December, 2006
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December 1, 2006 Today's Rebellious Yet Truly Morbid Fact! During an uprising on July 15, 1857, a group of British women and children being held by rebels in Chawnpore, India were cut to pieces with knives and hatchets. Then their remains were tossed into a well. When British forces finally retook Chawnpore, the captured rebels were taken back to the house where the slaughter took place. Then they were forced to lick the floors clean, after which they were hanged. Culled
from: Rotten.Com **********************************************************************
Morbid Film Du Jour! So, I just finished watching the best little chestnut of a movie: Hard Candy. It's about a 14-year-old girl (played by the amazing Ellen Page) who wreaks some most-righteous justice on a 32-year-old pedophile who made the mistake of chatting her up online. Although I was a bit disappointed that the film wasn't as brutal as it could have been (you'll know the scene I'm talking about when you see it), it is still the feel-good film of the year. (Unless you're a pedophile, I suppose...) Scores extra points for having the most realistic chat sequence I've ever seen committed to celluloid. I give it 5 skulls on the Morbid-O-Meter! Hard
Candy (2006) ******* Morbid Word Du Jour! Bre has added a new word to her vocabulary and wanted to share: "I heard this word mentioned on the radio the other day. The only thing the DJ could say was they found it more digusting than Necrophilia. I then decided I HAD to know what it meant, so I searched it and found this: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=munging "The word is munging, and if you go to this site it gives you the disturbing definition." ******* Wretched Recommendations! ThePretender has a DVD recommendation: "I just wanted to make sure you had seen Neon Genesis Evangelion. If not, it's a life changer. The series in mindblowing, and the movie is one of the achievements of the century (the only thing that comes close in levels of fucked up is 2001)." Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) |
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December 2, 2006 Today's Bizarre Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Hours after the bizarre death of the City of Phoenix's chief financial officer, city officials blamed a brain parasite contracted in Mexico for his bizarre demise. However, nine months of extensive testing eliminated the possibility that such a parasite caused Kevin Keogh, 55, to crawl out the window of his moving Mercedes-Benz SL 500 and onto its roof before jumping off the passenger side and hitting a tree. The lack of evidence of a brain parasite combined with police reports and other city records point to a pressure-cooker work environment in the upper echelons of Phoenix City Hall as the far more likely catalyst in Keogh's suicide. The bizarre incident occurred on Wednesday afternoon, December 8, 2004, when the CFO's car was traveling east on Camelback Road at about 45 mph. Witnesses told Scottsdale police that Keogh, after crawling onto the roof of the Benz, extended his arms outward for a second or two and then leaped off. He hit the tree, and his body rolled along the edge of the thoroughfare. His driverless car continued down the road until it collided with another vehicle. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Miraculously, nobody else was injured. Culled
from: Phoenix
New Times ********************************************************************** Hey, I always say, if you're going to kill yourself, do it with STYLE! Well done! ******* Blah Blah Blahg You'll never believe it, but The Comtesse has a My Space page now. It's not *much* of a My Space page because, as I've discovered, My Space is an awful pain in the arse to update. In fact, it's so much of a pain in the arse that, after spending an hour fighting with various errors while trying to post a blog update, I have decided to start up a blog on my own website and will only use the My Space page for occasional announcements. So, if
you'd like to be my friend on My Space, please come by and see me sometime: If you'd
like to check out my latest ramblings - including a travelogue-of-sorts
regarding my latest trip back to Catatonia - please visit my new home
blahg, Grim Tidings: I'm planning on using the blahg for posting reviews, stories, random thoughts, and other snippets that don't quite fit anywhere else on The Asylum. Hopefully, you'll find it entertaining at least *some* of the time. ******* Ghastly! Here's the none-too-pretty result of a bicycle vs. truck duel. Can you guess who won? http://nikolskih.livejournal.com/42612.html?page=1 Thanks to Desmodus for the link. ******* Morbid Art Du Jour! 99 Rooms is an amazingly beautiful interactive website that combines urban exploration photographs from East Germany, creepy artwork and interactive flash animation. Brilliant. Thanks to bettieinstereo for the link.
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December 3, 2006 Today's Explosive Yet Truly Morbid Fact! On August 18, 1769 huge quantities of gunpowder were being stored at the church of Saint Nazaire, in the northen Italian city of Brescia, when a bolt of lightning set fire to the church. Soon after, the powder magazine exploded, killing some three thousand people and demolishing all the buildings in the surrounding area. Culled
from: The
Pessimist's Guide To History **********************************************************************
Morbid Link Du Jour! Looking for a morbid board game to play with your friends? Here's a website that lists a few of them. I personally quite like the sound of "Gloom": http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist.php3?action=view&listid=9490 Thanks to Elizabeth for the link. ******* "My Uncle's Brush With Morbidity" by BK "This brush with morbidity is really my uncle Jay's story. He works as a locksmith and this incident occurred during the mid-eighties. A local funeral home contracted him to change their locks and he was working at five in the morning while it was still dark out. Almost every door in that building had a lock and only my uncle and his co-worker were there at the time. One room had a light burnt out so they were working in semi-darkness with only flashlights and the light from the hall outside the door. It was the perfect set-up... two men alone in the morgue in the dark. As Jay tells it, from across the room there was a 'thud' and the upper half* of the lid of a casket flew open as the corpse within bolted straight up into a sitting position (the lid wasn't fully shut). Jay's co-worker soiled himself and fled down the hall. My uncle realized it was just the effects of the brain and nerves decomposing, but nonetheless he had to finish the lock in that room with a corpse sitting erect not ten feet away, eyes wide open, 'staring' at him. His cowardly and humiliated companion had by this point returned and they scrambled to finish the lock and then, as Jay puts it, 'got the Hell oughtta there.' *in the US, most casket lids are divided through the middle forming an upper and a lower lid. The lower lid is usually closed and the upper opened during a viewing of the deceased.
