognizing the voice of labor.

 

"We see this event happen in the midst of that struggle."

 

"The reason it resonates today is we are still having these conversations. How do we create a just economy that functions for everybody? ... We are still, almost hundred and 10 years later, in the midst of these conversations."

 

As the strike wore into fall and the holiday season, a women's auxiliary group to the WFM organized a Christmas Eve party for the miners' families at the Italian Benevolent Society building, better known as the Italian Hall.

 

It was a big, boisterous affair, researchers have said. The multi-story hall was packed, with more than 600 people inside at one point. Children were watching a play and receiving gifts. Organizers later said the crowd was so large that it was hard to track who was coming in the door.

 

When the false cry of "Fire!" went up, pandemonium reached the sole stairway leading down to the street.

 

"What happened is when people panicked, they tried to get out through the stairwell," Holt said. "Someone tripped or people started to fall, and that's what created the bottleneck. It was just people falling on top of each other."

 

The aftermath was horrifying. As the dead were pulled from the pile in the stairwell, the bodies were carried to the town hall, which turned into a makeshift morgue. Some families lost more than one child. Other children were orphaned when their parents died.

 

One black and white photo in the Michigan Technological University Archives shows rows of what looks like sleeping children lying side-by-side. Their eyes are closed. Their faces were unmarred. The caption reads: "Christmas Eve in the Morgue."

 

After the dead were buried, some families moved away. Others stayed and kept supporting the strike, which ended the following spring.

 

Rumors emerged later that the Italian Hall's doors were designed to open inward, preventing the panicked crowd from pushing them outward to the street. Those were debunked, along with the suggestion in Woody Guthrie's "1913 Massacre" song that mining company thugs were holding the doors shut from the outside that night.

 

Damn… Mostly kids. On Christmas. That's a tough one.

 

Here's another touchy one. A race riot erupted in Mayfield, Kentucky, just before Christmas 1896.

Although slavery in the U.S. ended after the Civil War, the Reconstruction period and beyond was a dangerous time to be black. Things were awful for non-whites in the former Confederacy, amongst which Kentucky was especially bad for racial violence. In December 1896, white vigilantes lynched two black men within 24 hours of each other between the 21st and 22nd, one for a minor disagreement with a white man and the other, Jim Stone, for alleged rape. A note attached to Stone's swinging corpse warned black residents to get out of town.

 

In response to this unambiguous threat, the local African-American population armed themselves. Rumors spread amongst the town's white people that 250 men were marching on the city, and a state of emergency was called. The whites mobilized, black stores were vandalized, and fighting broke out between the two sides on December 23. In the event, three people were killed, including Will Suet, a black teenager who had just got off the train to spend Christmas with his family. It was all over on Christmas Eve, and a few days later, an uneasy truce between the races was called.

 

Ugh!

Y'all know what time it is? That's right, it's time for some quick hitters.

 

Many of us enjoy the Christmas period by going to the theatre or watching a movie. In December 1903, Chicago residents were eager to do just that at the brand-new Iroquois Theatre, which had been officially opened only in October that year. 1700 people in all crammed themselves in to see the zany, family-friendly musical comedy, Mr. Bluebeard. But just as the wait was over and the show started, a single spark from a stage light lit the surrounding drapery. The show's star, Eddie Foy, tried to keep things together as Iroquois employees struggled to put the curtains out in vain.

 

However, even the spectacle of a Windy City-native in drag couldn't stop the terrified crowd stampeding for the few exits. These, preposterously, were concealed by curtains and utterly inadequate in number. When the actors opened their own exit door to escape, a gust of wind sent a fireball through the crowded theatre, meaning that hundreds died before the fire service was even called. 585 people died, either suffocated, burned alive, or crushed. The scene was described in a 1904 account as "worse than that pictured in the mind of Dante in his vision of the inferno".

Next up, the politics behind this ghastly event are pretty complicated – one Mexican lecturer described the massacre as "the most complicated case in Mexico" – but here's an inadequate summary. The small and impoverished village of Acteal, Mexico, was home to Las Abejas (the bees'), a religious collective that sympathized with a rebel group opposing the Mexican government. Thus, on December 22, 1997, members of the then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party crept down the steep hill slopes above the village. They chose their moment to attack carefully as people gathered at a prayer meeting when they finally slunk into Acteal.

 

Over the next few hours, assassins armed with guns executed 45 innocent people in cold blood. Amongst the dead were 21 women, some of whom were pregnant, and 15 children. Worst of all, investigations into this cowardly act seem to implicate the government itself. Soldiers garrisoned nearby did not intervene, despite being within earshot of the gunfire and horrified screams. In addition, there was evidence of the crime scene being tampered with by local police and government officials. Though some people have been convicted, there are suspicions that they were framed and that the real culprits remain at large.

 

-Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring… except the Soviet Union. The Marxist-Leninist Khalq and Parcham parties had ousted the Afghan president in April 1978. Still, communism was so unpopular in Afghanistan that the mujahideen succeeded in toppling them just over a year later. So Khalq and Parcham turned to the Soviet Union for help, and on Christmas Eve that year, they obliged by sending 30,000 troops across the border into Afghanistan by the cover of darkness. Bloody fighting ensued, and soon the Soviet Union had control of the major cities.

 

The Soviets stayed for nine years, at which time the mujahideen, backed by foreign support and weapons, waged a brutal guerrilla campaign against the invaders. In turn, captured mujahideen were executed, and entire villages and agricultural areas were razed to the ground. When the Soviets finally withdrew in February 1989, over 1 million civilians and almost 125,000 soldiers from both sides were killed. From the turmoil after the Afghan-Soviet War emerged, the Taliban, installed by neighboring Pakistan, and with them Osama bin Laden. This indeed was a black Christmas for the world.

 

-How about another race riot… No? Well, here you go anyway. Although, this one may be more fucked up. The Agana Race Riot saw black and white US Marines fight it out from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day, 1944.

Guam was host to both black and white US Marines in 1944. But instead of fighting the enemy, the white troops elected to turn on the all-black Marine 25th Depot Company. First, the white Marines would stop their fellow soldiers from entering Agana, pelt them with rocks, and shout racist obscenities at them. Then, on Christmas Eve 1944, 9 members of the 25th on official leave were seen talking to local women, and white Marines opened fire on them. Then, on Christmas Day, 2 black soldiers were shot dead by drunken white Marines in separate incidents.

 

Guam's white Marines were decidedly short on festive cheer and goodwill to all men. Not content with these murders, a white mob attacked an African-American depot on Boxing Day, and a white soldier sustained an injury when the 25th returned fire. Sick of their treatment by their fellow soldiers, 40 black Marines gave chase to the retreating mob in a jeep, but further violence was prevented by a roadblock. Can you guess what happened next? Yep, the black soldiers were charged with unlawful assembly, rioting, and attempted murder, while the white soldiers were left to nurse their aching heads.

