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Post by Mini Mia on Sept 13, 2019 11:09:21 GMT -6
You know, it’s weird how things happen in real life, yet no one would believe them if in a book.
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Post by Phalon on Sept 30, 2019 21:52:45 GMT -6
Ok....here we go! It's the 31 Days of Halloween!!! I've got my 10 foot pole ready for prodding. She can be such a b!tch to wake up sometimes! Cover me...I'm going in.
<prod, prod, prod.>
Iiiii-imp. Imp! Wake up, wake up, wake up. It is time.
<impish purr. Hair snores.>
<prod, prod, prod.>
Imp! Get up!
<Imp grumbles. Hair moans.>
Urgh. While we wait for the Sleepy-headed Imp and her Hair to fully awaken, how about a little story. Not a scary story, but one of those weird True Crimes that has just the right touch of bizarre to make it into the 31 Days of Halloween. You can almost see this being played out by small town actors with bad fake French accents in one of those Murder Mystery Dinners that seem to be everywhere this time of year. Bad fake French accents, and wet socks. Robert Ledru , one of the 19th century’s finest detectives in France, made his name in Paris, breaking up black magic cults, arresting scores of anarchists, solving murders, and tracking down a group of political rebels who planned to overthrow the government. In 1887, the 35-year old Ledru was contacted by the authorities in Le Harve, a port in the Normandy region of France, to assist in solving the mysterious disappearance of sailors in the area. Upon arriving at the police station there though, he was informed that a new case had taken precedence – a brutal murder had occurred on the beach the night before, and the killer had left little in the way of clues. Ledru headed to the beach to check out the crime scene. The victim was Andre Monet, a dress shop proprietor, and like Ledru, a Parisian. He’d come to Le Harve for a vacation by the sea for health reasons, and instead of being rejuvenated by the sea air, wound up dead. He’d been shot point blank in the chest, with the bullet passing straight through his body. While Monet’s wife was being informed of her husband’s death, and the beach being combed for the bullet that had killed him, Ledru examined the only clue that was present at the scene – foot prints in the sand leading up to were Monet’s body had been found, and another set, leading away from the body. He sat on the beach to mull over what little evidence the killer had left. Even before the bullet was recovered, Ledru had solved the crime. The killer’s name was…Robert Ledru!
Ledru had arrived in Le Harve the night before, checked into a hotel, and went to bed early. When he awoke the next morning, before heading to the police station, he was surprised to find his socks were wet and dirty. Being anxious to get to the police station, he didn’t give it much thought…not until he saw the footprints in the sand, that is. The killer was missing his big toe on his right foot; Ledru’s right foot had no big toe! His revolver, normally fully loaded, had an empty chamber.
When Ledru turned himself into the police, they were reluctant to accept his story. He claimed to have no recollection of murdering Monet, claiming he did it while sleepwalking. The bullet had been found though, and it matched the ones in Ledru’s German-made revolver. It seemed Ledru was right - he was Monet’s murderer. He insisted he be arrested.
He was jailed, and kept under constant watch, and his first night imprisoned, he did, indeed, sleepwalk. His sleepwalking was thought to be brought on by a combination of syphilis, overwork, and stress, but the police still weren’t convinced that Ledru, famed detective, could kill someone, let alone do it in his sleep. The police decided to try an experiment, and gave Ledru a pistol loaded with blanks. A few nights passed, and nothing happened. Then one night, still asleep, he took the pistol from under his pillow, and fired point-blank at one of the guards. Robert Ledru was exiled at a secluded farm under constant watch by doctors and armed guards, until his death 50 years later in 1937.
What’s that Imp?....You’re sleepwalking? And have I never heard you should never wake up a sleepwalker?
<impish giggle>
You are not fooling anyone. You are NOT sleepwalking. You are laying in your lair with the covers pulled up over your Hair…if you’re not careful, you’re going to suffocate it, you know. Now GET UP! It’s time!!!
<Imp snarls. Hair wails.>
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Post by Phalon on Oct 2, 2019 22:33:25 GMT -6
There are jars of preserved human kidneys and livers, and a man's skull so eaten away by tertiary syphilis that it looks like pounded rock. There are dried severed hands shiny as lacquered wood, showing their veins like leaves; a distended ovary larger than a soccer ball; spines and leg bones so twisted by rickets they're painful just to see; the skeleton of a dwarf who stood 3 feet 6 inches (1.07 m) small, next to that of a giant who towered seven and a half feet. And "Jim and Joe," the green-tinted corpse of a two-headed baby, sleeping in a bath of formaldehyde. ~ The New York Times, 2005 Do you like museums? I like museums. Although Hubs and I lived in Philadelphia for a few years, I have never been to the Mütter Museum. Perhaps the reason is Gretchen Worden; she became the museum's director around the time we lived there, and during her tenure, turned it from a little-known medical museum with less than 200 visitors a year, into what is now considered a world-class museum with over 130,000 visitors each year. The above quote from NYT was written about a gallery in the museum opened in 2005 after her death, and dedicated to her memory. The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia originated in 1858 with a collection of specimens and medical tools donated by Dr. Thomas Dent Mutter for the intent of biomedical research and education. It is now considered America’s finest museum of medical history, with over 20,000 specimens, in addition to a large literary collection housed in the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. According to its website, "the museum helps the public understand the mysteries and beauty of the human body and to appreciate the history of diagnosis and treatment of disease." Some of the stuff housed there is downright creepy or just plain weird. Skin-bound books, John Wilkes Booth's vertebrae, and over 1,500 "wet specimens" (things in jars of formaldehyde) to include Grover Cleveland's tumor. Some of the odder things at the museum: the-line-up.com/mutter-museumAnd historical medical photos (warning: some may find these images disturbing): listverse.com/2012/11/18/10-disturbing-medical-images-from-history/?utm_source=more&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=directAnd perhaps even more disturbing than some of the photos is this little essay about why the museum has become so popular: culturacolectiva.com/history/mutter-museum-in-philadelphia-house-of-medical-raritiesGretchen Worden must have known a little something about human nature - our fascination with the macabre. She wrote, "While these bodies may be ugly, there is a terrifying beauty in the spirits of those forced to endure these afflictions."
