Thanks to Joseph sending me a link to a Mark Morford column, I just learned about the creepy Dyatlov Pass Incident. Ever heard of it? Here’s a summary: In February, 1959 nine experienced Russian mountaineers set off on a cross-country skiing expedition in the Ural mountains. When they failed to arrive to their destination, a search expedition was sent out and discovered their camp, abandoned. They had apparently built a camp for the night in an unplanned location due to inclement weather. Their tent had been cut open from the inside and their clothing and equipment was left behind.
The abandoned campsite. The tent had been cut open from the inside.
Eventually, they found two bodies, barefoot and in their underwear, in a forested area 1.5 kilometers downhill from the camp. There was evidence that the men had tried to build a fire and had attempted to climb a tree to locate the campsite. Three more bodies were found near the forest heading towards the camp. Although one of these bodies had a fractured skull, the official cause of death for all five was determined to be hypothermia.
It took two more months before the other four bodies were discovered, buried under deep snow in a ravine. All four bodies had signs of traumatic injury: one had a crushed skull, two had broken ribs, and the third was missing her tongue. There were reports of high radioactivity found on the bodies, and even reports of apparent blindness in some of the victims.
So, the legend began: what caused these nine experienced mountaineers to hastily leave their tent in the middle of the night and run out into the snow in -25 F cold in their underwear? Why did they cut open the tent rather than opening the ties? What caused the injuries? You can imagine where people’s imagination went… to a world of UFOs, Yeti, and other unexplained phenomenon.
Yet, Brian Dunning of Skeptoid put together a perfectly feasible explanation that doesn’t require anything supernatural. As usual. I tend to think his explanation is the closest to the truth (because let’s face it – our world is too boring for UFOs or abominable snowmen), but nobody really knows why those nine people died on that strange night in 1959. What’s your theory?
Read more about the incident here:
Fortean Times: The Dyatlov Pass Incident
St. Petersburg Times: Mysterious Deaths of 9 Skiers Still Unresolved
Pass Djatlova (in Russian)
Description and Analysis of the Dyatlov Pass Incident
Sundry
These girls fascinate me… I can’t help but think about inappropriate things like – does only one girl experience orgasms? And how bitter would I be if I was the one that didn’t?
Thanks to Elizabeth for the link.
Ghastly!, Sundry
Such a sweet video. Thanks to David K. for sending this one my way.
Sundry
Here’s something you can do with those disembodied baby doll parts you have lying around your pad.
Babydoll Coat Rack
Thanks to Faith for the link.
Sundry
Here’s a great word that has sadly fallen into disuse:
Weird Words: Patibulary
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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.”
http://www.worldwidewords.org
Thanks to Liz D-M for bringing this to my attention.
Sundry
Okay, I know how much you all hate Oprah. We all do. But if ever there was a time to tune in to Her Royal Majesty it is tomorrow – as the CHIMP VICTIM makes her first public appearance since losing her eyes, nose, hands, lips, etc. to the angry simian. You know you can’t miss this!
Woman Attacked By Chimp To Appear On Oprah
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I have been a horribly busy Comtesse lately – literally running around non-stop for the last few weeks – which explains why I haven’t been keeping up with the facts. It probably won’t get much better until the beginning of October when my life finally settles down. However, I will try to get a few random updates in between now and then…
I spent four hours this morning wandering through dew-covered, burr-infested meadows and woodlands in the Midlothian Meadows forest preserve near Chicago looking for a friend of my girlfriend’s who has been missing since last Sunday. There was a huge turnout – maybe about 100 people or more – and it was a well-organized search. He apparently just walked out of his house on Sunday night and hasn’t been seen since. Search dogs tracked him to the railroad tracks near his house, that run through the woods, and then lost his scent.
We didn’t find any trace of him, though I did find some other creepy artifacts in the woods (several of which I photographed), including the foundation of an old house, a creepy rocking horse and teddy bear in a clearing, an empty suitcase (you know I looked in it!), and a deer humerus that I thought at first might be human. (It will become a decoration on my bookshelf now.) I thought for sure we’d stumble across some human remains, even if we didn’t find the man we were looking for, but alas… we came home empty-handed. Every plastic bag was opened, every piece of canvas was overturned, and I am completely exhausted now. I’m off to sleep for a thousand years.
Here’s information on Tariq. I hope he turns up soon.
Tariq Ali
UPDATE: Tariq’s body was found in another nearby forest preserve about a week after our search. He had committed suicide by shotgun blast to the face. R.I.P.
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Aimee sends the following delightful euphemisms to add to the collection:
“I was reading a ‘Dictionary of Euphemisms’ and came across these:
Hemp Quinsy or Hempen Fever: death by hanging.
Hemp Widow: a woman whose husband was hanged
Hempshire Gentleman: the man who was hanged.”
Sundry
I apologize for my absence the last couple of weeks. My surgical leave ended and I went back to a maelstrom at work, which has zapped much of my free time. In addition, I’ve been working on a photo project for an upcoming Chicago ghost book by Ursula Bielski, so there hasn’t been much time for the blog. However, the oppressive heat appears set to lift this week and I can see a comforting fog beginning to roll in very soon. I’ll make it up to you with some nifty goodies in the near future.
Sundry
Today’s Sharp Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
A woman who lived with an 8-centimeter (3.1-inch) pencil lodged in her brain for 55 years has had most of it removed in a complex operation in August, 2007. She is now looking forward to a life without headaches and nosebleeds and hopes to also regain her sense of smell. “When I was four years old I fell down in Dessau with a pencil in my hand. The pencil bored its way through my skin — and disappeared in my head,” Margret Wegner, 59, told the mass circulation newspaper Bild. “It was incredibly painful.” The pencil missed her optic nerve and a major artery by just millimeters. A doctor treated the wound, but no one dared to operate on her brain. She decided to have the life-threatening operation after 55 years, and it was successfully carried out by a surgeon in a Berlin hospital. Most of the pencil — six centimeters of it — was removed but the 2-centimeter-long tip has grown in so tightly that it will remain lodged in her brain.
Culled from: Spiegel Online
Generously donated by: Lady Morgana
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