Links, Curiosities & Mixed Wonders – 17

Model Monique Van Vooren bowling with her kangaroo (1958).

We’re back with our bizarre culture column, bringing you some of the finest, weirdest reads and a new reserve of macabre anecdotes to break the ice at parties.
But first, a couple of quick updates.

First of all, in case you missed it, here’s an article published by the weekly magazine Venerdì di Repubblica dedicated to the Bizzarro Bazar web series, which will debut on my YouTube channel on January 27 (you did subscribe, right?). You can click on the image below to open the PDF with the complete article (in Italian).

Secondly, on Saturday 19 I’m invited to speak in Albano Laziale by the theater company Tempo di Mezzo: here I will present my talk Un terribile incanto, this time embellished by Max Vellucci’s mentalism experiments. It will be a beautiful evening dedicated to the marvelous, to the macabre and above all to the art of “changing perspective”. Places are limited.

And here we go with our links and curiosities.

In the 80s some lumberjacks were cutting a log when they found something extraordinary: a perfectly mummified hound inside the trunk. The dog must have slipped into the tree through a hole in the roots, perhaps in pursuit of a squirrel, and had climbed higher and higher until it got stuck. The tree, a chestnut oak, preserved it thanks to the presence of tannins in the trunk. Today the aptly-nicknamed Stuckie is the most famous guest at Southern Forest World in Waycross, Georgia. (Thanks, Matthew!)

Let’s remain in Georgia, where evidently there’s no shortage of surprises. While breaking down a wall in a house which served as a dentist’s studio at the beginning of the 20th century, workers uncovered thousands of teeth hidden inside the wall. But the really extraordinary thing is that this is has already happened on three other similar occasions. So much so that people are starting to wonder if stuffing the walls with teeth might have been a common practice among dentists. (Thanks, Riccardo!)
The state of Washington, on the other hand, might be the first to legalize human composting.
Artist Tim Klein has realized that puzzles are often cut using the same pattern, so the pieces are interchangeable. This allows him to hack the original images, creating hybrids that would have been the joy of surrealist artists like Max Ernst or Réné Magritte. (via Pietro Minto)

The sweet world of our animal friends, ep. 547: for some time now praying mantises have been attacking hummingbirds, and other species of birds, to eat their brains.
According to a NASA study, there was a time when the earth was covered with plants that, instead of being green, were purple.
This year, August 9 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most infamous murders in history: the Bel Air massacre perpetrated by the Manson Family. So brace yourselves for a flood of morbidity disguised as commemorations.
In addition to the upcoming Tarantino flick, which is due in July, there are at least two other films in preparation about the murders. Meanwhile, in Beverly Hills, Sharon Tate’s clothes, accessories and personal effects have already been auctioned. The death of a beautiful woman, who according to Poe was “the most poetical topic in the world“, in the case of Sharon Tate has become a commodity of glam voyeurism and extreme fetishization. The photos of the crime scene have been all over the world, the tomb in which she is buried (embracing the child she never got to know) is among the most visited, and her figure is forever inseparable from that of the perfect female victim: young, with bright prospects, but above all famous, beautiful, and pregnant.
And now for a hypnotic dance in the absence of gravity:

Meanwhile, Hollywood’s most celebrated actors are secretly 3D-scanning their faces, so they can continue to perform (and earn millions) even after death.
In the forests of Kentucky, a hunter shot a two-headed deer. Only thing is, the second head belonged to another deer. So there are two options: either the poor animal had been going around with this rotting thing stuck between its horns, for who knows how long, without managing to get rid of it; or — and that’s what I like to think — this was the worst badass gangster deer in history. (Thanks, Aimée!)

Dr. Frank Netter’s illustrations, commissioned by pharmaceutical companies for their fliers and brochures, are among the most bizarre and arresting medical images ever created.
This lady offers a perfect option for your funeral.
Who was the first to invent movable-type printing? Gutenberg, right? Wrong.
Sally Hewett is a British artist who creates wonderful embroided portraits of imperfect bodies. Her anatomical skills focus on bodies that bear surgical scars or show asymmetries, modifications, scarifications, mastectomies or simple signs of age.
Her palpable love for this flesh, which carries the signs of life and time, combined with the elegance of the medium she uses, make these artworks touching and beautiful. Here’s Sally’s official website, Instagram profile, and a nice interview in which she explains why she includes in all her works one thread that belonged to her grandmother. (Thanks, Silvia!)