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December 4, 2006 Today's Health-Giving Yet Truly Morbid Fact! A two-year-old toddler has had both his legs bitten off below the knee by a caged bear in northern Vietnam. Pham Van Hung was playing near the cage of a 200 kilogramme Malayan sun bear when the animal dragged him into the cage and mauled him. The family kept the bear to harvest the animal's bile, considered a health-giving tonic in Vietnam and other countries where traditional eastern medicine is practiced. "Hung's family found him as he was being attacked by the bear and it had already snapped off the kids legs from the knee down. They had to try very hard to get him out of the cage as the bear went mad at that time," said a police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity. All across Vietnam thousands of bears are illegally kept in tiny cages for their owners to harvest their bile. The intensely bitter, dark green bear bile is usually added to rice whisky and drunk as a tonic for the liver and blood. "This should be a lesson for every family raising bears for gall, as the business is booming in many places now," the police officer said. Culled
from: dpa ********************************************************************** The gall of that bear!! <groan> Actually, you know this one pisses me off. Poor bear. I don't think I'd cope very well in Asia... ******* Morbid Sightseeing! the Dickeys has a morbid sightseeing recommendation: The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras, NC. http://www.graveyardoftheatlantic.com/ "The pounding breakers relentlessly beat against weary ships as sea-faring souls search in vain for salvation from the angry sea... The waters off North Carolina's Outer Banks entomb thousands of vessels and countless mariners who lost a desperate struggle against the forces of war, piracy and nature. The Graveyard of the Atlantic, with one of the highest densities of shipwrecks in the world, holds some of America's most important maritime history. More than just a collection of artifacts, the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum is a premier cultural attraction for the Atlantic Seaboard and one of the finest, most innovative maritime facilities in the nation." ******* Morbid Link Du Jour! John sends a link to a collection of serial killer bios: http://www.fortunecity.com/roswell/streiber/273/azofkillers.htm |
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December 5, 2006 Today's Frustrating Yet Truly Morbid Fact! A Japanese office worker whose mother died from brain damage after he tied her up with a dog collar to stop her borrowing money from loan sharks walked free from court in December, 2004. Hidenori Mizukoshi, 36, was given a three-year jail term but saw it suspended for five years after the court in Fukuoka, southern Japan, acknowledged his frustration over his 62-year-old mother's spending. Mizukoshi beat his mother in the head and legs on May 20 after she refused to stop borrowing to pay for her compulsive love of pachinko, the Japanese pinball game, and travel. Mizukoshi then put a dog collar with a chain leash around her neck and tied her to a propane gas cylinder in a storage room for some eight hours before she was admitted to hospital. He pulled the chain so tight that his mother died from brain damage one week later. Prosecutors had demanded five years in prison for him, but the court showed understanding for Mizukoshi. "It runs counter to morals and is violent and malicious," presiding judge Masayoshi Takahara said of the crime. "But his mother's debt problem over many years was so serious that there is room for sympathy for his struggle to repay the debt," he said. Culled
from: Source Uncredited ********************************************************************** So, I take it that money is more valuable than life? Now I finally understand modern society! ******* Morbid Sightseeing! Soox has a Canadian morbid sightseeing tip for us: "I just got back from a trip to Victoria BC and was pleased to discover a wonderfully morbid treat while I was there: the nightly Ghostly Walk tour. Who would imagine that such a picturesque little town as Victoria is as amazingly haunted as it is? For an hour and a half we trailed our guide through the streets, learning tales of love gone wrong and horrible horrible murders from Victoria's steamy past. You can get something of an idea of the tour at their website, discover the past. For the most part, I was somewhat creeped out by the stories, but was skeptical about the presence of ghosts in the area, at least currently. However, at the end of the tour we went into a building that even the guide was uncomfortable with entering, and while we sat around the room listening to the stories of hauntings that had occurred there (no one knows why the place is so haunted), I began to feel a tingly, uneasy sensation on the side of my neck and my ear on the side of me facing the door into the room where most of the activity occurs. My girlfriend, sitting next to me, felt a similar sensation on her neck and shoulder on the side facing away from me. She thinks that something came up behind us and put its hands on our shoulders. "Whether we actually had a brush with a ghost or not, the stories and places on the tour were fascinating and I certainly recommend the tours if you should find yourself on the west coast of Canada looking for something to do." http://www.discoverthepast.com/discvr/gwalks.htm ******* Morbid Trinket Du Jour! Here's the perfect gift for that obnoxious teddy bear collector in your life: Teddy Scares! Thanks to Evonne for the link. |
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December 6, 2006 Today's Frustrating Yet Truly Morbid Fact! The beheading axe's partner in crime was the block. At first just any old piece of timber, it soon evolved into a carefully shaped sculpture designed to facilitate the executioner's task. As the victim's throat had to be supported by a flat surface ready for the axe blow, a hollow was scooped out of one side to accommodate the victim's chin, and a similar, though wider, hollow on the opposite side of the block allowed the victim to push his, or her, shoulders forward as far as possible, thereby stretching the neck and increasing the size of the target area. Most blocks were about two feet high, permitting the victim to kneel. Lower ones, such as the ten-inch-high one used for the execution of King Charles I, required an almost prone position, this attitude inducing an even greater sense of helplessness in the victim. A new block was usually prepared for each execution, the impact of the heavy blows invariably splitting the timber after the blade had passed through the victim's neck. The shock also made the block bounce, sometimes even causing the victim's body to be jolted to one side or the other, both reactions tending to deflect the subsequent blows of the axe. Culled
from: The
Book Of Execution ********************************************************************** I guess the expression, "back to the old chopping block" is kind of inaccurate, since the old chopping block would actually be thrown away after use so there would be nothing to go back to. Grrrr... I *hate it* when proverbs lie to me! ******* Morbid Sightseeing! One of these days, I have to haul my creaky bones over to the Czech Republic to see the Ossuary at Sedlec. Perhaps you may understand why after taking a look at this link? Thanks
to Ashleigh for the link. ******* Ghastly! Morbid Visions has a nice collection of ghastly images - and an annoying adolescent attitude to go with it. I can do without the attitude, but the images are worth wincing over. http://members.fortunecity.com/usamakid/unreleased/ Thanks to kelshubert for the link. |
