NOSFERATU EXHIBITION IN BERLIN

I feel it's fitting to give F.W. Murnau's 1922 vampire film, NOSFERATU one more look before the end of the film's centenary. Germany, the country in which it was filmed, is also recognizing its value as a part of its film legacy as well, with an exhibition at the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg, an art museum in Berlin. The showing focuses on the brilliant poster art by Albin Grau, the film's art director and publicist. Following is an interview with one of the exhibition's curators, Frank Schmidt.

NOTE: Don't forget to order the latest issue of the legendary CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN, where you can read my article on NOSFERATU.

Note on the exhibition:

Phantoms of the Night

100 Years of Nosferatu

16.12.2022 to 23.04.2023

Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu – A Symphony of Horror premiered in 1922 at the Marmorsaal (Marble Hall) at the Berlin Zoo. Since then, it has been truly absorbed into popular culture, featuring in everything from horror films to television’s The Simpsons. The exhibition Phantoms of the Night. 100 Years of Nosferatu at the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg focuses on the influence this icon of German silent film had on the visual arts.

André Breton considered Nosferatu a key work for Surrealism. Conversely, the film would be unthinkable without its art historical precedents. The sketches for the set design, for example, include motifs that call to mind etchings by Francisco de Goya, German Romanticism, and tropes from the fantastical art and literature of the early 20th century. Other identified influences come from Caspar David Friedrich, as well as from the work of Alfred Kubin, Stefan Eggeler and Franz Sedlacek. The exhibition also explores the impact Nosferatu has had on contemporary art and everyday culture.

Curated by Jürgen Müller, Frank Schmidt and Kyllikki Zacharias, head of the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg.

A New Look at Nosferatu’s Bloody Legacy

An exhibition in Berlin celebrates a century of one of the most famous, and complicated, vampire stories.

By Diana Hubbell | DECEMBER 15, 2022 | AtlasObscura.com

THERE’S A MOMENT IN F.W. Murnau’s silent film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror in which Thomas Hutter, the story’s unwitting protagonist, enters a world of nightmares. When he crosses the river to where the thinly disguised vampire Count Orlok resides, the intertitle reads “Als er sich auf der anderen Seite der Brücke befand, kamen die Geister, um ihn zu treffen.” (“As he reached the other side of the bridge, the spirits came to meet him.”)

It is a literal and spiritual crossing, one that came to be regarded by film theorists as one of the most significant moments in cinematic history. “It’s a very symbolic sentence in terms of what film means to us,” says Frank Schmidt, co-curator of Phantome der Nacht. 100 Jahre Nosferatu (Phantoms of the Night: 100 Years of Nosferatu), a new exhibition in Berlin on the legacy and cultural shadow of the iconic silent film. According to Schmidt, Hutter’s journey into the realm of the fantastic echoes the way an audience enters the immersive dream-world of a movie theater.

In the century since its release, Nosferatu has become one of the most influential films ever made—but it’s a wonder that anyone remembers it at all. When it debuted in Berlin in 1922, Murnau’s horror masterpiece was a commercial flop. The film’s creators did everything they could to drum up buzz, including a year-long advertising campaign and an extravagant costumed opening gala at the Berlin Zoological Garden’s Marble Hall. But larger German cinemas refused to screen it and Prana Film, the studio behind it, declared bankruptcy shortly after its release.

To make matters worse, in 1924, Bram Stoker’s widow, Florence, dragged the film’s makers to court for copyright infringement. It’s easy to understand her frustration; Stoker’s death in 1912 left her with a pile of debt and little money to show for supporting the literary genius who created Dracula. Murnau never bothered to ask her for permission to adapt the novel, let alone offer royalties. Supposedly, she learned of the film’s existence via an anonymous letter containing the program from the German premiere. After a brutal legal battle, the judge ordered Prana to burn all copies of the film.

That physical copies of Nosferatu survived in exile in the United States is eerily poignant, given that Henrik Galeen, the film’s Jewish writer, and part of the cast were forced to flee Germany with the rise of the Third Reich just a few years later. Though the film is a gothic horror fantasy, its history reflects the very real, precarious climate in Berlin at the time it was made and the years that followed. For all its political upheaval, the Weimar Republic in the 1920s was a period of ambitious art, film, philosophy, and literature that challenged social norms and conventions—a stark contrast to the jingoistic, state-sanctioned works produced under Nazi regime in the 1930s and 40s.

In addition to more than 100 original movie posters, sketches, and other artifacts from the film, the exhibition, on view at the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg in Berlin from December 16, 2022, to April 23, 2023, attempts to draw parallels between the art and historical events of the period. By juxtaposing images from the film with etchings and paintings by Francisco de Goya, Alfred Kubin, and Franz Sedlacek, viewers can see its inspirations firsthand. Most curiously, the exhibition brings the legend of the vampire to life in a rather literal way; once a month, visitors to the museum will be able to give blood—to the German Red Cross.

Atlas Obscura spoke with Schmidt, who curated the exhibit along with Kyllikki Zacharias and Jürgen Müller, about presenting one of the most famous vampire films of all time, criticism of the film as antisemitic, and why the film still looks modern today.

Why was a vampire movie produced in Germany in 1922?

There was a big fascination with anything fantastic in German art and literature—novels like The Golem, also vampire stories like Dracula. Albin Grau [the producer and production designer] was an occultist. On one hand, he wanted to make an occult film, but on the other hand he wanted to make a film for intellectuals. He wanted to make a film for people who normally go to the theater. It was a completely new form of fantastic film.

Do you think that’s why the film looks so modern, even today?

The look of the film for us today is very modern, [in part] because they filmed much of it outside. At the time, it was an economic decision because they had no money to build all these sets like in Hollywood. But for us today, it feels very modern to see all the old streets of Lübeck [in Germany]. They also filmed in the High Tatras [in Slovakia].

Why do you think the film resonated so strongly with viewers outside of Germany, particularly artists?

Even though [the film] did not have a strong reception in Germany, French Surrealist artists like André Breton saw it. They loved the film very much. The film was shown in France 1923 and also 1928, and there are many mentions of the film by the Surrealist artists of this time. Because the film had such a dream-like structure, much like their art, it had something they could connect to.

What do you think we can learn from the film today?

It shows us something about how the German film industry was in this time and what they tried to do. It also tells us about Berlin [during the Weimar Republic], that they made such a movie. For its time, it was very modern and very international. For me, it is very interesting to see how strong the connections were between art and film and literature in this period, and how they tried to translate this to the big screen.

Many of the people who worked in the film industry had to leave the country in the 1930s. Henrik Galeen, who was the screenwriter for Nosferatu, had to leave for the United States. He had a bakery in New York for some years. He couldn’t work as a screenwriter. He died there.

That brings up another issue. A number of critics have written about the antisemitic overtones in parts of the film, which were common in works of the period.

It is mentioned in the catalog and we have one chapter of the exhibition where we show some objects. It is mentioned, but it is also well known, since there are many texts and books published about this. [The antisemitism] is not that visible on first sight, but we try to show it in some way. [Murnau] also did not film everything that was in the script. There was a Jewish person, an antisemitic stereotype, in the script, and he did not use that for the film.

There are also antisemitic connotations of the house broker, Knock, even though he was played by Alexander Granach, who was a Jewish actor. He also left Germany for New York later.

It’s interesting that there was a Jewish actor playing a stereotypical caricature.

Absolutely, yes, but for this time, it was considered normal, in some way. Also, remember that Henrik Galleen, the screenwriter, was Jewish. And the stereotypes are in the script.

