10.28.2011

F%#! you, adversity!

Human oddities: my favorite kind of social interest piece.

And no, I'm not talking about the lame modern sideshow wannabes.

Tattooed men, surgically enhanced women, and sword swallowers?

Yawn.

That's a lifestyle choice.

It's those that were born different, yet through their own resilience, were able to make a life for themselves, who are truly amazing.
Whether you condemn or condone human oddities and sideshows, those who performed in them have and will continue to be remembered long after you and I are gone.

That said, here's a few of my favorite Very Special People:

Johnny Eck


Johnny Eck was a fraternal twin. His brother, Robert, was born "normal", but Johnny was destined for a more unique life.
Let's zoom out a little...
Billed as the "Amazing Half-Boy", Johnny was born with sacral agenesis, a rare condition that involved abnormal development of the lower spine.

At the age of 12 he signed on with magician John McAslan, doing sleight of hand tricks and acrobatics. Later going on to perform with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey.
I can't even do a regular handstand, so this is like, magic, or something.
 He also lent extra flair to the old "sawing a person in half" routine. His brother Robert acted as an audience plant and went up on stage, but switched places with Johnny and a dwarf who played the bottom half. Once "sawed in half" Johnny would chase his "legs" around on stage.
People freaked right out. 
 
Fun fact: Johnny also played a reoccurring bird character in the 1930 Tarzan films. Due to his physique, Johnny was probably the only person at that time who could play the role.
Ah, 1930's movie magic.
 Johnny Eck eventually passed away at the age of 79 in the same town he was born, Baltimore Maryland.
Chillin with a chihuahua before it was mainstream.
God bless you sir, and your amazing hand stands.


James Coffey

Also called "John"...

Not to be confused with The Green Mile's John Coffey.
...Coffey wasn't the first person to perform as a Living Skeleton, but he was probably the best.
Opting to wear stylish three piece suits with vertical stripes, Coffey added a certain elegance that had been absent in similar skeleton acts until then. Taking on a playboy persona, he made it a habit to flirt with the females in the audience, yet joked that "most ladies don't like their Coffey thin."

I also like to think that he was the inspiration for Tim Burton's Jack Skellington.

The similarities are eerie.
Originally, Coffey worked as a barber in Ohio. He appeared normal until the age of 29, when he inexplicably began to wither away. Eventually bottoming out at a meager 70lbs.

I bet he plays a sweet xylophone.
As a publicity stunt, since his persona was that of a dapper flirt, Coffey fell in love with and married ossified girl, Emma Scholler.

Twenty-two times.

In every town their act traveled to.

But in actuality, he wed one, Mary Curtright, in the late 1890's with whom he had a normal child

In 1905 he retired to Burlington, New Jersey where he faded into obscurity.


 Captain Martin Van Buren Bates and Anna Swan
What a lovely wedding photo.
Doesn't appear to be anything out of the ordinary here....
Wait a tic...
 The tallest couple ever recorded, Captain Bates measured 7' 9" and weighed 470lbs, while his bride, Anna, was recorded as 7' 6" tall and 390lbs. (Maybe she's wearing heels?)
Unlike other acts, Captain Bates actually earned his military title. He served the Confederate Army during the Civil War, earning the incredibly original nickname, the Kentucky Giant. You know, because he was a giant... from Kentucky. 
After the war ended he traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio and joined a traveling circus as their resident giant. While on tour in Halifax, Nova Scotia he met Anna, a daughter of Scottish immigrants.
Unlike many other circus romances, concocted by promoters to gain publicity, their courtship was the real thing. Eventually they married in London England. Queen Victoria provided the wedding gown and gifted a pair of diamond studded gold watches.
"No big, I'll supply the bling."
The couple later settled down on a massive farm in Seville, Ohio. Which, to this day, has a "Giant Fest" in September.
And yes, they totally have a horseshoe tournament.
Myrtle Corbin

Billed as the "Four-Legged Woman from Tennessee", Myrtle was born with dipygus. An extremely rare condition where the body splits at the torso, forming duplicate limbs, pelvis, and organs.
In layman's terms, Myrtle had a twin sister from the waist down.