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Post by Phalon on Oct 3, 2019 22:58:34 GMT -6
Anyone hungry? You are, Imp? Of course, you are. Come on, let's get a midnight snack.... ...at The Body Bakery. www.vice.com/en_au/article/3d5wy8/body-bakery-macabre-bread-bunsWell, that was tasty, wasn't it? What's that, Imp? It looked good, but you prefer the real thing? Well, then...there's a butcher down the street. What? He's too skinny? Huh? No, I meant there's a butcher shop...I didn't mean for you to eat the...< sigh>...never mind. Come on. I'll buy you a slab of meat.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 5, 2019 5:24:43 GMT -6
The grinning face stared at me from the darkness beyond my bedroom window. I live on the 14th floor.Horror stories don't have to be long to be creepy. How about this one... The longer I wore it the more it grew on me. She had such pretty skin.And... I held my son’s hand tightly as the cars whizzed past the sidewalk. “With any luck, they won’t find the rest of him,” I muttered to myself.A few of my favorites from this collection of Two Sentence Horror Stories. Lots of creepiness here: thoughtcatalog.com/michael-koh/2013/07/40-freaking-creepy-ass-two-sentence-stories/
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 5, 2019 14:05:04 GMT -6
Ooh! Me like.
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 5, 2019 20:33:51 GMT -6
I may have posted this before ...
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Post by stepper on Oct 6, 2019 17:22:18 GMT -6
I like the two sentence horror stories - that's quite entertaining and great for the imagination! I like the skeleton video too - especially the skeleton throwing TP to the one on the throne!
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Post by Phalon on Oct 8, 2019 5:13:27 GMT -6
I love the changing skeleton display! How fun is that!!! It reminds me of pink flamingos. When we first moved here, there was a house on the corner of the crossroads leading into town that had a flock of plastic pink flamingos in the front yard. Every week they'd be doing something different - riding in a boat with George Washington pink flamingo at the helm, playing a game of baseball or football, depending on the season. And of course at Halloween, dressed in scary costumes. I can't imagine the work that went into these displays, but it'd change every week, and went on for years. I looked forward to driving past on my way to work each Monday, and seeing what the flamingos were doing that week.
During the same time period was the Repent Man. About 1/8 of a mile down from the flamingo house, is where I get on the highway, and every morning on the highway overpass was a man dressed in robes, dragging a wooden crucifix (on wheels), and carrying a sign that said "Repent!". Apparently, he walked the entire length of town each morning, dragging his cross-on-wheels. No one knew why, and no one knew who he was - but like the flamingos, he did it for years.
The Flamingo House was torn down, and is now a Walgreens. Just like no one knew anything about the Repent Man, no one knows what happened to him. The only eccentric left from that time period is the Cross-Dressing Lawn Mower Man, who mows his lawn wearing heels and ladies lingerie.
Stepper mentioned recently something to the effect that there were a lot of crazies in this town. I think every place has its share of odd characters, but they're more visible in small towns. We only saw the motorcycle-riding evil clown that once though. And once was probably enough!
