There are some houses that if the walls could speak, they would likely scream in horror. When a home becomes part of a serious murder investigation, it’s often not long before the murder memorabilia hunters come forward, ready to grab a piece of true crime history. Then, once bodies have been discovered on the site, the ghost hunters and creepy tours will follow shortly after.

SEE ALSO: 10 Abandoned Amusement Parks With Horrific Histories [Disturbing]

The following homes all made such an impact on those who live in the area and the loved ones of victims that there was no other option left but to tear them down to the ground. Not even demolishing them could completely erase their memories, of course. Locals still know what the sites were.

10 Fred And Rose West’s House

Fred and Rose West will go down in history as one of the worst serial killer duos. They lived at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester City, England, and what took place behind closed doors was so disturbing that the home has since been flattened. The sinister couple murdered at least 10 young women together between 1971 and 1987. (Fred killed more beforehand.) The victims were then dismembered and buried in either the cellar or the garden. The two even threatened their children that they, too, would “end up under the patio.”

Behind bars, Fred became depressed when Rose refused to reply to any of his letters, and he took his own life in prison. Initially, Rose denied any knowledge of the murders, but her web of lies soon fell apart, and she was sentenced to life for her involvement.

Two decades after the crimes, Gloucester City Council purchased the “House of Horrors,” as it had come to be called, knocked it down, and turned the former site into a public walkway. Still, nobody will forget in a hurry what happened at 25 Cromwell Street.^[1]

9 Jeffrey Dahmer’s Apartment

When police officers arrived at the apartment of Jeffrey Dahmer at the 900 block of North 25th Street Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, they had no idea they were about to uncover one of the grisliest crime scenes of all time. Dahmer gained his nickname “the Milwaukee Cannibal” after he lured 17 men and boys back to his apartment from 1978 to 1991 with the intention to kill them. Police discovered seven skulls, a human head, and two human hearts in the refrigerator, as well as an entire torso in the freezer, among other remains.

After the crazed cannibal was arrested, his neighbors wished to depart the building as quickly as possible. One explained, “It’s been a living hell. It’s like we’re on a museum tour or a zoo tour. People drive by day and night. I haven’t been eating. I haven’t been sleeping. All I know is I want to get the hell out of here.”^[2] The building was demolished in 1992, and the former site of the grisly murders has remained vacant ever since.

8 Ariel Castro’s House

Ariel Castro kidnapped three female victims on separate occasions between 2002 and 2004 when they were aged 14, 16, and 20 years old. He then held them captive at his home in Cleveland, Ohio. The young girls, who grew into women during their decade of hell, were kept in darkness, surrounded by boarded windows and with only a small hole providing any circulation. Castro repeatedly abused them and even fathered a daughter with one of his victims. She gave birth in a small inflatable swimming pool.

In 2013, one of the brave victims was able to escape when Castro failed to secure the “big inside door,” and she screamed a cry of help that alerted the neighbors. Castro was arrested that same evening, but he only lived out one month of his life sentence before he hanged himself with a bedsheet in prison. It took just one hour and 20 minutes for his former home to be demolished as spectators cheered from the street.^[3]

7 The Petit Family Home

The Petit Family home invasion is so disturbing that it became one of the most widely publicized crimes in the state of Connecticut’s history. In 2007, Dr. William Petit, his wife Jennifer Hawke-Petit, and their young daughters 17-year-old Hayley and 11-year-old Michaela suffered a brutal, random attack at their family home in Cheshire. Perpetrator Steven Hayes and his accomplice Joshua Komisarjevsky broke into the home, first striking William Petit with a baseball bat and then binding the other family members and forcing Jennifer to go with them to the bank and withdraw cash.^[4]

She was able to alert the bank teller of the situation, but the Petit family were failed by the responding police officers. As the mother and daughters were brutalized and murdered inside, the police still did not enter, instead focusing on setting up a perimeter around the home. William Petit was able to escape as the perpetrators torched the house. The remainder of the family home was torn down, and the lot is now a memorial garden for the family.