 

One more major one for you guys, and then we'll leave on a kind of happier note. This one's kind of rough. Be warned. 

 

In late December 2008 and into January 2009, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) brutally killed more than 865 civilians and abducted at least 160 children in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). LRA combatants hacked their victims to death with machetes or axes or crushed their skulls with clubs and heavy sticks. In some of the places where they attacked, few were left alive.

 

The worst attacks happened 48 hours over Christmas in locations some 160 miles apart in the Daruma, Duru, and Faradje areas of the Haut-Uele district of northern Congo. The LRA waited until the time of Christmas festivities on December 24 and 25 to carry out their devastating attacks, apparently choosing a moment when they would find the maximum number of people altogether. The killings occurred in the Congo and parts of southern Sudan, where similar weapons and tactics were used.

 

The Christmas massacres in Congo are part of a longstanding practice of horrific atrocities and abuse by the LRA. Before shifting its operations to the Congo in 2006, the LRA was based in Uganda and southern Sudan, where LRA combatants also killed, raped, and abducted thousands of civilians. When the LRA moved to Congo, its combatants initially refrained from targeting Congolese people. Still, in September 2008, the LRA began its first wave of attacks, apparently to punish local communities who had helped LRA defectors to escape. The first wave of attacks in September, together with the Christmas massacres, has led to the deaths of over 1,033 civilians and the abduction of at least 476 children.

 

LRA killings have not stopped since the Christmas massacres. Human Rights Watch receives regular reports of murders and abductions by the LRA, keeping civilians living in terror. According to the United Nations, over 140,000 people have fled their homes since late December 2008 to seek safety elsewhere. New attacks and the flight of civilians are reported weekly. People are frightened to gather together in some areas, believing that the LRA may choose these moments to strike, as they did with such devastating efficiency over Christmas.

 

Even by LRA standards, the Christmas massacres in the Congo were ruthless. LRA combatants struck quickly and quietly, surrounding their victims as they ate their Christmas meal in Batande village or gathered for a Christmas day concert in Faradje. In Mabando village, the LRA sought to maximize the death toll by luring their victims to a central place, playing the radio, and forcing their victims to sing songs and call for others to come to join the party. In most attacks, they tied up their victims, stripped them of their clothes, raped the women and girls, and then killed their victims by crushing their skulls. In two cases, the attackers tried to kill three-year-old toddlers by twisting off their heads. The few villagers who survived often did so because their assailants thought they were dead.

 

Yeah...so there's that. We could go much deeper into this incident, but we think you get the point. 

 

We'll leave you with a story that is pretty bizarre when you stop and think about it. But we'll leave you with this story of an unlikely Christmas get-together. This is the story of the Christmas truce. 

 

British machine gunner Bruce Bairnsfather, later a prominent cartoonist, wrote about it in his memoirs. Like most of his fellow infantrymen of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, he was spending the holiday eve shivering in the muck, trying to keep warm. He had spent a good part of the past few months fighting the Germans. And now, in a part of Belgium called Bois de Ploegsteert, he was crouched in a trench that stretched just three feet deep by three feet wide, his days and nights marked by an endless cycle of sleeplessness and fear, stale biscuits and cigarettes too wet to light.

 

"Here I was, in this horrible clay cavity," Bairnsfather wrote, "…miles and miles from home. Cold, wet through and covered with mud." There didn't "seem the slightest chance of leaving—except in an ambulance."

 

At about 10 p.m., Bairnsfather noticed a noise. "I listened," he recalled. "Away across the field, among the dark shadows beyond, I could hear the murmur of voices." He turned to a fellow soldier in his trench and said, "Do you hear the Boches [Germans] kicking up that racket over there?"

 

Yes," came the reply. "They've been at it some time!"

 

The Germans were singing carols, as it was Christmas Eve. In the darkness, some of the British soldiers began to sing back. "Suddenly," Bairnsfather recalled, "we heard a confused shouting from the other side. We all stopped to listen. The shout came again." The voice was from an enemy soldier, speaking in English with a strong German accent. He was saying, "Come over here."

 

One of the British sergeants answered: "You come half-way. I come half-way."

 

In the years to come, what happened next would stun the world and make history. Enemy soldiers began to climb nervously out of their trenches and meet in the barbed-wire-filled "No Man's Land" that separated the armies. Typically, the British and Germans communicated across No Man's Land with streaking bullets, with only occasional gentlemanly allowances to collect the dead unmolested. But now, there were handshakes and words of kindness. The soldiers traded songs, tobacco, and wine, joining in a spontaneous holiday party in the cold night.

Bairnsfather could not believe his eyes. "Here they were—the actual, practical soldiers of the German army. There was not an atom of hate on either side."

 

And it wasn't confined to that one battlefield. Starting on Christmas Eve, small pockets of French, German, Belgian, and British troops held impromptu cease-fires across the Western Front, with reports of some on the Eastern Front as well. Some accounts suggest a few of these unofficial truces remained in effect for days.

 

Descriptions of the Christmas Truce appear in numerous diaries and letters of the time. One British soldier, a rifleman, named J. Reading, wrote a letter home to his wife describing his holiday experience in 1914: "My company happened to be in the firing line on Christmas eve, and it was my turn…to go into a ruined house and remain there until 6:30 on Christmas morning. During the early part of the morning the Germans started singing and shouting, all in good English. They shouted out: 'Are you the Rifle Brigade; have you a spare bottle; if so we will come halfway and you come the other half.'"

 

"Later on in the day they came towards us," Reading described. "And our chaps went out to meet them…I shook hands with some of them, and they gave us cigarettes and cigars. We did not fire that day, and everything was so quiet it seemed like a dream."

 

Another British soldier, named John Ferguson, recalled it this way: "Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill!"

 

Other diaries and letters describe German soldiers using candles to light Christmas trees around their trenches. One German infantryman described how a British soldier set up a makeshift barbershop, charging Germans a few cigarettes each for a haircut. Other accounts describe vivid scenes of men helping enemy soldiers collect their dead, of which there was plenty.

 

One British fighter named Ernie Williams later described in an interview his recollection of some makeshift soccer play on what turned out to be an icy pitch: "The ball appeared from somewhere, I don't know where... They made up some goals and one fellow went in goal and then it was just a general kick-about. I should think there were about a couple of hundred taking part."

 

German Lieutenant Kurt Zehmisch of the 134 Saxons Infantry, a schoolteacher who spoke both English and German, described a pick-up soccer game in his diary, which was discovered in an attic near Leipzig in 1999, written in an archaic German form of shorthand. "Eventually the English brought a soccer ball from their trenches, and pretty soon, a lively game ensued," he wrote. "How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time."