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Post by Phalon on Oct 8, 2019 22:08:00 GMT -6
South of Mexico City, along the canals of Xochimico, is a small island known as Isla de las Munecas – The Island of the Dolls. Yep, this is the 31 Days of Halloween's first Creepy-@ss Doll Story – not just a creepy-@ss doll, but hundreds, perhaps thousands of creepy-@ss dolls. The small island belonged to Don Julian Santana Barrera. In the 1950s, Julian discovered a drowned girl in the canal, and nearby a doll, which he assumed was the girl’s, floating in the water. He took the doll back to his island, and hung it in a tree to show respect for the girl. He became haunted by the thought of the girl drowning, and started hanging more dolls – some he found in the garbage, others acquaintances gave him – all in an attempt to appease the girl’s spirit. According to his friends, he started to hear anguished cries and believed the dolls were possessed by the spirits of dead girls. Driven by fear, he spent the next 50 years collecting dolls and hanging them in trees on the island, until he died in 2001. He was found in the canal, drowned, in the same place where he found the girl all those years before. Visitors to the island often bring dolls to hang in the trees, possibly out of respect for Julian, or possibly to keep his macabre tradition… alive? After-all, it is said that you can hear the dolls whispering to each other. Here is a pictorial of some of the dolls inhabiting the island: cindyvasko.com/gallery/island-of-the-dolls-mexico/
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Post by Phalon on Oct 11, 2019 6:12:32 GMT -6
"Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don’t want to see such a mouth up close. Before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it." ~ from The Ritual, by English author of horror, Adam Nevill
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Post by Phalon on Oct 13, 2019 7:59:49 GMT -6
"I try to offset any tendency towards the macabre with humour. As I see it, this is a typically English form of humour. It's a piece with such jokes as the one about the man who was being led to the gallows to be hanged. He looked at the trap door in the gallows, which was flimsily constructed, and he asked in some alarm, 'I say, is that thing safe? ~ Alfred Hitchcock I read this quote in one of those 'Creepy Quotes" lists and thought to myself, "Hhmmm...I wonder what will come up in a Macabre Gallows Safety Humor random word drill?" Lo and Behold, up pops "The Chicago Frankenstein Experiment". In 1882, convicted murderer - and jokester with a good sense of humor, James Tracy was sentenced to hang. Although he insisted he was innocent, his good humor was still intact as he stood on the gallows scaffold, waiting for the bottom to drop. "It was when they took his body down after the hanging that things got weird." mysteriouschicago.com/the-chicago-frankenstein-experiment-1882/
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Post by Phalon on Oct 19, 2019 5:39:36 GMT -6
Always hungry, this one goes out to the Imp. A traditional campfire song, the lyrics first appeared in "Our Own Boys Songster" (New York, NY, 1876), under the title "Dunderbeck's Machine", by Ed Harrigan, but the "by" is thought to mean "sung by" - Harrigan was a vaudeville singer. No one really knows, (or laid claim to), writing this little ditty. Dunderbeck's Machine
There was a man named Dunderbeck who invented a machine. It ground out perfect sausages, and it was run by steam, The pussycats and long-tailed rats, no more they will be seen, They're all ground up for sausage meat in Dunderbeck's machine.
Oh, Mr. Dunderbeck, how could ye be so mean, To ever have invented that sausage meat machine? The pussycats and long-tailed rats, no more they will be seen, They're all ground up for sausage meat in Dunderbeck's machine.
Now, one fine day, a little boy came walking in the store. There was a pile of sausages lying on the floor. While he was a-waiting, he whistled up a tune, And all them little sausages went dancing around the room.
One night, the thing got busted, the darn thing would not go. So, Dunderbeck, he crawled inside to find what made it so. His wife she had a nightmare, she was a-walking in her sleep. She gave the crank one big yank, and Dunderbeck was meat!
Oh, Mr. Dunderbeck, how could ye be so mean? Aren't you awful sorry now you invented that machine? The pussycats and long-tailed rats, no more they will be seen, They're all ground up for sausage meat in Dunderbeck's machine. <Impish giggles and gleeful clapping.>Wait, Imp! There's more meaty tales to come...and they're all bizarrely (sausage)-linked to one another.
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Post by stepper on Oct 20, 2019 15:17:19 GMT -6
I remember that song from when I was young - maybe cub scouts or boy scouts. Campfire song? I cannot say which with any certainty, but I remember singing it more than once.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 22, 2019 0:05:19 GMT -6
BOLL. Seriously? I had never heard of it, much less, sang it!
I have been to New Orleans though. I loved New Orleans - and two of my favorite things about New Orleans are the food and the ghost stories, and here's a story that combines both!
A handful of years before that good old Dunderbeck first started grinding up cats and dogs, the Mad Butcher of New Orleans was...well, going mad.
In the mid-1800s, a young couple from Germany immigrated to America, settling in New Orleans. Hans Mueller had been a butcher in Germany, and continuing the profession here, it wasn't long before he and his wife opened their own business in the French Quarter at 725 Ursaline Avenue.
The couple worked hard at their business, and became very respected and well-liked in the neighborhood...and the pork sausage they made in their shop was very popular. All that hard work though, came with a price.
Years of the hard physical work required to butcher, grind sausages, and run a household took a toll on Mrs. Mueller, and she became old before her time. Hans hired a younger woman to help his weary wife with household duties, and Mueller started having an affair with her. Mueller grew to love his mistress more than he did his wife, and when his wife found out about their affair, he strangled her one night after they closed shop....and dismembered her body, then ground the pieces of her in his sausage grinder, and made her into sausage...which he sold in his shop!!!.
Mueller made excuses when his customers and neighbors asked where his wife had gone, but he started running out of believable stories, and the neighbors, and even his mistress, became suspicious. Mueller's behavior wasn't helping either - he became haggard, unkempt, and seemed increasingly nervous. Even the quality of his popular sausages deteriorated...customers complained they found of bits of bone, hair, and even fabric in them!
Late one evening, he ran from his shop in a panic, screaming in the street. Neighbors came out of their houses to see what was wrong, and found Mueller blathering about his mutilated and bloody wife trying to kill him. Eventually he calmed down enough to explain to his horrified neighbors that he was tired, missed his wife (who was supposedly visiting relatives, his latest excuse), and must have dozed off and had a nightmare.
