EVERYDAY STRANGE - The Man in the Cauldron: The Matamoros Killings, Pt. I

El Padrino's nganga [image source]

MATAMOROS, MEXICO - On March 13, 1989, 21-year old med student Mark Kilroy disappeared while vacationing across the Texas border on Spring Break. On April 11, 1989 his body (along with 14 others) was discovered buried on a ranch belonging to Adolfo de Jesus Costanzo, known to his underlings as El Padrino. Mark had been the victim of a horrific Palo Mayombe ritual, of which El Padrino was an avid practitioner.

In Palo, the adept has a sacred urn or cauldron called an nganga. The nganga is the source of the Palo practitioner’s power and what is put into it, is said to come back. For example, if the practitioner wants physical strength, he or she may put animal muscles into the nganga, if they want youth, they will put in the blood of a young chicken. El Padrino got the idea to use human sacrifices, in lieu of animals, because he thought it would work better.

Mark Kilroy

During spring break 1989, Costanzo wanted more intelligence. He dispatched his underlings into the city of Matamoros, knowing that the border-town would be full of American students. These goons, were totally brainwashed and believed implicitly in El Padrino’s power, making them incredibly daring. They kept their ears open and waited for a young Americano to brag about his med school grades. When they had found their mark, they made their move.

They found Mark on a back street about a block away from the heavily populated main drag. They had stopped him while impersonating police officers. They became momentarily distracted and Mark ran for it. The goons shouted “Freeze,” and mark stopped dead in his tracks. He was just around the corner from disappearing into the throng of college age partygoers.

Instead he was taken back to the farm where he was tied up, blindfolded and held prisoner for an indeterminate period.

After he was killed, El Padrino added Mark’s brain to the cauldron, which when it was finally uncovered by police, was found to contain various other human remains, as well as snakes and spiders in a soup of blood.

When Mark’s friends realized that he hadn’t returned the next morning, they immediately contacted authorities on the Texas side of the border in Brownsville. This led to his eventual downfall. Costanzo might have continued his occult practices indefinitely if he hadn’t abducted a middle class white kid from the States.

Conservatively, roughly 1,000 murders take place every day around the world. However, few fates are as frightening or strange as what happened to Mark Kilroy on this day 26 years ago.

Sources:

Cauldron of Blood: The Matamoros Cult Killings by Jim Schultze (Avon Books, September 1989)

I’m listing the videos below as my sources on this story, but the true primary sources are long forgotten. I’ve been researching this case for years.

EVERYDAY STRANGE - The Patterson Disappearance

EL PASO, TX - William, 52 and Margaret Patterson, 42 were last seen on the night of March 5/6, 1957 at their home in the 3000 block of Piedmont Avenue in Kern Place, El Paso, Texas. Nobody knows what happened to them, they simply vanished from one day to the next. Their car was left in the driveway and the family cat was left to fend for itself. William owned a photography shop in town (Patterson Photo Supply)and it must have been an eerie sight for those that knew the couple had disappeared to see the shop sitting empty and unopened day after day.

Early on, a “business associate” claimed that the couple had gone on a sudden extended vacation to Florida. When the Pattersons still hadn’t returned after five months Cecil Ward, a friend and neighbor filed a missing persons report with the police.

A neighbor, Jeri Cash told police that she had been by the Patterson place the night they disappeared. She didn’t know the couple very well, but she said that Margaret seemed upset to her and William made it clear that he was annoyed that Mrs. Cash was there. Jeri and her family noticed “unusual activity” at the house later that night, but when Mrs. Cash told the police about what she had seen, they didn’t seem to care very much about her story.

Later, a letter appeared, alleged to be from a W.D. Patterson arranged to have William’s properties divided between Doyle Kirkland, a friend and manager at Doyle’s Photo Supply, his business auditor Herb Roth and a 24-year old employee at Patterson Photo Supply named Art Moreno. The letter seems strange because William had at least two known relatives, including his father and a sister. The signature on the letter was challenged. It’s unknown whether the letter was authenticated and honored.

Kirkland was also seen at the house the night the couple disappeared. He was in the garage with William working on a boat. In 1984, a man named Reynaldo Nangaray came forward claiming he had washed blood out of the Patterson’s  garage soon after the couple disappeared and that he’d found pieces of scalp on the propeller of the boat’s motor. In 1957 he was an illegal immigrant, he hadn’t come forward sooner because he’d feared deportation.

It wasn’t enough to take to a Grand Jury, however and the case remains open to this day.

Sources:

El Paso Times

El Paso Times II

The Doe Network

The Charley Project

EVERYDAY STRANGE - The Philippines Firestarter

SAN JOSE DE BUENAVISTA, ANTIQUE, ILOILO CITY - On March 5, 2011 a bizarre news story came out of the Philippines about a three year-old girl who could “predict” fires. The report was confirmed by the local mayor in the story after he allegedly witnessed the girl predict a spontaneous fire. Mayor Rony Molina put a fire truck on standby near the girl’s family residence.

The girl’s father originally claimed that she said there was going to be a fire at 9 a.m. Later, a spare tire for the motorized rickshaw he drove for his job burst into flame without contact with any visible ignition source. He checked his wristwatch, it was 9 a.m. The story was all the stranger in that the father claimed that the girl did not yet know how to tell time and that there were no clocks in the household.