Prof Andrew Chestnut, a Santa Muerte expert, has written together with prof. Kate Kinsbury a very interesting article on the recent surge in exorcisms across the world, which is likely caused by the growth of Pentecostalism in Christianity.
The feud between the two greatest 17th-century Dutch anatomists, Govert Bidloo and Frederik Ruysch, was essentially a battle over which kind of aesthetics this new science should have.
The feud between the two greatest seventeenth-century Dutch anatomists, Govert Bidloo and Frederik Ruysch, was essentially a battle on the right aesthetics to be given to this new science.
In closing, here is the danse macabre according to British animator Ciriak:

Welcome To The Dollhouse

Jul20

Anatoly Moskvin, a linguist and philologist born in 1966 in Nizhny Novgorod, had earned the unquestioning respect of his fellow academics.
He fluently spoke thirteen languages, and was the author of important studies and academic papers. Great expert of Celtic folklore and of Russian funerary customs, at the age of 45 he was still living with his parents; he refrained from drinking or smoking, collected dolls and it was murmured that he was a virgin. But everybody knows that geniuses are always a little eccentric.

Yet Anatoly Moskvin was hiding a secret. A personal mission he felt he had to accomplish, driven by compassion and love, but one he knew his fellow citizens, not to mention the law, would have deemed crazy.
That very secret was to seal his fate, behind the walls of the mental institute where Anatoly Moskvin now spends his days.

Nizhny Novgorod, capital of the Volga District and the fifth Russian city, is an important cultural centre. In the surroundin areas several hundred graveyards cand be found, and in 2005 Moskvin was assigned the task of recording all the headstones: in two years he visited more than 750 cemeteries.
It was a tough job. Anatoly was forced to walk alone, sometimes for 30 km a day, facing harsh condistions. He had to spend many nights outdoors, drinking from puddles and taking shelter in the abandoned barns of the inhospitable region. One night, caught in the dark, to avoid freezing to death he found no better option than to break in the cemetery burial chamber and sleep in a coffin which was already prepared for next morning’s funeral. When at dawn the gravediggers arrived, they found him sleeping: Anatoly dashed off shouting his excuses – among the general laughter of undertakers who luckily did not chase after him.

The amount of data Mskvin gathered during this endeavour was unprecedented, and the study promised to be “unique” and “priceless”, in the words of those who followed its development. It was never published, but it served as the basis for a long series of articles on the history of Nizhny Novgorod’s cemeteries, published by Moskvin between 2006 and 2010.
But in 2011 the expert’s career ended forever, the day the police showed up to search his home.

Among the 60.000 books in is private library, stacked along the walls and on the floor, between piles of scattered paper and amidst a confusion of objects and documents, the agents found 26 strange, big dolls that gave off an unmistakable foul odor.
These were actually the mummified corpses of 26 little girls, three to 12-year-olds.
Anatoly Moskvin’s secret mission, which lasted for twenty years, had finally been discovered.

Celt druids – as well as Siberian shamans – slept on graves to communicate with the spirits of the deceased. For many years Anatoly did the same. He would lay down on the grave of a recently buried little girl, and speak with her. How are you in that tomb, little angel? Are you cold? Would you like to take a walk?
Some girls answered that they felt alright, and in that case Anatoly shared their happiness.
Other times, the child wept, and expressed the desire to come back to life.
Who would have got the heart to leave them down there, alone and frightened in the darkness of a coffin?

Anatoly studied mummification methods in his books. After exhuming the bodies, he dried them with a mixture of salt and baking soda, hiding them around the cemetery. When they dried out completely, he brought them home and dressed them, providing a bit of thickness to the shrunken limbs with layers of fabric. In some cases he built wax masks, painted with nail polish, to cover their decomposed faces; he bought wigs, bright-colored clothes in the attempt of giving back to those girls their lost beauty.