It took several years to bring this exhibition together. What started the process?

The genesis of this was that the remains of the estate of Albin Grau, the producer and set designer, were found by a German scientist a few years ago. Now they are open to the public. You can see them in Switzerland. We had all the schedules, all the material, all the notes from him. We could also see that he had a strong connection to art. He claimed to have studied art in Dresden, but he never did. But he worked in advertising and he made many sketches for advertising companies. We could see how he used this piece of art, or he used that painting. So we looked at this and we saw many connections.

One of the most fascinating parts of the exhibition are the paintings used for the advertising posters. They’re striking Expressionist works in and of themselves.

In every magazine, every newspaper, you could see these articles and these pictures of Nosferatu. They had film posters for every big place in Berlin—for Alexanderplatz, for Gleisdreieck—and each film poster was different. The campaign was more expensive than the film. The posters alone are worth it to see the exhibition.

It’s really striking just how familiar many of these images are, partly because of the physicality of Max Schreck, the actor who plays Count Orlok. The scene where he’s rising out of his coffin is just iconic.

So iconic. There are so many memes and gifs of this.

Why do you think this film has stayed so prominent in the pop cultural lexicon?

For many people, it’s about the vampire itself, Count Orlok. It’s not a seducer. It’s more like an animal, like an insect. There are many comparisons to nature. Sometimes it looks like a rat, sometimes it looks like a flea, sometimes it looks like a praying mantis. In one scene in the script, Galleen writes that he stands by the window like a spider. Its aesthetic reminds me of modern horror films like The Ring. And [the vampire] breaks through the fourth wall. Once he sees you, you have no chance—you see him come right at you. I saw it last week in the cinema and it still gets me every time.

DINO-LUST?

I've posted some pretty weird things here at WoM, but this one just might take the cake -- and all the candles, too! With monster mash-up movies like SHARKNADO and FRANKENFISH remaining ever-popular, the creators of this quirky sub-genre were bound to come across even more crazy ideas, albeit in the world of fiction this time -- and this one could be the craziest.

Erupting like a Jurassic volcano from the brains of two women who combined dinosaurs with -- wait for it -- erotica (!), the Dino-Duo published a series of stories about dino-lust. Yes, you heard it right, dinosaurs making it with human women!

I had the chance to read some of these stories (thankfully, for free), and frankly, I couldn't get through much. The stuff read like the imagined fantasies from letter writers to men's magazines. Nevertheless, the subject matter, no matter how badly written, apparently became fairly popular among readers of this stuff.

So, if you must, and your curiosity has gotten the better of you, these stories are available as eBooks on Amazon (they'll sell anything for a buck, won't they?).

In the meantime, you can read about this bizarre phenomenon in the article below from STARBURST (June, 2015), where one of the authors is interviewed.

Now, if you're in the mood for some dino-reality, here's a story on two new dinosaurs discovered in China, one of the most fossil-rich places on Earth.

The World Has Two New Flying Dinosaurs

Or at least it used to. What can these recently identified dino-birds teach us about extinction?

By Sarah Durn | February 18, 2022 | AtlasObscura.com

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY MILLION years ago, there was a crystal-clear lake nestled in what is now northwestern China. Soaring trees hugged the shoreline. The air was filled with prehistoric birdsong. And there, floating along in the water, was a pigeon-sized, loon-like bird known as Brevidentavis zhangi. When the bird died, its body drifted down to the lakebed. Over thousands and thousands of years, layers of sediment covered the bird’s body. The lake dried up. The bird’s fragile, delicate bones fossilized into rock. And there it waited—until the summer of 2005 when a paleontologist found its skull, complete with the bird’s tiny, prehistoric teeth.

The Changma Basin, as paleontologists now know the site, is the second-richest Mesozoic bird fossil site in the world. But among the some 120 specimens uncovered, there are only six skulls. For more than a decade after their discovery, the skulls sat unstudied. That is, until paleontologist Jingmai O’Connor, assistant curator of vertebrate paleontology at Chicago’s Field Museum, took on the task of analyzing them. She identified two new species of dinosaur birds, Meemannavis ductrix and Brevidentavis zhangi—and an unexpected avian superpower. Brevidentavis zhangi could feel with its teeth.

In an article published in the Journal of Systematics and Evolution, O’Connor and her coauthors have begun to unravel the mystery of Brevidentavis zhangi’s strange jawbone, a feature that could help explain avian evolution.

After millions of years underground and some human preservation errors, studying these specimens posed a real challenge for O’Connor. Borrowing a phrase from her colleague and coauthor, Jerry Harris, O’Connor describes the fossils as “melty bones.” The six skulls have been flattened by eons in the ground. Once excavated, they were covered in glue. Dissolvable glue is often used to stabilize fossils, but this substance was thick, shiny, and permanent. That “makes it really hard to study these specimens,” O’Connor says. Important details of the bones are almost impossible to make out.

The first step of analyzing any fossil is to determine what exactly you’re looking at. To that end, O’Connor brought in a specialized photographer to take high-resolution images of the glossy fossils. Then she drew over the photographs identifying the beginning and end of each bone, constantly checking her drawing with the fossil to make sure she was getting everything right.

In the end, O’Connor was not only able to identify two new species amongst the skulls, but a whole new genus (the taxonomic category above species) of Mesozoic birds. O’Connor named Meemannavis ductrix after Meemann Chang, the first woman to lead China’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP). Brevidentavis’s name, on the other hand, is fittingly descriptive. It means “short-toothed bird.”

Beyond its teeth, Brevidentavis had another strange feature, something known to paleontologists as a “predentary.” It’s essentially a small bone that rests right at the front of the jaw. “No one knew what this thing was for the longest time,” says O’Connor. With the help of IVPP paleontologist Alida Bailleul, another coauthor of the study, O’Connor started to research what the predentary might have been used for.

They used a CT scan to map the internal bone structures of the Brevidentavis skull and then used a chemical stain to reveal tissue structures. Those scans showed a canal where a nerve would have run the length of the bird’s mandible into the predentary. This meant that the bird would have been able to feel and sense things through its teeth and predentary. This unusual ability may have helped Brevidentavis feel around in the mucky lakebed for prey. “Nobody knew that bird teeth were proprioceptive, that they had feeling,” says O’Connor. “So that was cool!”

When it comes to the study of Brevidentavis and other Cretaceous birds—those that thrived at the end of the Mesozoic period— paleontologists are constantly trying to puzzle out why a select few dino-birds survived while the rest died out with the dinosaurs. These survivors come from one clade of Mesozoic birds (organisms that all share a common ancestor), known to paleontologists as ornithuromorpha.

The Changma Basin was once a hotbed for ornithuromorpha like Brevidentavis and Meemannavis—Mesozoic birds who were happily flitting about with no clue their world was about to end. And here’s where the predentary bone comes in. Though some ornithuromorpha survived the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, all toothed ornithuromorpha were wiped out with the dinosaurs. “Indirectly you could say that toothed ornithuromorphs with predentaries were feeding on something that wasn’t available during the post impact disaster,” perhaps fish, posits O’Connor.

Paleontologist Juan Benito from Cambridge University, who wasn’t involved in the study, says these newly identified fossils help scientists understand “how you get to a duck from a dinosaur”—something that takes on new importance in today’s rapidly changing ecosystem. “In the current biodiversity crisis, it’s interesting to know which morphological features can allow a species to make it when others don’t.” Perhaps the secrets to surviving a mass extinction are buried in the 120-million-year-old rocks at a sleepy Chinese fossil site.