After stories of the girl’s alleged power began to circulate throughout the area, one noted for deep roots in folklore and magic, mayor Molina paid a visit. While there the girl said that something was going to burn. Moments later a shirt that had been hung on the clothesline to dry burst into flame.

It has also been reported that the girl had the ability to point her finger, say the word “fire” and whatever object she was pointing at would suddenly erupt in flame. Of course, many of these reports are highly dubious and may ultimately be the result of rumor.

Unfortunately though, the little girl has not gotten through this story unscathed, news videos online show the girl’s legs and feet to be burned and scarred (see picture at right and video below). The girl was taken to be baptized as the cause of the fires was believed to be “evil spirits”. It was reported that during the baptism ceremony a paper flyer tacked to the church bulletin board caught fire. It was also reported that there is video of this incident, taken by one of the girl’s godmothers, but it has not materialized online.

A similar story came out a year later about a girl in Vietnam. Perhaps what the world needs is a real-life Charles Xavier.

People who exhibit or are alleged to exhibit the ability to predict, create or control fire with just their mind are called pyrokinetic. The term “pyrokinesis” was coined by author Stephen King in his novel “Firestarter”, about a young girl who could start fires with her mind. It has been pointed out that the term isn’t necessarily accurate, but was probably invented by conjoining “telekinesis” - the ability to move objects with one’s mind, with the ancient Greek word for uncontrolled fire, “pyro”.

Sources:

Gulf News

GMA News

ABS-CBN News

EVERYDAY STRANGE - The True Story that Inspired "The Exorcist"

“Your mother sucks cocks in hell!”

-Regan MacNeil (played by Linda Blair) in The Exorcist

Cottage City, MD - We all know the story, we’ve all seen the movie: priests battle intransigent demon, pea soup is spewed, floors are soiled, Christ compels with heads a-twistin’. Here are the details of the real-life events that inspired the novel, which inspired the movie, The Exorcist.

These are some of the details found in the diary of one of the priests involved in the exorcism.

13-year old “Roland Doe” used to play Ouija board with his “Aunt Tilly”.

On January 15, 1949, dripping noises were heard in his Grandmother’s bedroom. A framed picture of Christ shook on the wall and scratching noises could be heard under the floorboards. The scratching continued every night for 10 nights

On January 26 Aunt Tilly died of multiple sclerosis after which the family experienced three days of peace followed by six nights of squeaking noises on Roland’s bed.

The mother suspected Aunt Tilly’s death had something to do with the unexplained noises. During one episode, Mrs. Doe asked if it was Aunt Tilly making the noises. This was answered with three knocks. Mrs. Doe then asked to confirm it was her with four knocks. Four knocks reported.

The "Doe" Family household.

On February 17, Roland Doe spent the night at the parsonage of Lutheran minister Rev. Schultz. That night, the reverend heard scratching noises and witnessed Roland’s bed vibrating, a chair Roland was sitting in tipped over and a pallet of blankets he was sitting on moved across the floor.

On the night of February 26 and for the next three nights scratch marks appeared on Roland’s body. His parents thought they could make out words in the puffy red markings, but this was not confirmed.

Many of the details of the manifestations are similar to those in the Hornsey Coal Poltergeist story: household objects flying around on their own, a bottle of holy water flew across the room but did not break. But there are other fascinating events described. Roland was removed from his school classroom because his desk was moving around on the floor. Another time a rocking chair Roland sat in spun around. Roland was taken to be baptized and became enraged during the ceremony.

In all, it took 30 attempts for the exorcism to finally take. At the end of each session Roland would issue a stream of profanity laced with Latin phrases. The boy had been shuffled between DC and St. Louis for the duration.

On April 18 the ordeal finally came to an end when Roland’s voice deepened in a masculine tone and commanded the spirits to leave his body in the guise of St. Michael.

After an unnamed minister gave a talk at a public meeting of the Society of Parapsychology describing the Roland Doe story, stories began circulating in Washington, DC and Prince George’s County newspapers. The first such article to appear was credited to Bill Brinkley in the August 10 edition of the Washington Post. It was a tongue-in-cheek account of the reverend’s lecture. By August 20 however, Brinkley sang a slightly different tune. His highly detailed article is what inspired a then 20-year old English major at Georgetown University called William Peter Blatty to write his best-selling novel.

From the first the names and even places were changed, the Doe family was said to live in Mount Rainier. Many of the details of the case were unearthed by researcher Mark Opsasnick, who wrote a very long 5-part article that is well worth the time of anyone interested in finding out more about the background of and true story behind The Exorcist. You can find it at the link in the Sources section below.

All of the above information and most of the newspaper articles and Blatty’s book are taken from the diary mentioned at the beginning of this article. Though the diary references events from January to April, the writer did not meet with the family until March 9. Most of the details come from Roland’s mother, according to witnesses the boy’s father didn’t believe that he was possessed. Make no mistake, this exorcism actually happened but Roland Doe’s head never spun around and he never spewed green sludge (although there was some spitting).

According to eyewitness Father Walter Halloran the boy mimicked the priests when “speaking Latin”, he threw tantrums and yes, even a punch, but he did not possess inhuman strength, or any other inhuman capability. His voice didn’t “really” change. He did not urinate or vomit prodigiously.

What it sounds like is a sensitive and troubled young man momentarily unable to cope with one of the most emotionally intense times in a youngster’s life and being saddled with unwanted attention on top of it. Blatty made hundreds of thousands of dollars off of this story, the producers of the film made that amount many, many times over. I’ve never come across any information regarding Roland Doe seeing a penny from the story, but the one positive in all of this is that the world has allowed him to remain mostly anonymous. 

