Author: Scarina

Now that’s my Kind of Vacation!

Cemetery tourist Loren Rhoads has just released a book about her travels, Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel.

The former editor of Morbid Curiosity magazine shares her adventures and tips touring the world’s cemeteries.

My particular favorites are St. Paul’s and Trinity Churchyard in Lower Manhattan.  City life continues around these islands of serenity that or filled with some amazing tombstones, like this one.

Source; http://io9.com/this-is-the-life-of-a-graveyard-tourist-1651350544

And the Creeper of the Year Award Goes To…

He’s a famous historian.  He speaks 13 languages.  And he’s going to spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital for unearthing the graves of 29 children and turning them into dolls.

Anatoly Moskvin was arrested in 2011 for desecrating graves in Nizhny Novgorod, a town about 250 miles east of Moscow.  Investigators found the mummified bodies of children in his apartment.  Moskvin would dress them, put lipstick on their faces, and put music boxes in their ribcages.

Source: http://metro.co.uk/2014/10/28/grave-robber-dug-up-29-girls-and-turned-them-into-human-dolls-4924735

Is it More Accurate than Sylvia Brown?
A new iOS app is giving people the creeps.  Deadline uses a quiz and your Healthkit information to generate a time that counts down to your time of death.

That isn’t mine, by the way.  I was considering downloading it but the overwhelming amount of one star reviews was off-putting.  I guess it’s back to the old-fashioned method of asking the Ouija board when I’ll die.

Source; http://gizmodo.com/creepy-app-uses-healthkit-to-say-how-long-you-have-to-l-1653104103

Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun

Police in Beijing are warning Halloween revelers that ride the subway, if you “insist on getting on the subway, or the chaos is serious and causes a stampede or other public safety incident, the police will deal with it severely in accordance with the law.”

For the past several years, expats have been organizing Halloween parties on subway Line 2.  They’d dress up in costume and bring beer and mixed drinks.  This sounds like just another day in New York City.  Halloween isn’t celebrated in China and Beijing is trying to clean up its image before hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference next month.  This includes getting Spider-Man off of the train.  You know Peter Parker always hops the turnstile.

Source; http://abcnews.go.com/International/scary-halloween-monsters-threatened-arrest-beijing-subway/story?id=26600856

That Explains the Smell

Have you ever wondered what happened in your house before you lived there?  In California, deaths in houses for sale or rent must be disclosed but three years is as far back as it has to go.  So your house could have been a serial killer’s lair and you might never have known it until now.  Died in House is a service that, for $14.99, uses an algorithm to scour any records and see who died in your house and of what.

This sounds useful but as a mortuary student, I have to tell you that about eighty years ago, almost everyone died at home.  So if your house is of a certain age you should just assume that it’s known corpses.

Source; http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2014/10/31/morbid_mapping_service_reveals_if_someone_died_in_your_home.php

Fashion Kills

The Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto recently had an exhibit about the perils of Victorian fashion called “Fashion Victims: The Perils and Pleasures of Dress in the 19^th Century.”

Nowadays, we worry about people developing anorexia and plastic surgery addictions, but try wearing a dress made of arsenic.  The world had no colorfast green dye until Carl Wilhelm Scheele mixed copper with arsenic.  Suddenly, Scheele’s Green was everywhere—in dresses on wallpaper—and people were literally swooning for it, as it tended to overcome people with it vapors.  There were other consequences.

That’s a lithograph of someone’s hands and the effects of arsenic dyes.

Aside from this deadly green, the tulles that were popular at the time were causing women to go up in flames if they got too close to a candle.  Even ballerinas were bursting in flames if they got too close to the footlights.  More info about the exhibit can be found at; http://www.batashoemuseum.com/exhibitions/fashion_victims/index.shtml

Source, including pictures; http://hyperallergic.com/133571/fatal-victorian-fashion-and-the-allure-of-the-poison-garment/

Buffy Visits Bulgaria

Bulgarian archaeologist, Nikolai Ovcharov, who’s known as the Indiana Jones of Bulgaria, has unearthed a vampire grave.

Sadly, this isn’t a real vampire (I think).  The unfortunate man was buried with part of an iron ploughshare driven through their chest to keep him from rising from the dead and tormenting the living.  This kind of treatment was usually reserved for those who died suspicious deaths, like suicides.

This is the third grave like this discovered in Bulgaria.  Has Buffy been to the land of Viktor Krum?

Source; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/bulgaria/11153923/Vampire-grave-found-in-Bulgaria.html

Not Clowning Around!

The organization Clowns of America International has a bone to pick with American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy.

Glenn Kohlberger, the president of the organization, says that “Hollywood makes money by sensationalizing the norm.”  He may be a professional clown but, where I come from, clowns are so not the norm!  According to Clowns of America International, shows like American Horror Story contribute to fear of clowns.  In this writer’s opinion, clowns don’t need any help, they’re scary all by themselves.

Source; http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/professional-clown-club-attacks-american-740768

Blood-stained Cheerleading Costume too Much

An angry mum in the U.K. is demanding a store remove its bloodstained cheerleader costume.

Sheila Pinney of Bristol was upset that her four-year-old child saw it and she had to explain what it was.  She even put up a petition on change.org to have them removed, which is now up to about a hundred signatures.

Just so we’re clear, ghosts, skeletons, and zombies are fine, but dead cheerleader is unacceptable?

Source; http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/mum-demands-asda-scrap-blood-stained-4455698 

Haunted House Benefit

Summerwind, originally known as the Lamont Mansion, was featured on the ghost documentary “A Haunting.”  I guess the cobwebs and blood-dripping walls could use a little sprucing up.

The mansion, in West Bay Lake, Wisconsin, was struck by lightning two years after the current owner bought it for his wife.  The plan is to rebuild it according to its original blueprints.  Those who get involved will have a chance to have their name engraved on a wall inside the house, which seems like a great way to have a ghost follow you home.

Interested in helping?  There’s more info here.  http://www.vcnewsreview.com/lifestyle/group-looking-rebuild-summerwind-sets-benefit

Ta ta for this week and stay weird,

Scarina