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December 7, 2006 Today's Violating Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Herodotus was born sometime between 480 and 490 BC at Haliacarnassus (south-west coast of Asia Minor). He travelled to Egypt, Africa and other parts of the ancient Greek world while still a young man, and through his writings he came to be called 'the Father of History'. He died in 425 BC. Here is an interesting snippet from his discussion on Egyptian mummification: "When the wife of a distinguished man dies, or any woman who happens to be beautiful or well known, her body is not given to the embalmers immediately, but only after the lapse of three or four days. This is a precautionary measure to prevent the embalmers from violating the corpse, a thing which is said actually to have happened in the case of a woman who had just died. The culprit was given away by one of his fellow workmen." Culled
from: Herodotus
on Mummification ********************************************************************** Hmmmmm... I can't help but realize that we don't follow this practice any longer. What do you suppose that means? <scratches chin> ******* Morbid Merchandise Is On Its Way! I know I've been promising t-shirts for eons, but thanks to the invaluable assistance of Jen at http://www.juror2.net I'm finally going to be able to make the dream real! The shirts should be available for purchase sometime within the next week, so prepare yourselves. I didn't want to spring this on you without ample warning; such excitement must be eased into gently. In the
meantime, please check out Jen's fabulous gruesome stick figure shirts: I'm particularly
fond of the Little Axe Girl, myself... ******* Morbid Riddle Du Jour! Joe sends a link to the following brain teaser which has a nice gothic feel to it. It's horribly easy to guess, but I suppose that's not the point, is it? The queen
of death; she crawls on your stairs, The answer
is here: ******* Wretched Recommendations! J.P. has a film recommendation - which also qualifies as a Morbid Mirth: "I'd like to recommend the Overkill box set of Happy Tree Friends. It contains over 7 hours of mind-numbing goodness, plenty of gore in hand for any morbidity fan! This is a must-buy!" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0009Y2762/theasylumeclecti |
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December 9, 2006 Today's Dutch Yet Truly Morbid Fact! A Dutchman has been accused of murdering his mother, flaying her and then cloaking himself in her skin during a street festival. The 42-year-old, identified only as Roland Z, was held after police in the southern town of Vlaardingen received reports a man was causing a disturbance. He was said to be wearing a strange suit or draped in a flag and shouting quotations from the bible. "This man was arrested while he stood attempting to direct traffic," said police spokesman Henry Hambeukers. "He said immediately that he had killed his mother." Investigators found the body of the 76-year-old woman in her apartment. "This man vandalised her corpse after her death. We are not discussing details out of sympathy for the man's mother, and for him too," Hambeukers said. He could not confirm reports the man had a history of mental illness and had joined a Christian cult, but said police were looking closely at his background. Dutch media were filled with gruesome details of the killing. Reports said the man wandered for several hours during the Carnival, a popular street festival in the southern Netherlands. Many thought he was drunk and wearing a costume. Culled
from: Press Association, Ltd. ********************************************************************** Now, there's
a killer who's studies the masters! ******* The Library Eclectica Upgrade In order to make The Library Eclectica a bit easier to maintain, I've switched it over from my website to an Amazon.Com aStore. I have added my reviews and descriptions wherever possible, so that the aStore is still personalized, and hopefully you'll find it a more pleasant and interesting browse than before. I've also added a number of new categories and I've added most of my book collection to the site as well. If you're looking for a Christmas present for that special morbid person in your life, why not have a browse here? http://astore.amazon.com/theasylumeclecti ******* The
Comtesse Reviews... As anyone who follows MFDJ is well-aware, I am a huge fan of non-fiction books. I like to think that what I am reading is "real" - or at least, that the events really happened basically in the manner in which they are relayed. It makes for a much more satisfying experience for me than reading fiction - which I like to call, "Made Up Shit" (MUS). Granted, some people Make Shit Up that is compelling to read, so I'm not knocking the talent inherent in the great fiction authors. For the most part, however, I leave the Made Up Shit on the bookshelf. Which brings me to the biggest problem that I have with historical non-fiction books. When the main characters of the stories are deceased, the authors can't interview them to find out their innermost thoughts and experiences. Yet, in order to make the story more personal and readable, the authors feel the need to "get inside the heads" of the primary characters, and imagine what they were feeling or saying or doing as certain key events unfolded around them. In other words, they resort to the anathema of non-fiction: they Make Shit Up. Some writers, such as Erik Larson of "The Devil In The White City" fame, are very good at this, and can bring characters to life in a believable manner. And then there are writers like Stephen Puleo, whose Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 I just finished reading (well, half-reading, half-skimming). There were times while reading this book that I literally laughed at loud at the ridiculous sentences this guy dreams up. My personal favorite: "Martin Clougherty walked home from the Pen and Pencil Club on this damp Wednesday morning with elation and wistfulness as his companions, both tugging at him like lovers competing for his affections." Uh-huh. Is this an entry for the Bulwer-Lytton Contest? Or how about this beauty? "The firefighter was close to him, so close that Barry could smell his foul breath." Could smell his foul breath???? Really? Was that documented in an interview somewhere or are you just Making Shit Up again? Or are you assuming that everyone had foul breath in those days? I swear, I was half-expecting to read a sentence like, "As he lay there trapped in the darkness, with the sticky molasses clinging to his head and body, George Layhe passed gas, quickly filling the crawl space with his noxious fumes. It occurred to him that he would rather smell his own gas than the sickly sweet odor of the molasses that threatened to devour him." I mean, really, why not? If you're just Making Shit Up to spread a short story out to a novel length, then why not at least make it entertaining? Okay, obviously, this book annoyed me... but it wasn't all bad. The first half of the book, especially the history of the molasses trade and the creation of the doomed, structurally flawed molasses tank, was pretty interesting. The chapters on the molasses flood itself were rather disappointing, however, and the entire second half of the book - about the court proceedings against the owner of the tank, United States Industrial Alcohol - was such a snoozefest that I literally skimmed the final chapters, desperate for the tedium to end. Since the Boston Molasses Flood has long been one of my favorite eccentric disasters, I was hoping that I would find this book an enjoyable and enlightening read, but alas, the most enlightening thing I learned is that the story that people sometimes tell me, that you can still smell molasses in the neighborhood on hot summer days, is a myth. Pity. ******* Morbid Mirth Du Jour! All herald the Evil Clown Generator! http://www.scottsmind.com/evil_clown.html Thanks to Elizabeth for the link. ******* Urban Exploration! Cathy writes to tell me about her page on Jim and Tammy FAy Bakker's tragic abandoned Kingdom, Heritage Park. "See
