Should you be planning a visit to the Czech Republic anytime soon, you surely cannot miss stopping by the Ossuary at Sedlec! It’s a chapel decorated with human bones! Now, there’s a proper church!
Thanks to Kevin for reminding me of this one.
“When I was 14 I was friends with this dumbass girl who I’ll call ‘Jane’. Anyways, she was seeing this older guy who thought he was cool. In reality, he was just an asshole redneck. Well, I needed a ride home and they were going out so I took a ride with him. I was sitting in the backseat like any normal teenager or moron would do, and Jane was in the passenger seat. We live in a really rural area, and there are dirt and gravel roads everywhere. We happened to be on a particularly bad one to go visit one of Jane’s friends. [Jane's boyfriend] decided he was going to show off, and starting speeding to about 80 miles an hour on a dirt road. We told him to stop, or slow down, but he didn’t listen. I don’t remember exactly what happened but I know he lost control and we went flying 80 miles an hour off a 10 foot embankment to a bunch of shardy rocks. I don’t remember anything until we were walking down the street. I was missing a shoe, and my face was numb. I felt my face and it was full of blood, and I felt my left cheek and noticed there was something hanging: it was a giant flap of skin with glass stuck in it. That’s when I knew I was screwed. I even felt my own cheekbone – it was the most disgusting yet unusual sensation I had ever felt. I felt this sharp pain going up my neck when I touched it but that wasn’t the worst part. When they got me in the ambulance they could barely fit the strap on my head because of massive swelling. I had a really bad concussion and they thought I had fluid on the brain. It was also a redneck hospital to so they lifelited me to another hospital.
“Anyways, the damage:
massive bruising to my left arm,
23 stitches on my face (the scar is humungous and ugly but it’s my ugly scar and I like it),
8 stitches on my ear, which was ripped all the way up (it still looks weird),
cervical stenosis (basically 2 disks were herniated and they took nerves with them causing me non-stop headaches which I still have 5 years later),
a massive concussion (they said my head had swollen to almost double its size)
“The way the police described it was that I hit my head on the dashboard and then bounced to my face going through the windshield…
“My wonderful stupidity paid off, and I live in permanent pain.”
Awful ordeal, but I must say I am incredibly happy that you like your scar. I like my scars too. I think we should all love our scars – after all, they remind us what we’ve been through to be here!
If you’re gonna fall, it’s probably best not to land on a knife.
Ouch – There’s Something In My Eye!
Thanks to Evelyn for the link.
This ever-so-slightly morbid joke was sent to me by my father, of all people…
Ralph returns from the doctor and tells his wife that the doctor has told him he has only 24 hours to live.
Given this prognosis, Ralph asks his wife for sex. Naturally, she agrees, and they make love.
About six hours later, the husband goes to his wife and says, ‘Honey, you know I now have only 18 hours to live. Could we please do it one more time?’ Of course, the wife agrees and they do it again.
Later, as the man gets into bed, he looks at his watch and realizes he now has only 8 hours left. He touches his wife’s shoulder and asks, ‘Honey, please… just one more time before I die ?’ she says, ‘Of course, dear.’
And they make love for the third time. After this session, the wife rolls over & falls asleep.
Ralph, however, worried about his impending death, tosses & turns until he’s down to 4 more hours.
He taps his wife, who rouses. ‘Honey, I have only 4 more hours. Do you think we could….?’
At this point the wife sits up and says, ‘Listen Ralph, I have to get up in the morning… you don’t.’
Here are some absolutely beautiful (and rather unsettling) 19th century Japanese ghost scrolls. I’m not normally a huge fan of Japanese scrolls, but I’d love to have THESE in my house!
Thanks to Bruce for the link.
Here’s an interesting blog entry – though I’d probably come up with a different running order for the torture implements. The imagination of the sadists of the past never ceases to amaze me.
10 Most Frightening Torture Techniques Of The Middle Ages
Thanks to dee spair for the link.
Excellent National Geographic article and photo gallery about the Capuchin Mummies:
Thanks to nina for the link.
Here’s a great word that has sadly fallen into disuse:
Weird Words: Patibulary
——————————————————————-
Of or relating to a gallows or hanging.
This turned up in a book of curious and interesting words, whose author took its meaning from Winter’s Tale, a futuristic work of magical realism of 1983 by Mark Helprin. Mr Helprin defined it as meaning “delicate in motion, graceful and muffled as in the quiet sound made by ballet slippers. Only to be used in winter and at night.” The words-book author clearly didn’t check in the Oxford English Dictionary, where he would have found far less pleasant associations.
The word is from Latin “patibulum”, originally a fork-shaped yoke that was put on the necks of criminals or a fork-shaped gibbet in the shape of a vertical letter Y. It could also mean the horizontal bar of the crucifixion cross, or a forked prop to support vines.
Despite the solemn and religious associations its etymology brings to mind, the Oxford English Dictionary says “patibulary” has mainly been used humorously in English. That’s based on citations such as this, from the Sporting Magazine in 1801: “A certain Corn-Buyer, which had undergone the discipline of a patibulary suspension on a gallows.” But others were deathly serious: in The French Revolution (1837) Thomas Carlyle wrote of the gibbet as “the grim Patibulary Fork ‘forty feet high’”.
The word is now extremely rare. There’s one appearance in a work by Samuel Beckett (“the patibulary melancholy of the lemon of lemons”) and an occasional historical reference, such as this in a book by Edward Payson Evans about the one-time habit of executing animals:
“Hangmen often indulged in capricious and supererogatory cruelty in the exercise of their patibulary functions.”