His real name is out there, you can find it if you look hard enough, but there’s really no need to because he’d just an average person. I feel like I know everything about him and that's just creepy when you think about it. The fact that he’s never revealed himself shows that he is not interested in re-hashing a couple of ill spent months in his early teens, despite the fact that he could have made a tidy profit in doing so.

Whether he is referred to as Roland Doe or Robbie Mannheim or Regan MacNeil doesn’t truly matter, just leave him be and keep his real name out of it. We all make mistakes in our youth, those of us who make the kind of mistakes that lead to multi-million dollar books and pictures deserve our awe and respect.

Sources:

This very long article turns out to be a very, very good read. One thing make me feel uneasy though. You ever get an inkling you’ve been had? This is probably a coincidence but the author’s name sounds like “Obsess-nik”. He was obsessed with finding out the truth behind this story and the suffix “-nik” describes someone who is attracted to or in the orbit of something like a “sputnik” or “beatnik”. It’s almost enough to inspire an Everyday Strange article in its own right.

The Haunted Boy of Cottage City by Mark Opsasnick

The original article that inspired Blatty to write his book:

Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip by Bill Brinkley

EVERYDAY STRANGE - The Brookfield Demon Murder

[Image source]

Brookfield, CT - On February 16, 1981 the 193-year old town of Brookfield, CT experienced its first murder when 19-year old Arne Johnson stabbed his landlord Alan Bono five times in the chest with a pocket knife. But that wasn’t the only precedent the act would set. In late October, facing a charge of manslaughter Johnson’s defense entered the plea of Not Guilty - by reason of demonic possession.

Roughly a year earlier, Ed and Lorraine Warren came to visit. You might remember them as the subjects of the recent film The Conjuring or nearly any made-for-TV program about ghosts or the paranormal in the late 1980’s / early 1990’s. Johnson’s girlfriend (Debbie Glatzel)’s 11-year old brother David Glatzel was being looked at for demonic possession. The Warrens swore it was a genuine case, though it seems they never met a paranormal case they didn’t love. But, it seemed the exorcism didn’t take. After Catholic priests presided over the boy, the infernal infection apparently remained. Arne, never particularly close to David, took the initiative to call upon the demons to leave the boy’s body and enter his own. Martin Minnella, Johnson’s lawyer argued that they did just that.

That decision turned the case into a national sideshow.

Minnella had “tapes” (audio or video is unrevealed) of the exorcism. Minnella still claims 34 years later that young David Glatzel spoke “the names of 42 demons in Latin, and that the Brookfield Police Chief was going to testify that he saw the child levitate”.

Minnella claimed that ‘demonic possession’ wasn’t synonymous with ‘insanity’, he was out to prove that demons exist. The Warrens also never seem to have met a camera they didn’t love and embraced their potential role as star witnesses. Minnella was prepared to have the Warrens testify to the existence of demons, and to produce the recordings of the exorcism including Johnson’s “challenge” to the demons but the plea was rejected by the court and the more conventional plea of self-defence was entered in its place.

The entire stabbing incident was found to be due to Bono’s having made an obscene remark about Debbie Glatzel’s dress, which Johnson took exception to. The two argued, things escalated, Bono wound up dead. Johnson was found guilty and served five years in prison.

The event gained colossal levels of media attention at the time and became known as “the devil made me do it case”. It even spawned a 1983 made-for-TV movie starring Kevin Bacon called The Demon Murder Case. It isn’t great. It’s no ‘The Exorcist’ that’s for sure, but tune in tomorrow for the real-life story that inspired the novel that the film was based on …

Sources:

Hartford Courant

People Magazine

Take a look at this My Life of Crime article for reams and reams of links

Post-Script: This story has a happy ending, Johnson married Glatzel while still in prison and the two remain together, today they are grandparents to two boys.

And here's The Demon Murder Case movie for your viewing pleasure. It also stars Andy Griffith and was directed by William Hale.

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Meth Vampire for Valentine's Day

“You Robert McDaniel swear no wrong will come to me Tiffany Lachelle Sutton due to tonight’s events … You also pass to me all your earthly powers wealth included.”

TEMPE, ARIZONA - 46-year old Robert McDaniel called his friend from a phone booth, confused and about to pass out from blood loss and exhaustion. Earlier, he had been restrained, sliced, punctured, stabbed and bled. After slipping his bonds he escaped the shack behind the abandoned house and ran across a field, drained and weak, his date chasing him with a pickaxe. When his friend arrived to pick him up, he still didn’t want to call the cops or go to hospital because of all the meth that had been involved. He was covered in blood and 23-year old Tiffany Sutton stood watching the scene, covered only in a blanket. Some people just have more fun on Valentine’s Day.

McDaniel barely knew Sutton, but on February 14, 2007 the two of them were drinking booze and smoking meth in a shack behind an abandoned house when McDaniel agreed to be tied up for what he must have thought was going to be a wild bout of kinky sex. Allegedly Sutton made him sign a waiver form beforehand in case the sex got “crazy”. The waiver form also included a stipulation that Mr. McDaniel’s worldly belongings become her property. Once he was tightly secured, Sutton pulled out the knives and pickaxe she just happened to have handy. McDaniel wasn’t sure what she was doing but began to wonder if he might die. Sutton claimed that she liked to drink blood and that she was going to drink his.