the park that Jimmy built. This is a work in progress, but I've posted
about 50 of the 200 pictures. The park was basically an entire resort
area (2200+ acres) built by James Bakker. When James ran in http://illicitohio.com/SBNO/heritage/heritage01.html The site is awesome - thank you Cathy! |
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December 10, 2006 Today's Unsuspecting Yet Truly Morbid Fact! During the American Revolution (in 1778), some of the Tories -- American colonials who remained loyal to the British king -- joined forces with Indian tribes to raid frontier towns in New York and Pennsylvania. One of the most brutal raids took place on July 3 in the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. There some 800 Tories and Indians massacred more than 200 unsuspecting Americans, a bloody act the Tories later blamed on the Indians. Culled from: The Pessimist's Guide To History ********************************************************************** A Plethora Of Viscera! The t-shirts I promised are still being worked on and will be available soon, but in the meantime I created some merchandise at Cafe Press. (I won't create t-shirts there since they don't utilize the high-quality silkscreening process that I demand for my garments, but they are adequate for other items.) I have created some products with the Skull n Crossbones MFDJ logo, and some mugs with my "Make Mine Strychnine!" motto. I'm hoping to begin making lots of fun-filled morbid merchandise in the future - this is just the beginning... and hopefully you'll enjoy what I've done so far. Let me know your thoughts, and please feel free to send your requests for future items my way. http://www.cafepress.com/asylumeclectica ******* The
Comtesse Reviews... I just finished watching the German gorefest Nekromantik and I think the words "gory mess" can serve to summarize it on two different levels. First of all, as expected, the gore factor in this movie is very high, and I was heard to say on a few occasions, "Oh, now, that's just sick" - and you know that takes some doing. There are also some scenes of despicable animal cruelty that I found aborrhent (yes, I close my eyes for violence against animals, but not people - make of that what you will). The film is also a mess as far as its storyline is concerned - meandering from reality to dream sequence, from boring moment to gory moment, without much of a point. I mean, it really takes some doing for a film about necrophilia to lose my interest, but this one did it. Stick with Nacho Cerda's Aftermath for a truly good slice of necrophilia. ******* Morbid Mirth Du Jour! A lady walks into a drug store and tells the pharmacist she needs some Cyanide. The pharmacist said, "Why in the world do you need cyanide?" The lady then explained she needed it to poison her husband. The pharmacist's eyes got big and he said, "Lord have mercy, I can't give you cyanide to kill your husband! That's against the law! I'll lose my license, they'll throw both of us in jail and all kinds of bad things will happen! Absolutely not, you can NOT have any cyanide!" Then the lady reached into her purse and pulled out a picture of her husband in bed with the pharmacist's wife. The pharmacist looked at the picture and replied, "Well now, you didn't tell me you had a prescription." Thanks to Paradox for this one! ******* Wretched Recommendations! Stephen has a film recommendation for us: "I found a Japanese-made 'shock' movie at Walmart that I thought I'd NEVER see there: 'IZO'. It is about a samurai who is too evil to enter Heaven, and too good to enter Hell, so he must walk the Earth for eternity. He eventually tires of this, and decides to kill enough people to get into Hell, and he kills so many (oh, the BLOOD!), that he finally gets his wish. "For a mere $9.99, it's a good gore-fest, and even has a pretty good anti-establishment (kill all those in charge) plot to go with it, if you're into that." And who isn't? Izo (2004) |
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December 11, 2006 Today's Blood-Soaked Yet Truly Morbid Fact! A Brazilian man arguing with his 88-year-old mother threw her into a neighbors' yard where two pit bulls mauled her to death. Painter Luiz Polidoro, 48, picked up his mother Maria and pitched her over the yard wall during an argument on Thursday afternoon at her house. Two pit bulls tied up in the neighboring yard then savaged her and she died later in hospital. "He is an alcoholic. He was robbing his mother's pension money so he could drink," the dogs' owner, Helder Bento Rodrigues, told O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper. Polidoro told police his mother had jumped over the wall on her own. The newspaper said he had tried to rescue her. When police arrived, he was cradling the blood-soaked woman. Polidoro has been jailed in Sao Paulo and charged with murder. Culled
from: Reuters ********************************************************************** I like how the dogs' owner tries to deflect the attention off the dogs and onto the rotten thieving alcoholic son! ******* Tidings Of Discomfort and Gloom! It's crunch time for Xmess presents, so I thought I'd share some of my favorite online shops for those of you still searching for the perfect gift. These sites have helped me out many times in the past! Gorey Details:
http://www.goreydetails.net/ ******* Morbid Mirth Du Jour! Would you like to know how you're going to die? Just ask the Death Psychic! Turns out that I'll die while having fun with fireworks, when an M-80 blows up in my hand and I die from massive blood loss. Considering I wince when I have to strike a match, I somehow doubt it... http://www.thedeathpsychic.com/ Thanks to Ken for the link. ******* "My Brush With Morbidity" by Rebecca "I grew up in an isolated farm house in northern New York, 15 minutes drive from town, which at least four months out of the year was more like 30 minutes to town, with snow covering the roads and windchill warnings each month in winter. The house had been built in the mid-1800's, and had been owned most recently by four generations of a family [I'll call them Smith]. When my father bought it, the house was what a realtor would describe as a 'fixer-upper,' in that it was mildewy on the inside, had water damage on the ceilings and cluster flies everywhere they could think to fit. "My parents had been adamant about making a place their own, and coupled with the limited funds of a young family, they chose the farm house, whose barn had burned down to its stone foundation which we played among as kids. "The house, and the 60 acres it held, were sold to my father by an elderly woman who had been living alone for quite some time, which would account for the disrepair of the place. My father began to gut the interior of the home, starting with the carpets, days after she was moved into a nursing home by her son. "The recarpeting, resurfacing, repainting, and all other things that are redone when one undertakes the gutting of a house were accomplished room-by-room, which is why my father had to fix the plumbing. The bathrooms were the last on the list to be restored for use before our family moved in fully, so my father set to work on the plumbing, some of which was located in the cellar. "The cellar, or basement, was very cold and damp, and not unlike other New England cellars. The Smith family hadn't fully removed all of the sundries located in the basement, and so there were the remnants of four generations of mason jars and pickle jars and fruit preserves and tennis rackets and all other things in the basement. "My father, having navigated this debris to locate the pipes, was clattering away with his wrench when he heard a clinking sound coming from some jars along the floor. Feeling bored, he started dumping out old coffee-cans fulls of nails and glass-jars with rusty bolts and things, but was quite shocked to discover that one of the glass jars held four mummified human fingers. "He called Mrs. Smith, who said 'Oh! There they are!' and proceeded to explain that her Uncle (this must have been around 1890) had gone out one night on a horse-drawn sleigh and had forgotten gloves, so his fingers had gotten frostbite. These fingers, then, had to be amputated, and apparently, he was so attached to them that he put them in a jar in the basement for safe keeping. He then died of unrelated causes, and without telling anyone where the fingers were hidden, and so was buried without them. "The son of the Smith family came to pick up the grisly souvenir, which my father had respectfully left in its original jar, and as far as I know the fingers were buried alongside the uncle, roughly 85 years after his death." Awww, why on earth would they bury those fingers? What a great family heirloom!! |