6 The Bloody Benders’ House

More than 140 years ago, one family committed such evil that they became known as the Bloody Benders. The Labette County, Kansas, family consisted of four people—John Bender, his wife Elvira, and their children John Jr. and Kate. (Some sources claim that Kate was actually John Jr.’s common-law wife.) From 1869 to 1872, he family would invite travelers into their home with the sole intention of smashing their skulls, cutting their throats, and stealing all their possessions. When members of the community noticed the rise in missing persons traveling through the area, they called a meeting.

A few days after that meeting, the Benders’ family home was abandoned, and locals discovered a terrible odor coming from inside. After a proper investigation, the bodies of their 11 victims were uncovered. However, other missing persons cases could tie the bloodthirsty family to as many as 21 murders. The since-demolished house is nowadays nothing more than a gravel road two hours southeast of Wichita. Ghost hunters will travel there just to soak up any sensation of its sinister history.^[5]

5 John Christie’s House

In London, 10 Rillington Place in Notting Hill is not the same house as it once was. In 1978, the place was rebuilt so that the grisly memories of the previous building could be long forgotten. In the 1940s and early 1950s, serial killer John Christie hid the bodies of his victims around the house, including burying them in the garden, hiding them under the floorboards, or stuffing the corpses inside a wall in the kitchen. In 1953, he was arrested, and it was discovered that young women who had turned to him for help with unwanted pregnancies were murdered. It is believed more than eight vulnerable victims lost their lives to the sinister Christie.

Despite the rebuild, this might be a case where past evils haven’t moved on quite so quickly. The current owner confessed, “I think the place is cursed. I’ve had bad luck since I’ve been here. I’ve been here 40 years. My health’s gone. Everything’s gone.”^[6]

4 Ted Bundy’s House

Ted Bundy confessed to the murders of 30 young women and girls in seven states between 1974 and 1978. However, the real victim count is believed to be much higher, as he buried the corpses in several secluded areas. One location that became a killing spot for him was Emigration Canyon, Utah. The serial killer’s former rooming house has since been destroyed, leaving only a scatter of bricks. However, the sinister cellar is still intact, which encourages ghost hunters and other true crime fans who are chasing a creepy experience.^[7]

Bundy moved to Utah when he was accepted at the University of Utah Law School in August 1974. It’s believed he kidnapped and murdered eight victims aged between 16 and 18 during his time in the state. The surrounding area of Bundy’s cellar would have been the last place some of these women saw before their lives were stolen from them.

3 Anthony Sowell’s House

Two years after Anthony “the Cleveland Strangler” Sowell murdered 11 women between 2007 and 2009, his former home on Imperial Avenue in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Cleveland was demolished. The property was where the bodies of the victims were found in various states of decomposition. The hunt for more bodies left the home in crippling disrepair, and the city decided it was in the interest of public safety to tear it down for good. More than 50 people—including relatives of the victims—gathered outside the property to watch the demise of the death house.

The victims’ family members received the following hand-delivered letter from the city: “In order to prevent actions that would be disrespectful to the memory of your loved one, your family and our community; the demolition will be performed in such a way that no piece of the property will remain.”^[8]

2 Myra Hindley And Ian Brady’s House

Myra Hindley and Ian Brady are considered by many as the real faces of evil. In the early to mid-1960s, they killed five children aged between ten and 17. The bodies of three of the victims were discovered in graves on Saddleworth Moor, but the chilling couple never revealed where they placed the bodies of the other victims. Hindley died behind bars in 2002 and Brady in 2017, and they never allowed the relatives of the victims any peace—withholding information about the murders until the very end.