His elderly parents, who were mostly away from home, did not realize what he was doing. If their son had the hobby of building big puppets, what was wrong with that? Anatoly even disguised one of the bodies as a plush bear.

Moskvin talked to these little bodies he had turned into dolls, he bought them presents. They watched cartoons together, sang songs, held birthday parties.

But he knew this was only a temporary solution. His hope was that science would someday find a way to bring “his” girls back to life – or maybe he himself, during his academic research, could find some ancient black magic spell that would achieve the same effect. Either way, in the meantime, those little girls needed to be comforted and cuddled.

“You can’t imagine it”, said during the trial the mother of one of the girls Moskvin stole from the cemetery and mummified. ”You can’t imagine that somebody would touch the grave of your child, the most holy place in this world for you. We had been visiting the grave of our child for nine years and we had no idea it was empty. Instead, she was in this beast’s apartment. […] For nine years he was living with my mummified daughter in his bedroom. I had her for ten years, he had her for nine.”.

Anatoly replied: “You abandoned your girls in the cold – and I brought them home and warmed them up”.

Charged with desecration of graves and dead bodies, Moskvin faced up to five years in prison; but in 2012 he was declared suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, unfit to stand trial, and thus sentenced for coercitive sanitary treatment. In all probability, he will never get out of the psychiatric institute he’s held in.

The little girls never awoke.

Moskvin’s story is somehow analogue to the ones I told in this series of posts:
L’amore che non muore – I (Italian only)
L’amore che non muore – II (Italian only)
L’amore che non muore – III (English)

Il corpo del gigante

Mar21

We have already told many stories about the big family of human wonders, those unique and peculiar people that we call freaks – but in the affectionate meaning, to claim diversity as a value, as something to be proud of.
As happens to many freaks, the life of Edouard Beaupré began in a completely ordinary way and without any presage of an extraordinary future. Born on January 9, 1881, Edouard was the first child baptized in the small community of Willow Bunch, in the Canadian prairies, that today has less than three hundreds inhabitants.

He was the eldest of the twenty children of Florestine Piché and Gaspard Beaupré, and during the first three years of his life, he didn’t show any distinguishing mark; but things were soon to change. The child began to grow at incredible speed: at the age of nine, he was already 1.83 metre tall. The boy’s body continued to steadily grow in weight and stature, and it was impossible to check his prodigious development.

All things considered Edouard was still a handsome boy, sweet and kind, a very skilful rider, and dreamt of becoming a cowboy. But luck was definitely not on his side: one day, while he was trying to tame an over-excited horse, the animal planted a violent kick on his face and the hoof broke his nasal septum.

Now the giant was also disfigured. Pressed by his parents, he therefore decided to enter the show business, relying on his extraordinary body, in order to financially support his family.
Edouard started touring Canada and the United States and his popularity grew until he was even hired by Barnum & Bailey, the biggest and most popular of all circuses.

Gigantism often involves bone and muscle problems and most giants, in spite of their body size, are very fragile and weak. This was not the case of Edouard Beaupré, whose physique was at the heart of his show: he merged, so to speak, two different traditional sideshow figures in one single performer – he was at the same time a giant and a strongman.

His show consisted of several trials of strength and weightlifting. But it was the final coup de théâtre that invariably left the audience amazed and breathless. Edouard had one of his beloved horses called on the track. He playfully explained that, when he was a boy, he had given up on his dream of becoming a cowboy because, even when he was riding the tallest horse, his legs touched the ground; now he used the animal to keep himself fit… this said, Edouard bent under the horse and, shouldering the beast, lifted it above the ground. Thus lifting more than 4 hundred kilos.

On the 25th March 1901 Edouard, although exhausted by a disease that the following year would turn out to be tuberculosis, had a wrestling match with Louis Cyr, who is still considered the strongest man of all times – he could lift 227 kilograms with a finger and carry almost two tons on his back. On that occasion Edouard was officially measured: he was 2.37 metres tall. The match lasted a very short time: the giant was defeated in the twinkling of an eye because he did not even dare touch the great champion. According to those who knew him well, maybe Edouard – who was kind by nature – was afraid to hurt his opponent.