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December 12, 2006 Today's Far-Flung Yet Truly Morbid Fact! In ancient Greece, cremation replaced burial as early as 1000 B.C. Reduction to ashes greatly eased the logistical problems of transporting back to Greece soldiers who had died on far-flung battlefields. To the Greeks, fire symbolized purification and the release of the spirit from the confines of the body. Cremation was denied to suicides and those infants who had died before cutting their first set of teeth. Intriguingly, victims of lightning were always buried - perhaps the Greeks assumed that it was pointless for humans to cremate after the gods had incinerated. Culled from: Death: A History Of Man's Obsessions And Fears ********************************************************************** The
Comtesse Reviews... This sounded like an interesting book, but I found it to be a terrible bore. It's a compendium of professional criminals written in 1886 by New York City police inspector Thomas Byrnes in order to assist other police departments. Although there is some amusement to be found in the archaic terminology used by Inspector Byrnes in his description of the crimes, the biographies of the criminals just aren't very interesting. The problem (in my morbid mind, anyway) is that these are thieves, pickpockets, forgers, and con artists, not murderers, so there aren't any good morbid tidbits to hold my interest. I expected there to be more stories involving murderers, but I don't know why I thought that. I should have realized that murderers wouldn't be "Professional Criminals"; after all, they would have been executed and could not have repeated their crimes. So instead, we get the boring old lowlife losers. Although Byrnes does summarize a few interesting murder cases at the back of the book, it's not enough to salvage this dull work. Definitely of historical value, but not entertaining in the least. ******* Morbid Mirth Du Jour! gsteinma sends a link to "some wonderful little old German poems (translated) about what happens to bad boys and girls, especially thumb-suckers and those who play with matches". Of course, this could only be Heinrich Hoffman's 1845 masterpiece Der Struwwelpeter! Enjoy! http://www.fln.vcu.edu/struwwel/struwwel.html *******
Now, here's a nifty site! A gallery of electric chairs used in executions throughout the country! Fun, fun, fun! Thanks to Daniel for the link. |
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December 13, 2006 Today's Bloody Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Police in Alaska say a woman upset about an impending breakup with her boyfriend cut off his penis and flushed it down a toilet. Utility workers recovered the severed body part and surgeons reattached it. The woman is charged with first-degree assault, domestic violence and tampering with evidence. Police in Anchorage say the couple argued Saturday night. But at some point they decided to have sex and the man agreed to have his arms tied above their bed. After the attack, police say the woman untied the man and drove him to the hospital. Officers arriving later at the couple's home found the woman cleaning up the bloody scene. Culled
from: Associated Press ********************************************************************** She drove him to the hospital??? Talk about a wishy-washy broad. No wonder he broke up with her!! ;) By the way, this reminds me of a scene from the fabulous bloodfest I Spit On Your Grave which I finally saw a couple of months ago. I heartily recommend it. It's about a woman who is brutally gang-raped and gets her just revenge on all her rapists. In other words: It's a feel-good movie. As with most low budget films, the acting isn't the best, but her methods of revenge are just so well-executed that you can forgive it. And they now have it on Netflix too! ******* The
Comtesse Reviews... Although I picked this up in the bargain book aisle at Barnes & Noble, this is an excellent, well-documented overview of the construction and all-too-brief life of the Titanic. The historic photographs are very interesting and I enjoyed studying the original blueprints of the ship... but then again, my girlfriend thinks I find "the most boring things interesting". Some people... Anyway, if you want a good overview of the Titanic's history, this is an excellent choice. ******* Morbid Link Du Jour! Here's a nice website that features "ghost stories and strange folktales of the American South, told by the region's most celebrated storytellers." This one has a twist in that you can either read the stories, or listen to them. http://www.themoonlitroad.com/ Thanks to Jeri for the link. ******* Morbid Mirth Du Jour! Here's a game that is based on H.P. Lovecraft's stories. I completely suck at it, but hopefully you'll have better luck than me! Thanks to Desmodus for the link. |
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December 14, 2006 Today's Detrimental Yet Truly Morbid Fact! A woman has been indicted on negligent homicide charges for allegedly giving her husband a sherry enema that killed him. Michael Warner, 58, died in May, 2004 after the enema caused his blood-alcohol level to rise to .47 percent. "That's extremely high," Detective Lt. Robert Turner said. "You're either going to be in the hospital or the funeral home with that much alcohol." Tammy Warner, 42, was indicted last week. Turner said Michael Warner was an alcoholic who could not swallow liquor because of ulcers and heartburn. "He was told that he could not drink alcohol or that he would die, according to the people that we interviewed," Turner said. "We are going to prove that she gave him the sherry and that she knew that he wasn't supposed to have any and that it could be detrimental to his health, and that she gave it to him anyway." Culled
from: AP ********************************************************************** Now, here's a guy who lived (and died) by Charles Bukowski's immortal words, "Anybody can be a non drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth." ******* The