It wasn't until a customer bit into a gold ring in a sausage and reported it to the police that Mueller's dirty deed was discovered. When police burst into the shop, they found him cowering in a corner, screaming in terror, and pointing to the sausage grinder. As police led him away, he pleaded with them to stop his wife from coming to get him. Committed to an insane asylum he spent the rest of this life trying to hide from the ghost of the wife he murdered. Eventually, driven completely mad, he committed suicide.
I think both Dunderbeck's and Mueller's sausages ought to have come with caution labels. Warning: this product made in a facility that processes nuts.
Ha! Get it.
<The Imp rolls her eyes.>
Come on, Imp, that's funny. No? Oh, well. Stay tuned for tomorrow's meaty tale in this Trilogy of Butchery.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 24, 2019 5:31:24 GMT -6
The above story of "The Sausage Ghost" is legend in New Orleans, and widely accepted as a true story. With the timeline of Hans Mueller turning his wife into sausages in the mid-1800s, and the Dunderbeck's Machine song in the late 1800's, it could be assumed that the murder of Mueller's wife inspired the song. But nooooo.....
There was no Hans Mueller or sausages made from his wife...at least there is no record of a Hans Mueller living in New Orleans in the 1800s, although it could be claimed that record-keeping during that time wasn't the most accurate. There absolutely was though a couple of gruesomely meaty actual crimes that probably inspired the Legend of the Sausage Ghost.
The first one occurred in Chicago in the 1890s. German immigrant Adolph Luetgert was known as the "Sausage King" of Chicago; he was founder and owner of the A.L. Luetgert Sausage & Packing Company. Despite being a married man, Luetgert, who had some financial woes, had an affair with a wealthy widow. To further his relationship with the widow, like Mueller, he murdered his wife, Louise, and just as Mueller did, made excuses for her sudden disappearance. Unlike Mueller, he didn't turn his wife into sausages - he boiled her in lye then burned the remains in the factory furnace, where her engraved wedding ring and bone fragments were found by investigators. Despite the gruesome facts, rumors spread during the trial that Luetgert had ground up his wife's remains as sausage and sold this "sausage" to unknowing consumers. Luetgert was convicted of his wife's murder in 1897, and given a life sentence. He died in his cell 18 months later. The former A.L. Luetgert Sausage & Packing Company is now residential condominiums, and the rumors that he ground his wife into sausages still persists. Her ghost is said to haunt the building.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 27, 2019 9:02:19 GMT -6
The similarities between the "Sausage Ghost" story and the murder of Louise Luetgert by her Sausage King husband are obvious. But why was Luetgert's murder in Chicago adapted and evolved into a legend in New Orleans, so much so that it is considered a true story? The answer may lay at the bottom of a blood-stained trunk...or two.
The "Sausage Ghost" story first appeared in print in a collection of Louisiana folklore in 1945, but had been making the storyteller rounds in the '30s...not too long after the infamous New Orleans "Trunk Murders".
"How Jealousy Turned a Devoted Husband into a Demon" read the October 28, 1927 Times-Picayune newspaper headline, along with photos of the "demon" husband, his wife, kids, and a trunk full of body parts...though "devoted husband" is not a term most would use to describe Henry Moity.
Theresa and Leonida Moity were flappers in 1920s New Orleans - a couple of “loose” young party girls that had no business being married. But they were - to two brothers, Henry and Joseph Moity, and the couples, along with their three small children shared a crowded second-story apartment at 715 Ursaline Avenue (yep...just a few houses down from Hans Mueller's legendary sausage shop of horrors).
The Moity brothers were no better at being husbands than Theresa and Leonida were at being wives. Henry and Joseph were most often drunk, were for the most part unemployed, jumping from job to job...to include butchery. Rumors began to spread that the women were having affairs with other men. Leonida left James, but continued to live with Theresa, Henry, and their kids, much to Henry's dismay - he thought Leonida was a bad influence on his wife.
On October 26th, 1927, Theresa told Henry that she was leaving him - both women packed their trunks, planning to move out of the tiny apartment the next day. Henry started drinking heavily, and continued to drink throughout the day, only pausing to go out to buy a sugar cane knife.
The following morning, the housekeeper arrived to find the dismembered bodies of two women each stuffed into their own trunks, while a pile of fingers, entrails, and other body parts were found on a bed. The "lady fingers" as a reporter referred to the pile of four fingers, were Theresa's; the wedding ring was missing - it was found embedded in a gaping wound in Theresa's back.
Henry was found hiding down by the docks, and confessed to the gory murders, saying he did it because he flew into a jealous rage after learning of his wife's affair with Joe Caruso, one of Theresa's lovers. The Times-Picayune reported, that during his confession Henry stated "If I ever get my hands on that Joe Caruso, I’ll chop him up into little pieces, not big pieces like my wife, but little pieces — My God, I’ll make him look like something that’s been run through a sausage mill!” He was sentenced to life in prison, where he died 30 years later.
And so there you have it - two true stories linked together to create one meaty ghostly legend. I've always thought that folklore is often created bits and pieces of actual events - in this case the bits and pieces were the wives.