And she had a club foot.
All those limbs and only one is fully functional...

An extremely popular performer, she worked for the Ringling Brothers and P.T Barnum, earning over $400 a week.
Show of hands; how many of you make about that much now?
Well then.
At the age of 19, Myrtle married doctor Clinton Bicknell and had five healthy children.
Although her duplicate legs were too small and weak to be functional, Myrtle did have two fully functional sets of reproductive organs.
This led to a rumor that Myrtle had three children from one set of organs and two from the other. It's possible that the story was concocted by show promoters, hoping to use the shock value to increase ticket sales. Although whether or not it happened, it was medically possible.

Myrtle eventually died in Texas at the age of 60, surrounded by family and friends.


Prince Randian

Okay, this guy is just way too cool. He's from exotic coastal South America. Speaks Hindi, English, French, and German. A family man with five kids, who worked in showbiz for 45 years.

At Coney Island.
And this is pretty neat too:


Prince Randian passed away in New Jersey following a final performance at the age of 63. Presumably still being awesome.

Daisy and Violet Hilton

Daisy and Violet were born conjoined twins in 1908 to Kate Skinner, a single barmaid in Brighton, England.
Fused at the pelvis, the girls shared only bone and blood circulation, but no organs.

Yet they further cement my belief that Tim Burton gets much of his inspiration from sideshow attractions.
Their story, however, is a tragic one.
Outright exploitation was not very common on the sideshow and vaudeville circuits. However, Daisy and Violet would prove to be the sad exceptions.

They were purchased as infants by their mother's boss, Mary Hilton. She recognized profit potential in the girls, and began teaching them to perform. Singing, dancing, and playing instruments at a young age.


The sisters began touring at the age of three. They were hugely successful, netting large profits for Mary Hilton, her husband Henry, and her daughter, Edith. During this time the twins were mistreated and abused, both physically and emotionally, seen as being only possessions by the Hiltons.
When Mary Hilton died in Alabama, guardianship of the girls was passed to Henry and Edith, who continued their strict control over Daisy and Violet.
When the girls turned 21, they finally managed to break free from the Hiltons. Suing for access to their earnings and ability to operate independently.
Livin' the good life
They began touring with their own show, "The Hilton Sister's Revue". But now that they had control, when previously they had been strictly controlled themselves, the twins began to self-destruct.
Financial issues and legal problems plagued the girls and their popularity waned.

At the age of 54, Daisy and Violet they made their last public appearance at a drive-in movie theater in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was there that their tour manager abandoned them.

Desperate, the twins found work at a nearby grocery store.
They would remain in North Carolina for the rest of their lives. Residing quietly in a small town outside of Charlotte, weighing groceries.
In January of 1969, Daisy and Violet passed away in their home at the age of 61.

10.22.2011

A love story.

Hey honey! Look, it's like I'm an Oreo!


Yeah, a double stuffed Oreo!

.......................

............................................

.................................................................






















Season's Greetings!

10.15.2011

Real haunted houses of Savannah

Ah, fall in Georgia.

There's really nothing fall-like about it.
Yup, October in Savannah.
Such festive colors.
No apple orchards, hay rides, or woolly sweaters.
But they do rock the pumpkins.
Still, $4 pumpkins from Kroger and overpriced lattes only do so much to get me into the spirit of fall. Especially when it still feels like June.

But Halloween is coming, I should totally get my scare on and check out some haunted houses!
You know, like Gates of MiserySlaughter at Sundown, and my personal favorite, Haunted Farm of Terror.
Yes, I want all of that.
Plus Rob Zombie's greatest hits.
So, I start googling up haunted houses in Savannah.
Except instead of being directed to gory attractions where teenagers and college students jump out of the dark with fake chainsaws and hockey masks, I'm greeted with a list of bed and breakfasts, restaurants, museums, and old theaters.
Huh.
Interestingly enough, Savannah has consistently made all the "Most Haunted Cities in America" top ten lists since, like, ever. Often placed in the #1 spot. Seriously.
Don't believe me? Google it. I'll wait.


Still waiting...