Recommended reading: For a fascinating account written by another fossil hunter, I recommend the book, "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World", by Stephen L. Brusatte

THE RADIOACTIVE "DEMON CORE"

Illustrating once again the perils of radioactivity and circumstances that can lead to disastrous results. "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" may be responsible for ending World War II, but making the stuff in their lethal payload would be far from over. 

The Nuclear ‘Demon Core’ That Killed Two Scientists
After World War II ended, physicists kept pushing a plutonium core to its edge.
By Sarah Laskow | April 23, 2018 | AtlasObscura.com

THE WAR WAS OVER—JAPAN HAD surrendered. The third plutonium core created by the United States, which scientists at Los Alamos National Lab had been preparing for another attack, was no longer needed as a weapon. For the moment, the lab’s nuclear scientists were allowed to keep the sphere, an alloy of plutonium and gallium that would become known as the demon core.

In a nuclear explosion, a bomb’s radioactive core goes critical: A nuclear chain reaction starts and continues with no additional intervention. When nuclear material goes supercritical, that reaction speeds up. American scientists knew enough about the radioactive materials they were working with to be able to set off these reactions in a bomb, but they wanted a better understanding of the edge where subcritical material tipped into the dangerous, intensely radioactive critical state.

One way to push the core towards criticality involved turning the neutrons it shed back onto the core, to destabilize it further. The “Critical Assembly Group” at Los Alamos was working on a series of experiments in which they surrounded the core with materials that reflected neutrons and monitored the core’s state.

The first time someone died performing one of these experiments, Japan had yet to formally sign the terms of surrender. On the evening of August 21, 1945, the physicist Harry Daghlian was alone in the lab, building a shield of tungsten carbide bricks around the core. Ping-ponging neutrons back the core, the bricks had brought the plutonium close to the threshold of criticality, when Daghlian dropped a brick on top. Instantly, the core reacted, going supercritical and Daghlian was doused in a lethal dose of radiation. He died 25 days later.

His death did not dissuade his colleagues, though. Nine months later, they had developed another way to bring the core close to that critical edge, by lowering a dome of beryllium over the core. Louis Slotin, a Canadian physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, had performed this move in many previous experiments: He would hold the dome with one hand, and with the other use a screwdriver to keep a small gap open, just barely limiting the flow of neutrons back to the bomb.* On a May day in 1946, his hand slipped, and the gap closed. Again, the core went supercritical and dosed Slotin, along with seven other scientists in the room, with gamma radiation.

In each instance, when the core slipped over that threshold and started spewing radiation, a bright blue light flashed in the room—the result of highly energized particles hitting air molecules, which released that bolt of energy as streams of light.

The other scientists survived their radiation bath, but Slotin, closest to the core, died of radiation sickness nine days later. The experiments stopped. After a cooling-off period, the demon core was recast into a different weapon, eventually destroyed in a nuclear test.

FOR SALE: COLD WAR NUCLEAR MISSILE SITE

Looking for the ideal bugout hideaway? Will an abandoned Cold War Nike base do? We're not talkin' tennis shoes here -- we're talkin' Nike -- as in nuke.

Now, a New Jersey suburb is putting the site up for auction. Minimum bid? $1.8 million. While the location could be turned into a museum, it's more likely that it will be turned into condos.

For Sale: An Abandoned Cold War Missile Launch Site by the Side of the Road
It’s a ghost town, but it’s got a pool.
By Matthew Taub | April 22, 2020 | Atlas Obscura

DRIVING DOWN ROUTE 322, JUST minutes from where southern New Jersey meets Philadelphia, you might think you’ve spotted a factory tower or standpipe off the side of the road, one of many postindustrial artifacts that flank America’s roadways. But this looming 40-foot tower, a kind of metallic mushroom, is part of a different kind of infrastructure: an abandoned missile launcher dating back to the Cold War, strategically positioned to defend the Philadelphia metropolitan area, with a particularly historic pedigree. And this one can be all yours.

Known as Swedesboro PH-58, the base is one of 14 Nike missile stations once threaded throughout New Jersey, and one of five that were in the state’s “Philadelphia Defense Area” (“PH,” for short). The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that, this month, Woolwich Township has formally requested bids and proposals for the property, which could be developed into restaurants, offices, or a park, among other possibilities. Bids, due in June, can be no lower than $1.8 million.

The United States military introduced the anti-aircraft Nike series in 1953, with the Ajax missile. Launch bases were installed in more than 200 locations throughout the country, as well as within the territory of American allies in Asia and Europe. Following the Soviet Union’s successful 1957 launch of Sputnik 1, however, the military felt a new show of strength was needed, and introduced the Hercules to the series in 1958. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the Hercules was, in every way, an improvement upon the Ajax: Where the earlier model could rise to 70,000 feet, with a range of 30 miles, at more than twice the speed of sound, the follow-up could reach 150,000 feet with a 75-mile range, at more than three times the speed of sound. Operational between 1957 and 1974, PH-58 was loaded with 30 Ajax and 24 Hercules missiles, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson University database. But since the site was shut down 46 years ago, it’s “become an eyesore,” writes Woolwich Township Mayor, Vernon R. Marino, in an email.

The tower is the most visible aspect, but there’s much more to the abandoned site. Its 33-acre campus is a ghost town of its own, with vaults stretching 30 feet underground, a mess hall, soldiers’ quarters, and a drained swimming pool. Though a small number of these bases have been preserved, like the museum at the Sandy Hook launch site farther north in New Jersey, it’s generally too expensive to restore an entire campus, says James Heinzen, a historian at neighboring Rowan University. The sites are also dangerous, he adds, because the underground missile vaults are covered by big steel doors and in need of some serious cleanup. PH-58 might not get the museum treatment, but it’s not too hard to imagine that the pool or mess hall living on—restored—in whatever the future of the site holds. In an email, Woolwich Township Clerk Jane DiBella writes that a commemorative radar tower may stay put as a reminder of the site’s history.

As it happens, PH-58’s location makes the base—and others in the PH zone—especially historically significant. The town of Swedesboro, formerly part of Woolwich Township (which owns the property), is a short drive from Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. In June 1967, when Rowan was known as Glassboro State College, President Lyndon B. Johnson and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin met there for official talks. (Johnson wanted to meet in Washington, D.C., and Kosygin preferred New York City; Glassboro was the compromise.) Today, Rowan maintains a collection of artifacts from the summit, some of which has been digitized.

Heinzen, who is also the director of Rowan’s Hollybush Institute (named for the campus building where the leaders met), says that while the summit produced no direct agreements, it set “a pattern” for future face-to-face meetings. The town’s name has even seeped into diplomatic parlance, with the “Spirit of Glassboro” signaling a willingness to meet with an adversary in person. The Glassboro Summit was followed by the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Agreement (SALT I).

The latter led to the shuttering of the Nike bases, if not their complete erasure. While many Nike bases nationwide were converted into housing, PH-58 malingered. Woolwich Township acquired the base from the federal government in 2009 for $828,000, but didn’t want to resell during a recession. Of course, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, economic conditions are not necessarily better right now, but Woolwich Township is already fielding proposals anyway.

[SOURCE CREDIT: AltasObscura.com.]

BLACK RAIN, CEMETERY PICNICS, AND WAS THE CORONAVIRUS PREDICTED?