But wait, the story is not quite done. Fast-forward to 2005, after Hurricane Katrina blew through New Orleans, leaving much of it destroyed. In an abandoned apartment, a trunk was found, containing mummified body parts of a woman that had been missing since 2002. The apartment had been rented by John Henry Morgan, who fled the city after the Hurricane (and receiving money from FEMA), leaving the trunk containing parts of his former girlfriend, Polly Pastori. If that's not bizarre enough, he had killed her 3 years earlier, and carted the trunk from one apartment to another. Even more bizarre perhaps - Polly was last seen alive at a deli where they both worked - she as a waitress, and he as a meat-slicer. The deli's address? 735 Ursaline Avenue!
Strange coincidence? Probably. But weird none-the-less.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 29, 2019 5:27:26 GMT -6
Everyone has a favorite holiday. Mine is Halloween. Stepper, this one is for you.
"Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories. Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about spectres. It is a genial, festive season, and we love to muse upon graves, and dead bodies, and murders, and blood." ~ English writer and humorist, Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927)
Jerome (first or last name, take your pick) may have been sarcastic with that last line of the quote, but did you know that it was the Christmas holiday and not Halloween that was traditionally the time to tell spooky stories? The tradition dates back thousands of years, when during the long dark, gloomy winter months, people would gather fireside to share tales of ghosts and goulies. It was especially popular during the Victorian times - think Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and the ghosts who tormented Scrooge; the written story is much more gruesome than any of the movies. Magazines and periodicals released around Christmastime always were dominated with ghost stories, even as late as 1915, though by that time some of the ghosts had wafted to Halloween with the influence of Scottish and Irish immigrant communities in the United States, celebrating their Samhain customs.
So gather 'round fireside for the "Legend of the Mistletoe Bride".
Christmas Day, 1727 at Bramshill House in Hampshire, England, was an especially joyous time - not only was it Christmas, it was the wedding of Lord Lovell and his 15-year old bride, Anne. After the ceremony and Christmas Wedding feast, as was tradition at the time, games were to be played before the guests carried the bride to the bedchamber. Anne suggested hide-and-seek.
Anne playfully ran off to hide, and the guests gave her a headstart before beginning their search. But she could not be found! Searching everywhere without any sign of the new bride, the guests grew uneasy, and whispered to each other that the young girl must have fled on her wedding night. Lord Lovell was distraught, and continued to search for his bride long after the guests left.
He searched for days, then weeks, then months. Years passed, and Lord Lovell never stopped looking for Anne. It wasn't until 50 years after her disappearance that Lord Lovell found his bride. It was up in the huge attic of the sprawling mansion, where Anne hid. There, behind a oak paneled wall with a secret hidden door, was an ornately carved wooden chest with a spring-locked lid. The chest contained the skeletal remains of young Anne, clothed in her wedding dress, clutching her mistletoe bouquet.
The Legend of the Mistletoe Bride has a few variations - in some, the bride's name is Ginevre, and the wedding takes place on Christmas Eve in anywhere from the 16th century to the 18th century. The English manor where it takes place varies too - Bramshill House, Minster Lovell Hall in Oxfordshire, and Grey's Court all lay claim to being the location of the Mistletoe Bride's entombment. At all three manors the heavy ornately-carved wooden chest is proudly on display - complete with scratch marks on the inside of the lid, made by the young girl's vain attempt to claw her way out of what would become her coffin. And at each place, the ghost of the Mistletoe bride still roams the halls.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 31, 2019 9:08:03 GMT -6
All throughout September, I was busy spanning the internet in search of stories of ghosts, ghouls, murders and mayhem for the 31 Days of Halloween. An accidental suicide that left its victim to permanently perform on a Broadway stage although she's never on the playbill; a "Fire Spook", roadkill couture for the most fashionable among us, a time traveler, zombie haikus, a hiker who stumbles upon by accident the creepiest Halloween party ever, scores of urban legends, and scads of creepy-@ss dolls.
I had my line-up all ready, but when October came, I found myself busier than usual, and didn't have time, or at night, when the time is right to tell ghost stories, I was just too tired to write anything to post.
Instead of the longer stories I had intended, here are a handful of news items I ran across in the last few weeks:
In Real Estate - New research shows that Millennials, saddled with high college debt - tuition has risen 104 percent in the last ten years alone - and often forced to take low-paying jobs, especially those who entered the workforce during the recession, are doing something that us Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers have traditionally shied - or ran screaming - away from. Desperate to get out from under their parents' or landlords' roofs, they are more willing than any other generation to live with ghosts - even the unfriendly kind. "The older generation of home buyers is the most reluctant to move into a haunted house" the study found, while Millennials don't care, as long as the price is right.
Medical News - Last month in Spain, there were nearly 20 reported cases of children developing a rare condition known as "Werewolf Syndrome". Werewolf Syndrome, also known as hypertrichosis, is marked by excessive, thick hair growth - remember stories of Jo-Jo the Dog Faced Boy, the famous side-show attraction in the late 1800s; he and his father both had hypertrichosis. Spanish health authorities issued an alert, and a drug recall when it was discovered that a drug that treats stomach problems had been tainted with a medication to treat male-pattern baldness. Luckily, unlike Jo-Jo and his father who had congenital hypertrichosis which is present at birth, it is expected these kids in Spain will have a "spontaneous reversal" of Werewolf Syndrome once they stop taking the contaminated medicine.
