“It’s astounding. Time is fleeting. Madness takes its toll!”---Time Warp
Admit it….you think this country’s on a fast train to Looneyville. There’s plenty of evidence, after all, including a hefty percentage of the population which is trying to elect Jabba the Hutt the next president. New genders are rising up daily, folks are eating massive amounts of kale, maniacs are shooting up the ballet and there are disturbing rumors of people willingly moving to South Dakota. Even worse, there are no more real kickoffs in professional football---the players just have a friendly comingle, drink a little tea and start on first down. It’s a scandal.
Before you sell all your stock in Cracker Barrel and move to La Rinconada, consider this; it’s not just us. Sophisticated countries like France and Northumberland have been associated with lunacy and mass hysteria since Medieval times. One famous Middle Age incident involved The Cat Nuns of France. Life in a convent is no bed of roses with its celibacy, poverty, hard work and unquestioning obedience to authority. Understandably, every so often a sister goes off the tracks, like the one who suddenly started meowing for no apparent reason. At the time, cats were not highly revered; more often they were associated by the lower classes with Satan and witchery. Before long, other nuns joined in, then the whole convent. It eventually became chorus-like, with caterwauling continuing on for several hours a day, which the neighbors found offputting, to say the least. When all the attempted solutions failed, the army was called in to quell the cacophony by whipping the meowing nuns into submission. “Absolutely unnecessary” protested one of them. “We would have been more than willing to renegotiate our contracts.”
Meanwhile, across the Rhine, a 15th-century German nun suddenly began biting the other sisters in her convent. Before long, the behavior spread and the convent was full of crazed nuns running around biting each other. Witchery or mere lunacy? Word of the Biting Nuns Outbreak went international and convents as far north as Holland reported outbreaks of nun-biting. The hysteria also traveled south and crossed the Alps into Italy. When prayers and masses failed, the Church resorted to exorcisms and the casting out of devils and demons, to no avail. At wits’ end, Church leaders resorted to flogging or dunking in water any nun who bit another. After a few examples were made of rulebreakers, the nuns finally came to their senses and the biting mania finally subsided, to the everlasting regret of The Jerry Springer Show.
Still Crazy After All These YearsThink you could swallow a nail? How about 453 of them? One patient at St. Joseph’s State Lunatic Asylum #2 in Missouri did just that. Then again, it is the Show Me State. We’re not sure whether the Guinness Book of Records recognizes such feats, but if not, they should. If Joey Chestnut gets props for gobbling down 83 very soft hot dogs, what about a guy who puts away 38 dozen big stickers? This accomplishment is one of many enshrined at the Glore Psychiatric Museum inside the Asylum, which is sort of like a Met Museum for the disturbed. Many exhibits at the Glore are intended to give visitors life-size visuals of what mental health treatment devices looked like in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and include surgical tools, doctors’ notes and diabolical equipment that will scare the devil out of you. There is also a gallery which features offbeat and sometimes scary creative works of art by patients past and present. But heck, you can see that kind of stuff every day at Chuck LeMasters’ house.
Speaking of lunatic asylums, as we so often do, it’s almost that time again. Halloween, a big favorite among the insane, is celebrated full-tilt at the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia, which provides ghost hunts, paranormal tours, a haunted house and close to 100 crazed actors trained in the art of scaring the hell out of people. “We have a lot of support from the crazies in the community and we really appreciate people coming to see us,” says Michell Graham, Events Manager at the asylum. “You don’t really have to be crazy to enjoy our festivities, but it helps.”
Alternatives:If you can’t make it to your favorite asylum this year, here are a few tasty alternatives:
In Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, a 20-foot neon green witch-head balloon floats over a costumed crowd of 180,000 at the annual Sea Witch Festival. Our favorite Wiccan, Bron Beynon of Tampa, will lead contestants in the fabled Broom Throwing Contest, which is preceded by the annual Dog Costume Parade. Arf arf!
What started as an unfortunate tale in Manitou Springs, Colorado is now a creative ritual. Legend has it that Emma Crawford and her coffin were washed away in a 19th-century landslide, never to be seen again. The town rightfully decided to honor Emma in an annual Coffin Race for which teams meticulously decorate their coffins, place an Emma inside and haul ass down the street, trying to beat each other’s times. If you’re weak, slow and unartistic, don’t give up---they can always use a few more Emmas.
If you happen to find yourself in New Orleans at Halloween, and why wouldn’t you, don’t forget the Endless Night Vampire Ball, where Venetian masquerade ball-with-vampire-court meets rock concert meets 19th century burlesque cabaret. This beloved NOLA event taps into the city’s haunted reputation, penchant for voodoo and longstanding affinity for vampires, and inevitably falls into decadence and debauchery. A good opportunity to flash your Steampunk garb and try a Bloodbath Cocktail. Maybe the only opportunity.
If you’re a history nerd, how can you beat Halloween in Salem, Mass., witch capital of the world? Salem’s Haunted Happenings is the largest annual Halloween celebration anywhere, a month-long festival with over half a million visitors arriving to explore 17th-century Witch Trial sites as well as the infamous Burying Point Cemetery. Highlights of the affair include the Grand Parade, the Haunted Biz Baz Street Fair and scary film nights. “Science fiction double feature---Frank has built and lost his creature.”
Advice For Future CorpsesSince this is the Season of the Witch and dead bodies are fair game, let’s continue with our headliners du jour, the nuns. In particular Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, OSB, the founder of the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, who died in 2019, though you’d never know it. When the Gower Abbey community just outside Kansas City dug her up recently to move the body into the monastery’s chapel, Sister W. looked pretty much the same as she did while clapping erasers and twisting kiddies’ earlobes several years ago. What’s up with that?
