In honor of the 30th anniversary of Shark Week, I wanted to see if I could find a murder that involved this notorious predator. Per usual, Google did not disappoint. I’m a little sad that I had not heard this… Read More ›
Strange News
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
Was this hymn printed on mummy paper?
The people of Norwich, CT celebrated the bi-centennial anniversary of their city’s settlement September 7th and 8th in 1859. To mark the occasion, the publishers of the local newspapers printed a hymn on brown paper to be sung during the… Read More ›
Scientists resolve myth about the identity of the Dark Countess
The Countess and the Princess In 1807 an enigmatic couple arrived in the village of Hildburghausen in Central Germany and lived in the castle of Eishausen for the next 30 years. The villagers referred to the solitary duo as the… Read More ›
Dozens of ghost ships found off the coast of Japan
Ghost ships are vessels found adrift at sea with its crew either dead or missing under mysterious circumstances. They appear in folklore and historical accounts. Probably the most famous fictional ghost ship is the Flying Dutchman, the legend of which… Read More ›
How to make honey infused corpse medicine
Corpse medicine was a type of remedy produced with the bones, organs, and blood from dead bodies. It is mentioned in ancient medical texts and histories from Greece, China, Mesopotamia, and India. One of the more peculiar accounts of corpse… Read More ›
Extraordinary, terrible, and totally “true” tales of people who were buried alive
Taphophobia (taphos meaning grave and phobos meaning fear) is the fear of being buried alive and it permeated Europe and America in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was especially bad during cholera and small pox epidemics because people… Read More ›
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