Did Psychic Sylvia Browne Predict the Coronavirus Pandemic Back in 2008?
By Tim Binall | March 12, 2020 | coasttocoastam.com

Amid the ceaseless news coverage of the worrisome coronavirus crisis, a surprising name has emerged from the past to capture the attention of people online: the late psychic Sylvia Browne, who is being credited by some for predicting the pandemic twelve years ago. This strange turn of events came about in recent days as an excerpt from the self-described medium's 2008 book End of Days has gone viral online due to its uncanny description of what has been unfolding in America and around the world.

Specifically, Browne wrote that "in around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments." As one can imagine, the matching date and general description of the coronavirus has led many to conclude that the self-proclaimed psychic correctly foresaw the current crisis. The eerie excerpt was even amplified by Kim Kardashian, of all people, when she shared the odd prediction with her enormous audience of social media followers on Tuesday evening.

While we'll likely never know for certain if Browne's prediction was a genuine forecast informed by some kind of supernatural skill or just a lucky guess, for those keeping score at home, she did provide some indication as to how the crisis would culminate. According to the psychic's purported vision, "almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived, attack again ten years later, and then disappear completely."

However, before one breathes a sigh of relief thinking that the coronavirus crisis will soon be over, it's important to note that a cursory search via Google Books shows several times when Browne's predictions in End of Days were pretty far off the mark. For example, she forecast that 2010 would see the development of a cure for the common cold, in 2015 all newly-built homes would be solar powered, and that aliens would begin revealing themselves to the world in 2018. As such, it would probably be wise to stay vigilant and keep washing your hands.

Eerie Black Rain Falls on Japanese Cities
By Tim Binall | March 10, 2020 | coasttocoastam.com

Residents in several Japanese cities were left fearing the worst when an eerie black rain fell from the sky. The unsettling incident reportedly occurred in the city of Hasuda and a number of nearby communities last week. People living in the impacted areas quickly took to social media to express their concern over the spooky phenomenon and authorities acknowledged the strangeness by announcing that they had received reports of "black puddles in roads and on cars."

As is often the case when a weird mystery captures the imagination of people online, various theories were offered for what could have caused the black rain which was described as resembling oil. While some worried observers wondered if the phenomenon could have the result of some kind of radioactivity, officials were quick to dismiss this explanation, saying that tests indicated that this was not the case.

Others postulated that perhaps the unnerving rain was caused by a North Korean missile launch and, in a testament to the pandemic panic that has gripped the globe, some put forward the macabre suggestion that the phenomenon was the result of officials secretly burning the bodies of coronavirus victims. Ultimately, it was discovered that a massive fire had erupted in the city at around the time that the rain fell, leading many to conclude that the inferno was likely the cause of the phenomenon.

Torture Museum Bruges
Inside this former medieval prison is a collection of objects designed to inflict unbelievable pain and suffering on the human body and mind. 
By Marjolein | March 2, 2020 | Atlasobscura.com

Located underneath one of the oldest stone buildings in Bruges, dating from around the 10th or 11th century, is a collection of medieval torture devices. 

The Torture Museum of Brugge is located in a former fortress that was designed to protect Bruges. During the 14th century, the building became known as “the Old Stone” as it became the site of a medieval prison. The museum now plays host to more than 100 different torture devices, all displayed in chronological order.   

As visitors wander through the rooms of the former prison, they also journey through a time where torture was a widespread form of punishment and public executions were the norm. The various devices on display range from the 13th century to the 18th century. It’s a wonderfully dark journey with tons of intriguing information. Many of the devices are equipped with mannequins displaying how they were used, which creates a lurid atmosphere. A few of the items on display are the wooden horse, chair of torture, and a device designed to compress the stomach known as the caretaker’s daughter. 

The building itself leaves a strong impression on all who venture inside. It displays the harsh realities of life during the Middle Ages, where crimes, heresy, or a simple accusation of wrongdoing could result in a few hours on the rack. 

I've heard of a corkscrew, but this?

Remembering When Americans Picnicked in Cemeteries
For a time, eating and relaxing among the dead was a national pastime.
By Jonathan Kendall | October 24, 2018 | Atlasobscura.com

A small group picnics on ledger-style tombstones in Historic St. Luke's Ancient Cemetery. The photo is not dated but is believed to have been taken prior to St. Luke's 1957 Pilgrimage Service. COURTESY HISTORIC ST. LUKE'S

WITHIN THE IRON-WROUGHT WALLS OF American cemeteries—beneath the shade of oak trees and tombs’ stoic penumbras—you could say many people “rest in peace.” However, not so long ago, people of the still-breathing sort gathered in graveyards to rest, and dine, in peace.

During the 19th century, and especially in its later years, snacking in cemeteries happened across the United States. It wasn’t just apple-munching alongside the winding avenues of graveyards. Since many municipalities still lacked proper recreational areas, many people had full-blown picnics in their local cemeteries. The tombstone-laden fields were the closest things, then, to modern-day public parks.

In Dayton, Ohio, for instance, Victorian-era women wielded parasols as they promenaded through mass assemblages at Woodland Cemetery, en route to luncheon on their family lots. Meanwhile, New Yorkers strolled through Saint Paul’s Churchyard in Lower Manhattan, bearing baskets filled with fruits, ginger snaps, and beef sandwiches.

A historic image of the Woodland Cemetery in Dayton, Ohio. COURTESY WOODLAND CEMETERY AND ARBORETUM

One of the reasons why eating in cemeteries become a “fad,” as some reporters called it, was that epidemics were raging across the country: Yellow fever and cholera flourished, children passed away before turning 10, women died during childbirth. Death was a constant visitor for many families, and in cemeteries, people could “talk” and break bread with family and friends, both living and deceased.

“We are going to keep Thanksgivin’ with our father as [though he] was as live and hearty this day [as] last year,” explained a young man, in 1884, on why his family—mother, brothers, sisters—chose to eat in the cemetery. “We’ve brought somethin’ to eat and a spirit-lamp to boil coffee.”

The picnic-and-relaxation trend can also be understood as the flowering of the rural cemetery movement. Whereas American and European graveyards had long been austere places on Church grounds, full of memento mori and reminders not to sin, the new cemeteries were located outside of city centers and designed like gardens for relaxation and beauty. Flower motifs replaced skulls and crossbones, and the public was welcomed to enjoy the grounds.

Sausages are served at a picnic at the Greve Cemetery in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. COURTESY OF ROGER MEYER FAMILY AND THE SCHAUMBURG TOWNSHIP DISTRICT LIBRARY

Eating in graveyards had, and still has, historical precedent. People picnic among the dead from Guatemala to parts of Greece, and similar traditions involving meals with ancestors are common throughout Asia. But plenty of Americans believed that picnics in local cemeteries were a “gruesome festivity.” This critique, notably from older generations, didn’t stop young adults from meeting up in graveyards. Instead it led to debate over proper conduct.

In some parts of the country, such as Denver, the congregations of grave picnickers grew to such numbers that police intervention was even considered. The cemeteries were becoming littered with garbage, which was seen as an affront to their sanctity. In one report about these messy gatherings, the author wrote, “thousands strew the grounds with sardine cans, beer bottles, and lunch boxes.”

Though the macabre picnics were considered “nuisances” in some communities, they did give participants a sort of admired air. One reporter lauded the fact that the picnickers looked “happy under discouraging circumstances,” and even said it was a trait “worthy of cultivation.” The fad of casual en plein air dining among the crypts would soon come to an end, though.

Cemetery picnics remained peripheral cultural staples in the early 20th century; however, they began to wane in popularity by the 1920s. Medical advancements made early deaths less common, and public parks were sprouting across the nation. It was a recipe for less interesting dining venues.

