Category: Bizarre

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You might belong in a museum

phot of a mummy
This amazing mummy rests in peace at the Museum of the Weird

At the Museum of the Weird we feature a mummy that might date back 3000 years. The process of mummification is an ancient art practiced by the Egyptians to preserve and prepare the body for the afterlife. Elaborate tombs were built to house the preserved body along with belongings and largess that showed off the wealth of the deceased. The process was very detailed and took months to complete. Poor people could not afford mummification, but would emulate the process by wrapping their dead in linen. (Read details about mummification from the Ancient History Encyclopedia.)

While many details of mummification are known, it has not been regularly practiced for centuries. The modern practice of embalming is the way that we expect to be preserved. As you may recall in our article on postmortem photos, some bodies were viewed and photographed for years after they died.

However, interest in mummification has resurrected, so to speak. In 2012 a terminally ill man willed his body to scientists so they could try to replicate the ancient mummification process. The entire experiment was explicitly captured in the documentary show, Curiosity, Season 2, Episode 2: I Was Mummified. (It’s available to watch for purchase through many outlets. This clip will give you an idea if it’s for you.)

Of course, the art of mummification is not completely lost. The U.S. company, Summum, offers complete mummification services for humans and animals. Here is video from The Discovery Channel’s show One Step Beyond, where the founder of Summum tells a little bit about his inspiration and their process. He’s a little off the beaten track, but I guess you’d have to be.

The already have a number of people willing to pay for mummification. Does that mean we can expect to see more pyramids rising up around the U.S.? If you can afford it, maybe someday you’ll end up in a museum!

In the mean time, come visit ours on 6th Street in Austin, Texas.

 

 

 

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When monsters attack

Several weeks ago we had a story about legendary monster, Godzilla, receiving official citizenship from Japan. That’s odd, since he spent a lot of time destroying Tokyo. That’s what monsters do, though. They attack, and not only in the movies. Here are a few real-world encounters with monsters from the news.

Giant Raccoon

Photo from World News Daily Report shows the horrific damage to the Bakers’ SUV caused by what they describe as a giant raccoon.

This article by the Weekly World News Report describes a bizarre incident in which a Montana couple is attacked by what they described as a giant raccoon about eight feet tall. Arthur and Helen Baker say they were driving on the highway when the creature appeared in front of them. It attacked their vehicle, smashing the windows and flipping the vehicle several times. It continued to attack until it injured itself on the broken windows.

Raccoons can get large, but none have been recorded to get that large, leading authorities to suggest that this encounter may have been with a bear. Even if that was the case, something that will attack and beat up a vehicle to that extent and go after the people inside is the stuff of which nightmares are made!

Russian Chupacabra

Carnage left from the mysterious creature in Russia that is killing chickens. Image © www.moe-online.ru

According to this article at rt.com, a mysterious creature has been killing hundreds of chickens in the Russian village of Davydovka in a methodical and, perhaps, intelligent fashion. Very little blood is found at the scene, putting it in line with Chupacabra legends. This is not the first time that attacks like this have been seen in Russia. A couple of years ago similar attacks happened in the Voronezh Region in April and two years prior.

Tracks discovered at the scene are similar to a canine, but the methodology is very unlike what would be expected from a dog, wolf, or other similar predator.

Is it possible that this creature has somehow hitched a ride from Latin America to find new prey in Russia?

 Giant Squid Attacks Russian Vessel

What gods did the Russians anger? Not only are the chickens suffering, but here is footage of a fishing vessel attacked by a giant squid. This looks like something from Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea! Can you imagine that just a few years the idea of a giant squid was considered myth and now we have this! Attracted by their catch the monster squid forced the crew to fight hard to drive it away.

https://youtu.be/fIKgNqlLU6c

Hopefully, most of us will never encounter a real-life monster. They will remain the stuff of nightmares and scary stories. These tales are a reminder, though, that any of us, at any time, may cross the threshold where the nightmare becomes real. Pleasant dreams!

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Beginning at the end

Wedding photo of Asian couple in a coffin.
Couple celebrate their wedding in the family funeral home.

We look forward to the day when an especially weird couple chooses to tie the knot at the Museum of the Weird. (We can totally make that happen with an in-house officiant!)

However, until that happy day, we always like to look at the bizarre ways that people celebrate their unions. Earlier this month, a couple in Ohio had their wedding in her family funeral home. According to this article in The Huffington Post, Chelsea and Barry Lesnick exchanged vows at the Brunner Sanden Deitrick Funeral Home & Cremation Center which has been run by her family for years.