 

So much more can be said about this event, but that seems like an excellent place to leave off this Christmas episode! And yes, when you really do stop and think about it… That's a pretty crazy yet fantastic thing.

 

Greatest disaster movies of all time

 

https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-greatest-disaster-movies-of-all-time

Mary Shelley, The Birth of Frankenstein

We've all heard the story of "Frankenstein's Monster." A bat shit crazy scientist wants to reanimate dead tissue and basically create a fucking zombie baby… BECAUSE THAT'S HOW YOU GET FUCKING ZOMBIES! Anyway, Dr. Frankenstein and his trusty assistant, Igor, set off to bring a bunch of random, dead body parts together, throw some lightning on the bugger and bring this new, puzzle piece of a quasi-human back to "life." At first, the reanimated corpse seems somewhat ordinary, but then flips his shit and starts terrorizing and doing what I can only imagine REANIMATED ZOMBIES FUCKING DO! 

 

Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. 

So, she was brought into this world by some smart fucking people. Mary's mother died of puerperal fever shortly after Mary was born. Puerperal fever is an infectious, sometimes fatal, disease of childbirth; until the mid-19th century, this dreaded, then-mysterious illness could sweep through a hospital maternity ward and kill most new mothers. Today strict aseptic hospital techniques have made the condition uncommon in most parts of the world, except in unusual circumstances such as illegally induced abortion. Her father, William, was left to bring up Mary and her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Mary's mother's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay. A year after her mother's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, the Memoirs revealed Mary's mother's affairs and her illegitimate child. In that period, they were seen as shocking. Mary read these memoirs and her mother's books and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory.

Mary's earliest years were happy, judging from the letters of William's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones. But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise Mary and Fanny himself, he looked for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children—Charles and Claire SO MANY MARY'S! Sorry folks. Most of her father's friends disliked his new wife, describing her as a straight fucking bitch. Ok, not really, but they didn't like her. However, William was devoted to her, and the marriage worked. Mary, however, came to hate that bitch. William's 19th-century biographer Charles Kegan Paul later suggested that Mrs. Godwin had favored her own children over Williams. So, how awesome is it that he had a biographer? That's so badass. 

Together, Mary's father and his new bride started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin, which sold children's books and stationery, maps, and games. However, the business wasn't making any loot, and her father was forced to borrow butt loads of money to keep it going. He kept borrowing money to pay off earlier loans, just adding to his problems. By 1809, William's business was close to closing up shop, and he was "near to despair." Mary's father was saved from debtor's prison by devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him additional money. So, debtor's prison is pretty much EXACTLY what it sounds like. If you couldn't pay your debts, they threw your ass in jail. Unlike today where they just FUCK UP YOUR CREDIT! THANKS, COLUMBIA HOUSE!!! 

Though Mary received little education, her father tutored her in many subjects. He often took the children on educational trips. They had access to his library and the many intelligent mofos who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr. You know, that dude that shot and killed his POLITICAL opponent, Alexander Hamilton, in a fucking duel! Ah… I was born in the wrong century.  

Mary's father admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary's mother's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. However, Mary still received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's Roman and Greek history books. For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate, England. Her father described her at age 15 as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible." My father didn't know how to spell my name until I was twelve. 

In June of 1812, Mary's father sent her to stay with the family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland. In a letter to Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic." Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her health, remove her from the seamy side of the business, or introduce her to radical politics. However, Mary loved the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and with his four daughters, and she returned north in the summer of 1813 to hang out for 10 months. In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered."

 

Mary Godwin may have first met the radical poet-philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley in between her two stays in Scotland. When she returned home for a second time on 30 March 1814, Percy Shelley became estranged from his wife and regularly visited Mary's father, William Godwin, whom he had agreed to bail out of debt. Percy Shelley's radicalism, particularly his economic views, alienated him from his wealthy aristocratic family. They wanted him to be a high, upstanding snoot and follow traditional models of the landed aristocracy. He tried to donate large amounts of the family's money to projects meant to help the poor and disadvantaged. Percy Shelley, therefore, had a problem gaining access to capital until he inherited his estate because his family did not want him wasting it on projects of "political justice." After several months of promises, Shelley announced that he could not or would not pay off all of Godwin's debts. Godwin was angry and felt betrayed and whooped his fuckin ass! Yeah! Ok, not really. He was just super pissed.

Mary and Percy began hookin' up on the down-low at her mother Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, and they fell in love—she was 16, and he was 21. Creepy and super fucking gross. 

 On 26 June 1814, Shelley and Godwin declared their love for one another as Shelley announced he could not hide his "ardent passion,." This led her in a "sublime and rapturous moment" to say she felt the same way; on either that day or the next, Godwin lost her virginity to Shelley, which tradition claims happened in the churchyard. So, the grown-ass 21-year-old man statutorily raped the 16-year-old daughter of the man he idolized and dicked over. In a graveyard. My god, how things have changed...GROSS!

Godwin described herself as attracted to Shelley's "wild, intellectual, unearthly looks." Smart but ugly. Got it. To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved and tried to thwart the relationship and salvage his daughter's "spotless fame." No! You don't say! Dad wasn't into his TEENAGE DAUGHTER BANGING A MAN IN THE GRAVEYARD!?! Mary's father learned of Shelley's inability to pay off the father's debts at about the same time. Oof. He found out after he diddled her. Mary, who later wrote of "my excessive and romantic attachment to my father," was confused. Um… what?

She saw Percy Shelley as an embodiment of her parents' liberal and reformist ideas of the 1790s, particularly Godwin's view that marriage was a repressive monopoly, which he had argued in his 1793 edition of Political Justice but later retracted. On 28 July 1814, the couple eloped and secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them. 

After convincing Mary's mother, who took off after them to Calais, that they did not wish to return, the trio traveled to Paris, and then, by donkey, mule, carriage, and foot, through France, recently ravaged by war, all the way to Switzerland. "It was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance," Mary Shelley recalled in 1826. Godwin wrote about France in 1814: "The distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war...". As they traveled, Mary and Percy read works by Mary Wollstonecraft and others, kept a joint journal, and continued their own writing. Finally, at Lucerne, lack of money forced the three to turn back. Instead, they traveled down the Rhine and by land to the Dutch port of Maassluis, arriving at Gravesend, Kent, on 13 September 1814.

The situation awaiting Mary Godwin in England was packed with bullshit, some of which she had not expected. Either before or during their journey, she had become pregnant. She and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's stupid ass surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her. The couple moved with Claire into lodgings at Somers Town, and later, Nelson Square. They kept doing their thing, reading, and writing and entertained Percy Shelley's friends. Percy Shelley would often leave home for short periods to dodge bill collectors, and the couple's heartbroken letters would reveal their pain while he was away.