It’s no surprise that the home the Moors murderers shared on Wardle Brook Avenue in Hattersley, Cheshire, England—the same place where investigators found the body of their final victim—stayed empty for so many years after the couple was arrested. Nobody wanted to live in a property where two of the biggest monsters in Britain once slept peacefully at night. The property was pulled down in 1987, and the site has remained empty ever since.^[9]

1 Dr. H.H. Holmes’s Murder Castle

In 1885, Dr. H.H. Holmes moved to the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago and built his now-infamous murder castle. The labyrinth-like structure featured many different rooms—all with equally sinister ways to die. The rooms were soundproofed, and the many secret passages would leave his unsuspecting guests feeling disorientated. There were even trapdoors that would drop his victims into the basement where he could finish the job. Holmes murdered for financial gain; often selling the skeletons of his victims to medical research facilities.

The actual victim count has been guessed to be as high as 200, but Holmes only confessed to 27 murders. He was hanged at Moyamensing Prison in Philadelphia in 1896. In 1938, the murder castle was finally torn down, and a post office now stands in its place. Chicago tour guides still take groups to the former site of the murders, but the true horror that took place here can only really be imagined.^[10]

Cheish Merryweather is a true crime fan and an oddities fanatic. She can either be found at house parties telling everyone Charles Manson was only 5’2″ or at home reading true crime magazines.
Twitter: @thecheish

Burying people has been a common way of dealing with the dead across the world and throughout history. However, there is much variety within burials.

Social, religious, and cultural norms often decide how individuals are placed, whether they have burial goods, and what they are buried in (e.g., stone tombs or wooden coffins). Even with all the different burials that have been found in the archaeological record, there are still some ancient burials that are unique and eye-catching.

10 Infant-Encircled Tomb

In Pachacamac, a site near modern-day Lima, Peru, a tomb was found containing roughly 80 individuals buried around AD 1000. They belonged to the Ychsma people, a pre-Incan population.

Half the individuals consisted of adults placed in fetal positions. Wrapped in textiles that are now mostly disintegrated, they had wooden or clay false heads lying on top of them.

The other half of the deceased consisted of infants arranged in a circle around the adults. The babies may have been sacrificed. They were all buried at the same time, and the Ychsma people had sacrificed infants in other burials. However, this is not certain as the skeletons don’t have visible evidence of it.

A large number of the adults had serious diseases, such as cancer or syphilis. They may have traveled to the site to be healed, a relatively common occurrence in pre-Columbian times. There were also skeletons of animals (such as guinea pigs, dogs, and alpacas or llamas) that had been sacrificed and placed in the tomb.^[1]

9 Skeleton Spiral

In modern-day Tlalpan, Mexico, archaeologists discovered a 2,400-year-old burial containing 10 individuals arranged in a spiral formation. Each individual had been placed on his or her side, with the legs pointed toward the center of the circle formed by the bodies. Their arms had been intertwined with those lying on either side.

Each skeleton was overlapping in other ways, too. For example, one individual’s head was placed on another person’s chest. The deceased consisted of people from all age groups, including an infant and an older child as well as young, middle-aged, and old adults.

Of the adults, two females and one male were identified. Two skeletons had skulls that had definitely been artificially modified. Some also had teeth that had been modified, a common practice at the time. The cause of death for these individuals is still unknown.^[2]

8 Standing Burials

In a Mesolithic cemetery just north of modern-day Berlin, a 7,000-year-old male skeleton was discovered. Besides Mesolithic cemeteries being exceedingly unusual in themselves, this man had also been buried standing up, making him even more conspicuous.

Initially, he had only been buried up to his knees, allowing the rest of his body to decay for a bit before it was interred. The man was buried with flint and bone tools and had been a hunter-gatherer with a physically undemanding life.

Similar burials have also been discovered in the cemetery known as Olenij Ostrov in what is now Karelia, Russia. The large cemetery contained four individuals who had also been buried in standing positions at approximately the same time. No further connection between the man from Germany and the people in Russia have been found yet.^[3]

7 Sacrificial Children

In Derbyshire, England, a mass grave was found that contained 300 soldiers from the Great Viking Army. Although this mass grave was not unusual, another grave next to it contained four individuals who were 8–18 years old. The children were placed back-to-back with a sheep’s jaw at their feet.

