Val's Halloween Countdown Thread

Because @Aondeug said I should.

So this should be pretty self-explanatory! From now until Halloween I'll be posting about something spooky every* day. This may include book/movie recs, podcast recs, weird bits of history, probably some true crime, and so on. (Yes, there will be Dracula.) Feel free to join in! :D





*this is likely overly optimistic on my part, but I'll give it a shot. Also, let's pretend I managed to post this on the first of the month, 'kay?

 

To begin, here's a youtube channel I adore: Ask A Mortician! She's got videos on all kinds of death-related topics, including mummies, saints incorruptible and otherwise, the modern funeral industry, medical history, and how they keep Lenin looking so handsome when he's been dead for ninety-plus years. AND MUCH, MUCH MORE! (She's also got a book coming out, which I will be purchasing and reading the shit out of ASAP.)

 

Continuing with the death theme, let's meet one of my favorite historical creepers: Count Carl von Cosel! Who wasn't actually a count. And wasn't named "von Cosel". The Carl part is true, though. Probably. Born Karl Tänzler, or possibly Georg Karl Tänzler, February 8, 1877 in (where else) Germany, died July 3, 1952 in (where else) Florida. In between…shit got weird.

Carl, as I'm going to call him for the sake of simplicity, came to the US in 1926 after kicking around Australia and being imprisoned by the British for the duration of WWI. He settled in Zephyrhills, Florida, where his sister already lived, and his wife and two daughters followed shortly, only to be immediately abandoned as Carl took off for a job as a radiologist in Key West. Can we take a minute to acknowledge that there is a town called "Zephyrhills"? Sounds like something out of a medieval medical text. Anyway, it's not really clear if Carl had any qualifications for the job at all, but he said he had nine university degrees and apparently that was good enough for the US Marine Hospital. Good call, guys. Might wanna tighten up those background checks in the future. While working at the hospital, Carl met Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos. She was twenty-one, she was beautiful, and she was dying of tuberculosis. According to Carl, she was also the physical embodiment of the vision of his soulmate that had been revealed to him by a dead countess he said he was related to. Uh, sure!

Since Elena was obviously his true love, even though she is not recorded as having displayed any reciprocal romantic interest in this weird middle-aged married German guy who kept professing his love and showering her with gifts, Carl decided he was going to cure her tuberculosis! Did I mention he probably didn't have any medical training? But no one knew that at the time and, since TB was almost always fatal, Elena and her family figured it couldn't hurt to let him try. And try he did. His exact methods seem lost to history, but apparently herbs and x-rays were involved. Surprisingly, this did not work, and Elena died on October 25, 1931. Carl reacted to the loss like a normal, mature, married man who didn't actually have a romantic relationship with the deceased, right? Ha.

Carl paid for Elena's funeral and to have her entombed in an above-ground mausoleum. So far, that's pretty nice of him!

And he secretly had a key to said mausoleum made so he could pop in and out whenever. Kinda weird.

And he went in every night and secretly embalmed Elena's body. Super weird.

And some accounts say he put a telephone in the vault and said it was to talk to…an airship…that had a secret purpose he couldn't tell anyone…

…and he said he talked to Elena's ghost…and she said she loved him…and she wanted him to take her away…

…and after about two years of this he lost his job because even the obviously extremely trusting folks at the hospital thought he might have gone off the deep end a little bit. Carl went back to his wife and kids, right? Wrong. Instead, he moved to a remote shack and built a laboratory inside an old airplane. Classic German mad scientist setup. What did he need the lab for? Oh, you know, this and that. Mostly he used it to try and preserve Elena's corpse, which oh by the way he had stolen out of her tomb and brought home in a toy wagon because why not just be as creepy as humanly possible. He fixed her up with plaster, wax, wires, and glass eyes, and they spent the next seven years living, laughing, and loving together, just like Norman Bates did with Mother. Aw, I love a happy ending!

Alas, the corpse course of true love never did run smooth, and during those seven years people did start to wonder about Count Carl's odd habits, like buying lots of women's clothing, or that time a local kid said he looked through the window of the shack and saw Carl dancing with what appeared to be a giant doll. Also, Carl had stopped visiting Elena's grave, which made her family suspicious. Eventually, in October of 1940, Elena's sister dropped by the shack to see what the dickens was going on, and the jig was up. Carl told her he and Elena were very happy together, but the sister refused to accept their relationship and went to the police. Man, it's so awkward when your girlfriend's family doesn't like you. The police came and took Carl to prison and Elena to the morgue. Even in the days before cable television, Carl's trial for graverobbing was a giant media sensation and the public was horrified—oh no wait they were actually on his side because they thought it was very romantic. FLORIDA. Oh, and Elena's body was put on display at a local funeral home, and thousands of people came to look at her. FLORIDA. Carl said at the trial that he had planned to put Elena on the airship—remember that?—and take her into the stratosphere so radiation from space could bring her back to life. Sure, why not.

Ultimately the charges against Carl were dropped, not because there was any kind of doubt that he'd done it but because the statute of limitations had expired. He asked if he could have Elena back, but this totally reasonable and not at all lunatic request was denied, and her family instead buried her in an unmarked grave to prevent any further shenanigans. All was not lost, however, as Carl used Elena's death mask to build a life-size replica of her, and that's how the RealDoll was invented! No, not really. I think. The life-size replica part is true, though. He lived out the rest of his life without incident, apparently financially supported by his wife(!), and died in his home in 1952. He was survived by his wife, one of his daughters (the other died of diphtheria in 1934), and his Elena doll. Although at least one writer thinks it wasn't a doll and Carl somehow secretly got Elena's actual remains back. Florida!