Pregnant and often sick, Mary Godwin had to hear of Percy's joy at the birth of his son by Harriet Shelley in late 1814 due to his constant escapades with Claire Clairmont. Supposedly, Shelley and Clairmont were almost certainly lovers, which caused Mary to be rightfully jealous. And yes, Claire was Mary's cousin. Percy was a friggin' creep.

Percy pissed off Mary when he suggested that they both take the plunge into a stream naked during a walk in the French countryside. This offended her due to her principles, and she was like, "Oh, hell nah, sahn!" and started taking off her earrings in a rage. Or something like that. She was partly consoled by the visits of Hogg, whom she disliked at first but soon considered a close friend. Percy Shelley seems to have wanted Mary and Hogg to become lovers; Mary did not dismiss the idea since she believed in free love in principle. She was a hippie before being a hippie was cool. Percy probably just wanted to not feel guilty for hooking up with her cousin. Creep. In reality, however, she loved only Percy and seemed to have gone no further than flirting with Hogg. On 22 February 1815, she gave birth to a two-months premature baby girl, who was not expected to survive. On 6 March, she wrote to Hogg:

"My dearest Hogg, my baby is dead—will you come to see me as soon as you can. I wish to see you—It was perfectly well when I went to bed—I awoke in the night to give it suck it appeared to be sleeping so quietly that I would not awake it. It was dead then, but we did not find that out till morning—from its appearance it evidently died of convulsions—Will you come—you are so calm a creature & Shelley (Percy) is afraid of a fever from the milk—for I am no longer a mother now."

The loss of her child brought about acute depression in Mary. She was haunted by visions of the baby, but she conceived again and had recovered by the summer. With a revival in Percy's finances after the death of his grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, the couple holidayed in Torquay and then rented a two-story cottage at Bishopsgate, on the edge of Windsor Great Park. Unfortunately, little is known about this period in Mary Godwin's life since her journal from May 1815 to July 1816 was lost. At Bishopsgate, Percy wrote his poem Alastor or The Spirit of Solitude; and on 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to a second child, William, named after her father and soon nicknamed "Willmouse." In her novel The Last Man, she later imagined Windsor as a Garden of Eden.

In May 1816, Mary, Percy, and their son traveled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. Claire sounds like a bit of a trollop. No judging, just making an observation. The party arrived in Geneva on 14 May 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs Shelley." Byron joined them on 25 May with his young physician, John William Polidori, and rented the Villa Diodati, close to Lake Geneva at the village of Cologny; Percy rented a smaller building called Maison Chapuis on the waterfront nearby. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night.

"It proved a wet, ungenial summer," Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house." Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories called Fantasmagoriana, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story." Unable to think up an account, young Mary became flustered: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." Finally, one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated," Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things." Galvanism is a term invented by the late 18th-century physicist and chemist Alessandro Volta to refer to the generation of electric current by chemical action. The word also came to refer to the discoveries of its namesake, Luigi Galvani, specifically the generation of electric current within biological organisms and the contraction/convulsion of natural muscle tissue upon contact with electric current. While Volta theorized and later demonstrated the phenomenon of his "Galvanism" to be replicable with otherwise inert materials, Galvani thought his discovery to confirm the existence of "animal electricity," a vital force that gave life to organic matter. We'll talk a little more about Galvani and a murderer named George Foster toward the end of the episode.

It was after midnight before they retired, and she was unable to sleep, mainly because she became overwhelmed by her imagination as she kept thinking about the grim terrors of her "waking dream," her ghost story:

"I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world."

She began writing what she assumed would be a short, profound story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she turned her little idea into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that time in Switzerland as "when I first stepped out from childhood into life." The story of the writing of Frankenstein has been fictionalized repeatedly, and it helped form the basis for several films.

Here's a cool little side note: In September 2011, the astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her waking dream took place "between 2 am and 3 am" 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write their ghost stories.

Shelley and her husband collaborated on the story, but the extent of Percy's contribution to the novel is unknown and has been argued over by readers and critics forever. There are differences in the 1818, 1823, and 1831 versions. Mary Shelley wrote, "I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world." She wrote that the preface to the first edition was her husband's work "as far as I can recollect." James Rieger concluded Percy's "assistance at every point in the book's manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator." At the same time, Anne K. Mellor later argued Percy only "made many technical corrections and several times clarified the narrative and thematic continuity of the text."

Charles E. Robinson, the editor of a facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, concluded that Percy's contributions to the book "were no more than what most publishers' editors have provided new (or old) authors or, in fact, what colleagues have provided to each other after reading each other's works in progress." So, eat one, Percy! Just kidding.

In 1840 and 1842, Mary and her son traveled together all over the continent. Mary recorded these trips in Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843. In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley finally died at the age of ninety, "falling from the stalk like an overblown flower," Mary put it. For the first time in her life, she and her son were financially independent, though the remaining estate wasn't worth as much as they had thought.

In the mid-1840s, Mary Shelley found herself in the crosshairs of three separate blackmailing sons of bitches. First, in 1845, an Italian political exile called Gatteschi, whom she had met in Paris, threatened to publish letters she had sent him. Scandalous! However, a friend of her son's bribed a police chief into seizing Gatteschi's papers, including the letters, which were then destroyed. Vaffanculo, Gatteschi! Shortly afterward, Mary Shelley bought some letters written by herself and Percy Shelley from a man calling himself G. Byron and posing as the illegitimate son of the late Lord Byron. Also, in 1845, Percy Shelley's cousin Thomas Medwin approached her, claiming to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley. He said he would suppress it in return for £250, but Mary told him to eat a big ole bag of dicks and jog on!

In 1848, Percy Florence married Jane Gibson St John. The marriage proved a happy one, and Mary liked Jane. Mary lived with her son and daughter-in-law at Field Place, Sussex, the Shelleys' ancestral home, and at Chester Square, London, and vacationed with them, as well.

Mary's last years were blighted by illness. From 1839, she suffered from headaches and bouts of paralysis in parts of her body, which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing, obviously two of her favorite things. Then, on 1 February 1851, at Chester Square, Mary Shelly died at fifty-three from what her doctor suspected was a brain tumor. According to Jane Shelley, Mary had asked to be buried with her mother and father. Still, looking at the graveyard at St Pancras and calling it "dreadful," Percy and Jane chose to bury her instead at St Peter's Church in Bournemouth, near their new home at Boscombe. On the first anniversary of Mary's death, the Shelleys opened her box-desk. Inside they found locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a copy of his poem Adonaïs with one page folded round a silk parcel containing some of his ashes and the remains of his heart. Romantic or disturbing? Maybe a bit of both.