“We really didn’t think of it as weird, for our mindset, because we deal with death all the time. It’s the family business,” Chelsea told Huffington. “But talking to other people about it, like friends and Barry’s family, they were a little weirded out by the idea. They were a little skeptical, thinking, ‘How is this going to work? Are there going to be dead bodies everywhere?'”

Having made the acquaintance of a lovely Austin funeral director, I have seen her approach funerals as a celebration of life. That would make it a very fitting place for a wedding.

Of course, there are those who take a darker view. An Austin cake maker, Natalie Sideserf, created a most unusual cake for her marriage to husband, David. Being horror fans, they celebrated with cakes depicting their own severed heads. See this video.

 

https://youtu.be/bCoSS1YgDqo

Isn’t it wonderful when weird people find each other? Weird weddings are proof that a couple belongs together, with a celebration as unique as they are. We raise a toast to all of you lucky couples. Of course, if you are looking for a perfect way to start your weird life together, we always have some room to celebrate amongst the mummies and shrunken heads.

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Buried alive in Brazil

You may have seen a recent story repeated from dailybuzz.com with titles like “Woman Buried Alive, Funeral Goers Hear Screams From The Grave.” Snopes declares this story to be false, and is is honestly unlikely that with the embalming processes commonly used in the United States that someone would make to the grave alive. However, it is not unheard of, even in our modern age, for someone presumed dead to be discovered alive in the nick of time. For example, this case in Mississippi where a man was discovered to be breathing on the embalming table!

We covered a story in 2011where a South African man was nearly buried alive. In that case the man was discovered in time. Here, there is startling video from 2013 where a Brazilian man was discovered trying to crawl from his own grave!

Should you be worried about being buried alive? Probably not. In general, modern medical professionals do a pretty good job of detecting life, or lack thereof. Of course, if you want to experience the idea of being buried alive, there is a device for haunted attractions that will give you that experience. Your author has tried this out at a HauntCon convention several years ago. You lay inside a coffin and the lid is closed. You feel it picked up, carried to your grave as people outside the coffin comment. Finally, feel yourself lowered into the grave and feel dirt tossed on you as the world becomes more and more distant. It’s probably not for everyone.

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Vampire flowers had willing donor

rose-224862_1280In 1963 a man named Ralph Farrar was diagnosed with a disease called Hemochromatosis. The result was that his blood had too much iron. The treatment at the time—which is still recommended today—is removal of blood from the body on a regular basis. Once a week, Farrar would go to the doctor where they would remove a pint of his blood.

Blood taken for this purpose cannot be used as part of a blood bank, so he found another use. Once a week he would pour a bottle on his roses as an iron-rich fertilizer. Ralph lived in San Antonio, Texas, but his story was picked up by the Associated Press (AP). Here is an archive of the original article as it appeared in the Tuscaloosa News on June 29, 1963.

Of course, the most famous plant that demanded blood was Audrey II, the plant from Little Shop of Horrors, which started as a 1960 Roger Corman film, then became a popular Broadway musical, finally returning to film in 1986, directed by Frank Oz.

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Ouija does it…

ouija_boards
Three talking boards await clearing by Doc Saul Ravencraft.

As I give tours to visitors at the Museum of the Weird I tell them about my role in making sure that everything our owner, Steve, brings to the Museum is safe for display to the public. We have young people and drinking people who come in and we don’t want anything that will be spiritually challenging or that might follow you home.

Recently, Steve walks in with these three talking boards that I think he bought from an estate sale. If you are alive, you know that talking boards (Ouija is treated as a trademarked brand name by Parker Brothers) have a reputation for ghostly activity and demonic possession that would make for a good horror film. Though, it usually makes for a bad horror film; the 2014 film Ouija only hit 7% on Rotten Tomatoes. If you are dead, you might find these corridors of communication to be pretty interesting. (I’m not sure what our readership is from beyond.)

Are talking boards dangerous? Are they invitations to dark spirits? Are they a telephone to relatives on the other side? Are they a party game that is more hoax than hex?

ouija_does_it
May 1, 1920 cover featuring Ouija board art by Norman Rockwell

Talking boards haven’t always had this terrible reputation. When they were first made commercial by William Fuld in 1890 spiritualism was in its heyday. People didn’t have an Xbox to gather around so they found other ways to entertain themselves. A séance made for a fun evening, whether you were a true believer or not. (It still does.) It was a common enough part of Americana that Norman Rockwell chose it for the May 1, 1920 cover of The Saturday Evening Post.

To get a feel for all of this, I highly recommend looking through the on-line Museum of Talking Board’s gallery. There are some beautiful and quirky versions of the talking board.