Forensic Science - An Australian scientist has proved that movement does not stop when decomposition starts. Human corpses move significantly for more than a year after death. Scientist Alyson Wilson studied bodies stored at a body farm known as the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research (AFTER) for more than 17-months, finding that there really is no such thing as resting in peace - rather in death, humans are quite restless. Her findings are expected to have implications for detectives and pathologists around the world. Zoology - The Paris Zoological Park unveiled a new exhibit that is straight outta a 50's B-movie horror flick: "The Blob". "The Blob" is a newly discovered mysterious living organism that looks like a yellowish fungus but behaves like animal - it has no mouth, no stomach, no eyes, but it can detect food and eat. It also has almost 720 sexes, can move without legs or wings and heals itself in two minutes if cut in half. If that's not weird enough, how's this for downright scary - the director of the Paris Museum of Natural History says, "The Blob surprises us because it has no brain but is able to learn...and if you merge two blobs, the one that has learned will transmit its knowledge to the other."
WTF??? - The story with ties to Ukraine has been all over the news for the past couple of months - no, not that news story. This one is about a girl born in Ukraine, but adopted here in the U.S.. Kristine Barnett and ex-husband, Michael Barnett, were charged in September in Indiana for abandoning their adoptive child, Ukraine-born Natalie Grace. Natalie suffers from a form of dwarfism, and the Barnetts adopted her in an "emergency adoption" when her previous U.S. adoptive parents in Florida gave her up for undisclosed reasons.
When the Barnetts adopted her in 2010, Natalie was supposedly 7 years old; her Ukrainian birth certificate stated she was born in 2003. Soon after, it became apparent to the Barnetts, that the girl might be a lot older - she might even be an adult masquerading as a child. After discovering she had already reached puberty, Natalie, according to Kristine, started to behave in ways there were not like an innocent child.
Kristine says, "She was hiding knives in our couches. She was talking about how she was going to kill family members. She put chemicals in the coffee...She was jumping out of moving cars. She was smearing blood on mirrors. She was doing things you could never imagine a little child doing. She would stand over people in their sleep. She would be standing in the middle of the room and say ‘I’m waiting for the right time’.”
The Barnetts had Natalie evaluated by medical and mental health professionals. She was found to have adult teeth, had begun menstruating, and was diagnosed with sociopathic personality disorder. Healthcare officials, including the Barnetts' primary care physician who performed a bone density test, and a clinical therapist who treated Natalia, believed her to be an adult impersonating a child.
In 2012, a judge approved the Barnetts' application to have Natalia’s date of birth officially revised to September 4th 1989 – legally changing her age from 8 to 22. They rented Natalia an apartment, prepaid a year's rent, and placed her under the supervision of an Indiana state healthcare provider for psychiatric treatment. Not long after, the Barnett family minus Natalie, moved to Canada to be close to their biological son - a child prodigy who was pursuing a PhD in quantum gravity at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
This is just making the news now, because another couple wanted to adopt Natalia (she has been living with them for some time). They attempted in 2016 to get the courts to reverse the legal change to her age. Despite the new tests commissioned by that couple, the court upheld the original results which maintained that Natalia is an adult. The couple later dropped their guardianship petition. Why the Barnetts are now, after all these years, being charged with abandonment, like so many other details of the case, remain unclear.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 31, 2019 14:57:28 GMT -6
Oh, the weather outside is frightful!!! Wrong holiday, right forecast. It's supposed to be frightful on Halloween, but I'm not talking about the weather. It's superbly nasty - rain, wind, and cold. There probably won't be but the bravest few trick-or-treaters out in this sh!t, so I might have time for a few more stories.
One of the drawbacks to not having time to post, aside from denying myself my daily dose of spooky fun, is that the Imp has been left to her own devices, which is never a good thing....for the rest of us. She's been off to who-knows-where, running amok, I'm sure. I left a nice slab of raw meat at the doorstep though, so maybe she'll be home soon.
In the meantime, how about some Zombie Haiku? "Zombie Haiku: Good Poetry for Your Brains" by Ryan Mecum, tells the oft-told tale of a zombie apocalypse...but with a twist. Little is known about the author before he turned into a zombie, except that he keeps of poetry journal of haiku...which he continues to write in even as he's infected, and turns into a zombie. The entire book is the zombie's "journal". Fun stuff like these....
Little old ladies speed away in their wheelchairs frightened meals on wheels.
and...
He tends not to flinch though I am yelling in his ear which is in my hand.
and...
Blood is really warm it's like drinking hot chocolate but with more screaming.
or...
They are so lucky that I cannot remember how to use doorknobs.
or...
Looking at my hand Somehow I lost a finger And gained some maggots.
and...
He is screaming words, But I don't understand him Since I have his tongue.
How fun is that? "Zombie Haiku: Good Poetry for Your...Brains" goes on my Christmas list.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 31, 2019 17:26:02 GMT -6
About ten minutes left of trick-or-treating, and unbelievably the weather got worse as the evening progressed - the wind is howling (forecasters predicted winds of 50mph), and if that's not enough, the rain changed to sleet. Was surprised that about 50-60 kids ventured out in the nastiness, the littlest ones arriving in cars, the older ones wearing winter and rain gear. Didn't notice anyone's costume, really, since they were all covered up. Some excellent makeup though.