Mary Shelley remained a stout political radical throughout her life. Mary's works often suggested that cooperation and sympathy, mainly as practiced by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view directly challenged the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and Enlightenment political theories. She wrote seven novels / Two travel narrations / Twenty three short stories / Three books of children's literature, and many articles. Mary Shelley left her mark on the literary world, and her name will be forever etched in the catacombs of horror for generations to come.

When it comes to reanimation, there's someone else we need to talk about.

George Forster (or Foster) was found guilty of murdering his wife and child by drowning them in Paddington Canal, London. He was hanged at Newgate on 18 January 1803, after which his body was taken to a nearby house where it was used in an experiment by Italian scientist Giovanni Aldini.

At his trial, the events were reconstructed. Forster's mother-in-law recounted that her daughter and grandchild had left her house to see Forster at 4 pm on Saturday, 4 December 1802. In whose house Forster lodged, Joseph Bradfield reported that they had stayed together that night and gone out at 10 am on Sunday morning. He also stated that Forster and his wife had not been on good terms because she wished to live with him. On Sunday, various witnesses saw Forster with his wife and child in public houses near Paddington Canal. The body of his child was found on Monday morning; after the canal was dragged for three days, his wife's body was also found.

Forster claimed that upon leaving The Mitre, he set out alone for Barnet to see his other two children in the workhouse there, though he was forced to turn back at Whetstone due to the failing light. This was contradicted by a waiter at The Mitre who said the three left the inn together. Skepticism was also expressed that he could have walked to Whetstone when he claimed. Nevertheless, the jury found him guilty. He was sentenced to death and also to be dissected after that. This sentence was designed to provide medicine with corpses on which to experiment and ensure that the condemned could not rise on Judgement Day, their bodies having been cut into pieces and selectively discarded. Forster was hanged on 18 January, shortly before he made a full confession. He said he had come to hate his wife and had twice before taken his wife to the canal, but his nerve had both times failed him.

A recent BBC Knowledge documentary (Real Horror: Frankenstein) questions the fairness of the trial. It notes that friends of George Forster's wife later claimed that she was highly suicidal and had often talked about killing herself and her daughter. According to this documentary, Forster attempted suicide by stabbing himself with a crudely fashioned knife. This was to avoid awakening during the dissection of his body, should he not have died when hanged. This was a real possibility owing to the crude methods of execution at the time. The same reference suggests that his 'confession' was obtained under duress. In fact, it alleges that Pass, a Beadle or an official of a church or synagogue on Aldini's payroll, fast-tracked the whole trial and legal procedure to obtain the freshest corpse possible for his benefactor.

After the execution, Forster's body was given to Giovanni Aldini for experimentation. Aldini was the nephew of fellow scientist Luigi Galvani and an enthusiastic proponent of his uncle's method of stimulating muscles with electric current, known as Galvanism. The experiment he performed on Forster's body demonstrated this technique. The Newgate Calendar (a record of executions at Newgate) reports that "On the first application of the process to the face, the jaws of the deceased criminal began to quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In the subsequent part of the process the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion." 

Several people present believed that Forster was being brought back to life (The Newgate Calendar reports that even if this had been so, he would have been re-executed since his sentence was to "hang until he be dead"). One man, Mr. Pass, the beadle of the Surgeons' Company, was so shocked that he died shortly after leaving. The hanged man was undoubtedly dead since his blood had been drained and his spinal cord severed after the execution.

 

Top Ten Frankenstein Movies

https://screenrant.com/best-frankenstein-movies-ranked-imdb/

The Michigan Lake Triangle. Was it aliens?

We're going back to the creepy, mysterious, and strange this week. We're heading up to Lake Michigan, where tons of ships and planes have gone missing, and other odd things have occurred in what is known as the Lake Michigan triangle. Full disclosure, being from Ohio, the only reason we are covering this is that it's not the actual state of Michigan, just a lake that was unfortunately cursed with the same name. So we'll only discuss the state if we absolutely have to. We kid, of course.. Or do we… At any rate, this should be another interesting, fun, historically jam-packed episode full of craziness! So without further ado, let's head to lake Michigan! 

 

So first off, let's learn a little about Lake Michigan itself because, you know, we like to learn you guys some stuff! 

 

Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume and the third-largest by surface area after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. Lake Michigan is the largest lake by area in one country. Hydrologically Michigan and Huron are the same body of water (sometimes called Lake Michigan-Huron) but are typically considered distinct. Counted together, it is the largest body of fresh water in the world by surface area. The Mackinac Bridge is generally considered the dividing line between them. Its name is derived from the Ojibwa Indian word mishigami, meaning large lake. We've also seen the title translated as "big water," so honestly, we're not sure of the translation, but those are the two we see most often. Lake Michigan touches Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. According to the New World Encyclopedia, approximately 12 million people live along the shores of Lake Michigan. Major port cities include Chicago, Illinois (population: 2.7 million); Milwaukee, Wisconsin (600,000); Green Bay, Wisconsin (104,000); and Gary, Indiana (80,000). Water temperatures on Lake Michigan make it to the 60s in July and August and can sometimes make it into the 70s when air temperatures have been in the 90s for several successive days.

 

The water of Lake Michigan has an unusual circulatory pattern — it resembles the traffic flow in a suburban cul-de-sac — and moves very slowly. Winds and resulting waves keep Lake Michigan from freezing over, but it has been 90 percent frozen on many occasions. Ocean-like swells, especially during the winter, can result in drastic temperature changes along the coast, shoreline erosion, and difficult navigation. The lake's average water depth is 279 feet (85 meters), and its maximum depth is 925 feet (282 meters).

 

Marshes, tallgrass prairies, savannas, forests, and sand dunes that can reach several hundred feet provide excellent habitats for all types of wildlife on Lake Michigan. Trout, salmon, walleye, and smallmouth bass fisheries are prevalent on the lake. The lake is also home to crawfish, freshwater sponges, and sea lamprey, a metallic violet eel species.

 

The lake is also home to a wide range of bird populations, including water birds such as ducks, Freddy the fox in bird costume, geese, swans, crows, robins, and bald eagles. Predatory birds such as hawks and vultures are also prevalent on the lake. This is mainly due to the wealth of wildlife to feast upon. The pebble-shaped Petoskey stone, a fossilized coral, is unique to the northern Michigan shores of Lake Michigan and is the state stone.

 

Today, the formation that is recognized as Lake Michigan began about 1.2 billion years ago when two tectonic plates were ripped apart, creating the Mid-Continent Rift. Some of the earliest human inhabitants of the Lake Michigan region were the Hopewell Native Americans. However, their culture declined after 800 AD, and for the next few hundred years, the area was the home of peoples known as the Late Woodland Native Americans. In the early 17th century, when western European explorers made their first forays into the region, they encountered descendants of the Late Woodland Native Americans: the historic Chippewa; Menominee; Sauk; Fox; Winnebago; Miami; Ottawa; and Potawatomi peoples. The French explorer Jean Nicolet is believed to have been the first European to reach Lake Michigan, possibly in 1634 or 1638. In early European maps of the region, the name of Lake Illinois has also been found to be that of "Michigan," named for the Illinois Confederation of tribes.