[Image source]

She sliced him across the leg and put her mouth on the wound. He told her he didn’t like what was going on, but she proceeded to stab him, then stab and slice him again, and again.

In all, McDaniel suffered seven stab wounds and was sliced multiple times. Sutton was arrested for aggravated assault. During the trial it was revealed that Sutton suffered from borderline personality disorder. Her mother insisted that Tiffany was “totally different” while on medication. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in a Maricopa county prison.

Sutton had been staying with McDaniel in the shack for a time before the incident though they barely knew each other. When the police had been by the evict the couple, Sutton drew blood when she dug her finger nails into the hand of one of the officers, for which she received a one year sentence which she served concurrently with her 10 year sentence. Though she’s appealed several times the conviction was never overturned.

Several Sutton fan websites popped up around the time of her arrest set up by the same person and she has become something of a kinky folk hero with one apparently lonely and desperate man (“Angelic Scars”) wishing to willingly have their blood drank by her every night. It goes to show that if there’s a variation on the theme of sex, no matter how dangerous or irresponsible, some kind of subculture will spring up around it.

If there’s a lesson to be learned here it’s to be sure you know who you’re smoking meth with this Valentine’s Day.

Sources:

East Valley Tribune

AZ Central

Crime Library

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Alligators in Sewers, NYC

“Salvatore yelled: "Hey, you guys, wait a minute," and got down on his knees to see what was the trouble. What he saw, in the thickening dusk, almost caused him to topple into the icy cavern. For the jagged surface of the ice blockade below was moving; and something black was breaking through ... "Honest, it's an alligator!" he exploded.”

NEW YORK, NY - An article appeared in the February 10, 1935 edition of the New York Times titled ‘Alligator found in Uptown Sewer’. It tells a surreal story about a group of youths shoveling snow into the sewer when one of them (Salvatore Condolucci) sees something moving weakly at the bottom. After identifying the moving thing as an alligator the group ties a lasso around its neck and hauls it ten feet up to the street. The reptile snaps feebly at the gang and they proceed to beat it to death with their shovels. It’s written in that white hot prose style common at the New York Times which blurs the line between fiction and journalism.

New York City’s former superintendent of sewers Teddy May talked about undergoing subterranean expeditions to root out the alligator problem. The first-hand accounts of Mr. May’s sewer safaris discovering “serenely paddling” colonies of ‘gators, then systematically hunting and destroying them were recounted in Robert Daley’s 1959 book, The World Beneath the City. From humble origins a legend too good to be true was born.

The consensus view of scientists is that alligators could not survive in the sewers beneath New York due to a confluence of hostile conditions: cold weather, lack of sun, food scarcity and pollution. But science is not conducted by consensus and appealing to a majority is a logical fallacy. Could the original Times article be true?

The author repeatedly describes the alligator as half-dead when it is found and states that its origin is a mystery and the subject of some debate and consideration. After it was bludgeoned to death the gator was taken to the Lehigh Stove and Repair Shop across the street where it was measured and weighed, then picked up by city workers and incinerated on Staten Island.

In 2009 Times publisher's son A.G. Sulzberger III ran a condescending blog piece about the alligators-in-the-sewer phenomenon. In it, Salvatore Condolucci, then 92-years old doesn’t retract the 1935 story. The fact that Sulzberger was able even to produce Condolucci speaks to the veracity of the original story. That the still living eye witness confirmed it is also worth considering, even though Sulzberg was careful to describe Condolucci’s memory as fading.

The “scientific consensus” would have you believe that there is no truth to the rumor that thriving colonies of alligators live or ever have lived in the sewers of New York, but could at least one have gotten down there by one way or another? Absolutely. Before the 1935 article appeared there was another incident three years earlier. On June 28, 1932 it was reported that "swarms" of alligators were spotted in the Bronx River and one was found dead on its banks. The conditions of a big city sewer are probably not as adverse to alligators as the scientists would have you believe, no matter how popular their opinions are among their peers.

These scientists have spread the rumor that ‘gators could not survive under these conditions, without scientifically verifying the idea. They seem to forget that alligators survived whatever it was that killed off the dinosaurs. Alligators are dinosaurs. They’ve been through climate changes, ice ages, lack of sunlight, all those conditions and survived as a species for 180 million years.

Lack of sunlight isn’t a problem, not if you want your gator to grow faster. It’s not the healthy choice for the sun-loving animal but commercial alligator farmers keep their livestock in the dark because it speeds the growing process.

Alligators have been found in sewers on numerous occasions in the southern states, even the wikipedia article on the subject lists multiple sources with links to news articles. You can even watch a video below taken in Florida of an alligator in a sewer.

There are food sources down there, nobody denies there are thriving rat colonies in the sewers of New York, and where one species thrives so must predator and prey. Though the sewer collects cold rain water, temperatures would be warmer in the sewers than on the streets due to heat energy released by decaying matter. But is it enough to support a colony of alligators? I’m not ready to say it’s impossible.

New York state isn’t saying it’s impossible either. Legislators have not taken any chances with the legend or tempted fate: it is now illegal to keep an alligator or its near-relatives as pets within state limits.