Still no sign of the Imp.
“The ignorant frighten children with ghosts, and the better educated assure them there is no such thing. Our understanding may believe the latter, but our instincts believe the former; so that, out of this education, we retain the terror, and just believe enough to make it very troublesome whenever we are placed in circumstances that awaken it.” ~ Catherine Crowe, English author (1790-1872)
Catherine Crowe wasn’t a typical Victorian woman. Unhappy in her marriage, she divorced her husband, Major John Crowe – divorce was rare at the time, even rarer – almost unheard of – for a woman to divorce her husband. After her divorce, Crowe became a writer, authoring two plays, five novels, and a number of short stories, and children’s fiction. Her writing proved successful, and that a woman need not rely on her parents or husband to live well. She was also a huge proponent of women’s education, an idea that was radical for the era. It was her writings of the supernatural though, that were the most successful and profitable. She wrote two volumes of supernatural stories. In 1848 she published a “groundbreaking” book “The Night Side of Nature, or, Ghosts and Ghost Seers.” Charles Dickens, in a review, called it ‘one of the most extraordinary collections of ghost stories ever published”. “The Night Side of Nature” sold over 65, 000 copies in Britain, and brought Crowe fame and a degree of fortune. Now go back and read Crowe’s quote at the beginning of this post again.
It’s a passage from “The Night Side of Nature”, and there is a lot of irony in that quote, considering what happened to Catherine Crowe. Delving deep into the supernatural, she perhaps ‘put herself in circumstances that awoke the terror within herself”. In 1854, Crowe was found wandering the streets of Edinburgh naked, carrying a handkerchief and a card case, believing spirits made her invisible. The story was widely reported and discussed, and Dickens, who once spoke so highly of her, described her now as ‘stark mad’ and ‘clothed only in her chastity’. She suffered some form of breakdown, believing she had been haunted by spirits.
She was treated for mental illness, eventually recovered, and continued writing. Her subject matter changed though, from ghosts….to seaweed, publishing three treaties on the subject before she died.
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Post by Phalon on Nov 2, 2019 8:43:38 GMT -6
Well, well, well. Look who finally showed up....two days late, I might add. Where have you been off to, Imp, and more importantly, what kind of trouble have you caused?
What's that? You had some to attend to some business? Care to explain?
<Imp nods excitedly.>
Well, go on then...
What? Some guy you've been seeing, ghosted you?! WTF?! Jerk!...
And then he started haunting you?! Bastard!!!...
What?! Seriously??! Then he zombie-ed you?? I hope you finally blocked him!...
No? What's that? You did something better? You ate him? Hhmmm...not the way I would have handled it, but you? Yeah, I can see it. A permanent solution, none-the-less.
<Impish giggle.>
Yes, folks, dating has always been a scary thing, but in today's world of social media, it can be downright nightmarish. Even though most of us aren't single anymore, we've all probably heard about "ghosting".
"Ghosting" is when someone you're dating suddenly disappears without explanation, even years into the relationship. A "ghost" doesn't respond to calls, texts - their social media pages go dark, and you never hear from them again.
The term has spawned a related dating vernacular:
Caspering - ghosting but in a friendly way. The person you've been dating uses something like the age-old 'it's not you; it's me' excuse, before he or she completely disappears.
Marleying - out of nowhere, your ex who ghosted you, gets in touch with you at Christmas.
Ghostbusting - you track down your ghost. Busted!
Haunting - When someone who ghosted you starts "liking" your social media posts, follows your stories, or sends a random text. Basically stalking, but done by your ghost.
Zombie-ing - long after you've been ghosted and have gotten over the jerk, he or she returns from the dead, acting like nothing happened.
What's that, Imp?
She wants me to add a new term to the list...
<Imp claps hands gleefully.>
Imping - when you take out your ghost...for dinner.
<impish giggle.>
Mwah-hahahahaha...HA!
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Post by stepper on Nov 2, 2019 21:31:40 GMT -6
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Post by stepper on Nov 2, 2019 22:07:17 GMT -6
Well, well, well. Look who finally showed up....two days late, I might add. Where have you been off to, Imp, and more importantly, what kind of trouble have you caused? What's that? You had some to attend to some business? Care to explain? <Imp nods excitedly.>Let me confirm this: Yes she was out and about and messing around. It's Halloween night - dark - cold by most standards - and in the short few moments I'm discussing, quiet. You'd think that this would exclude the Imp and all of her evil fiends, but NOOOO! I had moved the truck to the street in front of the house so as not to impede the progress of the intended ghosts and ghouls. I am in my usual Halloween location: outside in the driveway in plain sight, bags of candy there to tempt the kiddies, but right at this moment the intermittent crowds have parted. Some are down the street having raided my house and escaped with enough sugar to cause multiple cavities, and obviously there are more up the street making their way in my direction, but at this moment it's quiet. Dark. Peaceful. Then I saw it - almost. Some "thing" was in the street behind my truck, and it was moving, but that was all I could tell for certain. It was very hard to see, it was as quiet as it was dark, and that got my attention. Who was sneaking around out there? It moved up between my yard and the next door neighbors which placed it directly behind the Live Oak in the center of the front yard. Again, I had no clear view of it but I could tell it was quietly making its way in my direction. And I was convinced this was no Trick-or-Treater. I sat there quietly, waiting for what ever this thing was, to make an appearance, and that had to happen. The motion light over the driveway was still glaring from the last crowd of sugar crazed kiddies. Then it happened - it stepped into the light and was within only a few short yards of me. The biggest, most glorious buck I've seen in years with a magnificent rack to boot! My mind raced - it was staring directly at me and if I moved I knew it would be gone, but I desperately wanted a picture of this fleeting moment. I had just decided to wait it out. I put cracked corn in the front yard for the Egyptian geese and I knew that's what this big buck wanted; I had just enough time to decide to enjoy the view and wait for its head to go down when the kids up the street came to the house with the blaring stereo. The one playing a CD of favorite Halloween noises. And it was at this precise moment that the CD reached the part with the crying little girl, evil laugh, and a child scaring Impish cackle. The child reacted with a scream. The deer reacted to the scream by disappearing into the darkness with amazing speed. And then I heard another quieter, closer, Impish laugh. Just a laugh. She'd won this time - there was no chance of a picture. Then a very small shark walked up to my Snoopy pumpkin, said OOOO, and asked for chocolate. Keep your Imp in your own yard from now on, okay?