So that's the story of Count Carl von Cosel, who was not a count and not named von Cosel. Primary sources: X, X, and X (yes, they have pictures). There's a fair amount about this story out there, it's a popular one. I even came across one person passionately arguing that the whole thing was creepy and gross and not romantic at all, as though that were something anyone this century needed to be convinced of; perhaps that person was also from Florida. Florida!

 

To counterbalance that giant wall of text about a man who loved not wisely but too well, here is something small: a Diet Coke commercial from 1989 starring the late, great Madeline Kahn and Peter Cook. It's adorable, and I once wrote a paper on it for a media studies class.

Whoops! :D

 

Oh, and a (less overtly-spooky but still a little spooky) bonus: The Alchemy Website!
If you've ever desperately wanted to read a medieval alchemical text, and who among us hasn't, now's your chance. My personal favorite is the Ripley Scroll, for, um, reasons.

 

oh shit alchemy

The only alchemic texts I've read have been Daoist ones, personally.

 

ALCHEMY IS SO COOL

I mean the actual chemical-mixing was not super effective, but there's a whole culture surrounding it that's just fascinating to me. Like, there was a belief that alchemists got their power from their beards, so in 1500s Prague when all of Emperor Rudolf II's alchemists went on strike because Rudolf kept them locked inside all day trying to make the Elixir of Life, they shaved off their beards in protest. And then Rudolf had them fed to bears. Allegedly. (Source: this totally rad podcast.)

 

that is fucking amazing

Also the villain of the Japanese game Nioh is anime as fuck Edward Kelly. And anime as fuck John Dee. Who is Kelly's evil boss that makes clones of him.

 

they want to steal amrita

which is the food of the deva

from fucking japan

which happens to be el dorado

SO WE CAN BEAT SPAIN AND RULE THE WORLD WITH ALCHEMY

 

I think I ship anime-Kelly and anime-Dee now. I mean they did share a wife IRL, so…

Also this game sounds fantastic, omg. I love insane historical mash-ups like that. :D

 

*camps out in this thread all month*

 

Podcast rec: Blurry Photos!

I seriously love this podcast, you guys. I've been listening since…season two, I think? Personal favorite episodes include: Mothman, International Haunts (and Pancakes), The Philadelphia Experiment, The Hinterkaifeck Murders, and The Bloody Benders, among others (be sure to check out the Holy Grail episode, it is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, as well as any of the Ghost Stories episodes in the archive, and also anything with Ken Hite). There are inside jokes, silly voices, the Miss Cryptid Contest, weird news stories, Candy Chat, and MUCH, MUCH MORE! It's sort of NSFW-lite, they make plenty of dick jokes but they do bleep the swearing (because it's funnier that way), and they warn for anything particularly gruesome.

 

Words are not happening tonight, so: 136 Creepy Wikipedia Articles
Enjoy, and tread with caution.

 

OKAY YES I MISSED TWO DAYS. It was a rough weekend and you can't say I didn't warn you. I will make it up though! ANYWAY—
Do you like horror? Do you like manga? Do you like spirals, hair, the apocalypse, zombie fish, dead bodies showing up where they shouldn't, the monstrous feminine, and cats? Then by God you should be reading the works of Junji Ito RIGHT NOW. He's hardly obscure so I assume most of you who do like anything listed here have already heard of him, but that link is an excellent place to read most of his stuff that's been translated into English. Which you should. Right now.
C'mon, do it for Tomie.

 

http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/
I will edit this post to include a proper writeup when I can but rn my brain is fried. just check out the link for cool horror fiction and stuff.
Horror fiction, nonfiction about horror, and also there's a podcast so you can have some of the stories read to you if you feel so inclined! A lot of the stories include LGBT themes and the authors are a very multicultural bunch, which is really cool. Personal favorites include When You Work for the Old Ones and The Modern Ladies’ Letter-Writer; At Lorn Hall; 57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides; The Totals; and Who Is Your Executioner?

 

I realize my deep and abiding love of 70s made-for-TV horror movies is prrrrobably not universal, but in case anyone out there happens to like them too, here is a Youtube channel with a bunch of 'em! And once you're done with those, here's another channel with a lot of Lifetime movies and Tales From The Darkside episodes. :D

 

The Horror! - Vintage radio horror dramas. Check out the rest of the site too, there's a ton of cool old radio stuff.

 

I missed posting yesterday because I was busy making my mom watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Netflix with me. So in honor of the greatest show to have ever been on television, here are five spooooooky MST3k episodes (and some favorite riffs therefrom)!

1. The Corpse Vanishes

“Gasoline and clown white all over the road. You know, those clown shoes burn like black tires.”

2. Tormented

“Did you read that in a fortune cookie?”

3. Manos: The Hands Of Fate

“Every frame of this movie looks like someone’s last known photograph.”

4. The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies

“Is this supposed to be provocative or merely boring?”
“They’re provocative in their boringness.”

5. The Touch Of Satan

“Well, they better book a hall in Hell for their unholy wedding, it’s like a year wait.”

 

He's a cereal killer! :D

 

So I'm not the only one a little obsessed with Joel-Peter Witkin, right? You know, the photographer. He's famous enough to have his own Wikipedia page, surely you've heard of him.

Yeah, that guy!

Seriously though, his art is very creepy and very cool (and very NSFW—the wiki link is worksafe, the other two not so much). Be careful not to confuse him with serial killer Joel Rifkin.