They were dated to the same time as the Vikings, and at least two of them had died from traumatic injuries. Their placement and potential cause of death has led researchers to believe that they may have been sacrificed to be buried with the fallen warriors.

This may have been part of a ritual for the children to accompany the dead soldiers in the afterlife. Although this is still conjecture, no similar grave has been found from this time in England.^[4]

6 The Speared Man

An Iron Age burial site found in what is now Pocklington, England, contained 75 burial chambers (aka barrows) with over 160 individuals. One of these burials contained a man in his late teens or early twenties who had been buried with his sword 2,500 years ago.

The distinctive part of his burial? After he had been placed in a crouched position in his grave, he had been stabbed with five spears. Four went down his spine while the fifth pierced his groin.^[5]

The spears were placed so that they would have been sticking out from his burial mound—to be seen for years after his death. Researchers believe that the man may have been a high-ranking warrior who was ritualistically speared to release his spirit.

5 The Bound Woman

In modern-day Plovdiv, Bulgaria, a medieval female burial from the 13th to 14th century was found in the ancient Thracian and Roman Nebet Tepe fortress. It differed from the other burials found there as the woman had been placed with her face down and her hands tied behind her back.^[6]

Although burials with people facing down have been found across the globe, it does not commonly include binding. The archaeologists who excavated her had never seen a similar burial in the area. They believe that it may have been a punishment for criminal activity, though that it is not a reaction to the vampire beliefs for which Bulgarian archaeology has received a lot of attention.

4 The ‘Great Death Pit’

During the excavations of Ur in the early 1900s, there were six burials found without tombs that were dubbed “death pits.” The most impressive of these is the Great Death Pit of Ur, a burial containing six males and 68 females.

The males were laid to rest at the entrance. Wearing helmets and holding weapons, they were believed to be guarding the pit. Most of the females were neatly placed in four rows along the northwest corner of the pit. Two groups of six women were also in rows along two of the other edges.

All the women were dressed in expensive clothing with headdresses made from gold, silver, and lapis lazuli. One of the women had a headdress and jewelry that was much more extravagant than the rest. These pieces resembled those of Puabi, a Sumerian queen. It is thus believed that the dead woman was a high-ranking person and that the rest of the deceased were sacrificed to go with her to the afterlife.

Whether this was a voluntary or forced sacrifice is unknown. Two skeletons, one male and one female, had premortem skull fractures. None of the others had any visible injuries. Researchers believe that the victims consumed poison to kill them. The two injured people may have also been clubbed on their heads.^[7]

3 Mass Infant Graves

Mass graves containing babies are unusual, but several ancient ones have been discovered. In Ashkelon, Israel, a collection of bones belonging to over 100 infants was discovered in a sewer from Roman times. The babies showed no signs of illness or deformation and may have been killed as a form of birth control.

A similar burial containing 97 infants was found in the Roman villa at Hambleden, England. These remains are theorized to have been babies born in a brothel who were thus unwanted. Alternatively, they may have been babies who were stillborn.^[8]

Another mass grave was found in a well in Athens, with remains dating from 165 BC to 150 BC. The location contained 450 infant skeletons, 150 dog skeletons, and one adult with severe physical deformities. Most of the infants were less than a week old. One-third had died from bacterial meningitis, and the rest had died from unknown causes. There was no evidence that their deaths were unnatural.

As babies were not considered to be real people until a ceremony performed 7–10 days after birth, it is possible that these babies had died before they were considered real humans and were thus disposed of in a simple way.

2 Multiple Skulls

On Efate Island, Vanuatu, a 3,000-year-old cemetery was excavated with over 50 skeletons exhumed. Each skeleton was missing its skull. It was common for the Lapita people who lived there to exhume a dead body once its flesh had rotted and remove the head. The head would be placed in a shrine or somewhere similar to pay respect to the deceased.

All the skeletons were facing the same (unspecified) direction except for four who were facing south. These four had isotope levels indicating that they had originated somewhere other than the island unlike the rest of the individuals buried there.