Sources:

The original NY Times article

The full Times article reproduced

Sulzberg Jr. blog piece

FAQ about Alligators and their kin

Snopes article with a listing of multiple incidents

1999 - Unexplained (2nd edition) by Jerome Clark, pp 389-90

EVERYDAY STRANGE - The Devil's Footprints

“Since the recent snow storms, some animal has left marks on the snow that have driven a great many inhabitants from their propriety, and caused an uproar of commotion among the inhabitants in general.”

- The Western Luminary & Family Newspaper for Devon, Cornwall, Somerset & Dorset. 13 February 1855

DEVON, UK - It was 160 years ago on this day, February 8, 1855 that one of the most enduring mysteries of the world took place. The people of Devon county, England awoke to find a mysterious track of seemingly bipedal footprints in the snow. The prints were spaced roughly eight to 16 inches apart and described as four inches in length and two and half to three inches wide. The tracks were uniformly single file. They were made by cloven hooves which led over top of buildings, through walls, haystacks, gates and enclosures stretching over a course of 100 miles from Exmouth to Topsham. Some apparently lucky villagers reported the tracks leading up to their front doors before retreating back again. They even continued across the two mile expanse of the River Exe estuary.

Kangaroos, badgers, otters, experimental balloons and freezing rain have all been offered as alternate explanations for the prints, but did this event even happen? Very little contemporary reports remain to this day, only a few survive, that there are contemporary accounts at all is encouraging.

River Exe estuary.

First mention of the mysterious case appeared in the February 13, 1855 edition of the Western Luminary in which local people were already ascribing the mysterious hoofmarks to the devil. But they did not cower in fear at the idea. Within hours of the discovery of the bizarre trail, searches were conducted to discover their cause, tracing the prints for miles. No one however, tracked the full 100 mile length of the marking. Had anybody even attempted to do so there wouldn’t have been enough time as the snow was not deep and fluctuating temperatures played havoc with the impressions. Initially, it was reported that the tracks covered an area of around 40 miles, which was deduced from various reports coming from several different towns in the county. After a few weeks interest in the story eventually died down and the Devil’s Footprints became something of a local legend and nothing more.

Interest in the story was revived by the ubiquitous Charles Fort in his 1919 work ‘The Book of the Damned’. By 1950 contemporary papers by Rev. H.T. Ellacombe were sent to the Devonshire Association which included tracings of the footprints and the draft of a letter to The Illustrated London News marked ‘Not for publication’ concerning the event. Ellacombe had even collected samples of the oblong globes of whitish excrement that had been found next to some of the tracks. He sent the samples off to naturalist Richard Owen without receiving a reply. The Ellacombe papers are the oldest surviving documents concerning the case. Another pivotal discovery was The Devil’s Footprints booklet published by G.A. Household which reprints many contemporary newspaper articles.

[Image source]

It was an anonymous letter writer (signed ‘South Devon’) to The Illustrated Times of London who first put forth the idea that the tracks were uniform in size and shape, traveled in single file over the course of 100 miles, surmounted a 14 foot high wall, climbed roofs and crossed the river estuary. The letter writer claimed to be an experienced woodsman, skilled in animal tracking and identification and appeared befuddled as to an explanation for the tracks. According to Rev. Ellacombe’s now recovered papers, ‘South Devon’ was actually a ‘young D’Urban’, a 19-year old resident of Newport House, Countess Wear. Young D’Urban would grow up to be a respectable, reputable man, but youthful ‘enthusiasm’ seems to have gotten the better of him here. It is D’Urban’s falsified account of the events which colors them to this day.

So, was the devil really in Devon on this day 160 years ago? Some believe the entire story was a satirical fabrication, formulated to criticize the local church which had recently changed their standard prayer book. One thing is sure, the event now known as the Devil’s Footprints certainly happened, though not as mysteriously as it is remembered. It’s entirely possible that the prints really were made by unidentified animals, possibly migrating fowl. It seems that it was the unidentifiable nature of the prints that had captured the public’s collective imagination, not the tracks anomalous behavior.

In 2009 the mystery was revisited when a woman awoke to find a track of cloven footprints in her back garden. It would have been the perfect time to come up with a valid explanation for the 1855 case, an investigator looked into hares as the possible culprit. No follow up reports were found.

Sources:

Anybody interested in this mystery event owes a huge debt of gratitude to Mike Dash whose exhaustive 1994 survey of research materials has been an invaluable resource into the study of The Devil’s Footprints.

The Devil’s Hoofmarks (white paper by Mike Dash)

The Complete Books of Charles Fort, pp.305-10.

The Daily Mail

The London Telegraph

BBC

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Cacti's Revenge

No matter how ignorant we may be to the secret life of cacti, we rarely think of the plant as capable of revenge.

[Image source]

LAKE PLEASANT, AZ - “Cactus plugging” is the act of using cacti for target practice. It seems harmless enough, the cactus doesn’t truly seem to be alive. Their branches resemble arms making the plant appear like the bizarrely gorganized remains of dried out desert travelers who didn’t quite make it out. It is a symbol of the desert, an area to beware, an area of death. In many ways the cactus, like the vulture, are symbols of death. But no matter how ignorant we may be to the secret life of cacti, we rarely think of the plant as capable of revenge.

On February 5, 1982 David Grundman, 24-27 (reports vary) was cactus plugging with friend Jim Suchochi, a couple miles into the desert from the highway, west of Lake Pleasant. Grundman started off slowly that winter day, felling a couple lightweight cacti with a few shotgun blasts. Before long however, a more impressive specimen caught his attention.

