Decidedly Grim

Here’s a website to get you in the proper holiday spirit!

My Miserable Christmas

Thanks to Robert for the link.

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Here are some nice photos of an abandoned amusement park. I want to go!!!

Lincoln Park

Thanks to katchaya for the link.

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I apologize for my prolonged absence. Work ate my life, as usual. I’m finally done with the grim project which engulfed me and I can focus on the important things in life. New Years’ Resolution: WORK LESS!!!

Now back to some interesting things… Chase sent me a link to a short film about a woman named Sadie McMullen who was accused of throwing two children off a train trestle to their deaths during a “fit of insanity” in 1890. She was acquitted but was sent to the New York State Asylum For The Insane in Buffalo for a couple years, after which she faded into oblivion. Here’s a short film about Sadie:

And here’s a site dedicated to the magnificent asylum where she stayed:

New York State Asylum For The Insane

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Here’s a wonderful blog for morbid sightseers like us!

Curious Expeditions

Thanks to Eleanor for the link.

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Trey Brandt has a fascinating hobby: he tracks down the wreckage from military plane crashes, photographs his findings, and shares them with us on his website. In addition to captivating photos of the wreckage, he provides archival photographs of the victims and details of the circumstances behind the crashes. Completely entrancing! I am jealous… I want to track down some old crash sites now!

Aircraft Wrecks In Arizona and the Southwest

More websites dedicated to crashes can be found at the Asylum’s All Things Dark & Gruesome – Catastrophic Crashes page.

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John sends a link to a marvelous photograph of a vintage embalmer’s office culled from the even more marvelous photographic archive Shorpy.Com.

Embalming Without Odor, 1864

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On my “Signal 30” post, I mentioned one of my all-time favorite morbid books: Car Crashes and Other Sad Stories. This is a collection of photographs of car crashes taken in the ’40s and ’50s by Mell Kilpatrick. In the comments to this post, Jim kindly shared a link to the wonderful blog Dull Tool Dim Bulb which contains newly discovered photographs by Kilpatrick taken with a dashboard cam. Although the photos aren’t the usual gory stuff, they are still very interesting. There’s something about car crashes from that era that are uniquely fascinating. The cars were such huge hunks of metal that it seems amazing they could be twisted and mangled so thoroughly, and the lack of seatbelts made for some extremely peculiar fates for the unfortunate passengers. Compelling stuff!

Mell Kilpatrick Dashboard Camera

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Emily sent me a link to an entry on the Surgical Technologists blog that displays photos and descriptions of 20 of the most frightening devices ever to tear a human body asunder. I’m not sure which is the most horrifying, but with names like “Tonsil Guillotine,” “Scarificator,” and “Artificial Leech”… well, let’s just be glad that we didn’t need surgery back in those days!

20 Scary Old School Surgical Tools

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Morbid Anatomy is my new favorite blog: a magnificent assortment of images of anatomical models and specimens from museums and collections across the globe. Pure morbid fascination!

Morbid Anatomy

Thanks to Steve O’ for the link.

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Karen told me she “saw this site and thought of you,” which is so unbearably sweet, I simply cannot find the words to express my shock. What I can do is tell you that Serial Killer Central is home to a nice, comprehensive serial killer community. Which doesn’t mean you have to be a serial killer to post here… though it doesn’t hurt.

Serial Killer Central

Incidentally, some of you… er, maybe one of you?… were complaining about my having taken down my Dark & Gruesome Links page, so just for you I have tidied it up by removing all the dead links and I’ve reinstated it. I’ve also put a new splash page on The Asylum Eclectica featuring a photograph I took last September in the abandoned Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. Comments/Concerns/Dismay are all appreciated.

Oh, and I added a Donations link to the splash page too. Not that I ever expect donations, but in these troubling economic times, they certainly do lessen the load of running the site. Thank you for anything you can offer from your coffers.

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