Comtesse Reviews... This is an interesting collection of crime scene photographs from the coffers of the Daily News. The most famous photo is the image of Ruth Snyder on the electric chair, which is reproduced in its full version here, which I had never seen before. There are a number of ghastly images, but the most powerful ones are the stark "noirish" shots of detectives and prisoners on their way to the courthouse, or at the scene of the crime in the process of being arrested. A fascinating collection. 4/5 skulls. ******* Morbid Link Du Jour! Holly offers the following link: "Bio Cleaning Services of America is a service that cleans up the mess left after 'Homicides, Suicides, Accidental, and Unattended Death.' It's a thing that most people don't like to think about but they have to do -- when someone gets splattered all over a room, they're the ones who go in and scrub them off the walls. "The articles page, at http://www.biocleaningservices.com/Page2.html, is particularly interesting; the article 'An Anatomy of a Bio Clean' describes in detail how the company cleans up the mess left after a person died and wasn't found for two weeks - which is when the person downstairs noticed a greasy brown substance dripping through the ceiling." "I know the .doc format is a little annoying, but it's virus-free and very worth reading. Give it a look." http://www.biocleaningservices.com/ ******* "My Brush With Morbidity" by FederalPrisonCop ANOTHER one of my (many) brushes with morbidity: In 1993, I went to the doctor because of severe stomach pains, and occasional shortness-of-breath. An X-ray showed that I had a Morganni's hernia, which is when your diaphragm ruptures, your guts seep into your thoracic (heart / lung) cavity, and interfere with their function. As I left the doctor's office, and walked to the admissions area of the hospital (which was across the street), I suddenly collapsed in pain in the middle of the crosswalk, and had a VERY hard time breathing. Nurses from both the emergency room, and the doctor's office ran into the street to care for me, and they called for an ambulance while they attempted to open my airway, take my blood pressure, etc. The ambulance arrived within a minute, and my doctor came out to treat me as I was put into the ambulance. Once in the back of the ambulance, my doctor told me matter-of-factly, "You have a collapsed lung. I need to give you a chest-tube, and it is going to hurt like hell." I was then strapped to the stretcher, and my right hand was tied to the rail next to my left armpit. I then felt something freezing cold on my right side, and I was told, "Here it comes!". As soon as he said that, he jabbed a scalpel into me WITHOUT ANESTHETIC, and kept moving it back-and-forth, so he could get through the muscle between my ribs. As I lay there screaming to myself, but not making a sound (no air!), he then stuck a finger - then forceps - into me. As he spread my ribs with the forceps, and cut into my thoracic cavity, he said, "Cough!" I was gasping by this time, but I did my best to "cough" for him. Suddenly, I felt another jab into my side, and then what felt like cold water was being poured into me, while hot water was being spilled onto my side / back. As soon as I felt this cold / hot sensation, my once-silent screams of pain were given massive volume (air!). Although I was throbbing with pain from my right side, the joyous sensation of finally being able to breath again was somewhat overwhelming it. My doctor then - FINALLY - put some lidocaine into my side, and stitched the chest tube to my skin, to keep it from being pulled out during my move from the ambulance to the surgery center. Ironically, the pain didn't do it, but, the sight of him sewing the tube to me made me suddenly get hot all over and pass out. I awoke the next day in recovery, and I had yet ANOTHER brush with morbidity: I heard a woman standing next to my bed, and she was saying to my mom, '"He had to have his right lung removed, but it only bought him a few months, because the cancer has entered the other lung." I started screaming that they had taken my lung, and that I was dying, but - as I was being sedated - the lady reassured me that it was the man in the bed NEXT to me that was dying... ...and, it was HIS wife who was telling this to my mom. By the way... ...did I mention the morphine-induced hallucinations about being "on a ledge", and "about to fall", because my room was at the end of a long hallway, and my bed was situated where I could look down the hallway? I broke the footboard of the bed, and had to be 5-pointed, because they would not get my "off the ledge". |
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December 15, 2006 Today's Choice Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Excerpt from the Report of the Board of Trustees of the Northen Michigan Asylum at Traverse City, September 30, 1886, which detailed inmate deaths since the opening of the asylum in 1885: Male, age
27, single, native of Ireland "[He] was, when admitted, much demented, and in delicate physical health. His death was due to acute peritonitis, caused undoubtedly by his degraded habit of eating irritating and indigestible articles. Broom straws, the nap from the blankets, articles from the spittoons, and other filthy and disgusting material were to him choice morsels." Died: April
11, 1886 Culled
from: Angels
in the Architecture ********************************************************************** The
Comtesse Reviews... "Angels in the Architecture" is a fascinating study of the abandoned Traverse City State Hospital (formerly known as the Northern Michigan Asylum) in Traverse City, Michigan. The book contains many interesting snippets from asylum record books (such as the one above) as well as fascinating recollections from former patients and nurses. But the real reason to purchase this book is to see Heidi Johnson's mesmerizing black and white and infrared photography. She has a gift for making the mundane look profound and she brings the sadness, loneliness, and poignancy of these old buildings to brilliant life. I was able to find a gallery of her photographs online so that you can see the grandeur of her imagery: http://photo.net/photodb/folder.tcl?folder_id=179614 ******* Morbid Press Release Du Jour! I just received the following press release regarding the upcoming Albert Fish film by the creator of the great H. H. Holmes documentary: Elderly
Serial Killer to be Released in 2007 ******* Morbid Trinket Du Jour! Admit it - you've always wanted your own pet zombie. And now's your chance! Thanks to Joe for the link. |
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December 16, 2006 Today's Depressurized Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Japan Airlines flight 123, a Boeing 747-SR46, crashed into the ridge of Mount Takamagahara, near Mount Osutaka, Japan on Monday August 12, 1985. It remains the worst single-aircraft disaster in history, and the second-worst aviation accident of all time, second only to the Tenerife disaster. All 15 crew members and 505 out of 509 passengers died (including the famous singer Kyu Sakamoto) resulting in a total of 520 deaths. There were four female survivors who were seated together in the center of row 56: Yumi Ochiai, an off-duty JAL flight attendant, age 25, who was jammed between a number of seats; Hiroko Yoshizaki, a 34-year-old woman and her 8-year-old daughter Mikiko, who were trapped in an intact section of the fuselage; and a 12-year-old girl, Keiko Kawakami, who was found sitting on a branch up in a tree. The accident occurred when the plane's rear pressure bulkhead buckled, shedding 15 feet of leading edge and the vertical stabilizer into the sea, depressurizing the cabin, and severing all four of the aircraft's hydraulic lines, rendering the aircraft uncontrollable. Culled
from: Wikipedia ********************************************************************** Deb had some additional information to share about this crash: "The plane crashed into the side of a mountain in August, so people were dressed for summer and since help couldn't arrive until 12-18 hours later, many people died from exposure overnight. One of the survivors, who was a flight attendant hitching a ride, said she could hear screams and cries all through the night. There is a coffee table book of photos taken while the rescue was going on which is AMAZING!!! I believe it's only available in Japan and it's called simply 520:524. If you ever have the opportunity, check it out. It's definitely worth it for folks like us." Oh, I want that book, but I can't seem to track it down anywhere. If any of you manage to locate it, please let me know!