[Image source]

Saguaro cacti are endemic to the Sonoma desert spread between the Arizona and Mexico border. They can grow up to 60 feet high and live to about 200 years, though some specimens have been known to be 300 years old. The arm-like branches of the cacti don’t grow until 75 years into the life of the plants. When Grundman locked his targets onto a 27-foot tall, 100 year old saguaro, he was targeting a plant that had lived to roughly half of its potential, but it was more than enough time for it to sprout massive 1000 pound limbs.

It seems Grundman’s fatal mistake was getting too close to the living thing as he blasted it to smithereens. After plugging it twice, Grundman turned and called out to his friend Jim, before a massive branch fell on him, crushing him to death. Early reports stated he had uttered the partial word “tim-” as in “timber” before the fatal moment.

It’s a story that seems too good to be true, and debunkers flock to it hoping for an easy target, but like Grundman himself, those debunkers find that the target is not so easy after all, and much more prickly than first imagined. It’s a cautionary tale, one that tells all who hear it to respect life, all forms of life, no matter how immobile. The general tone of many of the articles you will find on this incident is mocking and carry the sentiment that Grundman deserved what he got. He was immortalized in the 1984 Austin Lounge Lizards mock hero-ballad “Saguaro” where he is referred to as a “noxious little twerp”.

For the record, saguaro plugging is illegal.

Sources:

Sources are abundant on the web. I wasn’t able to track down the two original articles that mentioned the story. The first appeared in the now defunct Phoenix Gazette newspaper, the second appeared in the Arizona Republic before being picked up by the Associated Press. But I did find an AZ Republic article that made mention of the story and seemed to confirm the truth of it.

Arizona Republic

The Desert News - December 1, 1987

Phoenix New Times

Snopes

NSFW! - EVERYDAY STRANGE - The Dyatlov Pass Incident

WARNING! THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES

[The bodies] displayed devastating internal injuries ... The impact which had caused them was said to be equivalent to a car accident, the result of an “unknown compelling force”.

KHOLAT SYAKHL, USSR - On January 27, 1959 a group of 10 well-trained hikers left the town of Vizhai, and the last vestiges of civilization they would ever see before trekking into the bush. Their goal was to reach Otorten, a mountain over a dozen kilometers away. Igor Dyatlov, the leader of the expedition was to send a telegram back to the team's sports club upon their return to Vizhai. It was expected no later than February 12. When the telegram didn't arrive, people began to get worried, not the least of whom was Yuri Yudin who had been part of the expedition but was sent back due to illness before the mysterious "incident" took place (we’ll cover his take on the incident later). By February 20 a search team was organized, later joined by Soviet army and militsya forces. On the 26th the bodies of the nine member team were found.

This is the part that sticks with people. First, their tent was found ripped apart and covered in snow. It was originally thought that the tent had been ripped from the outside but it was later found to have been ripped from the inside, by the occupants. Most people who hear this story for the first time presume that the team ripped open their tent to ensure a swift, sudden and panicky get away. All of their belongings were left behind in the tent, including their outer clothing and shoes.

Investigators then followed a trail of eight or nine bare footprints in the snow to a patch of woods about a kilometer and a half away. Two bodies were found there, those of Yuri Krivonischenko and Yuri Doroshenko, who were both in their underwear next to the remains of a camp fire. The temperature that night was estimated to be around -24° Celsius. It appeared that one of them had climbed the cedar tree as branches were broken five meters up.

Next, three bodies (those of Igor Dyatlov, Zinaida Kolmogorova and Rustem Slobodin) were found lying on the snow roughly 150 meters apart from each other and all three seemed to be heading back in the direction of the tent when they collapsed, one after the other.

On May 4, the snow had melted enough to reveal the remaining four bodies that had been buried four meters below the snow in a ravine another 75 meters deeper into the woods than the tree. These four were found with more clothing on than the others. It may be surmised that the cedar tree group had died first and that these four (Lyudmila Dubinina, Nicolai Thibeaux-Brignolles, Semyon Zolotariov and Alexander Kolevatov) had taken their clothes to wear.

The condition in which the bodies were found sends chills up the spines of all who encounter this story.

The body of Lyudmila Dubinina was found with her eyes and tongue missing. Thibeaux-Brignolles suffered a major skull fracture and Dubinina and Zolotariev displayed devastating internal injuries, with ribs broken along straight lines. Zolotariev’s ribcage was crushed on both sides while Dubinina’s was injured on one side. The impact which had caused them was said to be equivalent to a car accident, the result of an “unknown compelling force”. What little clothing that was found on the bodies was peppered with radioactive particles.

What “unknown compelling force” could have caused such devastating internal injuries? Who or what removed poor Lyudmila’s tongue? And what could possibly have contaminated the clothing on the bodies with radioactive material?

The answers to these questions have led some people down some very dark paths leading to UFO’s, Ural Mountain Yetis or even Soviet weapon experiments. One can hardly blame them as based on the evidence, either one of these explanations appears logical, albeit extraordinary.

Authorities weren’t able to concoct a comprehensive conclusion about what exactly took place, but they came close. The fact that official Soviet records regarding the case had been sealed for over 40 years behind the iron curtain only led to outrageous speculation by commentators in the West. Was it all just propaganda?