Granted, most of the reported hauntings aren't so much Amity Horror as they are things that go bump in the night.
Still, seeing apparitions and witnessing doors creak open by themselves are not exactly how I'd like to end my day at the local B&B.
Fake scares I can handle, real ones tend to degrade me into a quivering puddle of goo.
Check out the creepy tunnel of death, you say?
Sorry, no. I'm too busy crapping my pants.
The city of Savannah is actually rife with tunnels, that particular one is real and is located underneath the Pirate House Restaurant.

Aside from the creepiness, the she-crab soup is pretty decent.
Motivated by the all mighty tourist dollar, the Pirate House does tend to get a little gimmicky.
Their brochure claims that Captain Flint, of Treasure Island fame, hung out there, despite being a fictitious character. Also, Blackbeard's ghost supposedly roams the halls.
Ooooooo!
Also: Aarrghh!
For those history fans that may be playing along, that's obviously nonsense since Blackbeard died in 1718. Savannah wasn't even founded until 1733, and the earliest possible construction of the Pirate House, although debated, wasn't until 1753.

And if I've learned anything from Sid Meier's Pirates!, besides that governor's daughters really dig dancing...
Spin her enough times and her giant rack heart will be yours!
...it's that the "Golden Age of Piracy" ended around 1680. Finally petering out around 1730.

But privateers were still a thing during the early years of the Pirate Houses' existence in the 1700's, and it has always operated primarily as a bar/restaurant/swashbucklers retreat. And if anything is haunted there it probably is the tunnel. Just not by Blackbeard's ghost.

Back in the day the majority of able-bodied men weren't exactly keen on the idea of seeking adventure on the high seas as a privateer. Conditions were lousy and they didn't even get a decent cut of the plunder. 
The chances of hanging out and drinking rum with the likes of Kiera Knightly or Johnny Depp were also slim.
Weird, I know.
So, resourceful captains resorted to impressment to fill out their crews. Which is a fancy way of saying, "Hey, that guy looks like he'd make a good sailor. Lets get him drunk/whack him on the head and drag 'em over to the ship. Yarrrgh!"

And guess how they sneaked these knocked out soon-to-be sailors over to their ship?
Why do I feel like I've been here before?
Those who enter the tunnel have reported hearing low moans, cold spots, and feelings of nausea. Not unlike what the kidnapped, barely conscious men must have felt like as they were dragged to their new occupation.

Eerie.

This cannot possibly end well.

 Another purportedly haunted establishment is the Marshall House. An upscale hotel, it was originally built in 1851, and certainly has it's fair share of disturbing lore.

Conveniently located minutes from everything creepy.
During the Civil War, Union forces occupied the hotel, employing it as a hospital. The downstairs was used as a surgery. Medical knowledge being what it was at the time, if there was a problem with a limb, it got cut off. The average amputation took less than a minute, and with anesthetics being in short supply, the practice of placing a bullet in a soldier's mouth to give them something besides their tongue to bite down on, is where we get the phrase "bite the bullet".

This. But not as sexy.
Anyway, body parts from the amputations began to pile up, and being that the hotel was in the middle of town, there were limited places to discard them. So, the good doctors ripped up the floorboards and deposited the various limbs underneath.
Is it just me,
or is this is almost as disturbing as the real thing?
The winter following the Union occupation was unusually cold, which kept the smell to a minimum and allowed the severed body parts to decompose slowly. There they stayed until the hotel underwent renovations in 1999. 135 years later.

That's a hell of a surprise to have when all you're trying to do is upgrade the plumbing.

Dammit! No way are the HVAC guys going to come back after this.
Obviously, as the renovations progressed the limbs were removed. Around this same time people also began reporting seeing shadowy apparitions, hearing footsteps and voices from people who weren't there, foul odors, and just really bad vibes, man.
So yeah, all your typical haunted, let's get the hell out of here, type stuff.

It's been theorized that the dead soldiers miss their severed limbs and are looking for them.
C'mon guys!
I just want my right arm back, is that so much to ask?!
On an interesting side note, apparently the wicked aura and odors were super nasty in room 414. Various deodorizers were tried to no avail. Staff even tried group prayer, but were overwhelmed by the sense of pants soiling dread. So they hit upon a fairly ingenious solution; by cranking up the volume on a radio station that played nothing but gospel music and leaving it there. Supposedly the hauntings died down after that. Or someone finally cleaned the grease trap.