******* Morbid Merchandise!! As promised, I have FINALLY created some t-shirts, with the help of Jen at Juror2.Net. There are more designs on the way, but for now, there are two designs for offer: Morbid
Fact Du Jour 10-Year Anniversary Shirt Team
Satan Shirt Shipping is free and there is still time to order them for the holidays! Please take a look and let me know your thoughts. Also, if you have any requests, don't hesitate to send them in. I'm hoping to have a nice selection of fun-filled morbid wear in the future. Also, be sure to check out Jen's curiously gruesome stick figure shirts: Thanks! ******* Morbid Link Du Jour! Veronica sends a link: "As
a frequent consumer of the morbid, I often find little gems like the
following page: "The creation of a pathologist/hobbyist computer programmer, it's an informative page giving a brief overview of the autopsy process, complete with cartoon illustrations. There are also links to a 'time of death determiner', lecture notes, and a page listing organ weights. I submit this find in the hopes that 'pathguy.com' will be as interesting a read for you as it was for myself." |
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December 17, 2006 Today's Swolne Yet Truly Morbid Fact! A sadistic form of water torture was used by the Dutch at Amboyna, in the West Indies, during the interrogation of a number of English merchants who were suspected of plotting to capture the Dutch headquarters in 1622: "Then they bound a cloth about his necke and face so close that little or no water could go by. That done, they poured the water softly upon his head untill the cloth was full, up to the mouth and nostrills, and somewhat higher; so that he could not draw breath, but he must withall suck-in the water ... which being still continued to be poured in softly, forced all his inward parts, came out of his nose, eares, and eyes, and often as it were stifling and choaking him, at length took away his breath, and brought him to a swounce or fainting. "Then they tooke him quickly downe and made him vomit up the water. Being a little recovered, they triced him up againe, poured in the water as before, eftsoones taking him downe as he seemed to be stifled. In this manner they handled him three or four severall times with water, till his body was swolne twice or thrice as bigge as before, his cheekes like great bladders, and his eyes staring and strutting out beyond his forehead..." Culled from: The History of Torture ********************************************************************** By the
way, all those spelling discrepancies above are in the original text.
I'm not THAT bad with my typing! Almost, but not quite! ******* Morbid Mirth Du Jour! The Perry Bible Fellowship is an excellent comic strip that isn't always morbid, but is always delightfully twisted and offbeat. Highly recommended! Thanks to Desmodus for the link. ******* Wretched Recommendations! Mary P. has a book recommendation for us: "The scariest book I have ever read about serial killers is called 'Die for Me', about Leonard Lake and Charles Ng in Wilseyville, CA. Even the name of the town is creepy. It's probably the first time ever that I was too spooked to finish - only got halfway in my first effort. There is absolutely no morbid humor to be found in that dreadful saga. I did pick it up later and finished it but I almost wish I hadn't." Die
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December 18, 2006 Today's Recently Deceased Yet Truly Morbid Fact! A man expecting to find his recently deceased father's belongings opened a plastic bag sent to him by a funeral home and discovered an amputated human leg. Christopher Runyan received the bag in January, 2005 from Sinnickson's Moriches Funeral Home, which handled the funeral of his father, Paul, 77, who died the previous week. Runyan said a foul odor was coming from the bag, and he opened it and discovered the leg. "The stench that came out almost knocked me over," Runyan told the Daily News. "I turned totally white." The funeral home had received the bag from the hospital, and Lee W. Sinnickson said in a statement that it is the policy of his funeral home "not to open the contents of a decedent's personal effects." Suffolk County police Sgt. George Kelly said Tuesday that investigators determined that the leg belonged to a patient who died Jan. 13. "We believe it was just a case of human error," Kelly said. Culled
from: Associated Press ********************************************************************** You know,
you try to do a thorough job and look at the thanks you get! ******* Morbid Mirth Du Jour! What if Worth 1000 held a photoshop contest and the topic was Irrational Phobias? Here's what you'd get: http://www.worth1000.com/cache/contest/contestcache.asp?contest_id=7964&display=photoshop#entries Thanks
to Shifter for the link. ******* Morbid Art Du Jour! Jim and Mary send me a link to a collection of Underground Australian Surreal Art. The toy art is particularly excellent. Enjoy! |
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December 19, 2006 Today's Determined Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Twenty-two-year-old Catherine Howard, charged with infidelity by her husband Henry VIII, was held in the Tower of London. The night preceding her execution the queen, determined not to exhibit any feminine weakness on the scaffold, 'asked that the block might be brought to her room and, this having been done and the executioner fetched, to the amazement of her attendants she knelt and laid her head in the horrible hollow, declaring as she rose to her feet that she could now go through the ordeal with grace and propriety'. And indeed she did, together with her lady-in-waiting, Lady Rochford, the latter paying the penalty for concealing her mistress's adultery from the king, and also for the false evidence she had supplied whereby her husband, Lord Rochford, had been executed for alleged incest with his own sister, Anne Boleyn. Culled
from: The
Book Of Execution ********************************************************************** My Brush With Morbidity by Nina "I once worked in a private lab near a small town hospital. At 6:00 each morning, I made my way to the hospital's basement pathology lab to pick up specimens. Having trained in the squalid county hospital of a nearby city, I was accustomed to unusual sights. Nothing rattled me -- not even the medical examiner sawing open the head of a suicide while detectives ate cheese doodles and cracked jokes. Not the sputums and body fluids I collected on my morning rounds. Nor the various 'spare parts' in jars and basins. Nor the individuals on the table, who had been alive moments earlier. "But one dark morning, alone in the basement, I followed the sound of running water coming from the autopsy room. The autopsy room light switch was beside the other door, across the room from where I stood. I could barely make out the form of a woman on the steel table, covered in a sheet up to her chin. In the sink behind her head, water trickled into a basin. "But I froze. There was no way in hell that I was going to cross that room and turn off the water. There was no way I could stay in that basement a second longer. I felt an overwhleming urge to flee, so I turned, and raced to the nearest stairwell." ******* Ghastly! The world definitely needs more websites like Scarmageddon - a site that collects images of scars and their associated stories and allows you to rate and comment on them. Positively wince-inducing! Thanks to Tara for the link. |