On the 3rd of July 1904, after his usual performance at the Saint Louis World’s Fair, Beaupré collapsed. The steady and inexorable growth, and tuberculosis had prevailed over his physique and caused a pulmonary hemorrhage. When he was carried to the hospital, Edouard was at death’s door and just had the time to mutter how sad it was to die so young and so far from his parents. So the famous Willow Bunch Giant passed away, when he was only 23.
But this was not the end of his story.

A certain Dr. Gradwohl carried out a post-mortem on his corpse and, as expected, found a pituitary tumour that had probably caused Edouard’s gigantism. Then the corpse was entrusted to the care of a funeral firm, Eberle & Keyes, to be embalmed and prepared for burial. The corpse should have returned to Edouard’s home village, but the circus manager, William Burke, convinced the Beaupré family that costs would be too high and that Edouard would be given a proper burial also where he was. When his parents gave their consent, they didn’t suspect that Burke was not willing to pay a penny. Burke cut and ran after making his parents believe that the funeral had been held and that their son was buried in St. Louis cemetery. He left the corpse at the funeral home and left again with the circus heading to another town.

The managers of the funeral home, enraged because they hadn’t been paid, decided to display the giant’s body in the shop window in order to recover the expenses for the embalming. This did not last for long, because after a few days the police asked to remove it from the public views. So began the odyssey of Edouard’s corpse: at the beginning it was sold to a traveling showman, then was brought back to Montréal by a friend of the Beaupré family, Pascal Bonneau. There it was exhibited for six months at the Eden Museum in Rue St. Laurent, a sort of squalid wax museum; and yet the queue people formed to see the giant was so long that it blocked the street. Around 1907 the corpse became the propriety of the Montréal Circus, another waning reality. Exhibited on a catafalque, the embalmed corpse was an easy prey to dampness, that damaged it, until the circus went bankrupt. Accused of “unauthorised corpse exhibition”, the proprietors left Edouard’s remains in a shed in Bellerive city park. Horrified, some children discovered it, while they were playing in the park.

“Huge body of man found by children to Bellerive Park – a lush but poor part of town. The local doctor was called, and I was notified that it was in the presence of a giant human. The condition of the remains is not specified. I bought this amazing discovery with high hopes for the search and examination. The doctor asked me for sneaking that can cost such a treasure. I told him to bring the corpse, a lot.” These words were noted down on the journal of Dr. Louis-Napoléon Délorme – who was fond of deformities – that paid 25 dollars for Edouard’s body. Considering the poor conditions of the corpse, he went on to mummify it, and used it for several dissections with his students at the Montréal University. The giant finally found a new accommodation, at the Faculty of Medicine, where it was potted in a display cabinet.

Edouard Beaupré remained there until the 1970s, when his nephew Ovila Lespérance asked the University to return the remains of the giant of Willow Bunch to his family. In 1989 the academic committee consented to the cremation of Edouard’s remains, that on the 7th of July 1990 were finally inhumed in the small Canadian town. Today a life-size statue reproduces Beaupré’s features and tourists can also compare their own feet to the track left by a shoe of the gentle giant. Who, after 85 years of vicissitudes, rests in peace at last.

The contents of this article are mostly taken from The Anatomy of Edouard Beaupré, by Sarah Kathryn York.

Il Lago Natron

Oct6

Nel giro di due giorni ci sono arrivate una dozzina di segnalazioni riguardo alcune bellissime foto che, evidentemente, sono diventate virali proprio in queste settimane: quelle degli animali “pietrificati” del Lago Natron. Sembra esserci anche un po’ di confusione sull’argomento, e per questo ci siamo decisi a trattarlo qui.

Primo chiarimento: gli animali ritratti nelle foto non sono pietrificati, ma ovviamente mummificati. Il Lago Natron, in Tanzania, è un lago salino di bassa profondità, la cui concentrazione di sodio è tale da rendere l’acqua viscosa al tocco: non solo, attira colonie di cianobatteri responsabili per la caratteristica colorazione rossa-arancione delle sue acque.