Thanks to Liz D-M for bringing this to my attention.
Today’s Grand Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
After his first grisly crime, Harvey Louis Carignan (the “Want-Ad Killer”) beat a death sentence and continued to manipulate, rape, and bludgeon women to death using want ads to lure his young female victims. His weapon of choice was a claw hammer which he used to rape and bludgeon his victims earning him the nickname of “Harv the Hammer.” He described himself as: “An instrument of God, one who was acting under His personal instructions. Murder, rape and mutilation are all part of a Grand Plan. God is a figure with a large hood and you can’t see his face.” Under so-called orders from God, he killed at least 5 and maybe as many as 18 women. A catalogue of some of his crimes:
On July 31, 1949 while stationed at Fort Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, Carignan raped and killed 57-year-old Laura Showatler. She died from several blows to the head. (He was convicted of this crime and sentenced to death, but due to a legal technicality his sentence was overturned and he was paroled on April 2, 1960.)
On October 15, 1972, ninteen-year-old Leslie Laura Brock of Bellingham, Washington was found dead. She died from several blows to the head. Witnesses claimed that they saw her get into Carignan’s silver truck.
On May 1, 1973, Kathy Sue Miller, age fifteen, answered Carignan’s want ad for employees at a service station that he was leasing. When the girl showed up in response to the ad, he sexually assaulted and killed her. Her body was found months later by two boys hiking on the Indian reservation north of Everett, Washington. She was naked, bundled in a sheet of plastic, and had been beaten with a hammer which left nickel-size holes in her skull.
By May of 1974, Carignan started dating and living with Eileen Hunley, whom he picked up hitchhiking, after moving to Minnesota. In August Eileen broke off her relationship with him. She disappeared on August 10, 1974. Her rotting corpse was found five weeks later in Shelbourne County. Her skull was imploded by the force of savage hammer blows and she had been raped with a tree branch.
On September 14, 1974, Carignan picked up Gwen Burton from a Sears parking lot. He ripped her clothing, choked her into semi-consciousness and sexually assaulted her with a hammer. He dumped her body in a near by field but she survived and was able to craw to the road side for help. Four days later, he picked up Versoi and Diane Flynn. He forced them to perform oral sex and would beat them if they didn’t follow his commands. The two girls were able to escape when Carignan stopped for fuel. Two days later, Kathy Shultz did not show up at her classes. Her body was found the next day by hunters in a cornfield forty miles form Minneapolis. As in the other cases, Kathy’s skull had been destroyed by crushing hammer blows.
In February of 1975, Carignan was tried on the attempted murder and aggravated sodomy in Gwen Burton’s case. He pled not guilty by reason of insanity claiming that God told him to kill those women. The jury was not convinced by the insanity plea and found him guilty. He was sentenced to a maximum of forty years in prison. Since no criminal in Minnesota may be sentenced to a term exceeding forty years, the other trials and sentences, 30 years for the assault on Jewry Billings; 40 years for Eileen Hunley’s murder; and 40 years for killing Kathy Schultz, were mere formalities. Out of the one hundred fifty years, the convicted killer will have to serve no more than forty, with the usual time off for “good behavior.”
Culled from: Mystery Crime Scene
Based on the true crime book The Want-Ad Killer by Ann Rule.
Hmmmm… no more than 40 years can be served in Minnesota? In which case, he would be released in 2015 or earlier (for “good behavior”). Hopefully he’ll die behind bars before that happens… Elderly and infirm or not, I wouldn’t want this guy loosed upon the world again!
Which brings me to an exciting announcement! In my partnership with Jen of Juror2.Com, we have the latest installation of the Morbid Fact Du Jour Serial Killer Quotes T-Shirts: The Want Ad Killer Shirt!
“I’m not dangerous now…
… but I won’t say that I
wouldn’t be tomorrow.”
- Harvey Carignan
(The Want-Ad Killer)
Get yours now and impress your friends with your Serial Killer panache!
More Serial Killer Quote shirts are also available at the Morbid Fact Du Jour Etsy Store. Tell your friends and foes!
Today’s Fiery Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
A woman out for jog while listening to her iPod had her legs severed by a freight train because she may not have heard it coming. Cheryl Ann Risse, 32, was recovering at a hospital Friday, July 6, 2007. Authorities did not know how she ended up in the path of the train Thursday morning, but rescue workers speculated she did not hear the locomotive coming because she was listening to her iPod. Risse often jogged across the tracks on her way to a nearby park. The train engineer didn’t know he had struck Risse until he returned along the same tracks minutes later. A passing sheriff’s deputy noticed her waving her arms. “My feet are on fire,” she told Tony Long, a battalion chief for Pompano Beach Fire-Rescue, who responded to the scene. “Do you think you can put the fire out? They’re really hurting.” The woman was expected to survive.
Culled from: WFTV.Com
Generously submitted by: Dark Paradox
Of course, anyone who jogs on railroad tracks with headphones on is an automatic Darwin Award Winner. And that’s a fire that no amount of water will extinguish! But on the bright side – she doesn’t need to get up early to go jogging anymore. That must be a relief!
Oh, and speaking of people falling in front of public transit, video of a man falling under a Chicago Transit Authority bus was released the other day. (The family is suing the CTA for negligence in running him over.) Take a look and tell me – is the CTA to blame here, or the man himself?