Today, more than 100 years since Americans debated the trend, you’d be hard-pressed to find many cemeteries—especially those in big cities—with policies or available land that allow for picnics. Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, for example, has a no picnic rule.

But the fad isn’t entirely dead in the United States. The country’s immigrant population includes families carrying on traditions that call for meals with departed loved ones, and cemeteries will hold occasional public events in the spirit of this era. There are still scattered graveyards where you can picnic among tombstones, too, particularly if you know someone with a sizable family lot. In those cases, all you need is a picnic basket filled with treats, and you and your undaunted party can partake in an old American tradition. Just remember to clean up after yourselves. The penalties for doing otherwise may be grave.

Meet the Cryptids Haunting Ohio’s Imagination
A new exhibition pays homage to some of the Buckeye State’s beloved—and infamous—legends.
By Jessica Leigh Hester | March 11, 2020 | Atlasobscura.com

The Loveland Frog.

ONE EVENING IN AUGUST 2016, Sam Jacobs and his girlfriend were playing Pokemon Go near the inky shore of Lake Isabella, in Loveland, Ohio. The lake is regularly stocked with catfish, bluegill, trout, and perch (to the delight of local fishers). But the couple saw something that struck them as more than a little odd—and it wasn’t a creature roaming their phone screens.

“We saw a huge frog near the water,” Jacobs told Cincinnati’s WCPO television station. “Not in the game,” he added. “This was an actual giant frog.”

Jacobs paused his play and snapped some grainy photos. They’re tricky to decipher, but appear to show a dark figure standing in the gently rippling water, light bouncing off its enormous, saucer-shaped eyes. Jacobs was convinced he was seeing a frog rearing up on its hind legs.

“I realize this sounds crazy,” he told WCPO. “But I swear on my grandmother’s grave this is the truth: The frog stood about four feet tall.”

Jacobs wasn’t the first person to claim to see a monstrous amphibian roving Loveland. In 1972, a local police officer named Ray Shockey said he crossed paths with an enormous frog near the Little Miami River. Shockey kept it pretty quiet, Dayton’s Journal Herald newspaper reported that year; he didn’t want to spook anyone.

Soon after, however, his partner, Mark Matthews, was scouting the same spot when he encountered a creature that fit Shockey’s puzzling description. It hopped toward him, he told the Journal Herald—and while it wasn’t aggressive, exactly, it was unusually, almost unbelievably, large. Keen to get a closer look and preserve the evidence, he landed four shots with his .357 magnum. He told the Journal Herald that he suspected the thing was a hefty iguana that had lost its tail—but that it was hard to say for sure, the paper noted, because “the animal gave one last hop, fell into the river and was washed away.”

There’s no reason to suspect that Rutherford B. Hayes, America’s bookish and extravagantly bearded 19th president, ever laid eyes on the giant, bipedal Loveland Frog (or Frogman), as it’s come to be known. Or that he was scared by an unsettlingly oversized iguana. He probably never made the acquaintance of the Mothman either. Or the Grassman (Ohio’s answer to Bigfoot). Or South Bay Bessie, the Loch Ness–style monster said to patrol the waters of Lake Erie.

But Hayes’s presidential library and museum, in Fremont, Ohio, has recently mounted a show called “Ohio: An Unnatural History,” about the legendary creatures that go bump in the Midwestern night.

The museum, which normally traffics in tangible objects and measurable facts, doesn’t view its dalliance with the paranormal as anything unusual. “Not only do we cover presidential history, but also local history,” says Kevin Moore, associate curator of artifacts. “And we view local folklore as part of Ohio’s local history.”

South Bay Bessie.

Hayes had a personal library of thousands of books, Moore says, and was a history buff to boot, with an interest in the legends of local Native American cultures. “We want to appreciate the folklore just being part of Ohio culture—not get into any effort to validate or disprove it,” Moore says.

Tall tales, however dubious, don’t spring from nothing—and that makes folklore a useful window into local history, says Esther Clinton, a folklorist at Bowling Green State University, in a video accompanying the exhibition.

“The stories that become folklore are the stories that are repeated often, and not just by the same person,” Clinton says in the video. “What that means is that these are stories that make emotional and intellectual sense to people. If we look at folklore, that tells us a lot about what are people thinking about, what are they worried about?”

To bring the creatures in the exhibit to life, the library tapped Dan Chudzinski, a historian, special-effects artist, and animal-anatomy aficionado who doubles as the curator of the Mazza Museum at the University of Findlay.

The child of an anatomist-cum-biology-professor, Chudzinski has always been drawn to both known anatomy and the creatures that wander the foggy, gray margins of our imagination. He cut his teeth on taxidermy as a teen, and volunteered at the Toledo Zoo. At the Mazza Museum, which is rich in children’s book illustrations, he strung a 40-foot-long sculpture of Bessie, made from urethane foam and custom hardware, from the ceiling. It has a massive skull, studded with 200 teeth, and is roughly the size of a bus—a fact that Chudzinski uses to playfully taunt schoolkids, saying, “If you all fit into one bus, theoretically you could all fit into one really hungry lake monster.”

Though he often creates sculptures so uncannily lifelike that you expect to see the eyes blink or the chest rise and fall, Chudzinski’s work for the cryptid show mainly consists of 2D images. He wanted them to feel as informed and convincing as paranormal portraits can possibly be—thoughtful and unique, yet recognizable, sporting the iconic characteristics.

To research one of his subjects—the Headless Motorcyclist, said to roam the roads after a gruesome accident—Chudzinski visited local libraries to look for reports of a vehicular decapitation. He also interviewed people who claimed to have encountered the various creatures he portrayed—and did a little fieldwork of his own.

The Grassman.

For Grassman inspiration, he visited creatures including Kwisha, a silverback western lowland gorilla who lives at the Toledo Zoo; artist and ape have known each other for about 18 years. To compile characteristics for the Loveland Frog, Chudzinski tromped to the pond near his house, where he observed the pickerel frog’s speckled skin and the tree frog’s ability to conceal itself up in the canopy. (He figured it would be superlatively creepy if the Loveland Frog could scale trees and conceal itself while spying on the humans below.)

To capture the moods he wanted to convey in the background, Chudzinski says he went “to locations that people wouldn’t wander around at times when people definitely wouldn’t go out.” There, he asked himself: “What sounds do I hear? How am I feeling?” To up the eeriness even further, he depicted most of the creatures at dawn or dusk, surrounded by wisps of fog.

The Pukwudgie.

Some of the legends, like the Loveland Frog, have local or regional roots. Stories of the Mothman have flitted around West Virginia as well as Ohio. (The two states were linked by the Silver Bridge until 1967, when it collapsed, resulting in dozens of deaths.) The Pukwudgies—little troll-like creatures spiked with quills—are hallmarks of Wampanoag and Algonquian stories, Chudzinski says. Others are Midwestern twists on other, established creatures. The Grassman, Moore says, is clearly a relative of Bigfoot or Sasquatch (though the Ohio version is said to be surlier than its Pacific Northwest counterpart).

Many have spawned local traditions or swag. The Loveland Frog earned its own musical (Hot Damn! It’s the Loveland Frog), and the Great Lakes Brewing Company sells a beer called the Lake Erie Monster, a seasonal Imperial IPA it markets with a logo of a menacing, wave-riding serpent.

These creatives are elusive, and the stories about them have an element of shapeshifting too. The legend of the Loveland Frog may actually be a mangling of the telling of an extraterrestrial encounter, said to have occurred in the 1950s, according to the exhibit.

