October 2014
October 31, 2014
How to make a roller-skating witch
Instructions from Humpty Dumpty Magazine - Oct 1954. via And Everything Else Too (which has full-size scans).
Posted By: Alex - Fri Oct 31, 2014 -
Comments (6)
Category: Holidays, Toys
Happy Nutcrack Night!
Original article here.
Who knew that Halloween used to be a time of divination for romance?
LOVE TESTS OF HALLOWEEN tells of other forgotten customs.
Whether you are roasting your lover's nuts, or going door-to-door for candy, have a swell night!
Posted By: Paul - Fri Oct 31, 2014 -
Comments (5)
Category: Holidays, Superstition, Nineteenth Century
October 30, 2014
Real or Fake?
Would you drive by the above and keep going thinking it was fake? A man beheaded his mother and kicked her head around before stepping in front of a train. Passers-by said they thought it was a Halloween prank.
Posted By: Alex - Thu Oct 30, 2014 -
Comments (6)
Category: Crime, Evil, Dismemberment, Nausea, Revulsion and Disgust
Doomsday Flight
The movie is apparently pretty good. So good, in fact, that it soon earned an odd place in film history as The Movie Too Dangerous For The Public To See. Whenever it was shown, it inspired a slew of copycat bomb hoaxes, eventually leading the FAA, in 1971, to send a letter to TV stations, requesting that they never show it again. The FAA's letter warned that "the film may have a highly emotional impact on some unstable individual and stimulate him to imitate the fictional situation in the movie."
TV stations honored the FAA's request, and to my knowledge have never aired it again. It eventually was released on VHS (Available on Amazon
), and there may be a DVD of it available (though not on Netflix). But you won't see it on TV.You can find a fuller version of this movie's history here and here.
Posted By: Alex - Thu Oct 30, 2014 -
Comments (8)
Category: Movies, 1960s
Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp
The tour for squares.
The tour for hipsters.
Their home page.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Oct 30, 2014 -
Comments (3)
Category: Eccentrics, Regionalism, Religion, Superstition
October 29, 2014
Dr. Bouchaud’s Flesh-Reducing Soap
"Will absorb all fatty tissues from any part of the body." I wonder if Dr. Bouchaud was related in any way to Dr. Anton Phibes?
From The Australian Home Journal, June 1926 [via Vintage Ads]
Posted By: Alex - Wed Oct 29, 2014 -
Comments (7)
Category: Advertising, Baths, Showers and Other Cleansing Methods, 1920s
The Relaxed Wife
Posted By: Paul - Wed Oct 29, 2014 -
Comments (7)
Category: Bad Habits, Neuroses and Psychoses, Husbands, Wives, 1950s
October 28, 2014
Okee the Painting Otter
A forgotten giant of the art world. Source: The Santa Cruz Sentinel - Apr 7, 1965.
Posted By: Alex - Tue Oct 28, 2014 -
Comments (4)
Category: Animals, Art, 1960s
One of These Things Is Not Like the Others
You recall perhaps the full-size rubber mask of the mystery half-wit? Well, here he is again, as a hand-puppet, inexplicably consorting with legit Disney characters. The manufacturers must have loved that design.
Original ad here.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Oct 28, 2014 -
Comments (5)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Puppets and Automatons, Advertising, Comics, 1940s
October 27, 2014
Energy-harvesting jewelry
Naomi Kizhner's jewelry serves two purposes: 1) it's decorative; 2) it harvests energy from your body to charge your various electronic devices.For instance, "The Blinker" gets energy from your blinks. The "Blood Bridge" is more invasive, tapping directly into a vein to power a hydro micro turbine.
However, you can't buy this jewelry because it's really just an art project intended to "provoke the thought about how far will we go to in order to 'feed' our addiction in the world of declining resources."
More at Naomi Kizhner's website. [via The Higher Learning]
Posted By: Alex - Mon Oct 27, 2014 -
Comments (10)
Category: Fashion, Jewelry, Power Generation
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction books such as Elephants on Acid. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Chuck Shepherd Chuck is the purveyor of News of the Weird, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre. Our banner was drawn by the legendary underground cartoonist Rick Altergott. Contact Us |
