Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!  Our host this week is a celebrity from 1915, Ecklin's Famous Fat Cat, Miikku!

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find out more about our friend here.  And, anyway, I think he's just a bit chubby.

Europe's oldest known battlefield.

A brief history of money.

The wild world of hummingbirds.

19th century Parisian fashion styles.

So, you want to be a spy?

Some spirits you definitely don't want to meet.

Some mighty strange creatures live in the deep sea.

When Ray Bradbury met Moby Dick, and things did not go at all well.

The first man to walk around the world.

If you've been longing to pay good money for some aged mold, I have good news!

The life of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

19th century Britain really liked to unwrap mummies.

The end of the world's longest treasure hunt.

Lady Elizabeth Russell, Keeper of the Castle.

Why we stare at "Girl With the Pearl Earring."  Although, to be honest, I've never liked that painting.  Go figure.

The Great Potato Duel.

Washington Irving's wildly successful literary hoax.

The "Brides in the Bath" murders.

The Tower of London as seen by Cruikshank.

The life of a British naval hero.

Cavalry vs. cavalry in WWII.

The 1780 invasion of the British Parliament.

Cannibalism and the Franklin Expedition.

The world's first submarine.

Lake Michigan is full of giant craters, and scientists are puzzled.

The world is full of skyquakes, and scientists are still puzzled.

That time San Francisco evicted a bunch of dead people.

Six haunted libraries.

The man who had an...unusual musical talent.

The difficulties of dealing with a white elephant from Mandalay.

The dog who saved Warner Brothers.

A brief history of water filtration.

In search of Baba Yaga.

The making of a death mask.

The Celtic origins of Halloween.

The earliest known evidence of humans in the Arctic.

WWII prisoners of war stage a "great escape."

The 19th century King of Poachers.

How the Anglo-Saxon language influenced modern English.

The unreliability of eyewitness identification.

An eccentric treasure hunter.

A mysterious shooting.

The original symbolism of swastikas.

It's not always a good idea to listen to Ouija boards.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a murder case that turned out to not be what it seemed.  In the meantime, here's some Haydn.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This account of a ghost who really resented sharing its apartment with roommates appeared in the “New York Times,” March 25, 1900:

Within a stone's throw of the headquarters of the Square-Back Rangers, in Cherry Street, is a three-room front flat, which has come near enough to being haunted, so that no tenant has remained more than a few hours within its walls for the goodly space of nineteen years. Tenants have presumed to move in only to hustle out, after finding their furniture turned upside down and their handsome framed chromos turned to the wall by occult influences. 

The “bravest guy" on Cherry Hill five years ago ventured to go into the hallway several hours after twilight.  He could see nothing there, but he got a thump in the eye and also managed to get a swollen cheek. He said it was the nastiest scrap he ever ran up against. 

An old French woman nineteen years ago became agonized with grief over the loss of her husband, who had sickened and died in this fat. One night she took a blanket and a stout clothes line, and with their help hanged herself on the bedroom door. She was found dead in the morning and her body was taken down by the neighbors.

Since that tragedy the flat has been uninhabitable. Cherry Hill lights hesitate to say that it is haunted, because they do not believe that the ghost of the unfortunate French woman ever comes back to the scene of death. But, everybody in the old Fourth Ward knows that there is something the matter with that flat. There were the Ryans, who were just as respectable a family as ever lived in the hill, and they had no skeletons in their family closet to excite the sinister ill-will of a ghost. They moved into the flat--husband and wife and three children. About an hour after they had all gone to bed there was one of the greatest rackets that ever took place in a genuinely haunted house.

The family woke up to see their furniture being thrown all over the flat by some invisible agency. The husband was punched in the face and the wife had her left eye blackened and the children came down with the whooping cough. All this happened in about ten minutes time. Six hours had been used to move into the flat, but it took that family just fifty minutes to get out with all their belongings.

