Author Archives
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The camel-riding corpse that killed a woman
In the spring of 1883, a coroner was dispatched to investigate the gruesome death of a woman on a sheep ranch in eastern Arizona. The only witness to the killing was a woman who barricaded herself inside a ranch house… Read More ›
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Lord Byron’s skull cup
Lord Byron (January 22, 1788 – April 19, 1824), née George Gordon Byron (I love that his middle name is Gordon), was a leading poet of the Romantic movement and a good friend of fellow writers Mary and Percy Bysshe… Read More ›
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Re-animating a Murderer: The Corpse Experiment that Inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
George Forster was hanged at Newgate Prison on January 18, 1803 for murdering his wife and daughter. After the execution, Forster’s (also spelled Foster in The Newgate Calendar) body was carried to a nearby house so that Giovanni Aldini (April… Read More ›
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George Washington, zombie-in-chief
George Washington (1732-1799) was many things: Founding Father, Commander-In-Chief, and the First President of the United States. He was also almost America’s first zombie. Washington became seriously sick after he got caught in a rainstorm in 1799. His doctors tried… Read More ›
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Forensic Science and the Creepy Legend of the Ourang Medan
According to legend, some time in the 1940’s a ship named the S.S. Ourang Medan sent a distress signal as it traveled through the South Pacific. The S.O.S. said that the officers aboard were dead and rest of the crew were dying…. Read More ›
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How a bloody corpse was used in a 17th century forensic test
People used to believe that the corpses of murder victims could identify their killers – sort of a zombie testimony. Courts all over Europe, up until the 19th century in some places, practiced a ritual called the bier-right. The bier-right… Read More ›
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An almost complete list of human bone chandeliers
Ossuaries are buildings or containers where human skeletal remains are kept as way to reduce the space needed to store human remains. They are typically used in locales that need to re-use burial plots because space for graveyards is very… Read More ›
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The strange ways people avoided premature burial
Taphophobia, or the fear of premature burial, reached a fever pitch at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century. One of the reasons for this was people realized that the methods doctors used to confirm death were… Read More ›
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The woman who survived premature burial
Frightening stories of people who were accidentally buried alive, also known as premature burial, have been repeated around fireplaces and reported in newspapers since the 18th century. True or not, these tales really scared a lot of people so families went to… Read More ›
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The corpse queen of Portugal
According to legend, in the mid-14th century a heart-broken King Peter (Pedro) I of Portugal exhumed the corpse of his lover to have her posthumously crowned queen. The romantic scandals of European royalty could fill a library so it can… Read More ›
