Category:
Death
Death
Follies of the Madmen #500
I suppose I should have come up with something super-special for the 500th installment of this series, but this will have to suffice!
Sure, kill the talking lion and then...style his mane?
Posted By: Paul - Wed Feb 17, 2021 -
Comments (1)
Category: Animals, Business, Advertising, Death, Comics, 1950s, Hair and Hairstyling
Stunt Rock
The trailer first, then the backstory.The Wikipedia entry.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Jan 14, 2021 -
Comments (1)
Category: Death, Destruction, Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art, Movies, Music, 1980s
Phone Calls From the Dead
As opposed to phone calls from telemarketers, who are more like the living dead."Scientific" parapsychologists D. Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless have recently discovered a startling fact: that dozens of people have had telephone calls from the dead. "The weight of evidence has convinced us that there are surviving spirits making attempts to contact living people" through the telephone, Bayless told the National Enquirer. Their new book, Phone Calls from the Dead, describes fifty such cases. Unfortunately, if the person receiving the call realizes that he is speaking to a spirit from the Beyond, the call is usually over within seconds, they say. Some postmortem calls arrive, appropriately enough, over dead telephone lines. Rogo believes that these calls occur when a spirit manipulates electrical impulses in the phone to reproduce the sound of its own voice. "We've stumbled on a whole new mothod of psychic communication!" says Rogo.
— The Skeptical Inquirer - Summer 1979
— The Skeptical Inquirer - Summer 1979
Posted By: Alex - Wed Dec 23, 2020 -
Comments (4)
Category: Death, Paranormal, Books, 1970s
Clothes for Snowmen
Various sources report that when Madame de la Bresse died in 1876, she instructed in her will that all her money be used for buying clothes for snowmen. For instance, Bill Bryson shares this anecdote in his 1990 book The Mother Tongue: English & How it got that Way:
[The nineteenth century] was an age when sensibilities grew so delicate that one lady was reported to have dressed her goldfish in miniature suits for the sake of propriety and a certain Madame de la Bresse left her fortune to provide clothing for the snowmen of Paris.
Here's a 1955 cartoon about Madame de la Bresse and the snowmen:
The Montana Standard - May 6, 1955
But the earliest source for the story I've been able to find is a 1934 edition of Ripley's Believe it Or Not!. Which makes me wonder if the story is true, because I'm convinced Ripley invented many of his "strange facts". I can't find any French references to Madame de la Bresse.
However, it's possible Madame de la Bresse and her odd bequest were real, and the best argument for this I've been able to find is made by Bob Eckstein in his The History of the Snowman. He doesn't provide any sources to verify the existence of Madame de la Bresse, but he does give some historical context that could explain what might have inspired her to want to clothe snowmen:
When noted prude Madame de la Bresse passed away in 1876, she instructed in her will that all 125,000 francs (about $22,500 today) of her fortune were to only be spent putting clothes on the vulgar and offensive naked snowmen in the streets. This bizarre bequest may have had something to do with a certain celebrated snow statue made during the later part of her life in 1870...
The date was December 8, 1870. Snow began to cover Paris. Bored officers threw snowballs, and some of the soldier-artists began to make snow sculptures. Before long, the snowballs became monumental snow statues. One soldier, Alexandre Falguière, channeled his angst of his home city being attacked by creating La Résistance, a colossal snow woman, which was constructed in a mere two to three hours with the help of others.
Although the artist Moulin built a huge snow-bust nearby, it was twenty-nine-year-old Falguière's snow woman that attracted the press to visit the site...
The snow woman was light in the bosom yet clearly blessed with a female face. She had broad shoulders with folded muscular arms and possessed an able-bodied, World Wrestling Federation savoir faire, which suggests Falguière compared the Prussian siege of Paris with the sexual aggression of a relentless female refusing to succumb (La Résistance).