Well, one person who was not only familiar with the case, but intimately involved with the nine victims of this tragedy was Yuri Yudin, the lone survivor of the expedition, who as you may recall was sent back a day into the hike due to illness. He died in 2013 at the age of 75 and spent countless hours turning over the evidence in his mind. The difference between Yudin and official Soviet investigators is that he knew each of the individuals on the team, quite well, and knew how they would react to a given situation both individually and as a group.

To Yuri Yudin, the “unknown compelling force” that killed friends on February 2, 1959 was most likely an avalanche. He wasn’t the first and he certainly wasn’t the only one to put this forth as a theory, but his was the most reasonable version of what might have happened that night.

Yudin's theory was that the team was asleep when an avalanche hit the tent. Remember that the tent was found partially covered in snow. The force of the avalanche slammed against them. He surmised that Dubinina and Zolotariev were lying atop their skis and that Thibeaux-Brignolles was resting his head against a hard object when it hit. He believed that Dyatlov, ever the leader of the group, did not panic but was forced to cut the tent open from the one side that remained unblocked by snow. There were eight sets of footprints for nine people and he believed that Thibeaux-Brignolles was carried by other team members to a more stable area. The rest is somewhat easy to imagine.

Dyatlov volunteered to risk being buried by further avalanches to try to retrieve what supplies he could, but he didn’t make it. Then, perhaps after climbing the cedar tree to mark their leader’s progress and perhaps having seen him collapse, Kolmogorova and Slobodin went after him and collapsed along the way. The remaining survivors sat by the fire in minimal clothing. When Krivonischenko and Doroshenko succumbed, the remaining four took their clothing and went deeper into the woods.

The clothing was found to have much higher than normal levels of radiation on them, but it is believed that this was the result of contamination from Dubinina’s lab coat, although this is questionable. As for Dubinina's tongue? I often come across wild animals as a culprit, online, but these theorist tend to forget that she was buried under four meters of snow. The most reasonable explanation? Natural erosion caused by bacteria.

Sources:

There is an amazingly detailed documentary on youtube called the Mystery of Dyatlov's Pass. It was produced for the Television Agency of Ural and is in two parts. It’s in Russian, but has English subtitles. The first part really humanizes the victims, with many passages from the diaries of the team members. It discusses what the individuals of the expedition were like. It talks about how they would stay up late in their tents and talk philosophically about love and what it is to live a meaningful life. These were passionate youngsters (and one slightly older professor) living in an oppressive regime, yet what they cared most about was experiencing life and living to the fullest. If you can’t get past the low production values and subtitles then you are going to miss out because it’s unforgettable.

The second part gets more into the nitty gritty details of the investigation and though each part is only roughly an hour long, it feels thoroughly detailed. The narrator even explicitly acknowledges theories about UFO’s and doesn’t dismiss them outright, but states plainly that the documentary is only interested in investigating serious ideas. The second part is also where you’ll find Yudin’s excellent and comprehensive theory in full.

Basically, this video wipes away most other research materials I’ve ever come across regarding Dyatlov Pass, but I make mention of one other. You can watch both parts right here:

Aquiziam

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Elisa Lam, Part II

BEFORE YOU START, BE SURE TO READ PART I

CONCLUSIONS
There are few, if any solid conclusions in this case, mostly pie-in-the-sky speculation. But let's put on our thinking caps and try for a slice of that pie anyway.

This case haunts me. Elisa Lam is like the little sister of a close friend. She's from my town and she's from a culture that I recognize and am closely familiar with. My parents used to eat at her parent's restaurant. And as I mentioned, she's buried in the same cemetery as my young uncle, the same uncle who, with his brother, introduced me to Metallica and AC/DC and Slayer at a time when I was too young to realize that music got any worse than that. I never knew her and would never have in life, but this death hits close to home. I want to know what happened. I want to solve it. And if anybody is responsible I want them found, exposed and punished.

But that's the thing, we don't know if anybody else was involved.

The elevator video haunts many who watch it. There are so many "freaky" behaviors in it that it becomes unforgettable. I believe that she is playing some kind of cat-and-mouse game with an unidentified person, most likely a man that she is attracted to. I also believe that she is wearing his shorts in the video. I originally thought she was wearing a skirt, but she is in fact wearing a man's black shorts, they are large enough on her to fall past her knees at the bottom. She was also not wearing a bra, or anyway, a bra was not found in the water tank along with her body and her other clothes. She was wearing a shirt, a zip-up hoodie, black lace underwear and a man's shorts. This sounds like post-coital attire to me, but that is pure speculation. It does seem odd to me though, that someone as interested in fashion as Elisa would go around in a man's shorts and seemingly hastily thrown on wardrobe without there being some kind of a reason for it. Remember in part one when the autopsy stated there was subcutaneous pooling of blood in her anus, but no trauma. It's possible that this was due to consensual sex. Not saying it was, just saying it's possible.

Watch the video again, her face shows no signs of distress, nothing to indicate she feared imminent harm. Watch the part of the video when she steps outside the elevator. For starters, if she was hiding and truly feared being found, she wouldn't have stepped out of the elevator in the first place. She's acting like someone who is hiding that wants to be found or at the very least, doesn't fear being found. She peeks her head out the door and looks both ways in a noticeable fashion. She hides again, then takes cute, shuffling little steps toward the exit and watches the hallway, then hops out hoping to surprise someone. Then she playfully crab-walks in and back out of the elevator again.