 

The Straits of Mackinac were an important Native American and fur trade route. Located on the southern side of the straits is the town of Mackinaw City, Michigan, the site of Fort Michilimackinac, a reconstructed French fort founded in 1715, and on the northern side is St. Ignace, Michigan, the site of a French Catholic mission to the Indians, founded in 1671. In 1673, Jacques Marquette, Louis Jolliet, and their crew of five Métis voyageurs followed Lake Michigan to Green Bay and up the Fox River, nearly to its headwaters, searching for the Mississippi River. By the late 18th century, the eastern end of the straits was controlled by Fort Mackinac on Mackinac Island, a British colonial and early American military base and fur trade center founded in 1781. 

With the advent of European exploration into the area in the late 17th century, Lake Michigan became used as part of a line of waterways leading from the Saint Lawrence River to the Mississippi River and thence to the Gulf of Mexico. French coureurs des Bois and voyageurs established small ports and trading communities, such as Green Bay, on the lake during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. In the 19th century, Lake Michigan was integral to the development of Chicago and the Midwestern United States west of the lake. For example, 90% of the grain shipped from Chicago traveled by ships east over Lake Michigan during the antebellum years. The volume rarely fell below 50% after the Civil War, even with the significant expansion of railroad shipping.

 

The first person to reach the deep bottom of Lake Michigan was J. Val Klump, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1985. Klump reached the bottom via submersible as part of a research expedition. In 2007, a row of stones paralleling an ancient shoreline was discovered by Mark Holley, professor of underwater archeology at Northwestern Michigan College. This formation lies 40 feet (12 m) below the lake's surface. One of the stones is said to have a carving resembling a mastodon. The construction needed more study before it could be authenticated. The warming of Lake Michigan was the subject of a 2018 report by Purdue University. Since 1980, steady increases in obscure surface temperature have occurred in each decade. This is likely to decrease native habitat and adversely affect native species' survival, including game fish.

Fun fact… Lake Michigan has its own coral reef! Lake Michigan waters near Chicago are also home to a reef, although it has been dead for many years. Still, it is an exciting feature of the lake, and scientists at Shedd Aquarium are interested in learning more about its habitat and the lifeforms it supports. Dr. Philip Willink is a senior research biologist at the Shedd Aquarium who has conducted research at Morgan Shoal to find out what kind of life there is and what the geology is like. "Morgan Shoal is special because it is so close to so many people. It is only a few hundred yards from one of the most famous and busiest streets in Chicago (Lake Shore Drive)," he said in an interview. 

 

"Now that more people know it is there, more people can make a connection with it, and they can begin to appreciate the geological processes that formed it and the plants and animals that call it home. It is a symbol of how aquatic biodiversity can survive in an urban landscape."

 

"I hope people continue to study and learn from Morgan Shoal. We need to keep figuring out how this reef interacts with the waves and currents of Lake Michigan," he said. "We need to continue studying how the underwater habitat promotes biodiversity."

Passengers, have you heard about the Stonehenge under lake Michigan? Well, in 2007, underwater archeologist Mark Holley was scanning for shipwrecks on the bottom of Lake Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay. Instead, he stumbled on a line of stones thought to be constructed by ancient humans. They believe that this building, similar to Stonehenge, is about 9000 years old, but interestingly, on one of the stones, there is a carving in the form of a mastodon, which died out more than 10,000 years ago. The exact coordinates of the find are still kept secret – this condition was put by local Indian tribes who do not want the influx of tourists and curiosity seekers on their land. The boulder with the markings is 3.5 to 4 feet high and about 5 feet long. Photos show a surface with numerous fissures. Some may be natural while others appear of human origin, but those forming what could be the petroglyph stood out, Holley said. Viewed together, they suggest the outlines of a mastodon-like back, hump, head, trunk, tusk, triangular-shaped ear, and parts of legs, he said.

 

"We couldn't believe what we were looking at," said Greg MacMaster, president of the underwater preserve council.

 

Specialists shown pictures of the boulder holding the mastodon markings have asked for more evidence before confirming the markings are an ancient petroglyph, said Holley. "They want to actually see it," he said. But, unfortunately, he added, "Experts in petroglyphs generally don't dive, so we're running into a little bit of a stumbling block there."

Featured on ancient aliens below clip:

Stonehenge in Northern Michigan - traverse city skip to 4:40

Soooo what's up with that… Michigan Stonehenge? Well, maybe not…

 

Sadly, much of the information out there is incorrect. For example, there is not a henge associated with the site, and the individual stones are relatively small compared to what most people think of as European standing stones. It should be clearly understood that this is not a megalith site like Stonehenge. This label is placed on the site by non-visiting individuals from the press who may have been attempting to generate sensation about the story. The site in Grand Traverse Bay is best described as a long line of stones that is over a mile in length.

 

Dr. John O'Shea from the University of Michigan has been working on a broadly similar structure in Lake Huron. He has received an NSF grant to research his site and thinks it may be a prehistoric driveline for herding caribou. This site is well published, and you can find quite a bit of information on it on the internet. The area in Grand Traverse Bay may possibly have served a similar function to the one found in Lake Huron. It certainly offers the same potential for research. Unfortunately, however, state politics in previous years have meant that we have only been able to obtain limited funding for research, and as a result, little progress has been made.

 

Honestly, even if it's not a Stonehenge but still possibly dating back 10,000 years, that's pretty dang terrific either way. Hopefully, they can figure out what's really going on down there!

 

So that's pretty sweet! Ok with that brief history and stuff out of the way, let's get into the fun stuff!

 

The Lake Michigan Triangle is a section of Lake Michigan considered especially treacherous to those venturing through it. It stretches from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to Ludington, Michigan, before heading south to Benton Harbor, Michigan.

It was first proposed by Charles Berlitz. A proponent of the Bermuda Triangle, he felt Lake Michigan was governed by similar forces. This theory was presented to the public in aviator Jay Gourley's book, The Great Lakes Triangle. In it, he stated: "The Great Lakes account for more unexplained disappearances per unit area than the Bermuda Triangle."

 

The Lake Michigan Triangle is believed to have caused numerous shipwrecks and aerial disappearances over the years. It's also been the scene of unexplained phenomena, from mysterious ice blocks falling from the sky to balls of fire and strange, hovering lights. This has led many to believe extraterrestrials are drawn to the area or perhaps home to a time portal.

 

Let's start with the disappearances. The first ship that traveled the upper Great Lakes was the 17th-century brigandine, Le Griffon. However, this maiden voyage did not end well. The shipwrecked when it encountered a violent storm while sailing on Lake Michigan.