Either way, I really hope they got the idea from watching Ghostbusters II.
You know, that scene where the Ghostbusters use positively charged slime
and played Jackie Wilson's "Higher and Higher"
to animate the Statue of Liberty?
Awesome.
And while we're on the subject of bodies (or parts of them) in odd places, bizarre as it is, much of Savannah is actually built upon the dead.

Times were tough back in the day. Savannah endured several yellow fever epidemics, was almost burned to the ground twice, and it's citizens actively participated in both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.
So, yeah, a lot of people died there.
That said, finding bodies while digging in the city is extremely common. When old cemeteries closed, headstones were moved. But, in true Poltergeist fashion, they didn't always move the bodies.
Not really sure where these go. Guess we'll just lean them up against this wall here...
Here's a particularly fun excerpt from the book Haunted Savannah that details a related incident:

"Some road crews and utility companies have been accompanied by an archaeologist, and they usually turn up a few of Georgia's earliest inhabitants when they do any sort of maintenance. A man working for Georgia Power relayed a grisly tale about laying some cable using a machine that burrows sideways through the ground. He said, 'A human body makes a sound unlike any other when that machine bores through it. We are supposed to keep a log of when we hear that sound. When we laid a cable in an alley downtown, I was busy all day writing down the fact that we kept on hitting body...after body...after body.' He then described the sound, likening it to a wooden spoon caught in a garbage disposal."
Except not.
 With all the dead people around, the number of reported hauntings is suddenly not so surprising.

And since we're getting our haunted Halloween on, here's another story that takes place just east of town at Old Fort Jackson.
Originally built in 1808 as a stronghold against the British, Fort Jackson was also utilized by the Confederates during the Civil War.
The details surrounding the incident and subsequent haunting are unknown, but what we do know is that a Private Garrity was on guard duty near the drawbridge when he was approached by Lt. Dickerson.

Good lord, old forts are frickin sweet.
Private Garrity, for some reason, decided that it would be a good idea to bludgeon Lt Dickerson, breaking both his musket and the lieutenant's skull, in four places.


Garrity! You are such a dick!
Other soldiers rushed to the scene to apprehend Garrity, but in another brilliant maneuver, Garrity decided to evade capture by jumping into the moat, where he drowned.
Dickerson somehow survived, but never fully recovered. He was also neither able to remember the incident or the reason for it, or just didn't want to say.

Anyway, there has been a ghostly figure seen at the scene of the attack. Most assume that it's Garrity. Supposedly he is only visible from the waist up, walking alone, his legs a misty blur.


Eh, probably just a bunch of overactive imaginations.

Happy Halloween everyone!

10.09.2011

Just in time for Halloween: 6 seriously sadistic serial killers

Halloween is without a doubt my favorite holiday. It's fantastical, creepy, over the top, and the perfect excuse to binge out on all things chocolate and Tim Burton.
Pre Willy Wonka of course.
Decorations are up, pumpkins are out, and the horror movie section is a lot busier.
Conjured up images of the lurid and macabre tend to fascinate on a normal day, but in October everyone gets in on the gag. So in honor of Halloween, here's a list of the truly depraved that have inspired so many of the films and stories most prevalent this time of year.

6. The Soap-Maker of Correggio

An Italian murderess, Leonarda Cianciulli's story is equal parts Silence of the Lambs and Fight Club.
Yet she looks like somebody's grandma.
Desperate for children, Leonarda became pregnant 17 times. Ten of her children died at a young age, another three were miscarried.
Four sons remained, and Leonarda would be damned if she lost any more.

