I have gotten many a Halloween blog suggestion and I want to say THANK YOU
to all that took the time to message me-- I am keeping the messages in my
inbox, hoping to get to them in due time!
Due to some circumstances outside of my control I was bogged down with
work recently and not able to do the proper research necessary to do any of
those subjects justice, however. So I
decided to compile a list of what I like to call "Historically Scary
Shit".
Because what could be better on Halloween than the scary, scary shit that
history can serve up?
*Note* If you're looking for the run
of the mill Elizabeth Bathory, ghosts of Gettysburg, Ed Gein, etc shit, I'm
hoping to disappoint you. As these
topics have been done often and very well I am attempting to stay away from
them and share some similarly scary, yet not as nearly well known, shit.
Enjoy.
The Dyatlov Pass Incident
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| Image credit: wikipedia.org |
It's always creepy when weird synchronicity starts to surround my history
stuffs. The Hubs and I rented a movie a
few weeks ago loosely based on the incidents of Dyatlov Pass. A few days later my favorite thing to listen
to in the car (the Stuff You Missed In History Class Podcast) did an episode on
Dyatlov Pass. Then someone emailed me
the suggestion to chronicle the incident as a Halloween blog all on its
own. So here I am writing about the
Dyatlov Pass Incident as I'm pretty sure the Universe is telling me I have
to. So here goes.
In January 1959 ten students from the Ural Polytechnical Institute set off
on what was supposed to be a two (ish) week hike through the Ural Mountains. Nearly a month after they had departed they
still had not returned and it was determined that something must have
happened. A search party was mounted and
of the nine that actually set out (one stayed back due to illness) all were
found dead on the east side of a mountain known, ironically, as The Dead
Mountain, or Mountain of the Dead, by the native peoples in that area. Tragic but not terribly creepy, right? Keep reading.
The search team did not just find the students, they also found their camp
which had been destroyed by the hikers themselves. All of the tents were found with evidence
that the hikers had ripped or cut them open from the inside out. All of the supplies the hikers had brought
with them had been left behind, and footprints leading away from the camp
showed that most left barefoot, some wearing only a single shoe or socks
alone. At this time in the Ural
Mountains, the temperatures were around -22 F.
What was found at the camp sets up a scenario that something frightened the
hikers to the point where their *best option* was to cut themselves out of
their tents and leave with whatever clothing they had on in -22 degree
weather. The bodies of the scantily clad
(for winter in Russia, anyway) hikers offered more questions than answers. Three bodies were found between a wooded area
and the camp; early searchers believe that these hikers appeared to have been
attempting to return to camp. Two of the
bodies were found under a tree near the remains of a fire barefoot and in only
their underwear. The branches of the
tree were broken up to ten feet above the ground, leading to the belief that
the two hikers, at some point, climbed the tree. The four other hikers were found about two
months later down a ravine. All were
seriously injured and one even had a portion of her tongue removed. The official cause of death was given as a
“compelling force” (their words) and the investigation was ended.
But that’s not the end of the weird
shit.
Some of the hikers clothes were
found to be radioactive, people in a nearby village reported seeing a series of
orange lights in the sky around the time the hikers were presumed to have been
killed, and it appeared the hikers died at different times as some were found
to be wearing what appeared to be clothing ripped from those that had died
previously.
So what the fuck happened in those mountains? Well, tragically, ten hikers died. And that’s really all we know for sure. Theories have been offered ranging from attack
by the natives (the Mansi; however, the original investigators concluded that
the injuries were too severe to have been caused by humans), to a yeti attack,
to an avalanche, to aliens. And if we’re
going based on the historical record, we don’t know what happened.
Ring Around The Rosy
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| Image credit: learnnc.org |
As if little kids weren’t creepy enough, amirite? But throw in this horrifying nursery rhyme
and why I’m childless becomes immediately apparent. Anyone that’s actually paid attention to the
words to this little gem has probably noticed that they are… Well…
Different. The words that we now know
and love are as follows:
Ring around the rosy
Pocket full of posy
Ashes, ashes, we all
fall down
Fucking weird, right? The origins of
Ring Around The Rosy lie in a plague.
Most cite the Black Death, or Bubonic Plague, however there is evidence
that its origins are even earlier than that.
Either way, the “ring around the rosy” is in reference to the red rings
that would form on the skin before the buboes (pustules) would rise and fill
with puss; the “pocket full of posy” refers to the pouches of fragrant herbs
that people would carry to ward off the plague; last but not least, the last
line, which originally read “ashitoo” instead of “ashes” in reference to the
sneezing that would occur as part of the plague, implies that said pockets of
posy did not work and everyone got plague and “fell down”….
Meaning they
fucking died.
Because little kids will make up games about anything. Because they’re fucking creepy.
The Werewolf of Bedburg
This is a pretty famous folklore in the countryside of Germany and Great
Britain, though the actual historical record is pretty sparse. However, it is fucking Halloween, so take it
with a grain of salt. Supposedly, a man
named Peter Stump (we think) was arrested sometime in 1589 on suspicion of
being a werewolf. While being tortured
on a rack he confessed everything. And
by “everything”, I mean all the cool ways Satan helped him turn into a werewolf
(one involved a magic girdle!). He also
confessed to killing and eating fourteen young children, including his own son,
and two pregnant women. The proof of all
of this? The werewolf had had his left
paw cut off somehow, and Mr Stump also was missing his left hand. Bam.
Werewolf. Oh, and he was sleeping
with his daughter.