The Mothman.

The Mothman story has changed too. In November 1966, the Associated Press reported alleged sightings of the Mothman in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, just across the bridge from Gallipolis, Ohio, and described the creature as a “gray and white ‘thing’” that looked like a “man with a 10-foot wingspan who flies after cars at 100 miles per hour.” The AP noted that the creature was winged, but didn’t mention anything about the searingly red eyes that would figure into later accounts.

Even as cryptids evolve in the popular imagination, the people who helped stoke their stories sometimes wind up recanting. After Sam Jacobs claimed to see the Loveland Frog in August 2016, Mark Matthews—the gun-slinging patrolman from 1972—got in touch with WCPO to call bull on the whole thing. He hadn’t seen a creature standing on its hind legs, he clarified—it had scuttled under a guardrail. And the body wasn’t lost to the river—he had put it in his trunk, certain that it was just a very large iguana. “It’s a big hoax,” he said.

The new exhibition doesn’t adjudicate the tales it tells. But it does make a curiously compelling case that murky accounts belong in the annals of history, shoulder to shoulder with real-world artifacts. They all help us understand the stories a place shares about itself.

FISH WITH A HUMAN FACE!

Fish With Human Face Stuns China!

A bizarre piece of footage out of China shows a fish that seems to sport the face of a human. The eerie video was reportedly filmed by a tourist visiting the city of Kunming earlier this week. While stopping a popular pond in the area, she caught sight of a strange fish, said to be a carp, in the water that appeared to possess the eyes, nose, and mouth of a person. The astounded witness mused to someone nearby "the fish has become a fairy, it has a human-like face."

The video quickly went viral in China after it was posted to the social media site Weibo with viewers offering all manner of opinions on the odd creature. Fortunately, there was nothing sinister or supernatural about the fish's unique 'condition' as the spooky visage was merely the result of markings on its body coincidentally resembling a face, likely 'enhanced' by the water. The phenomenon, so to speak, is actually not altogether rare for this particular species of fish as 'human-faced' carp spotted in England and Taiwan made similar headlines in recent years.



[SOURCE: Coast2Coast AM.]

Caught On Tape: Howl of a Bigfoot?

A chilling piece of footage from Canada features what appears to be a series of haunting howls coming from a forest and some suspect that the eerie screams could have come from a Bigfoot. The strange scene reportedly occurred earlier this month as Stargell Blackstar was grouse hunting with his wife and grandson at a rather remote wooded location around 30 miles Sioux Lookout, Ontario.

In a subsequent post of the video to YouTube, the bewildered witness says that the odd sounds lasted for around five minutes, but they were only able to film around 2 minutes of the weird event. In the footage, Stargell can be heard marveling "oh my God" as a number of unsettling howls repeatedly erupt out of the nearby forest.

At one point in the video, Stargell's grandson starts crying, which we imagine was a worrisome moment as the family probably would have preferred that whatever creature was behind the screams did not know they were there. To that end, some observers have suggested that the animal in question was the legendary Sasquatch. However skeptical viewers argue that the howls could have come from a moose or some other prosaic animal. 



[SOURCE: Coast2Coast AM.]

Canadian Professor Lost Her Job for Telling the Truth About ‘Endangered’ Polar Bears
James Delingpole | 27 Oct 2019

A Canadian university has frozen a zoologist out of her adjunct professor post as punishment for saying the unsayable about polar bears: that populations are thriving; that they are not endangered; that stories about how they are being caused to starve by melting summer sea ice are junk science #FakeNews.

Dr Susan Crockford is one of the world’s leading experts on polar bears and had held her post as Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada for 15 years.

But by speaking the truth about polar bears she fell foul of environmental activists who have long treated Ursus maritimus as one of the poster children for their “the Earth is doomed and it’s all our fault” narrative. As a result, without explanation, Crockford was ousted from her position at the university.

In an interview with Crockford this week for Breitbart News, I ask: ‘Do you think you’ve been blacklisted for telling inconvenient truths?’

She replies:

“Oh I absolutely do.”

Crockford’s “crime” was to point out that contrary to environmentalists’ computer projections, polar bear populations have increased, not decreased — despite “global warming”.

“What happened was that in 2007 there was a prediction that when sea ice declined to about 42 per cent below what it would have been in 1979 that two-thirds of the polar bears in the world would be gone. That would be 10 out of the 19 sub populations that exist.

But what has happened, we find from research, is that bear numbers have not gone down but in fact have gone up by at least 16 per cent and probably more. So the bears are thriving despite the fact that sea ice has declined dramatically.”

The “polar bears starving because of melting sea ice” story has been a staple of the green scare narrative.

In 2017, for example, footage of an emaciated polar bear rummaging pitifully through trash cans became a huge international story.

The video for National Geographic attracted over two million views. It was set to tear-jerking music and accompanied by the utterly dishonest and misleading message “This is what climate change looks like.”

In fact, as Crockford explains, this was the purest green #FakeNews.

“Starving is the leading natural cause of death for polar bears. It just happens.”

If the polar bear was starving to death, it was likely the result of its being old or sick — not because of melting summer sea ice.

Crockford says:

“Polar bears do most of their feeding in the spring time, not the summer. Starving polar bears don’t tell us anything about populations.”

[SOURCE: Breitbart.com]

"Blob" Creature Mystifies Scientists

A fascinating new exhibit at a zoo in Paris showcases a mysterious and bizarre creature dubbed the 'Blob.' The strange slime mold, which will reportedly be unveiled to the public for the first time this coming Saturday at the Paris Zoological Park, boasts an array of odd and rather wondrous characteristics that have left scientists scratching their heads. "The blob is really one of the most extraordinary things on Earth today," marveled museum director Bruno David, "it's been here for millions of years and we still really don't know what it is."

What makes the blob remarkable is that it lacks eyes, a mouth, a stomach, a brain, and a nervous system, yet it can accomplish a number of things which should seemingly be impossible. For example, the creature was stunningly able to navigate its way through a maze in order to find food, which it subsequently somehow consumed. Noting that the weird slime is apparently capable of memory, adapting its behavior, and solving problems, David observed that it seems to behave "like a little animal."

To that end, however, David noted that "we don't really know if it's an animal, if it's a fungus, if it's in between." The creature is made all the more confounding by the fact that it also boasts incredible healing powers and, if merged with another of its kind, can inexplicably share information with its counterpart. And, amazingly, in one experiment, scientists cut the creature into multiple pieces and it managed to reconstruct itself in a manner akin to what one might expect from a science fiction film.

Named after the 1958 Steve McQueen film The Blob, this particular form of the perplexing organism has been known to scientists for nearly 50 years, yet continues to astound researchers by what it is capable of doing and how it appears to defy classification. Ultimately, David mused that "the blob is a living being which belongs to one of nature's mysteries." And, adding one more achievement to the list, the creature is likely to become a star attraction at the zoo, despite resembling nothing more than a small puddle of goo.


.
[SOURCE: Coast2Coast AM.]

A Cultural Historian Explores an Old Mental Hospital, and Why They Scare Us
They are haunted, but not by ghosts.
By Troy Rondinone | 31 October 2019

RISING 200 FEET OUT OF the hills of rural West Virginia, a clock tower looms over a vast and empty collection of buildings that once housed thousands of people diagnosed with mental illness. After being shuttered for more than 20 years, since 2007 the Weston State Hospital has been open for business again under its original name—the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum—and caters to tourists interested in some combination of history and the paranormal. Some buildings are off-limits and most of the site is without electricity, but a considerable portion of it awaits the curious and the brave. As I pulled in to the vast, park-like grounds, the imposing, cut-stone main building leered in the late afternoon sun. The architecture is Gothic-inspired, and the windows dark—like it was made to evoke a sense of dread and mystery. But this is precisely not what the builders wanted to inspire.