Maybe she just had a top of the line casket impervious to bacteria? Nope. The coffin had a large crack in it through which water could enter. The Catholics in the area went nuts, hopping up and down at the apparent miracle. Scores of rabid pilgrims descended on KC to witness the scene. Church leaders retired to their belfries to consider sainthood. The phenomenon of incorruptibility is not common, but there are more then 300 saints whose bodies were exhumed centuries after their deaths which showed no sign of physical decay. St. Cecilia, the first of them, was martyred somewhere between 177-230 AD and nearly 1500 years later her remains were exhumed and her body was discovered to be perfectly preserved, as if she were asleep in the same position in which she’d been buried.
We know a lot about human decomposition because those clever forensic scientists have created body farms to study human decomp under various conditions. Without embalming and in a neutral climate and not in a coffin, body remains liquify into a dark sludge at around 30 days. The body will skeletonize anywhere between one month and several years, depending on the environment, burial, etc. If undisturbed, bones will dissolve in 20 years in fertile soil, though in sand they might last for centuries. So what keeps this from happening in the cases of Wilhelmina, St. Cecilia and many others?
First, embalming can preserve a body for long periods of time. Second, a closed anaerobic environment will slow things down since bacteria responsible for much of the tissue breakdown need oxygen. But a large percentage of uncorrupted bodies have no such protection.
In a small town high in the Colombian Andes, Clovisnerys Bejarano kneels before a glass box holding the petrified corpse of her mother, who died 30 years ago but looks as if she might just be asleep. Saturnina Torres de Bejarano is dressed in the same rose-print dress and green woolen jersey she was interred in, clasping a fake red carnation in her eerily well-preserved hands.
“She still has her little brown face, her braids, her hair,” Bejarano remarked at her mother’s final resting place in a museum displaying her body and those of 13 others from the town of San Bernardo. All became spontaneously and mysteriously mummified after death. “When all this began, people were a little incredulous about what was happening,” said museum guide Rocio Vergara. “But as time went on, it became more and more frequent to find bodies in this condition.” Some even had their eyes, usually among the first body parts to decompose.
Despite numerous attempts by experts to explain the phenomenon (which has also occurred in countries such as Mexico and Italy), the reason for the spontaneous mummification in San Bernardo has never been pinned down. There is no clear pattern to the uncorruptibles, they were different ages when they died, of no particular gender or body type. The climate of the area is humid, which should aid in decomposition. Locals prefer to believe that some bodies were spared because “the person was so good,” says Vergara. “The people think it is a reward after death by God.” Then he stands back to look at one of the corpses and his slight smile morphs into a look of concern. “But you know, Senor, I am not so sure of that. There are others who consider it a punishment.”
Tales Of The Ghost Car (Best read in a dark cemetery at night by a hippie on LSD. But you’ll do.)It was a dark and stormy night, foreboding even for Halloween. Lightning flashed, thunder rolled and rain pelted down to lock everyone in place. Alas, poor Timothy, never the bravest of souls, was left on his own at a motel in the middle of nowhere after a foolish argument with his girlfriend Roseanne. The power was out, the phones useless and Tim decided the only possible way out was to hitch a ride on the lonely road which fronted the motel. He stood in his doorway, half blinded by the swirling storm, contemplating a dreadful fate. Then, providence reared its head…a vehicle slowly approaching from the west, dark in color with no headlight beams to light the night. Timothy tried to wave it down, but the mystery car had no intention of stopping. In desperation, Timmy did a very uncharacteristic thing—he ran alongside the creeping vehicle, hoping the driver had slowed down to pick him up. Tim was wrong.
Sopping wet, Timothy snapped open the door and jumped into the passenger seat, thrilled to be saved. When he looked to his left, however, he was shocked to see there was no driver. This ghost car was headed who knows where on its own power in its own good time. The sole passenger was terrified but decided to stay put and wait for signs of electricity along the dark and spooky highway. Adding to his discomfort, the driver’s side window was down, admitting inside the furies of the storm. Timothy tried to raise it but it seemed locked in position. Tim had an eerie feeling that the vehicle---and the entire night--- was laughing at him, positioning him for some dire fate. Then something shocking happened.
Timothy’s conveyance faced a sharp curve up ahead, but showed no sign of turning. Suddenly, a ghostly white hand appeared from nowhere and turned the wheel, then it completely disappeared. Tim had his head in his lap, he wished to see no more of this but he felt he had to watch the road. When another curve appeared, the hand returned and Timothy was beside himself with fear. Was this car taking him directly to hell? Would he ever find a way out of this nightmare?
Then, incredibly, lights appeared ahead…neon enticements from a small tavern…a possible oasis from his dastardly plight. Salvation was at hand! Timothy leaped from the car and ran inside the pub, grateful to be alive. And no, the bar was not full of vampires waiting to suck the blood out of him, just plain folks like you and I. Tim sat himself down for a bracing drink and surveyed the customers---a friendly lot, all in all, and in surprising numbers considering the brutal conditions outside. But then, like a shot from a gun, the front door banged open and two drenched customers stumbled in, dripping wet and very angry.
“There he is, Joe!” one of them yelled to the other, pointing directly at Timothy. “There’s the asshole who jumped in our car while we were pushing it!”
That’s all, folks….bill.killeen094@gmail.com