The Anatomical Machines, Giuseppe Salerno, C. 1756-64

There are 5 temples in Kyoto, Japan, that have blood stained ceilings. The ceilings are made from the floorboards of Fushimi Castle where Torii Mototada and his remaining 380 samurai warriors killed themselves, in 1600, after a long hold-off against an army of 40,000 for 11 days

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On March 20, 2012, a concerned relative requested the police in Waller, Texas to conduct a welfare check on the Sesler family as they could not get in touch with them. 

Upon arrival at the family’s home located in the 2400 block of Farr in Waller County, the officers knocked on the front door and announced their presence, but no one answered. Upon further investigation, they looked through one of the windows and noticed that the house was in complete disarray. As they looked through another window, they saw a body, indicating that the home was now a crime scene.

The responding officers kicked in the front door and searched the rooms one by one. It took them just a matter of seconds to take in the gruesome scene. In the master bedroom, Lawton and Rhona Sesler were found surrounded by a pool of their own blood. In the bathroom, they discovered the lifeless body of their 26-year-old son, Mark.

One person was missing from inside the home, the couple’s other son, Trey Sesler, a 22-year-old successful YouTuber known as “Mr. Anime.”

𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞:

https://morbidology.com/mr-anime-the-massacre-of-the-seslers/

Judy Garland rose to an unimaginable fame at just 17-years-old when she starred as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. However, from the age of 13, Garland had starred in other MGM productions beforehand. Garland developed an eating disorder and a drug addiction courtesy of MGM who had branded her a “fat little pig with pigtails.” 

MGM put her on a strict diet and would even go as far as to physically remove food from her possession so that she could not consume it. She was only a young teenager when she developed an eating disorder, living on a diet of chicken soup, coffee, and cigarettes.

Garland had a gruelling schedule, sometimes even working up to 18 hours a day. To combat fatigue and hunger pangs, she would be piled with amphetamines and barbiturates. To help her sleep, she would be given sleeping tablets. It’s not much of a shock that Judy Garland became addicted to drugs and ultimately, they would cause her untimely demise at the age of 47.

The Cannibal House Part 3 (pt. 1 | 2) — Armin Meiwes had a lonley childhood. His father left when he was young, with his two half-brothers following soon after. This left him alone with his controlling and strict mother that would often criticize him in public and insist on going everywhere with him. After his mother’s death in 1999, he was given ownership of their large mansion. It is rumoured that he created a shrine for his mother in the house, which included a mannequin that he would lay on a pillow each night. Even to this day, her closet is still filled with her clothes. Meiwes was arrested only three years after his mother’s passing, which suggests that her death may have fuelled his obsession with cannibalism.

The Mysterious Deaths of Mary Morris and Mary Morris

May 23, 2022

On October 12, 2000, Mary Lou Morris (48 years old) left her house to go to work, where she worked as a bank loan officer and was never seen again. Her husband Jay tried calling her throughout the day, but did not hear back from her. Mary Lou also never showed up to work. 

A badly burned body was found in the remains of a car shortly after and the body was identified as Mary Lou Morris. She was found only three miles from her home. Because her body had been so badly burned it was hard to tell what her cause of death had been, and homicide wasn’t really on the table because there was no reason for it. Mary had no enemies and appeared to be well liked. 

Three days after Mary Lou Morris was found deceased, the body of another woman was found deceased in her car in almost the same spot and nearly the same circumstances as Mary Lou Morris had been found in. The strangest part? This woman was also named Mary Morris, Mary McGinnis Morris to be exact and she had been 39 years old at the time of her death. 

Mary McGinnis Morris was a nurse practitioner who was in charge of various clinics and it was discovered that she had actually been afraid of a man she worked with. One night, Mary had found her office in disarray, and noticed that on the man’s desk it said, “Death to her” written on it. Mary told her husband, Mike, that she had wanted a gun to be able to protect herself, and she kept it under her car’s driver seat. 

A few weeks later, Mary McGinnis Morris met with her friend, a woman named Laurie Gemmell to give her an allergy shot. Laurie claimed that Mary seemed fine and told her she was staying at the clinic for a few more hours, then she was going to run errands before going home and making dinner. Later that day, Laurie said she got an alarming phone call from Mary, telling her that she had seen someone in the drug store that gave her the creeps. 

Mary told Laurie she was going to go back to work, sign off on her computer and go home. Twelve minutes after this phone call Mary called 911. She was frantic, claiming she had been abducted and attacked. She was found dead shortly after this and it was determined that she had been beaten and then shot to death. The killer staged the scene to make it look like a suicide, and investigators found blood on the passenger door, that was left open with the keys outside of the car. 

The coworker Mary was afraid of and her husband Mike became suspects. Mike Morris claimed he was at the movies with his daughter at the time of the murder, but he did refuse to take a polygraph test and did not allow his daughter to be interviewed. He hired an attorney after the murder and investigators discovered that Mike and Mary were having problems in their marriage. 

Shortly before Mary was murdered, Mike had confronted her about an alleged affair she was having with a friend. There was also a $700,000 life insurance policy on Mary and Mike had called Mary’s cell phone around the time that she was murdered. The call lasted 4 minutes, and it was believed that Mike had been calling the killer, though Mike claimed he called Mary and she just didn’t answer and also that the 4 minutes was a mistake the phone company made; the call did not last 4 minutes according to Mike.