We know that there are two elevators, side-by-side at the old Cecil Hotel (now re-branded as the Stay-on-Main), on the opposite wall between the two elevators is a mirror. When she steps outside the elevator it appears she is facing the mirror and fixing her hair.

The next moment on the video is the one that is truly bizarre. She goes back into the elevator and pushes all the buttons again, I suppose hoping to jam it up. Some speculate that she does this to prevent someone chasing her from using the elevator to catch up to her by sending it on a random journey. But again, she shows no signs of serious distress at being found.

The next part of the video is the one that disturbs most who see it. She makes hand gestures with her fingers spread out. Some people compare the gestures to the way they imagine a grey alien might move, fluidly but in an unrecognizable pattern. Watching the video at 135% speed, removes some of the freakiness of the hand gestures. After watching the video countless times it seems to me that she is calling out to somebody that she can't see. If you look at the selfie picture she took which I posted at the top of Part I, it seems that it was not entirely uncommon for her to make these kind of fingers spread apart hand gestures. It's impossible to know what she was saying when calling out, but it seems like she was getting bored of the hide and seek game and hoping to end it, warning that however was playing with her that the game was about to end.

Immediately after she makes the seemingly bizarre hand gestures, she counts to three. This is the most obvious part of the video but it took quite a few plays before I caught it. She is calling out and counting to three on the fingers of her left hand. She even bends her knees when she touches her fingers, the way one would when playfully doing so.

But after she counts to three and no one appears, she looks both ways down the hall, then plays with her again before walking off, never to be seen alive again.

Is it possible that the elevator footage showed part of a game of hide-and-seek? What if, since Elisa was never found by whoever she was playing with in the elevator, she took the game one step further and attempted to hide in the water tank? Is that a smart, rational decision to make? No, but there is some evidence that she wasn't taking as much of her medication as she might have, potentially throwing her cognitive skills off-balance, as touched on in Part I.

The question then becomes, if she was playing hide-and-seek in the video with an unseen party, why did that person not come forward before or after her body was found? Is it possible that she wasn't actually playing hide-and-seek with anybody, that her play friend was a hallucination? That's a stretch but it's possible.

I wonder about why 54 seconds were edited out of the elevator footage. I've got a couple ideas of why that might be. Either it shows nothing interesting, just an empty hallway and so was chopped out as unimportant, or it shows somebody else, somebody unconnected to the disappearance who just happened to be walking by. If the latter is the case, then that could help explain why Elisa walked away form the elevator at the end of the video as seemingly disappointed or dare I say somewhat embarrassed as she appeared to be. She was calling out, counting to three, her friend didn't re-appear, but somebody else did. In the final analysis though, these ideas are all just speculation. Still, the case haunts me.

I saw a recent news report that police were looking into two hotel employees as possible suspects in Lam's murder, but the source is dubious and I haven't seen a follow-up.

Carmen Yarira Esparza Noriega

One of the strangest elements of all in this case, is the recent discovery of the body of Mexican actress Carmen Yarira Esparza Noriega in a water tank. There are a couple of coincidences between Carmen and Elisa's cases that may lead you to think they are connected. Both women disappeared in February, Elisa in 2013, Carmen in 2014, both were found in water tanks after locals complained of funny or foul tasting water and California and Mexico are relatively close in proximity. It's not without precedent for a killer to move from state to state or even country to country to avoid detection or it may be possible that Carmen's murderer was inspired by the seamier details of Elisa's case. I'll provide a bunch of links to Carmen's story at the end of the "sources" section.

I've barely scratched the surface here. I haven't talked about the Cecil Hotel's checkered history, which includes multiple suicides and stays by serial killers including Richard Ramirez. There are many low income long-term residents of the hotel at least one of which is a well-known sex offender who was a resident at the hotel at the time of Elisa's disappearance. He was on many videos about the case including one on CNN, and the news either failed to mention or didn't realize just who they were talking to. Apparently he was one of the most vocal residents to complain about the water. At the time, the hotel was facing possible re-zoning and he had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. There is speculation that he and another long-term resident acting as his accomplice staged the murder, but I don't buy it.

I didn't talk about the other bizarre coincidences surrounding the circumstances of this case, like how it resembles the story of Japanese horror film Dark Water, right down to the actress playing the mother in the film wearing a similar looking wardrobe to Elisa in the elevator video. I didn't talk about the Tuberculosis detection kit, called LAM-ELISA that was being used during the time of her disappearance in the area to help stifle a possible outbreak among the homeless. I didn't talk about the last known witness to see her alive being a store clerk at a bookstore called ... The Last Bookstore. And there are more little things, little echoes that jab away at you until you are unsettled enough to believe that Elisa Lam was killed by fate itself.

Elisa was a real person, a beautiful girl with self-image problems who battled depression and felt isolated in her own active mind. Many if not all young people feel depressed or self-conscious, I wish I could have been there to tell her that it's perfectly normal to feel that way, at any age. But I can't.

Sources:
It's impossible to list all the sources, but here were some of the major ones.
Elisa Lam's tumblr blog
Elisa Lam's blogspot
The autopsy report
Yelp listing for Cecil Hotel
Current Yelp listing for renamed Stay on Main hotel
Crisis Forums (a terrific active chat about the Lam case)
Websleuths translation of Chinese forum about Lam

The case of Carmen Yarira Esparza Noriega:

The Mirror UK
New York Daily News
Fox News Latino

The Daily Mail
Milenio