 

The first occurrence in the Lake Michigan Triangle was recorded in 1891. The Thomas Hume was a schooner built in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, in 1870. The ship was christened as H.C. Albrecht in honor of its first owner, Captain Harry Albrecht. In 1876, the vessel was sold to Captain Welch from Chicago. In the following year, the ship was bought by Charles Hackley, a lumber baron who owned the Hackley-Hume Lumber Mill on Muskegon Lake. The boat was then renamed as the Thomas Hume in 1883, after Hackley's business partner. The Hume would make many successful trips across Lake Michigan until May 21, 1891, when it disappeared, along with its crew of seven sailors. After that, not even a trace of the boat was ever found. The Hume was on a return trip from Chicago to Muskegon, having just dropped off a load of lumber. The ship remained lost until Taras Lysenko, a diver with A&T Recovery out of Chicago, discovered the wreck in 2005. Valerie van Heest, a Lake Michigan shipwreck hunter and researcher who helped identify the wreckage, and Elizabeth Sherman, a maritime author and great-granddaughter of the schooner's namesake, presented the discovery at the Great Lakes conference at the Great Lakes Naval Memorial and Museum. The last trip of the schooner began like many others it had completed for two of Muskegon County's prominent lumbermen, Thomas Hume and Charles Hackley. It took a load of lumber to Chicago in May of 1891.

 

The unloaded vessel left to return to Muskegon, riding empty and light alongside one of the company's other schooners, the Rouse Simmons, which years later would go on to legendary status as the Christmas Tree Ship.

 

Sherman relayed the history of the Thomas Hume's final moments. She said the two vessels encountered a squall, not a major storm or full gale that took many Great Lakes ships. 

 

"It made the captain of the Rouse Simmons nervous enough to turn back to Chicago," she told conference members.

 

The Thomas Hume continued on, and no signs of the vessel, the captain, nor the six-man crew were ever seen again. Sherman said Hackley and Hume called for a search of other ports and Lake Michigan, but nothing was found, not even debris.

 

That's when the wild theories began. Sherman said one of the most far-fetched was that the captain sailed to another port, painted the Thomas Hume, and sailed the vessel under a different name. Another theory was a large steamer ran down the schooner, and the steamer's captain swore his crew to secrecy.

 

Hackley and Hume put up a $300 reward, which seemed to squelch that theory because no one stepped forward.

 

The wreck remains in surprisingly good shape. The video shot by the dive group of the Thomas Hume shows the hull intact, the three masts laying on the deck, the ship's riggings, and a rudder that is in quality shape. The lifeboat was found inside the sunken vessel, presumably sucked into the opening during the sinking.

 

So what happened? Simple explanation… Maybe a storm or squall. Better explanation… Probably aliens… Or lake monster… Yeah, probably that.

 

Another mysterious incident believers in the Triangle seem to reference is the Rose Belle. From their archives, the news bulletin for the day reads: "October 30, 1921: the schooner Rosabelle, loaded with lumber, left High Island bound for Benton Harbor and apparently capsized in a gale on Lake Michigan. She was found awash 42 miles from Milwaukee, with no sign of the crew. After she drifted to 20 miles from Kenosha, the Cumberland towed her into Racine harbor. A thorough search of the ship turned up no sign of the crew. She was purchased by H & M Body Corp., beached 100 feet offshore, and attempts were made to drag her closer to shore north of Racine. The corp. planned to remove her lumber."

 

According to the Wisconsin Historical Society's Maritime Preservation Program, the Rosabelle was a small two-masted schooner and was used to bring supplies to High Island for the House of David. It was 100 feet long, with a beam of 26 feet.

 

Despite appearing to have been involved in a collision, there were no other shipwrecks or reports of an accident. What's more, the 11-person crew was nowhere to be found. 

 

We're gonna go with aliens again.

 

Mysterious disappearances have continued to occur along the lake's waters. For example, on April 28, 1937, Captain George R. Donner of the freighter O.M. McFarland went to rest in his cabin after hours of navigating his crew through icy waters. As the ship approached its destination at Port Washington, Wisconsin, a crewmember went to wake him up, only to find him missing and the door locked from the inside. A search of the ship turned up no clues, and Donner hasn't been seen since.

 

Over the years, shipwrecks stacked up, drawing attention to this region of Lake Michigan. Then, during the blizzard of November 1940, three massive freighters and two fishing tug boats sank off the coast of Pentwater, Mich., well inside this triangular boundary. Wrecks of the three freighters have been found, but the two tugboats have yet to be discovered. Whether the wreckages are lost or found, experts find it highly unusual that five ships – killing a total of 64 sailors – all sank on the same day so close together.

 

But did aren't the only thing that had disappeared here. 

 

Theories surrounding UFOs and extraterrestrials roaming the skies of the Lake Michigan Triangle are spurred on by the mysterious disappearance of Northwest Airlines flight 2501. The plane was traveling from New York to Seattle, with a stop in Minneapolis, on June 23, 1950, when it seemingly disappeared out of the sky.

 

At 11:37 p.m. that evening, its pilot requested a descent from 3,500 to 2,500 feet due to an electrical storm. The request was denied, and minutes later, the plane disappeared from radar. Despite a massive search effort, only a blanket bearing the Northwest Airlines logo indicated the plane had gone into the water.

 

As days passed, partial remains began to wash ashore across Michigan, but the plane never resurfaced. According to two police officers near the scene, there had been a strange red light hovering over the water just two hours after the plane disappeared. This has led some to theorize it was abducted by aliens. However, their reason for taking the aircraft remains a mystery.

 

See, told you… Aliens!

 

Do you need more proof of aliens? Here ya go

 

Steven Kubacki was a 23-year-old student at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. On February 20, 1978, he was on a solo cross-country skiing trip near Saugatuck, Michigan, when he disappeared. 

 

The next day, snowmobilers found his equipment abandoned, and police located his footprints on the ice. The way they abruptly ended suggested Kubacki had fallen through the ice and died of either hypothermia or by drowning. Seems pretty cut and dry, eh... Well, you're fucking fucking wrong, Jack! The mystery appeared all but solved until May 5, 1979, when Kubacki showed up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Fifteen months after seemingly disappearing into the icy depths of Lake Michigan, he found himself lying in the grass, some 700 miles away. 

 

Kubacki told reporters he had no memory of the past year and a half. However, when he awoke, he was wearing weird clothes, and his backpack contained random maps. This led him to believe he'd been traveling. He also had a T-shirt from a Wisconsin marathon, which he explained by saying, "I feel like I've done a lot of running."

 

The location of Kubacki's disappearance has led many to suggest he was yet another victim of the Lake Michigan Triangle. While some don't believe him regarding his supposed amnesia, others feel an alien abduction is a reason behind his disappearance and lack of memory.