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Post by stepper on Nov 2, 2019 22:16:23 GMT -6
I appreciate the thought, but can't help but remember this is coming from a person who is inordinately fond of cemeteries. Especially when they are snowed under and one can ski in semi-privacy. Also, in the first part of the story Scrooge is my hero - then his excellent example of clean and prosperous living is corrupted by the evil ghosts - or were they Imps in disguise?
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Post by Phalon on Nov 4, 2019 5:42:48 GMT -6
Oh! How very cool....and very, very cute!!
HA! PFFT!!! She's an imp. Causing mischief is their very nature. It's just what imps do.
She does tell me to let you know she's sorry though, that she scared your deer; she didn't mean to. When the Hair saw the buck, it reminded them of those old deer jokes, and they had to retell them, even though everyone's heard them a million times. You know the ones...
What do you call a blind deer? - No-eyed deer. What do you call a blind deer without legs? - Still no-eyed deer. What do you call a blind deer without legs, that's been neutered? - Still no f***ing eyed deer.
<impish giggle>
They crack her up every time.
HA! and PFFT! again. You gave yourself away, you know. Anyone who finds joy in watching a buck (and only wants to shoot it with a camera and not blow it away with a rifle), and little sharks ooooing over pumpkins and candy, has more in common with the new and improved Scrooge than with the old curmudgeonly Scrooge.
I wonder if the old tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas is still currently being practiced....sort of in a backwards kind of way. There has to be a reason the box stores display Christmas decorations right next to Halloween decorations, and why the Hallmark Channel has been showing their sappy Christmas movies all throughout October, when they should have been showing horror movies instead....although some of those Christmas movies are sooo bad, they are horrors.
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Post by Phalon on Jan 20, 2020 8:32:02 GMT -6
"We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr - (Jan 15, 1929 - Apr 4, 1968)
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Post by Phalon on Jan 27, 2020 6:41:05 GMT -6
"It can happen anywhere. Hate is born of ignorance. No one is learning from the past, no one wants to learn." ~ Auschwitz survivor, Vera Grossman Kriegel, age 81; she was 6-years old when she was a prisoner at Auschwitz.
On January 27, 1945, 75 years ago today, the prisoners at Auschwitz death camp in German-occupied Poland were liberated by Soviet Red Army.
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Post by stepper on Jan 27, 2020 18:40:50 GMT -6
"It can happen anywhere. Hate is born of ignorance. No one is learning from the past, no one wants to learn." ~ Auschwitz survivor, Vera Grossman Kriegel, age 81; she was 6-years old when she was a prisoner at Auschwitz. On January 27, 1945, 75 years ago today, the prisoners at Auschwitz death camp in German-occupied Poland were liberated by Soviet Red Army. Very timely - thank you! I read about the Romai recently. Adolf Hitler issued a supplementary decree to the Nuremberg Laws on 26 November 1935 which classified Gypsies as "enemies of the race-based state", thereby placing them in the same category as the Jews. In some ways the fate of the Roma in Europe paralleled that of the Jews in the Jewish Holocaust. Historians estimate that between 25% to over 50% of the Romani population were killed by the Germans and their collaborators. Later research cited by Ian Hancock estimated the death toll to be at about 1.5 million out of an estimated 2 million people.
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Post by Phalon on Jan 28, 2020 7:02:17 GMT -6
That the slaughter of the Romani people during the Holocaust has largely been overlooked has been called one of Europe's "hidden shames"; Germany didn't even officially (which allowed them reparations) recognize the Roma genocide until almost 1980, and by then most of the survivors had died.
I watched an excellent documentary on the History Channel this past weekend, called "Auschwitz Untold" (if you have Comcast/Xfinity it's still available On Demand; I had missed the beginning of the documentary when it aired, so I was able to rewatch last night). Survivors of the death camp told of their unimaginable experiences in Auschwitz. The documentary talked about the Roma a lot, probably more so than any film I've seen, and one of the survivors telling his story was a Roma who escaped.
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