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December 20, 2006 Today's Virtual Yet Truly Morbid Fact! A Shanghai online game player stabbed to death a competitor who sold his cyber-sword creating a dilemma in China where no law exists for the ownership of virtual weapons. Qiu Chengwei, 41, stabbed competitor Zhu Caoyuan repeatedly in the chest after he was told Zhu had sold his "dragon saber," used in the popular online game, "Legend of Mir 3". "Legend of Mir 3" features heroes and villains, sorcerers and warriors, many of whom wield enormous swords. Qiu and a friend jointly won their weapon last February, and lent it to Zhu who then sold it for 7,200 yuan (US$870). Qui went to the police to report the "theft" but was told the weapon was not real property protected by law. "Zhu promised to hand over the cash but an angry Qui lost patience and attacked Zhu at his home, stabbing him in the left chest with great force and killing him," the court was told. Culled
from: Reuters ********************************************************************** At first I thought that it was a virtual stabbing! ******* Ghastly! A man from Plattekloof, Cape Town, was assaulted in front of a restaurant in Brackendowns in Alberton, shortly after the Cheetahs beat the Blue Bulls in the Currie Cup final. Then, the unconscious man was reversed over by a car which raced away from the restaurant. Rozier van Blerk, 29, became entangled in the underbody of the car, which dragged him behind it for about 600m before the driver hit a speed bump and stopped the car near a petrol station. The man was horribly injured, and eventually succumbed to his injuries: "He had undergone eight operations since being admitted to hospital about six weeks ago. Most of them were to clean his wounds and do reconstructive surgery," said Bean. Van Blerk's back was stripped of all skin and muscle. One of his lungs was ripped open and pieces of one of his kidneys and his liver had been scraped away. His backbone was visible and his ribs were scraped almost clean. His right elbow was also injured. Van Blerk's parents, Pieter and Louwrita van Blerk, remained at his bedside during his final hours and were too emotional to talk to the media. Ludi Brik, spokesperson for the family, said Van Blerk had reacted when his mother talked to him the day before he died. Birk said on Wednesday: "When she asked him to stick out his tongue or move his head, he did so." A tragic story, indeed. But the truly ghastly part? Pictures of the doomed dragged man!! They are truly wince-inducing!! http://asylumeclectica.com/asylum/morbid/archives/drag/drag1.jpg Thanks to Rene for the images and link. ******* Wretched Recommendations! Lissa has a book recommendation for us: Typhoid
Mary: Captive to the Public's Health "The cover art will grab you immediately as it is a drawing of a woman cook throwing tiny skulls into a frying pan as though they were eggs. Obviously, this is the true story of poor Mary Mallon who was found to be the carrier of typhoid who infected 22 persons while working as a cook in various upper-class homes in New York, Long Island and the Jersey shore. At 37 she was taken into custody and forced to live out her remaining 26 yrs in isolation on a small island of New York. The book is written in several perspectives so that a full, socially relevant picture is given of Mary and also everything surrounding her life and the disease she spread. Hopefully, being printed in 1996, it is still in print so that others may get it. How often does one get such an account of someone who did so much damage, intentional or not?" |
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December 21, 2006 Today's Happy Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Sylvester Adams was convicted of kidnapping and strangling a 16-year-old boy and was executed by lethal injection on August 18, 1995 in Columbia, South Carolina. His last words were positively giddy: "All you people out there - ha ha ha ha! I'm the happiest man in the world! I'm not afraid to die! I'm not crazy! I'm going to be reaching that white house tonight!" Culled
from: Last
Suppers: Famous Final Meals From Death Row ********************************************************************** I might also mention that Sylvester Adams was mildly mentally retarded, one of 35 developmentally disabled inmates executed in the U.S. since 1976. ******* Wretched Recommendations! Lissa has a book recommendation for us: Embalming:
History, Theory & Practice "This is an actual TEXTBOOK! I can tell you, I worked at a funeral home and enjoyed the privilege of hanging out in the 'morgue' with the embalmer as he worked and this book is chock full of wonderfully disgusting and interesting things I never saw, knew or heard of! The only downside is that the pictures are all black and white and there are some shots of body cavities and viscera that would be far less obscure had they been in color. Otherwise, this book is amazing! Plus, as any textbook, at the end of each chapter there are a list of 'Topics for Discussion' which I think would be really great if you were lolling around, having some drinks and talking about things with friends. Packing the anus and vagina with cotton soaked in arterial fluid to prevent purge after aspiration of the body? Who would have guessed? This one is worth hunting down. In fact, I'd like to own a copy though I imagine its cost would be a fairly painful nip in the wallet." ******* Morbid Mirth Du Jour! Q: Why did the conjoined twins move to England? . A: So the other one could drive. Thanks to Rob for this one. |
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December 22, 2006 Today's Papal Yet Truly Morbid Fact! One of the most bizarre events in the history of the papacy was the "cadaver synod" after the election in 896 of the insanely vengeful Pope Stephen VI. He harbored so much anger at a predecessor, Pope Formosus, that he had his corpse exhumed. Formosus' decomposing body was dressed in papal vestments, propped in a throne and put on trial for crimes against church law, including perjury. Unable to mount a defense, Formosus' ghastly remains were convicted. As punishment, the three fingers Formosus once used to bless the faithful were hacked from his right hand. His body was dragged away and thrown into the Tiber River. Piling crime upon crime like a modern suspense novel, Stephen soon was thrown into prison himself. Formosus' friends crept into his cell and strangled him. Culled
from: Yahoo News ********************************************************************** Ah, Stephen was just jealous that he didn't have a cool name like Formosus, and that his parents had cursed him with a 'ph' instead the more masculine 'v'!! Watch out for Stephens - they always have something to prove! My favorite
Stephen (and yours too, I trust?): (Abundant apologies to Stephens everywhere...) ******* Ghastly! Courtesy Rotten.com, here are some images of a mass cadaver exhumation in a third world country. Positively putrid! http://poetry.rotten.com/twe/index.html Thanks
to Dave for the link. ******* "My Brush With Morbidity" by Joseph "Several years ago, while I was still in high school, I had a job delivering newspapers. To do the job requires being up very early in the morning to prepare for the deliveries. While I was waiting for the papers to be delivered, I was told that there had been an accident about a half mile down the road, so being a morbid individual I went to quawk at the accident. "A woman on her way home had lost control of her car, crashing unto the edge of a bridge railing. The car had caught fire, and she was completely incinerated. I looked into the drivers seat, where the completely charred rem |