One of these immigrants was buried with three skulls (taken from the local people) on his chest. This burial was the only one that included skulls and most likely indicates that he was admired in some way.^[9]

1 Mixed Mummies

A study conducted on ancient burials on the British Isles found that there were at least 16 mummies created between 2200 BC and 700 BC. As this area of the world is cold and wet, which is not great for mummification, it is believed that they were created by being smoked over fires or intentionally buried in peat bogs.^[10]

Mummies are not that unusual as they have been found in many parts of the world. However, several of these mummies seem to have been made up of multiple people. It is possible that only certain body parts were preserved during the mummification process and that these parts were cobbled together to create complete mummies.

Growing up in the United States, you learn about all the big, quintessentially “American” sites and structures from a very early age. You’re told that they are important and given a vague explanation of why. Then you set about the task of never really thinking about them again.

That’s a shame because they can be quite fascinating—usually for reasons that they were never meant to be. Behind the stately columns and torches lies an entire world of weirdness hidden away from the public eye.

10 The Washington Mini Monument

The Washington Monument, the giant white obelisk in Washington, DC, was built in honor of the first US president, George Washington. You probably knew that. What you may not have known is that the monument has a forgotten baby brother.

Buried beneath an unassuming manhole right beside the famous landmark is a 3.7-meter-tall (12 ft) replica. Placed there in the 1880s, around the same time that the Washington Monument was finished, this shrunken clone served as a “Geodetic Control Point” for the National Geodetic Survey (NGS).^[1]

Officially named “Bench Mark A,” it was basically used as an exceptionally accurate starting point when making maps and planning railroad routes. However, due to its proximity to the monument, the NGS employees decided to dress it up a bit rather than use the standard plain metal rods.

Unfortunately, the miniature monument has sunk into DC’s marshy soil over the years. So it was given a proper burial. It was entombed in a brick chimney and sealed off from the world. It continues to sink about 0.5 millimeters (0.02 in) each year.

9 The Capitol’s Flag Factory

Aside from being your typical stately government building, the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, offers a special service: For a small fee, you can own an American flag that has been flown over the Capitol. So, if you wish to own a flag that is slightly more America-y than your neighbor’s, you’re welcome.

But before you reach for your wallet, there’s just one thing. The flag you receive will indeed have been flown over the Capitol, but only on one of three tiny, hidden flagpoles for 30 seconds.

Since its inception in 1937, the Capitol Flag Program (CFP) has supplied patriotic citizens with genuine “Capitol-flown” flags. However, when demand eventually outgrew supply, the CFP had to get creative. Rather than continue to sell the prominently displayed flags above the Capitol’s entrances, they just installed a bizarre “flag factory” on the roof.

Three unremarkable flagpoles, complete with a small service elevator and crew of workers, are used to fly as many flags for the state-mandated 30 seconds as possible each day. Security cameras have even been installed to prevent workers from flying the flags for a disgustingly disrespectful 29 seconds.^[2]

8 The Golden Gate Bridge-Boat-Tunnel Thing

While it isn’t a really a national monument, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge is still a world-famous symbol of American ingenuity. However, this bright orange engineering marvel came dangerously close to not existing. San Francisco almost built a tunnel instead. Stranger still, they almost built a tunnel designed by a man who had presumably no idea what a tunnel actually was.

When shopping around for ideas about how to span San Francisco Bay in the early 1930s, city officials were delivered an unusual proposal by local inventor Cleve F. Shaffer. His eccentric concept called for two bridges to be built—one from each shore—which would each connect to its own ship floating stationary in the bay. A tunnel would run between the ships, which would be raised and lowered to allow sea traffic in and out of the city.^[3]

Aside from the fever-dream design, the problems introduced by the plan were many. The narrow spiral ramps within the bridge-ships would create nightmarish traffic jams. In addition, the fact that most of the bridge was freely floating was a recipe for maritime disaster.

Tempted by the relatively low price tag, the city of San Francisco came bafflingly close to accepting this design before settling on their now world-famous suspension bridge.