In 1939, her eldest son was drafted to fight in WWII. Afraid for her son's safety and being a rational human being, Leonarda consulted two gypsy fortune tellers.
The first one told her that all her children would die, so naturally she got a second opinion. The next gypsy told her: "In your right hand I see prison, in your left a criminal asylum."
Miss Cleo says, your life is going to suck.
Shortly afterward Leonarda completely flipped her shit. In her later confession to police, she claimed to have been visited by the Virgin Mary, who instructed her to sacrifice humans for her sons.
Eh, seems legit.
Leonarda pretended to play match-maker for her first victim, a woman named Faustina Setti. She told Faustina that she found a husband for her, and advised her to send letters to her family explaining that she would be out of town for a while to meet her new husband.
Things worked a little differently back then
Faustina never made it out the front door. Leonarda killed her with an ax, drained the blood, and threw the rest into pots. She used the blood to make tea cakes, and the flesh was cooked into soap.
Two more women were dispatched in the same way. Feeling generous, Leonarda gave away the extra cakes and soap to friends and neighbors.
No really, I insist you join in my cannibalism.
She was finally caught after the sister-in-law of her last victim went to police, upon which Leonarda readily confessed. Even detailing the exact methods she used in her soap-making.
Works great on blood stains!
5. Burke and Hare

Body snatchers, turned murderers.

"Up the close and down the stair,
In the house with Burke and Hare.
Burke's the murderer. Hare's the thief,
And Knox the boy who buys the beef."


... goes a well-known English rhyme.
Apparently the antics of these two scoundrels were recently made into a movie starring Simon Pegg. Which I was unaware of until I started writing this drivel.
Shaun of the Dead and Gollum, go figure.
Anyway, in the early 19th century William Burke and William Hare moved from Ireland to Scotland looking for work. Settling in at a swell spot in Edinburgh called The Begger's Hotel. Shortly afterward, an elderly resident named Old Donald who lived at the same hotel, died owing rent.
These two enterprising chaps realized they could get a fair amount of money by selling the body to a medical school, since the dissection of corpses was technically illegal and fresh bodies were hard to come by. Subsequently, Old Donald's coffin was filled with wood, while his body was sold to anatomist Dr. Robert Knox for four pounds more than what the dead man owed in rent.
Cha-ching!
Realizing that there was significant money to be made in the corpse trade, Burke and Hare dispatched a number of victims, mainly by suffocation.
Most were elderly, mentally retarded, or prostitutes, and all were sold to Dr. Knox. In fact one of the victims, prostitute Mary Paterson, was recognized by Knox. He had been one of her clients. If Knox realized how Burke and Hare came by their goods though, he never mentioned it.
Burke and Hare's business was barely a year old before they were caught in October 1828.
Burke was sentenced to death, while Hare turned king's evidence and was eventually released. Supposedly Hare later worked at a quarry, until his co-workers discovered his identity and blinded him.
That'll teach you to steal grandma.


4. H.H Holmes

Another body snatcher, Mr. Holmes is probably best known as America's first recorded serial killer. A graduate of the University of Michigan, he stole corpses, insured and disfigured them, and then claimed the insurance. Pretty ingenious really, except that he was also a twisted son of a bitch.
Ah, the reckless confidence that a mustache like that can inspire...
Living in Chicago and working as a pharmacist, H.H Holmes built a large "castle" in 1892, a year before the World's Fair.
H.H Holmes Castle = One city block.
The ground floor was made up of various businesses, while the second and third floors were a labyrinth of almost 100 rooms. Several of which were rigged up with gas lines, allowing Holmes to asphyxiate his victims. Others were sealed air tight, wherein people could be locked in and left to suffocate. Most of Holmes' victims were female employees who had taken out life insurance policies that Holmes paid the premiums on, but was also the beneficiary.
"It seemed like a good deal at the time."
Holmes would then go on to sell the bodies and organs via his former contacts from U of M.
He officially admitted to 27 murders, but it's estimated the true number of victims was over 100.
After moving around the country, H.H Holmes was finally caught and hanged in Philadelphia. The executioner botched the job, (although he couldn't have done it to a more deserving guy), and Holmes was slowly strangled to death. Taking over 15 minutes to die.
His final request was that he be buried in cement so his body couldn't be dissected.