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| Image credit: wikipedia.org |
All of what we know on the Werewolf of Bedburg comes from an English
pamphlet that was, supposedly, based on an earlier German pamphlet that is now
lost to history. So take this story with
some healthy skepticism. But tell it at
a bonfire at some point to scare your friends.
Tell them it’s true, because TUH told you so.
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| Image Credit: bethshort.com |
The Black Dahlia
I’m throwing this one into the “scary historical shit” pile because I just
love this story, in a very dark and probably unhealthy sort of way. There’s something very scary to me about some
unknown figure that committed a terrifying act of depravity and then was never
caught, left to roam the streets in anonymity.
Before she was known as the Black Dahlia, she was known as Elizabeth
Short. An aspiring actress, Short made
her way to LA in 1943. What she did in
LA is relatively anonymous, we know that she rubbed elbows with some relatively
sophisticated people, dated, got arrested for underage drinking and tried to
get her acting career off the ground.
Until January 1947 when her body was found in a drainage ditch just
outside of LA. She was badly beaten, cut
in half, nude, her lips cut to the cheekbones, and there was evidence of sexual
assault. And from there the trail goes
cold.
Men that she had dated were investigated.
People that she had last been seen with at the Biltmore Hotel were
questioned. None of the leads panned
out. Over the years many people have
come up as suspects, but no one was ever convicted and for every good reason
one person is the killer of the Dahlia, someone else has two good reasons why
it was someone else. We know that
whoever it was never was convicted. Thus,
whomever was depraved enough to rape, murder, cut a woman in half, mutilate her
face and dump her in an empty lot, nude, walked the streets afterward and,
possibly, is still walking around.
The Lions of Tsavo
Way back in 1898 the British set to work building a bridge over the Tsavo
River in Kenya. All was going well until
one dark night when a young Indian construction worker was dragged from his
tent and devoured by lions. Which
totally put a damper on everyone’s night.
This was not to be the last encountered with what would eventually
become known as the Tsavo Lions.
Lions in the Tsavo region are now pretty well known due to these two
man-eating lions that stalked and killed throughout the construction camp. All methods of barriers and traps were used by
the head of the project, Lieutenant Colonel John Patterson, to try to stop the
maneless male lions, including fences made of thorns and large bonfires, but
the lions continued to drag workers off in the middle of the night and devour
them. Often within ear shot of their
compatriots.
At the end of the day the Lions of Tsavo were rumored to have killed over
135 men before being shot. New research
now maintains that they probably killed closer to 35, but their ravenous
feeding on humans actually halted construction on the railroad for a short time
since so many workers had fled in terror.
When the lions were killed they measured over nine feet from nose to
tail. After spending some time as John
Patterson’s floor rugs, they were eventually turned over to the Chicago Field
Museum for exhibition and study. Which
is great! Except that all this modern
research has still failed to answer one very important question: Why were these lions eating people instead of
hippos or rhinos or whatever the fuck lions normally eat?
There are theories, however. Some
believe that the lions were infirm in some way, which caused the need for
large, slow, clumsy prey which, let’s be honest here folks, in the wild that’s
exactly what we are. Others have pointed
to a disease outbreak that devastated the lions’ normal food supply, and still
others have come up with the idea that, chillingly, due to the amount of slaves
that died in the Tsavo River the lions simply decided they really liked the taste
of humans.
They look kind of cute here actually, don't they?
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| Image Credit: Chicago Field Museum |
For further reading on the Dyatlov Pass Incident the internet is a treasure
trove as this happening has gained some popularity in recent years. Also, I would seriously direct anyone to the
podcast “Stuff You Missed In History Class” as it is simply fantastic. Also, there’s a completely historically
incorrect movie called Devil’s Pass that is in no way educational, but is
very entertaining.
Ring Around The Rosy is featured, amongst other nursery rhymes, in the book The Secret History of Nursery Rhymes by Linda Alchin. While I have not yet had the pleasure to read
the book, her website (rhymes.org/uk) did help me greatly in this research. For more information on the Bubonic and other
plagues, a great resource is When Plague Strikes by James Cross Giblin, the man
that also brought you Let There Be Light: A Book About Windows. Which I hear is a real page turner.
There’s not a ton out there on the Werewolf of Bedburg, however, but
horrorpedia.com does a good write up.
The pamphlet A True Discourse. Declaring the Damnable Life and
Death of One Stubbe Peeter, a Most Wicked Sorcerer is the only historical record we have of Mr Stump, or Stubbe, or Stub,
or Griswold (seriously). But, if you’re
interested, the heavy metal band Macabre did a song called the Werewolf of
Bedburg in honor of Mr Stump. I think it’s
crap, but The Hubs says it’s pretty “killer”.
No pun intended. I think…
The website
bethshort.com has been created in honor of the Black Dahlia and is where many
of the arm chair detectives still working the sixty plus year old case go to
discuss leads, evidence, etc and is a great resource for all things Dahlia
related.
The Lions of
Tsavo have been featured in the movie The Ghost And The Darkness (1996). The Smithsonian Institute makes a living out
of fantastic research and a great article on the species of lions known as
Tsavo Lions can be found here http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/man-eaters-of-tsavo-11614317/?no-ist.
Also, the article
describing the new research on how many victims the lions actually had can be
found here: http://news.ucsc.edu/2009/11/3316.html
Now have a happy
fucking Halloween!
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| Image Credit: nyhistory.org |
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