The darker reputation of the Ouija board is a more recent phenomenon. It’s not hard to find terrifying tales by people whose game turned into something supernatural. Religious and skeptical groups cry out against them, though for opposite reasons. Even so, the boards remain popular, with the classic boards selling more. Beautiful, artistic versions of the board are widely produced.

Of course, you don’t need to buy a fancy board to make a connection. You can make your own talking board with a piece of paper, Scrabble® tiles or any number of methods. For homemade methods it’s common to use an overturned glass. There are also games, such as the more recent Charlie Charlie, that look to connect with nothing more than a piece of paper and a couple of pencils. (Some of the Charlie Charlie videos are pretty funny.)

On my end, I used my own methods to clear these talking boards of any previous spiritual presence they might contain. The Ouija Queen board went to another collector and the other two came into my own. Will they be tools for amusement or will they open gateways into terror? Time will tell. Until then, I leave you with this brief TV ad by Parker Brothers.

 

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Flame on—spontaneous human combustion

A recent rash of news articles has focused on the strange case of the nine-day-old child of Karna Perumal, an agricultural labourer, and his wife Rajeswari from T. Parangini in Villuppuram district of Tamil Nadu. According to some, this baby was a victim of Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC), a condition where a person bursts into flames, apparently without any external cause. This incident is, understandably, controversial, so I’m not going to focus on it today, but it’s not the only case of SHC to get attention. Here is video of a case involving a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran who survived an incident when his feet burst into flames.

The idea of SHC began appearing in fiction as early as 1834. Charles Dickens even used the concept in his story Bleak House.

Does this really happen? We’re honestly not sure. It’s just another weird mystery in our wonderfully weird world!

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Death by selfie

Recently, Russia released a pamphlet advising people about the deadly consequences of taking selfies. Apparently, the carelessness of people trying to capture themselves for social-media posterity has become so dangerous that people need to be warned. Warned about what? Take a look at these icons from the pamphlet. Are any of these you?

RussianSelfies
Icons from Russian Selfie pamphlet highlight some important “dont’s”

Is this seriously a problem? Are people actually selfying themselves to death? Scoff if you will, but watch this video of several deadly selfie incidents from around the world first.

https://youtu.be/5CNDwJU1wDQ

If we were going to bet on a way for the human race to end itself we would have gone for nuclear war or something like that. We never even had a bet on Selfie Apocalypse. So, if you need to take pictures of yourself, please be careful. Even better, come and do it in the safety of our Museum with our life-sized King Kong!

Of course, we should also remind you that you should not send selfies to loved ones after you die, either. (See our earlier article about a selfie from Hell, literally.)

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Some parts may not be included

If it’s never happened to you, it’s difficult to understand the tragedy of losing a loved one, especially in a death that requires an autopsy. The tension is terrible as you wait for the body to be returned from the authorities so that you can begin the process of burial or cremation. What if you discovered that parts of your loved one were missing? confiscated by the authorities?

This actually happened to the family of Brian Shipley of Staten Island who died in a 2005 car crash. Years after he was buried, a highschool classmate was doing a tour of the medical examiner’s office and found his friend’s brain preserved and proudly displayed in a jar. The family had no idea about this.

The Shipleys sued, as their beliefs require that the body be buried as a whole. The case has finally made it through the court. According to an article in the New York Daily News, the court decided it is legal for a medical examiner to keep body parts from an autopsy for their own use and that they don’t even have to tell the family.

Is it reasonable for a medical examiner to be able to keep a few souvenirs of their work? What do we say to people whose beliefs require a full accounting of the remains? Should people be compensated in some way when the state keeps a piece or two?

Personally, your author finds this pretty outrageous.

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If you give a mouse a Mountain Dew

We’ve all heard some of the food horror stories: animal and human body parts found mixed amongst the fries; things found packaged in the factory. Often these are just tales. But there’s an interesting twist to this one.

Around 2009, a man named Ronald Ball claimed he bought a can of Mountain Dew from a vending machine which contained the remains of a mouse. That is disturbing! Perhaps more disturbing was the response that PepsiCo filed with the court an 8 April 2010. An affidavit from Lawrence McGill, a licensed veterinarian with a speciality in veterinary pathology stated that after a mouse submerged in Mountain Dew for 30 days would “have been transformed into a ‘jelly-like’ substance.” I’ll give you a moment to ponder that while I take a sip of my beverage.

Is this possible? Would leaving a mouse in a can of Mountain Dew actually cause it to dissolve? Let’s try science!

Explorer Multimedia helps find the truth with an experiment where they soak a rodent in Mountain Dew for 30 days. You might not want to view this over lunch.

There you have it! Clearly Ronald Ball was having us on. Shame on you, Ronald! And, may I add? EEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!