3. Bordello from Hell

For about ten years, sisters Delfina and Maria de Jesus Gonzalez operated a nightmarish brothel in the middle of Mexico.
Not quite. But close.
The sisters would kidnap or trick young girls into entering their establishment and kept them drugged to maintain compliance.
Once the girls were "worn out", became too difficult, or lost their looks, they were murdered. Delfina and Maria also killed their clients, (generally bandits who wouldn't be missed), that came through with large sums of money.
The police failed to link the missing girls to the Rancho El Angel for almost a decade.
Bet no more girls would've been Taken if Liam Neeson was involved.
But then a crack whore tried to travel through town with dozens of young girls in tow.

This is what we call a clue.

Miss. Josefina Gutierrez, crack hoe extraordinaire, was arrested and confessed that the girls were destined for the Rancho El Angel. Police raided the brothel, but the sisters had already peaced out. Instead they found a bunch of drugged girls and the bodies of 11 men, 80 women and several fetuses.
Eventually Delfina and Maria were caught and stood trial in 1964. Both were sentenced to 40 years in prison. Delfina died, but Maria completed her sentence and is possibly operating a vegetable stand somewhere in Mexico.
At the ripe old age of 87.
2. The Blood Countess

If you were born a peasant girl in 17th century Poland, your life already kind of sucks. What with the whole being a peasant, and a female, in a society that places more value on a well-trained horse than you, thing.
Seriously. The damn cow even comes first.
Well, add a sadistic Countess with a penchant for bathing in the blood of young virgins procured from the local peasantry, and God is clearly just fucking with you at this point.

Meet Erszebet Bathory, born of a wealthy Transylvania family and Countess of Cachtice Castle. 
The original cold-blooded bitch
As a child, Erszebet suffered from violent seizures. It has been suggested that Erszebet's seizures may have had something to do with turning her bat-shit insane later in life.
So what's your excuse, lady?
Erszebet married young, as was typical back in the day. Her husband, Count Ferenc Nadasdy, probably realizing his wife was crazy, was absent for most of the marriage. Preferring to go to war against the Ottomans rather than stay home.
So Erszebet was left alone and bored while teenage hormones kicked into high gear.
Not surprisingly, she got it on with several of the local peasants. And probably as a result of adolescent angst, developed an interest in the occult.
I can't help but feel she's responsible for bullshit like this.
Also, Hot Topic.
After the death of her husband, there was no one to keep the crazy in check. And Erszebet began torturing the shit out of young girls.
She commissioned a giant birdcage lined with spikes, which she forced young women into. Once the girl was inside, Erszebet enjoyed stabbing at them with hot pokers. In an effort to escape, the girls wound up impaling themselves on the spikes.
It's estimated that the Countess is directly responsible for the deaths of over 500 young women.
Oh, she also liked to do this:
And was made into a collectors item?
After six years of violent torture and murder, the authorities finally got involved. Erszebet and four of her servants were arrested. But Erszebet was never formally tried.
Somewhat protected by her status as a noblewoman, the Countess was instead walled up inside her own castle. All windows and doors were bricked over, with only a small opening left through which food could be passed. On August 21st 1614, Countess Erszebet Bathory was found dead at the age of 54.
I kind of hope she made a good looking corpse though, you know, to justify all those blood baths...
And apparently to inspire goth fan fiction.
1. Metal Fang

Half Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me and half Hannibal Lecter, Nikolai Dzhumagaliev was the scariest thing to come out of Kazakhstan until Borat.
Nicknamed "Metal Fang" because of his false metal teeth, Nikolai was something of a lady killer.
Literally.
You know what, maybe it's the hat,
but that is an attractive cannibal.
His M.O was to take women out on dates, rape them, hack the bodies up with a knife and ax, cook at 350 degrees for one hour, season to taste, and serve.

Kind of makes you consider vegetarianism, huh?
After killing a woman, Nikolai would generously invite friends over for a meal. Which was how he was finally discovered.

After accepting a dinner invitation, two alcoholics discovered a woman's severed head in the kitchen, presumably while they were searching for the vodka. Yet they managed to keep their collective shit together long enough to summon the police.

Did you say top shelf or....
Shit.
Nikolai was charged with the murders of seven women. But the court found him insane and he was sent to a mental institution. He escaped in 1989 and wasn't recaptured until 1991. In 1994 Nikolai Dzhumagaliev was released and he remains at liberty.

Probably coming to a neighborhood near you.