I’m an academic historian of American culture at Southern Connecticut State University, and my trip to the Trans-Allegheny began years earlier, when I saw it featured late one night on a ghost-hunter television show. What was it that made this place so scary? Was it always that way? (According to the Travel Channel, the hospital is one of the 10 most haunted spots in the country.) I spent the next five years tracking the dark narrative of mental hospitals through fiction, memoir, film, media, and art. I watched hundreds of movies, read scores of novels, and pored over heaps of periodicals. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that Americans have always been deeply invested in what goes on within the walls of these institutions, and I began to understand why. The term “asylum” itself, which has negative connotations today, was originally used to evoke confidence, safety, and security. How and why this changed is part of this longer story of stigma, fear, and horror. A “ghost tour” through the Trans-Allegheny is the logical end of the story. Or perhaps, more precisely, the opening of another chapter.

THE TRANS-ALLEGHENY WAS ONCE AMONG the most expensive buildings in the United States. Ground broke on this massive collection of sandstone buildings in 1858, with the forced work of incarcerated African-American laborers, and continued on and off through the 1950s. Situated on over 300 acres, it was designed to evoke optimism and the spirit of reform that gave birth to similar mental hospitals around the country, beginning in the 1830s.

These public works were sold as monuments to healing, mansion-like and airy, with cutting-edge medical treatments and scientific architecture. Inside, a person committed there was said to encounter occupational therapy, medication, hydrotherapy, even hypnotherapy. Superintendents boasted that the older methods—chaining up the “mad” in basements—had been abolished. Straitjackets and strong rooms, it was said, would be used only sparingly. Clean air, baths, simple food, and healthful activities were considered cures for disorders of the mind, and the reported “cure” rates were—at least at first—terrific.

These “asylums”—the word in common use at the time—were meant to feel like a refuge, but were also products of a very different understanding of mental illness. As such, they also employed high doses of opium, bleeding, harsh purgatives, and devices such as the “Utica Crib” and the “phrenological hat.” Still, the institutions were not operated as though they had something to hide. Tourists were encouraged to visit, and postcards and even patient newspapers were printed for public consumption. In 1842, Charles Dickens called on a number of mental facilities during his American tour. He was famously unimpressed by Blackwell’s Island Asylum in New York, but found the Connecticut Retreat for the Insane in Hartford “admirably conducted” and the Boston Lunatic Asylum to be a place embodying “enlightened principles of conciliation and kindness.”

But even in those years, exposés, novels, and short stories began to cast America’s asylums as mysterious, even sinister. In 1833, one Robert Fuller called the McLean Asylum for the Insane in Massachusetts a “tyrannical Institution” and a “dungeon.” Isaac Hunt’s 1851 description of the Maine Insane Hospital told of a “most iniquitous, villainous system of inhumanity, that would more than match the bloodiest, darkest days of the Inquisition or the tragedies of the Bastille …” Pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft locked her protagonist up in an asylum for her controversial 1798 novel Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman. Edgar Allan Poe set a dark comedy, “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether,” at the fictional Maison de Santé hospital, where the protagonist encounters a mad doctor who lords over a topsy-turvy world ruled by the patients.

Without a firm understanding of the causes of mental illness, or more advanced pharmaceutical or therapeutic options, these places were never going to achieve their goal of humane treatment of mental illness—a goal we still grapple with today. By the end of the 19th century, the hospitals were clearly overwhelmed. Stays grew longer, treatments were revealed as ineffective, and conditions worsened markedly. And thanks to a widely copied 1890 New York state law that made the state wholly responsible for the care of people with serious mental illness, patients kept flooding in. Overworked doctors tried dangerous new drugs and treatments, or simply neglected their charges. Things were even worse in the segregated, “colored” hospitals for African Americans, which typically had much lower budgets and fewer treatment options. In an effort to reverse the bad publicity, superintendents started renaming their institutions “hospitals.” It made little difference.

The demise of these big state hospitals began in the late 1960s, spurred by the widespread availability of thorazine (called the “chemical lobotomy”), a new Medicaid provision that funneled federal mental health funds to nursing homes, and a new emphasis on outpatient care. Deinstitutionalization of mental illness emptied many struggling hospitals, but also put many former patients, damaged by their institutional quarantine, on the streets and in prison.

This larger historical arc is mirrored, beat for beat, in the history of the Trans-Allegheny. Inspired, like many of the large state hospitals, by physician-reformer Thomas Story Kirkbride, it was designed for “moral treatment.” Kirkbride’s animating idea was that space, air, and rest would cure most cases of mental illness, hence the wings were set back in a staggered pattern to facilitate maximum light and air into each ward, and the grounds were planned with pleasant walkways, lawns, and fish ponds. Renamed the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane by the new state government of West Virginia in 1863, it welcomed its first batch of 20 patients in fall 1864. By 1881, the massive clock tower and the fourth wing of the main structure were completed, at significant cost to the state. It was touted as the largest hand-cut stone building in America.

The hospital was designed for 250 patients, but by the end of the century there were nearly 500 in residence. Intake diagnoses included “hereditary,” “epilepsy,” “menstrual,” and “masturbation.” By that time the cure rate was reported as 26 percent, much lower than earlier levels. Another name change, to Weston State Hospital in 1915, reflected a lack of confidence in the operation of the hospital, and within a couple of decades, the patient population was more than 2,000. New treatments, such as electroconvulsive therapy and lobotomies, were introduced. The crowding increased and conditions further declined.

By the time the hospital closed, at the tail end of nationwide deinstitutionalization, in 1994, it had lived through the lifecycle of just about every American mental hospital: early optimism, local boosterism, poor results, declining conditions, overcrowding, and finally desperation and closure. As with other hospitals, Weston shut its doors after years of diminishing support and patient numbers.

The grand old abandoned asylums carry the weight of a heavy past. Many are Kirkbride structures: massive faces, extended bat-like wings, tall ceilings, and extensive facilities. Cupolas and towers top many of them, which look castle-like. Nature has reclaimed many of the forgotten ones, which makes them alluring and hazardous. Hydrotherapy tubs, ventilation pipes, broken toilets, empty bed frames, and rotting dance floors: The mental hospital has become core to the idea of “ruin porn.” And for good reason. These features that these sites are known for, frankly, have long been associated with hauntings in popular culture.

Some states have declared their abandoned hospitals strictly off-limits, citing health hazards, including asbestos. Some hospitals have been repurposed. Fairfield State in Newtown, Connecticut, for example, has recycled and updated some of the buildings for municipal functions, and added a large youth sports complex to the site. Others, such as Blackwell’s Island (on what is now called Roosevelt Island) combined demolition with extensive refurbishment to create luxurious private living and commercial spaces. And then there are the hospitals that have entered the paranormal tourist trade.

In 2007, a contractor purchased the derelict Weston building from the state at auction for $1.5 million. The new owners revived its original, more frightening, less socially acceptable name, and began a program of limited restoration and courting of audiences interested in history or that like a good scare. The employees at Trans-Allegheny report that the site, as an attraction, has been a great boon to a local economy, which calls to mind the civic optimism that came along with its construction in the 19th century.