Four or five other families tried their luck, but the hoodoo was too alert and strong. Old Mike Finnegan could not stand it when his stove, which had been securely set up in position, dropped over on its side. Every kind of tenant has tried it except the Italians, and front flats on the hill are not accessible to them. Nobody has ever seen anything in that flat which could cause a rumpus. No ghost has ever been detected.

The flat is known on the hill as the “stable alley," and any spirit, investigator who really wants to see the place can find it by asking the first longshoreman he meets on the hill for directions to the house where Jackie Haggerty lost the last shred of his reputation by letting himself get a black eye from the evil influence in the hallway. Jackie used to cut a good deal of ice in the social firmament of Cherry Hill before he queered himself in the haunted flat. 

Psychical students can get more real information in five minutes spent in that flat after dark about the spirit business than they get now in a whole series of Winter lectures at a lyceum on the way brain molecules have of wagging on St. Patrick's eve and other great spirit occasions of the year. 

There is a man on the hill who has never been out of the Fourth Ward.  He was born in the haunted flat before the evil days came upon that habitation, but he has not crossed the threshold of his birthplace for twenty years, and all the profits of the Gambling Commission could not induce him to visit the scenes of his childhood. He says, though, that he does not believe the flat is haunted.

I have to admit, a ghost that can give kids an instant case of whooping cough is a new one for me.

The Ghost of Gloddaeth Woods

Gloddaeth Woods, circa 1908

This week, Elias Owen’s 1887 book “Welsh Folk-Lore,” brings us one of those quaint old tales extolling the many charms of Welsh countryside, a land where things are very seldom dull.

The following tale was told the Rev. Owen Jones, Pentrevoelas, by Thomas Davies, Tycoch, Rhyl, the hero in the story.

I may say that Gloddaeth Wood is a remnant of the primæval forest that is mentioned by Sir John Wynn, in his History of the Gwydir Family, as extending over a large tract of the country.  This wood, being undisturbed and in its original wild condition, was the home of foxes and other vermin, for whose destruction the surrounding parishes willingly paid half-a-crown per head.  This reward was an inducement to men who had leisure, to trap and hunt these obnoxious animals.  Thomas Davies was engaged in this work, and, taking a walk through the wood one day for the purpose of discovering traces of foxes, he came upon a fox’s den, and from the marks about the burrow he ascertained that there were young foxes in the hole.  This was to him a grand discovery, for, in anticipation, cubs and vixen were already his.  Looking about him, he noticed that there was opposite the fox’s den a large oak tree with forked branches, and this sight settled his plan of operation.  He saw that he could place himself in this tree in such a position that he could see the vixen leave, and return to her den, and, from his knowledge of the habits of the animal, he knew she would commence foraging when darkness and stillness prevailed.  He therefore determined to commence the campaign forthwith, and so he went home to make his preparations.

I should say that the sea was close to the wood, and that small craft often came to grief on the coast.  I will now proceed with the story.