Il lago prende il suo nome dal natron, il carbonato idrato di sodio, un sale minerale che nell’antico Egitto veniva utilizzato proprio per imbalsamare le mummie. Gli egiziani lo raccoglievano dal letto dei laghi alcalini ormai secchi, e lo utilizzavano per le sue proprietà prosciuganti ed antibatteriche: se immergete un corpo nel natron, esso ne risucchierà tutti i liquidi e, contemporaneamente, i microorganismi responsabili della decomposizione saranno mantenuti a distanza.

Secondo chiarimento: gli uccelli ritratti nelle foto non sono morti così, sono stati messi in posa. Dovrebbe essere superfluo specificare una cosa tanto ovvia, ma molti sembrano aver frainteso il lavoro del fotografo Nick Brandt e hanno immaginato che il Lago Natron sia un qualche tipo di trappola mortale per qualsiasi animale vi si avvicini. In realtà gli animali, morti per cause naturali, sono caduti nelle acque del lago e sono stati preservati per diversi mesi dai sali che esse contengono. Brandt li ha “ripescati”, e posizionati per ottenere esattamente l’effetto voluto.

La cosa forse più interessante della nicchia ambientale del Lago Natron è che, nonostante esso sia piuttosto inospitale per la maggior parte delle forme di vita, non è affatto disabitato: sulle rive, infatti, dove sorgenti minerali calde moderano la salinità dell’acqua, proliferano alcuni tipi di alghe; queste alghe sono un cibo particolarmente ricercato da una specie di tilapia – un pesce tropicale – che vive nei pressi delle sorgenti, e dai fenicotteri.

Infatti, a dispetto di quello che suggeriscono le fotografie, il Lago Natron è uno dei luoghi di nidificazione principali per i fenicotteri. Questi ultimi non soltanto riescono a filtrare, con il becco, le alghe dall’acqua salata, ma addirittura sfruttano a loro vantaggio l’ambiente poco confortevole: costruiscono i loro nidi fangosi vicini alla riva, in modo che la poca acqua che li circonda (viscosa, imbevibile, dall’odore nauseabondo) costituisca un efficace deterrente per i predatori.

Il lago, con i suoi microorganismi, batteri, alghe, piccoli pesci e fenicotteri è dunque piuttosto vivo – eppure anche i suoi giorni sono contati. Alle alte temperature africane, il bacino ha una grandezza che varia in continuazione, a seconda del carico di acqua piovana che vi si riversa, ma il suo destino inevitabile è quello di prosciugarsi del tutto. Come altri laghi alcalini prima di lui, una volta secco si trasformerà in una bella distesa di erba e piante che spuntano dal suolo ricchissimo di sali minerali.

(Grazie a tutti coloro che ci hanno scritto!)

Sokushinbutsu

Aug11

I Sokushinbutsu erano dei monaci buddhisti giapponesi che, applicando una tecnica antichissima, forse importata dalla Cina, causavano la propria morte nel tentativo di divenire dei Buddha. Fin qui, niente di strano: quale religione non conta fra i suoi proseliti degli asceti pronti a tutto pur di raggiungere il Paradiso?

Ma i Sokushinbutsu hanno qualcosa che li rende unici. La loro tecnica consisteva nel raggiungere uno stato di auto-mummificazione che avrebbe reso il loro corpo incorrotto e virtualmente eterno.

Tutti conosciamo le mummie egiziane, o quei corpi antichi recuperati dai ghiacci siberiani. Ma qui siamo di fronte a una vera e propria arte della preparazione della salma, mentre questa è ancora in vita.

Il procedimento era complesso e richiedeva una forza di spirito e una pazienza notevoli. Per 1000 giorni (poco meno di tre anni) i preti dovevano nutrirsi con una dieta speciale consistente in noci e semi, prendendo inoltre parte a un regime di attività fisica che eliminava ogni traccia di grasso dai loro corpi. In seguito, dovevano mangiare soltanto corteccie e radici per altri mille giorni, bevendo unicamente tè velenoso tratto dalla linfa dell’albero Urushi, normalmente usato come lacca per verniciare le tazze. Questo causava vomito e una rapida perdita di fluidi corporei, ma soprattutto rendeva il corpo troppo velenoso per essere divorato dagli scarafaggi.