 

So you may be asking yourself… But if this was all alien activity, why is that no mention of UFOs… Well, you're in luck cus… There are!!! In fact, Michigan, in general, has a pretty good share of UFO sightings; coincidentally, there was a sharp rise in sightings about a month after weed was legalized in the state. I'm kidding, of course…or am I. So let's take a look at s few sightings in the area!

On March 8, 1994, calls flooded 911 to report strange sightings in the night sky. The reports came in from all walks of life — from police and a meteorologist to residents of Michigan's many beach resorts. Hundreds of people witnessed what many insisted were UFOs — unidentified flying objects.

 

Cindy Pravda, 63, of Grand Haven remembers that night in vivid detail — four lights in the sky that looked like "full moons" over the line of trees behind her horse pasture.

 

"I got UFOs in the backyard," she told a friend on the phone.

 

"I watched them for half an hour. Where I'm facing them, the one on the far left moved off. It moved to the highway and then came back in the same position," Pravda told the Free Press. "The one to the right was gone in blink of an eye and then, eventually, everything disappeared quickly."

 

She still lives in the same house and continues to talk about that night.

 

"I'm known as the UFO lady of Grand Haven," Pravda laughed.

 

Daryl and Holly Graves and their son, Joey, told reporters in 1994 they witnessed lights in the sky over Holland at about 9:30 p.m. on March 8.

 

"I saw six lights out the window above the barn across the street," Joey Graves told the Free Press in 1994. "I got up and went to the sofa and looked up at the sky. They were red and white and moving."

 

Others gave similar accounts, including Holland Police Officer Jeff Velthouse and a meteorologist from the National Weather Service Office in Muskegon County. What's more, the meteorologist recorded unknown echoes on his radar the same time Velthouse reported the lights.

 

"My guy looked at the radar and observed three echoes as the officer was describing the movement," Leo Grenier of the NWS office in Muskegon said in 1994. "The movement of the objects was rather erratic. The echoes were there about 15 minutes, drifting slowly south-southwest, kind of headed toward the Chicago side of the south end of Lake Michigan."

 

The radar operator said, "There were three and sometimes four blips, and they weren't planes. Planes show as pinpoints on the scope, these were the size of half a thumbnail. They were from 5 to 12,000 feet at times, moving all over the place. Three were moving toward Chicago. I never saw anything like it before, not even when I'm doing severe weather." Hundreds of reports of suspected UFOs were called in not only to 911 dispatchers but also to the Mutual UFO Network's (MUFON) Michigan chapter. 

 

MUFON, an all-volunteer nonprofit organization founded in 1969, bills itself as the "world's oldest and largest civilian UFO investigation and research organization."

 

The reported UFO sightings were the largest since March 1966, Bill Konkolesky, Michigan state director of MUFON, told the Free Press.

 

"It was one of the big ones in the state. We haven't seen a large UFO (reported sighting) wave since that time," Konkolesky said.

 

Wow… Awesome! 

 

A mysterious video, apparently shot from Chicago in late 2020 or early 2021, shows a fleet of UFOs above Lake Michigan, and most of them look like bright orbs. These UFO orbs hovered in the skies for several minutes, and at one point in time, some of these lights disappeared before appearing again. 

The eyewitness who witnessed this eerie sighting claimed that these UFO lights used to appear above Lake Michigan several times in the past.

 

The video was later analyzed by self-styled alien hunter Scott C Waring, who enjoys a huge fan following online. After analyzing the mysterious footage, Waring claimed that something strange was going on in the skies of the United States. He also suggested that there could be an underground alien base in Lake Michigan.

"The lights were so close to the water that sometimes the reflection of the UFOs could be seen. Aircraft can be seen flying over the lights once in a while, but the lights and aircraft stay far apart. These lights are a sign that there is an alien base below lake Michigan. Absolutely amazing and even the eyewitnesses noticed other people not looking at the UFOs. Very strange how people are too busy to look out the window. 100% proof that alien base sites at the bottom of Lake Michigan off Chicago coast," wrote Waring on his website UFO Sightings Daily. 

 

There have been shitload UFO sightings in the area of the Lake Michigan Triangle, only fueling more speculation. So here are some of the patented midnight train quick hitters!

 

An early sighting occurred in November 1957, when a cigar-shaped object with a pointed nose and blunt tail, with low emitting sounds, was seen. Subsequent civilian and military air traffic controllers cited no aircraft were in the vicinity at the time.

 

In July 1987, five youths had seen a low-level cloud expel several V-shaped objects which hovered quietly, with bright lights. Then, the things reentered the cloud formation and rapidly departed toward the lake's north end.

 

In August 2002, seven miles off the Harrisville shoreline, two freighter sailors observed a textured, triangular-shaped object soar above and follow their ship. Then, the thing made a 90-degree turn and quickly disappeared.

 

In September 2009, a couple left their residence to close their chicken coop for the evening. They jointly observed a large, triangular object pursued by a military jet. In addition, they noted two bright and beaming white lights when the object was overhead.

 

In June 2007, an 80-year-old resident inspected what appeared to be a balloon-shaped object near his fenceline. Upon his arrival, the object immediately increased to the size of a car and shot upward. He stated his body hair stood on end and when he later touched where the thing was, his hands became numb.

 

In October 2010, a couple experienced a sky filled with a variety of low-flying white and red objects. The couple returned to the village, where five individuals from a retail establishment joined in the observation. Later, a massive yellow orb appeared and quickly exited into the sky. The viewing lasted for nearly an hour.

 

Well… We're convinced, well maybe at least Moody is anyway. 

 

Anything else weird, you ask? Why yes… Yes, there is. 

 

Yet another odd aerial phenomenon occurred on July 12, 1883, aboard the tug Mary McLane, as it worked just off the Chicago harbor. At about 6 p.m., the crew said large blocks of ice, as big as bricks, began falling out of a cloudless sky. 

The fall continued for about 30 minutes before it stopped. The ice was large enough to put dents in the wooden deck. The crew members brought a two-pound chunk of ice ashore with them that night, which they stored in the galley icebox, proving they didn't make up the story. Ouch… That's nuts. 

 

Littered on the bottom of the Great Lakes are the remains of more than 6,000 shipwrecks gone missing on the Great Lakes since the late 1600s when the first commercial sailing ships began plying the region, most during the heyday of commercial shipping in the nineteenth century. Just over twenty percent of those vessels have come to rest on the bottom of Lake Michigan, second only in quantity to Lake Huron. So many of those have disappeared mysteriously in the Michigan triangle area. What the hell is going on there! Aliens? Weather? Portals to other dimensions?

 

We may never know for sure, but most likely… Aliens

Movies

 

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