Davies had taken his seat on a bough opposite the fox’s den, when he heard a horrible scream in the direction of the sea, which apparently was that of a man in distress, and the sound uttered was “Oh, Oh.”  Thus Davies’s attention was divided between the dismal, “Oh,” and his fox.  But, as the sound was a far way off, he felt disinclined to heed it, for he did not think it incumbent on him to ascertain the cause of that distressing utterance, nor did he think it his duty to go to the relief of a suffering fellow creature.  He therefore did not leave his seat on the tree.  But the cry of anguish, every now and again, reached his ears, and evidently, it was approaching the tree on which Davies sat.  He now listened the more to the awful sounds, which at intervals reverberated through the wood, and he could no longer be mistaken—they were coming in his direction.  Nearer and nearer came the dismal “Oh!  Oh!” and with its approach, the night became pitch dark, and now the “Oh!  Oh!  Oh!” was only a few yards off, but nothing could be seen in consequence of the deep darkness.  The sounds however ceased, but a horrible sight was presented to the frightened man’s view.  There, he saw before him, a nude being with eyes burning like fire, and these glittering balls were directed towards him.  The awful being was only a dozen yards or so off.  And now it crouched, and now it stood erect, but it never for a single instant withdrew its terrible eyes from the miserable man in the tree, who would have fallen to the ground were it not for the protecting boughs.  Many times Davies thought that his last moment had come, for it seemed that the owner of those fiery eyes was about to spring upon him.  As he did not do so, Davies somewhat regained his self possession, and thought of firing at the horrible being; but his courage failed, and there he sat motionless, not knowing what the end might be.  He closed his eyes to avoid that gaze, which seemed to burn into him, but this was a short relief, for he felt constrained to look into those burning orbs, still it was a relief even to close his eyes: and so again and again he closed them, only, however, to open them on those balls of fire.  About 4 o’clock in the morning, he heard a cock crow at Penbryn farm, and at the moment his eyes were closed, but at the welcome sound he opened them, and looked for those balls of fire, but, oh! what pleasure, they were no longer before him, for, at the crowing of the cock, they, and the being to whom they belonged, had disappeared.

What the fox cubs thought of all this was not recorded, but I’m sure they were grateful for the spectral protection.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

After you finish reading, you're all invited to the Strange Company HQ game room.

The legend of a Louisiana "wild girl."

The historical importance of cloves.

Imagine finding out one day that you have a cellar full of ancient graves.

An ancient seed grew into something wonderfully weird.

The story of that tech giant who drowned when his yacht mysteriously sank keeps getting weirder.

Some unknown music by Mozart has been discovered.

The space mystery of the "flyby anomaly."

Down a medieval well.

A brief history of pet cemeteries.

Papal conclaves gone wild.

The origins of the dinosaur-killing asteroid.

Time-traveling at the British Museum.

One of the U.S. Air Force's less distinguished moments.

More Nazca geoglyphs have been discovered, and boy are they weird.

Some strange things that have been found in walls.

The life of Marie of Luxembourg.

The real discoverer of penicillin.

Evidence of a Neolithic society in Morocco has been discovered.

A very unfortunate family.

The significance of mummy cheese.

Elephants talk to each other, but we can't hear it.

The life of a 19th century Baptist missionary in India.

The rules of mourning for Paris widows, 1894.

Ancient humans and dinosaur footprints.

The heiress who may have been the model for the Statue of Liberty.

Cat memes go way back.

The sad, and probably short, life of Lady Mary Seymour.

Some haunted artworks.

Traveling the Silk Roads.

18th century pies really didn't mess around.

The mysterious poisonings of several children.

Yet another domestic murder.

An archaeologist's message in a bottle.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll bring on the Welsh Weirdness!  In the meantime, here's one of those songs I remember from way back when.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

The following news item is very brief, completely (as far as I can tell) unresolved, and probably even massively unimportant.  However, it charms me as just one more snippet of evidence that we live in a very strange world.  The "Minneapolis Star Tribune," August 8, 1930, via Newspapers.com:

Amateur detectives of Fort Reno, Okla., are working on a mystery which includes nary a corpse, only a hole in the ground. It is a large hole, about 18 feet deep and was made within a few feet of the place where a hole was dug in 1925 about the same time of the year. A single footprint has been found at the bottom of the hole. Nobody has been able to discover why or who made the excavation. One young man suggested that somebody wanted the hole for his front parlor and then found he couldn't bring it in, so he left it there.  But very few take stock in that theory.

Feel free to leave your own theories in the comments.

The Business Partnership of Torrance and Waldie

Engraving of 18th century Edinburgh

William Burke and William Hare created for themselves a prominent place in the annals of infamy with their assembly-line practice of committing murder in order to sell cadavers to an Edinburgh medical school during 1827-28.  A much more obscure, but equally ghastly predecessor to this line of homicide-for-profit took place in that same city a few decades earlier.  It deserves notice as the first known case of what would eventually be termed “anatomy murder.”

