So, did anyone get any delightfully morbid trinkets for Whatevermas this year? Since the fair Abigail and I decided against buying gifts for one another, I didn’t get my usual quota of demented delights, but we did go shopping at one of my favorite t-shirt shops (Chicago’s own Threadless) and picked up a few rather dark creations I thought I’d share:
Today’s Mysteriously Omitted Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Karl Lotter, a prisoner who worked in the hospital at Mauthausen concentration camp, had no trouble remembering the first time he watched SS doctor Aribert Heim kill a man. It was 1941, and an 18-year-old Jew had been sent to the clinic with a foot inflammation. Heim asked him about himself and why he was so fit. The young man said he had been a soccer player and swimmer. Then, instead of treating the prisoner’s foot, Heim anesthetized him, cut him open, castrated him, took apart one kidney and removed the second, Lotter said. The victim’s head was removed and the flesh boiled off so that Heim could keep it on display.”He needed the head because of its perfect teeth,” Lotter, a non-Jewish political prisoner, recalled in testimony eight years later that was included in an Austrian warrant for Heim’s arrest uncovered by The Associated Press. “Of all the camp doctors in Mauthausen, Dr. Heim was the most horrible.” But Heim managed to avoid prosecution, his American-held file in Germany mysteriously omitting his time at Mauthausen, and he lived in Cairo until his death from cancer in 1992.
Culled from: AOL News
Generously donated by: Suzy
What a monster. I hate stories like this, where the bad guy gets away without punishment… Grrrrrrrrrr…
Purevile is an Etsy shop that sells interesting necklaces made with various found items (keys, bones, doll parts, etc). They are nice… but what’s REALLY interesting about it to me are the manner in which the items are displayed. They are photographed in front of vintage birth defect photographs and the like, with distinctively grim descriptions like this:
“…A Long hallway slowly fills with water….Thousands of thorny vines line the walls….a small childs cries become louder and more muffled….You look down at your reflection….and you cannot believe your eyes…..”
How can you resist? Go, take a gander:
Purevile
Thank you to Lady Morgana for the link.
I gotta get this book!
Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930
by John Harley Warner and James M. Edmonson
From Publishers Weekly
“This is a startling window into the education of American doctors in the late 19th and early 20th centuries-on both a visceral level and for its revealing cultural record. Cringe-worthy shots of medical students-bare-handed gentlemen and a few ladies in street clothes show off their scalpels, saws and textbooks-while their cadavers, mostly poor and black, are awkwardly posed, and exposed. In one stunning shot, a black woman looks out from behind the young students. ‘What are we to make of an African-American woman, standing, broom handle in hand, behind the dissection table, her gaze fixed on the camera?’ the authors ask. More importantly, they conclude, the photo is now drawn ‘out of the shadows of history’ where ‘we can at least bear witness.’ A blood-soaked dissection table makes you want to look away and the dark humor of students playing pranks with skeletons are both hilarious and horrible. Postcards sent to family and friends must have caused shock and awe for postmen and recipient alike. Here, a difficult glance into medicine’s ‘uncomfortable past’ offers a grand opportunity to understand the legacy doctors and patients live with, and benefit from, today.”
Thanks to Nadja for the suggestion!
More ghastly books can be perused at the Library Eclectica’s Ghastly Gore aisle.
Today’s Bulletproof Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Convicted murderer James Rodgers, who was executed by firing squad in 1960, when asked if he had any last requests replied, “A bulletproof vest”.
Culled from: Death: A History of Man’s Obsessions and Fears
I love a condemned man or woman with a sense of humor! When I’m on death row (oh, you know it’s bound to happen some day), I hope that I can come up with something witty and profound. “Profitty,” if you will. I will consider it my final act of morbid entertainment, and I will take that responsibility VERY seriously!
Here in Chicago, people like to cross the street when one direction has cleared, then stand along the line in the middle of the lanes awaiting the other side to clear. I’ve often thought this is unsound survival behavior, to put your fate so fully in the hands of another human being who is probably talking on a cell phone or messing with their iPod in the car. This video illustrates quite well why I do not engage in this behavior, myself.
(Warning: The footage, although not particularly graphic, is quite disturbing to witness.)
I just watched a somewhat interesting documentary about Santini, the “World’s Most Extreme Escape Artist”. This guy escapes from contraptions that look like something out of the Saw series: drills and knives and flames slowly come towards him as he struggles to free himself from the locks. Some of his escapes are less than exciting to watch, but the one in which he pulls his thumb free from a medieval thumb lock attached by rope to a speeding truck is pretty crazy.
Santini: The World’s Most Extreme Escape Artist
Thanks to Lady Morgana for the link.
Here’s an excellent website that chronicles disasters that may have befallen our ancestors. You know, I love this sort of thing!
Thanks to Elizabeth for the link.
Nick Cave’s song “The Curse Of Milhaven,” which details the escapades of a murderous 15-year-old girl (swoon…), is one of my favorites from his morbid masterpiece Murder Ballads. Here’s an excellent live version of the song from 2001.