Because there were so many similarities between Mary Lou Morris and Mary McGinnis Morris, many theories have arose as to how two women, living in the same area, with the same name, could be killed only days apart. 

One of the first theories was that a contract had been put on Mary McGinnis Morris’ life, but the killer had accidentally killed Mary Lou Morris. Realizing the mistake, the hitman then went and killed the intended target, Mary McGinnis Morris, a few days later. A person had apparently called into a Houston newspaper who said that this was true. This makes sense because the two Mary’s lived in close proximity to one another and were similar in appearance. 

Investigators believe that these two murders are just a coincidence, but many of the women’s families do not. If the cases are not related, then there are no suspects in the death of Mary Lou Morris. The coworker is the obvious suspect in Mary McGinnis Morris’ death. 

A strange part about Mary Lou Morris’ case is that 6 months after her death, her husband received a $2000 bill for his wife’s phone card. Police eventually traced this phone card to a 16 year old girl who told them she had found the purse with the card and other belongings the month prior, just sitting in a parking lot of a Galveston convenience store. Mary Lou’s family did not recognize the purse as being hers. Jay Morris also received three phone calls from someone asking for Mary and the caller has never been identified. 

Is it possible these two women were killed coincidentally only days apart? 

Were there ever any Western depictions of the himantopodes? They became popular in the Middle East but I've never seen any European art of them...

i've never heard of them before and i don't remember seeing anything like that, but i'll keep an eye out for them. i'm not an expert though. maybe some professional art historians/medievalists etc know more?

for context (from the wikipedia article on iranian folklore): "Himantopodes (davālpā): an evil creature that uses its flexible, leather-like legs as tentacles to grip and capture human beings. The captives will be enslaved and forced to carry the creature until they die of fatigue."

Here's a more in-depth lexicon entry

“ Okmulgee, Oklahoma fire crews say they had a bizarre lightning strike call at the Oxford Apartments overnight. They say lightning came through the vent in the roof and struck the toilet, shattering it.“

I will accept precisely one form of toilet humour and it is jokes about these three pictures.

The Bleeding House on Fountain Drive

One day in Sept of 1987, Atlanta Georgia resident, Minnie Winston awoke to find dark red splotches of blood in several rooms (on both the walls and floor) of her house. There was blood on the bathroom’s lower walls, the kitchen, living room, bedroom, hallways, and basement. Blood was also found in a crawlspace and under a television set.

The police came, collected samples of the blood and sent them to the state crime lab. It was concluded that the blood samples belonged to a human but the police had no idea where it came from. It didn’t belong to either Minnie or her husband. There was no evidence of a break-in or wrong doing. The couple had never witnessed anything like this before and were terrified. Given the amount of blood they found, it appeared to have been placed, or dripped, on the spot from a very lively source. In other words, someone inside their home had been bleeding profusely. To this day, there has been no explanation of how the blood got there and who it belonged to. The source of the blood was never found.

NY Times Article

Additional Source (since NY Times has a paywall now)

This picture belongs to Jewel, "I have written in the past concerning the image of my 9-yr old twin's caught w/ the digi cam. This is no joke and there has been no tampering with the photo. The spooky thing is...she swear's she was alone when this image was captured and I for one believe her because My Camera is off limit's and I know who’s in my house. The camera is new and there's no way she would use it around someone. We have tried to figure out who the image is...guess what, were still trying. My family and I are all really spooked. It's just really phenomenal that it's real & we know it's real because when thing's happen none of us are the cause. TV's come on by themselves, thing's move & there is no one near them to touch them."

Source

I know people on tumblr looove stories of underwater cave diving, but I haven't seen anyone talk about nitrogen narcosis aka "raptures of the deep"

basically when you want to get your advanced scuba certification (allowing you to go more than 60 feet deep) you have to undergo a very specific test: your instructor takes you down past the 60+ foot threshold, and she brings a little underwater white board with her.

she writes a very basic math problem on that board. 6 + 15. she shows it to you, and you have to solve it.

if you can solve it, you're good. that is the hardest part of the test.

because here's what happens: there is a subset of people, and we have no real idea why this happens only to them, who lose their minds at depth. they're not dying, they're not running out of oxygen, they just completely lose their sense of identity when deep in the sea.

a woman on a dive my instructor led once vanished during the course of the excursion. they were diving near this dropoff point, beyond which the depth exceeded 60 feet and he'd told them not to go down that way. the instructor made his way over to look for her and found a guy sitting at the edge of the dropoff (an underwater cliff situation) just staring down into the dark. the guy is okay, but he's at the threshold, spacing out, and mentally difficult to reach. they try to communicate, and finally the guy just points down into the dark, knowing he can't go down there, but he saw the woman go.

instructor is deep water certified and he goes down. he shines his light into the dark, down onto the seafloor which is at 90 feet below the surface. he sees the woman, her arms locked to her sides, moving like a fish, swimming furiously in circles in the pitch black.

she is hard to catch but he stops her and checks her remaining oxygen: she is almost out, on account of swimming a marathon for absolutely no reason. he is able to drag her back up, get her to a stable depth to decompress, and bring her to the surface safely.

when their masks are off and he finally asks her what happened, and why was she swimming like that, she says she fully, 100% believed she was a mermaid, had always been a mermaid, and something was hunting her in the dark 👍