I arrived at Trans-Allegheny in the afternoon, and my experience began with a historical tour led by a docent dressed as a nurse. She explained the history of the buildings in great detail and related the stories of some of the patients with sensitivity and a modern understanding of mental illness. We meandered through a section of the central building, including a small museum, medical facilities, and the parklike courtyard in the back. A few spaces, such as one well-appointed hallway section, have been renovated to their midcentury splendor, with period furniture, fresh paint, and carpeting. In other places peeling paint and grimy floors spoke to the fact that most of the building has been untouched since 1994, and in many cases much earlier.

BUT I HAD SIGNED UP for more than the history experience. I was to return that night for the “Ghost Hunt,” in which about 30 visitors were allowed to see much more of the hospital between 9 pm and 5 am. I arrived that evening with a thermos of Starbucks, some snacks, a notepad, a headlamp, and a Ghost Meter EMF sensor (purchased online for $39.95). I wanted to understand the place that the old asylums have taken in the modern American imagination.

The large group was broken up into teams of 10 or so, and each was led through tours of different floors within the massive central building and its attached wings. The guides related history and legend and then let us wander freely for an hour or so in each new area. Walking through such a dark space is disconcerting and disorienting by itself. With my headlamp on a subdued setting, I could make out objects and doors but little else until I got close up. There were many times that I found myself alone. The hallways were staggered, and opened onto bedrooms, offices, bathrooms. One section had a row of cells. Wheelchairs seemed to have been strategically placed. My EMF device remained quiet.

In one area, a guide told me about Big Jim, who, it is said, murdered another patient with a bedpost. Here was the process for contacting him. Sit in the dark room and unscrew the head of your flashlight until bulb and battery lead are just disconnected. Then ask Big Jim a question and wait to see if his spirit would make the connection to make the light flicker on. There was some flickering, which means that it was at least a very good story to tell your friends later. I returned there later, after the tour, and sat in the dark room across the hall, my headlamp off, curious if something would happen—some noise or creak or visual artifact of the kind that tends to inspire ghost stories.

There was nothing, but that didn’t make it any less terrifying.

As the night went on, I continued patrolling the dark halls, sometimes away from the group, and I heard the sounds and thought I saw things in the shadows (though nothing that couldn’t be explained a dozen ways by animals, architecture, and the psychology of the unknown). I entered rooms and sat as still as I could. I checked that ghost meter. If there was a sensation that stuck with me, it might be the smell of old cigarette smoke—a direct sensory connection with the departed residents, it seemed. I’m a scholar, a skeptic, someone who knows how, over the years, a drumbeat of movies, rumors, horror stories, and more have made the classic American state mental hospital into an object of terror—maybe the most haunted class of buildings in the country. I know all that. But it’s impossible not to be affected by this.

These abandoned hospitals still have a lot to teach us. And sometimes that’s what’s most scary about them. None of us visitors slept that night, but rather spent the whole time exploring. I left in the light of the morning, tired but glad that I had had the experience. I neither saw nor heard any evidence of the supernatural, but I recalled all the stories and films from my years of research and started to see them in a new way. We, as a society, created these horrors, in allowing the overcrowding and decline of places of healing, in the stigmatization of people with mental illness, in the mistreatment of even the staff. Something about spending the night in the facility let me trace this path of hope and despair for myself.

[SOURCE: Atlas Obscura.]

How Mexico’s Most Sorrowful Spirit Became a Cultural Phenomenon
As America’s immigrant population grows, so does La Llorona’s cultural stature.
By Winnie Lee | 30 October 2019

DURING THE MAKING OF THE 2019 horror movie The Curse of La Llorona, some of the cast and crew were convinced that the spirit of La Llorona—Spanish for The Weeping Woman—lurked about. They were spooked by inexplicable cold chills and exploding jewelry on set, unexplained flickering lights and screaming dreams.

“We did have some creepy supernatural occurrences,” the director, Michael Chaves, told the Los Angeles Times. “Half the crew actually does believe the house that we shot in was haunted, and there might have been something to that.” Actress Patricia Velasquez added, “I think she was there just making sure we were doing right by her.”

In the film, the titular character is the ghost of a mother from 17th-century Mexico who drowned her sons and now haunts the living with her inconsolable crying. Dressed in white, she spends her days looking for other children to steal.

Off the screen, La Llorona is a well-known and pervasive legend who serves as a cautionary tale for multiple generations in Latinx households, often invoked to scare kids and stop them from misbehaving. Known throughout Central and South America but most often associated with Mexico, her story varies according to who tells it.

In some versions, she’s an indigenous woman who’s so enraged by her husband’s infidelity that she vengefully murders their children in a nearby river, then drowns herself in grief and remorse. In other versions, she blames her offspring for her lover’s desertion and throws them to their death in the river.

Regardless of which version is told, each tale results in her being doomed to wander the earth, always near water, wailing for her little ones (and thus earning her sad name). What earns her a scary reputation, is that La Llorona doesn’t just kidnap youngsters. She also brings woe and death to those who hear her cries or get in her way.

“The versions of the story we see today—including movies (The Curse of La Llorona, Mama, and La Leyenda de La Llorona) and television shows (the series Grimm)—all emphasize the spooky or frightening aspects of the story,” says Domino Renee Perez, author of the book There Was a Woman: La Llorona from Folklore to Popular Culture and associate chair of the English department at the University of Texas at Austin. “That this wandering woman who weeps will get you if you don’t watch out.”

Other, more complex versions of the grieving woman exist. She’s sometimes associated with Doña Marina, or La Malinche—the Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast who served as an interpreter, adviser, and mistress to Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, bore his child, and was then deserted by him (to compound her misery, she’s sometimes portrayed as a traitor for siding with the Spanish).

Other times, the mourning lady is thought of as an Aztec goddess whose weeping was an omen that predicted the Spanish arrival and ensuing slaughter of indigenous groups—an aggrieved deity who continues to weep to this day.

In Xochimilco, a section of Mexico City that’s called the Venice of Mexico, during an open-air theatrical spectacle that bears her name, La Llorona is portrayed as a woman warrior who kills herself and her baby to avoid leaving her land and people, swearing vengeance against the Spaniards. The performance—which has taken place each year on the water since 1993, to coincide with the Day of the Dead—was created to promote the history, ancient cultural traditions, and natural beauty of Xochimilco’s water canals, which date back to pre-Hispanic times.

Ultimately, what ties all these different stories together is the thread of overwhelming grief. “It’s a story about loss,” says Perez, “and the many ways that the woman at the center of the story chooses to respond to that loss. It’s also about how a community responds to her actions.”

Though her actions can be interpreted in a variety of ways, La Llorona has recently become more visible outside the Latinx population—not just in the arts and media but in mundane items such as cocktails and towels. Her myth may date back centuries, but her growing popularity today is a sign of the times, says Perez: “I think that as the Mexican-American and Mexican-immigrant populations continue to grow [in the U.S.], more and more of our stories, cultural practices, and customs are finding their way into the mainstream.”

For the Latinx community, The Weeping Woman is such a familiar and subjective subject, says Perez, that she’s malleable enough to be more than just a tool to discipline naughty kids. In fact, she can be—and is fast becoming—a potent and enduring cultural symbol.

“The story also has a timelessness to it,” says Perez, “dating back to pre-conquest portents foretelling, for some, the fall of the Aztec Empire and extending into the present, where thousands of women are being separated from their children at the border. La Llorona remains relevant, and as long as she does, her story will continue to be told.”

[SOURCE: Atlas Obscura.]