In November 1751, two nurses named Helen Torrence and Jean Waldie sought a suitable subject for some local apprentice surgeons.  Their first plan focused on a dead child they had attended.  They hoped to substitute some heavy object in the coffin, and make off with the body.  This scheme being foiled, they then turned their attention to another young patient of Torrence’s, a boy of eight or nine named John Dallas.  The boy was not expected to live, and would be, in the opinion of his kindly nurse, “a good subject for the doctors.”

Young Dallas, however, inconsiderately refused to die, and even showed dangerous signs of possible recuperation.  The two ladies, determined not to be cheated of a corpse a second time, resolved to take matters into their own hands.

On December 3, Janet Dallas, the boy’s mother, called on Torrance.  The nurse invited her to the local pub.  While they were gone, Waldie went to the Dallas home and kidnapped the boy, hiding him in her own flat.  Torrance soon joined her there, and they forced ale “which would scarce go over” on the weak and sickly John.  He died a few minutes later.

Once the boy went from patient to profitable merchandise, it was time to make a deal.  The apprentices, after examining the body, offered Torrance and Waldie two shillings.  The nurses were indignant, exclaiming “that they had been at more expenses about it than that sum.”  When the students offered to throw in “tenpence to buy a dram,” the ladies were mollified, and the bargain struck.  When Torrance agreed to carry the body herself to their rooms, she even got a bonus of sixpence.

Young John’s parents initiated a frantic search for their missing child, and four days later his body was found “in a place of the town little frequented,” and bearing clear marks of having been dissected.  (When the apprentices heard that the boy was feared to have been murdered, they panicked and dumped the corpse.)

The parents, rather gruesomely, were arrested first, followed by Torrance and Waldie.  The apprentices gave their story, whereupon the Dallases were freed and the nurses put on trial, a proceeding which took place on February 3, 1752.

The best their counsel could say in their favor was a protest that they faced the death penalty for two of the charges.  Their argument was that, although the murder itself was a capital offense, the kidnapping was a lesser crime, and the sale of the body not illegal at all.  The prosecution retorted that those charges were still relevant to the case.  Although stealing the child while alive, and selling him when dead, would not merit the supreme penalty, the killing in-between most certainly did.

The two nurses were swiftly convicted.  Torrance then tried to “plead her belly” (i.e., claim that she was pregnant, as the law could not execute a woman in that condition.)  She was examined by four midwives, who reported that she was not expecting a child.  Helen Torrance and Jean Waldie paid for their crime at the end of a rope on March 18. It is recorded that “Both acknowledged their sins, and mentioned uncleanness and drunkenness in particular.”

Their bodies were dissected at the medical college.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

It's time for this week's Link Dump!

Game on!

Yet another marriage that ends in murder.

The first American to be fatally hit by a car.

Fun with handcuffs!

The election battles which followed the battle of Bosworth.

The complicated history of America's oldest tombstone.

Why Jane Goodall believes in the afterlife.

Let's talk Beer Duels.

Let's talk fossil frauds.

The questions surrounding a female Civil War soldier.

Remembering "The Sorrows of Young Werther."

Images of a "ghost city" in the Pacific Ocean.

Ghost laying in Shropshire.

The woman who inspired Betty Boop.

The women who made 18th century condoms.

The incredible career of a 16th century knight.

Paging you "intelligent design" fans:  Our DNA is basically a computer.

Mourning the unmourned.

Some mysterious French Neanderthals.

We now know who was buried in a lead coffin under Notre Dame.  And he wasn't a vampire.  Bummer.

The ghost of the Taft White House.

The "Raphael of Cats."

The wonders of sea sponges.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at an "anatomy murder" that pre-dated Burke and Hare.  In the meantime, here's a bit of Bach.