The date was December 8, 1870. Snow began to cover Paris. Bored officers threw snowballs, and some of the soldier-artists began to make snow sculptures. Before long, the snowballs became monumental snow statues. One soldier, Alexandre Falguière, channeled his angst of his home city being attacked by creating La Résistance, a colossal snow woman, which was constructed in a mere two to three hours with the help of others.
Although the artist Moulin built a huge snow-bust nearby, it was twenty-nine-year-old Falguière's snow woman that attracted the press to visit the site...
The snow woman was light in the bosom yet clearly blessed with a female face. She had broad shoulders with folded muscular arms and possessed an able-bodied, World Wrestling Federation savoir faire, which suggests Falguière compared the Prussian siege of Paris with the sexual aggression of a relentless female refusing to succumb (La Résistance).
La Résistance by Falguière. Source: wikipedia
So maybe Madame de la Bresse was invented by Ripley. Or maybe she was real and decided to clothe snowmen because she was offended by Falguière's nude snow statue. I'm not sure. Hopefully someone else may be able to shed some light on this mystery!
Posted By: Alex - Sun Dec 13, 2020 -
Comments (4)
Category: Art, Statues and Monuments, Death, Law
The invisible will of Beth Baer
On August 30, 1951, Beth A. Baer sat down to write out a will. She died about two months later. But when her relatives found her will, it turned out to be mostly a blank sheet of paper. Her pen had run out of ink soon after she started writing it, and because she was almost completely blind, she hadn't noticed.However, lawyers Charles Gerard and Clark Sellers were able to figure out what she had written by lighting the paper at an angle and photographing the indentations from the dry pen. Based on this, the court accepted the will as a valid document.
This was bad news for her husband, whom she had decided to leave only $1.
Los Angeles Times - May 13, 1953
Posted By: Alex - Sun Dec 06, 2020 -
Comments (0)
Category: Death, Inheritance and Wills, Law, 1950s
Static
A quirky, out-of-place worker (Keith Gordon) at a crucifix factory invents a device he claims can show pictures of Heaven. Discouraged and confused by the inability of those around him to see anything but a screenful of static, he charismatically hijacks a bus of friendly elderly people in order to get media attention for his invention.
The director's page.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Dec 05, 2020 -
Comments (2)
Category: Death, Eccentrics, Crackpots, Inventions, Television, 1980s
Unauthorized Dwellings 15
Bonnie and Clyde took over an abandoned house for their last hideout.Full story here.
More pix here.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Dec 03, 2020 -
Comments (0)
Category: Death, Domestic, Scary Criminals, 1930s
Igorot Cave & Cliff Burial
A BBC slideshow here.
Essay here.
This is an original vintage post-mortem photograph from the 1930s. I believe it shows a very rare glimpse into traditional Igorot funeral customs. The man in this photo is deceased and bound in a sitting position.
A customer who has spent time with the Igorot had this to say, "I can explain why the man is placed in the seated position. I just spent a week in Ifugao, Philippines with a member of this tribe. A person is placed in this position and salted and dried for 3 days. The reason they are seated is because once dry, the person can be removed from the chair and turned,sideways into the fetal position. The Igorot/Ifugao tribe believes that a fetus in the womb is in the fetal position and by placing them in the fetal position after death, they will return to "mother nature/mother earth". Also Interesting to note that deceased loved ones are typically placed under their bed, under a child's bed, under the house, or somewhere else in the house in order to keep them close to the family. Just thought I'd share what I learned straight from a tribe member himself"
Source.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Nov 24, 2020 -
Comments (2)
Category: Death, Religion, Foreign Customs, South Pacific and Polynesia
All Things Fall
Posted By: Paul - Fri Nov 06, 2020 -
Comments (3)
Category: Death, Technology, Special Effects
Music to Be Murdered By
Posted By: Paul - Wed Oct 28, 2020 -
Comments (0)
Category: Celebrities, Death, Hollywood, Music, 1950s
| Who We Are |
|---|
| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. 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. Contact Us |