Infine, il monaco auto-mummificante si chiudeva in una tomba di pietra di poco più grande del suo corpo, e lì restava senza muoversi mai dalla posizione del loto. I suoi unici collegamenti con l’esterno erano un tubo per l’aria e una campana posta all’esterno della tomba. Ogni giorno il monaco suonava per far sapere che era ancora vivo.

Quando la campana smetteva di suonare, il tubo veniva rimosso e la tomba sigillata. Dopo altri 1000 giorni, i monaci aprivano la tomba per controllare che la mummificazione fosse andata a buon fine.

Se i corpi mostravano una perfetta mummificazione, venivano immediatamente esposti nel tempio per l’adorazione. Spesso, però, quello che i monaci trovavano era un semplice cadavere decomposto. Anche se non erano considerati veri Buddha, questi resti venivano onorati per la loro dedizione e la loro forza di spirito.

Questa pratica sembrava estinta da secoli, finché un mese fa è stato rinvenuto un corpo di un vecchio che avrebbe tentato di raggiungere lo status di Buddha seguendo questa ricetta.

La Cripta dei Cappuccini

May2

Se capitate a Roma, vi consigliamo di ritagliarvi un quarto d’ora per una visita indimenticabile. Proprio all’inizio di Via Veneto, la famosa strada delle celebrità di Roma, frequentata da signore ingioiellate, attrici glamour e ambasciatori internazionali, si trova la Chiesa di Santa Maria Immacolata, al cui interno è conservato uno dei santuari più impressionanti e, a nostro avviso, suggestivi d’Italia. Un luogo non soltanto consigliato a chi avverte il fascino e il gusto del macabro, ma anche a chi vuole passare qualche minuto di sincera meditazione e di confronto con se stesso e il proprio senso.

La Cripta dei Cappuccini era l’ossario in cui venivano conservati i resti dei frati, e contiene le ossa raccolte durante le periodiche riesumazioni dal 1528 fino al 1870. In questo esiguo spazio si è calcolato che siano conservati i resti di 3700-4000 frati cappuccini. Verso la metà del 1700, con interventi successivi, questo luogo di sepoltura, di preghiera e di riflessione venne trasformato in un’opera d’arte. Nel 1775 il Marchese De Sade lo visitò e ne lasciò una suggestiva descrizione.

La Cripta è suddivisa in 6 piccole cappelle adiacenti: la cripta della Resurrezione, la cappella per le messe, la cripta dei teschi, la cripta dei bacini, la cripta delle tibie e dei femori, e la cripta dei tre scheletri.

Le ossa adornano i muri, il soffitto e sono posizionate a creare fantasiose ed elaborate composizioni allegoriche che ricordano la caducità dell’esistenza e l’inesorabile fine che ci attende. Un memento mori di rara bellezza, nel quieto silenzio delle volte ricoperte di ossa e scheletri. Assieme alle ossa, sono conservati alcune salme mummificate vestite con il tipico saio, alcune in piedi, altre sdraiate in nicchie curvilinee.

Teschi affiancati a scapole che fanno loro da ali, lampadari formati con costole e altre ossa, baldacchini di bacini, pendagli di vertebre, rosoni formati da mandibole e ossi sacri… la vista si perde in questi ornamenti barocchi e macabri.

Notevole è l’ultima cappella, quella chiamata “dei tre scheletri”, che ci svela l’intimo senso dell’opera. Due scheletri di bambini (della famiglia Barberini) sorreggono con una mano un cranio alato. Uno scheletro sottile (la “principessa Barberini”) tiene in una mano una falce, e nell’altra una bilancia: segni rispettivamente della morte livellatrice, che miete tutti indistintamente come l’erba di un prato, e del giudizio divino dell’anima, che soppesa opere buone e cattive. Ma questo scheletro è inserito all’interno di una mandorla, segno di vita che rinasce. La morte, dunque, non è che il seme di nuova vita.

Una targa, infine, ci sorprende perché dona voce a tutti questi scheletri – pensavamo di essere noi ad osservare quelle centinaia di orbite vuote, ma forse è accaduto proprio il contrario. Incisa sulla targa, una frase semplice ma toccante: “Noi eravamo ciò che voi siete, e quello che noi siamo voi sarete”.