For me, zombies are probably the scariest of the iconic horror monsters because humans are either zombie food fighting for survival in a post-apolocalypic landscape or they are transformed into mindless walking corpses that are doomed to feed on the… Read More ›
Halloween
Halloween Horror Post #3 (2017): The cinematic after-life of an unidentified skeleton
I recently read an article by John Squires, published in 2014, over at Halloween Love about how Dawn of the Dead unintentionally featured a real dead person. Some of the movie crew rented what they probably thought was a fake… Read More ›
Halloween Horror Post #2 (2017): The haunted bones of the Fighting Fairy Woman
In the mid-19th century William Hicks, the mayor of Bodmin, in Cornwall, hosted a dinner party. As the story goes, rather than entertaining his guests with music or poetry, he chose to prank his guests with a fake seance…. Read More ›
Halloween Horror Post #1 (2017): The curse of Rowland Jenkins
History is full of stories about curses spoken by prisoners, either rightfully or wrongfully convicted, on the way to their execution. The hexes were a prisoner’s supernatural retribution for perceived wrongs that the court dealt them. This cosmic vengeance… Read More ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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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