7 The Supreme Basketball Court

The “Highest Court of the Land” is a title that has long been held by the US Supreme Court. It is well-deserved, albeit in a metaphorical sense. A more literal example would be the secret basketball court which sits just above the courtroom.

Once used as a storage area for journals and other legal documents, the fifth floor of the Washington, DC, Supreme Court building was converted into an all-purpose workout area for off-duty employees in the 1940s. At some point, the focus shifted to basketball and a slightly smaller-than-regulation basketball court was constructed.

In recent years, justices such as Byron White and William H. Rehnquist have shot hoops there to blow off steam. Sandra Day O’Connor used it to host women-only yoga classes. A weight-lifting area even caters to justices looking to strengthen their cores.^[4]

Unfortunately, this court is off-limits to the public. As it sits just above the courtroom on the fourth floor, there are strict rules in place. Signs warn visitors not to play when court is in session because squeaky sneakers can really blow your concentration when deciding the legal fate of millions.

6 The Disturbing Vision Behind the National Parks

Many people are aware that Theodore Roosevelt founded the US Forest Service and more or less created the concept of a “national park.” However, most people don’t know that he had help—from some of the most distressingly racist people on the planet. They saw national parks as an opportunity to prove the importance of racial purification.

These men were Madison Grant, Gifford Pinchot, and a handful of other aristocratic supporters of eugenics, the belief that some creatures—including humans—are genetically superior to others. They were fond of warning of the impending “race suicide” that America would face if it didn’t replenish its stock of white people and even suggested that certain people should be legally forbidden to reproduce.^[5]

However, they were also very vocal about the importance of wildlife conservation. When Roosevelt approached them for help in establishing the national parks, they saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

Essentially, their idea was to use the parks as a metaphor for human society—the noble bear and elk (white people) deprived of land and resources by weaker but more numerous species (nonwhites). Luckily, the message was lost in translation and now we just like looking at all the pretty trees.

5 Crazy Horse’s Ironic Insult

In 1948, sculptor Korczazk Ziolkowski began work on possibly the most ambitious statue in the world. Using the very mountains of South Dakota’s Black Hills, he planned to honor Native American folk hero Crazy Horse with a massive memorial, the largest on the planet. Unfortunately, he didn’t bother to consult any actual Native Americans before starting work.

Aside from the fact that Ziolkowski began unknowingly blowing apart a sacred mountain with no permission whatsoever, the statue itself has proven problematic as well. The plan calls for Crazy Horse, mounted on horseback, to be pointing dramatically across the land.

This is a reference to a folktale in which a white man asks, “Where are your lands now?” The legendary warrior replies, “My lands are where my dead lie buried.” It makes for a moving image. But there’s one small problem: It is unbelievably rude to point in Native American culture.^[6]

Needless to say, Native American spokesmen have been condemning the statue for decades, comparing it to a Mount Rushmore that features the presidents picking their noses. Luckily, the statue is not yet finished. Here’s hoping that someone takes over soon who is willing to actually speak to the people being honored.

4 The National Mall’s Dodged Bullet

The National Mall in Washington, DC, is absolutely packed with monuments to great Americans and moments in American history. The Washington Monument, the Smithsonian, and the Lincoln Memorial all call this long, grassy stretch home. However, in the early 1920s, it came dangerously close to adopting a new monument, seemingly praising one of the darkest moments in the nation’s history.

Having only been abolished half a century prior, slavery was still an extremely tender topic during the early years of the 20th century. This is exactly why the “Mammy Monument” was so baffling.

Proposed by North Carolina Congressman Charles Stedman in 1923, this statue featured a large slave woman holding a white infant. It was to be a memorial to slaves who “desired no change in their condition of life.”^[7]

Understandably, in an era in which many white Americans were still struggling to decide if freeing the slaves had been the right move, a monument to slaves that looked upon slavery “as the happy golden hours of their lives” might have been problematic.

Nevertheless, the Senate approved the proposal, nearly constructing the statue ironically close to the Lincoln Memorial. However, overwhelming backlash ultimately caused the project to be canceled.

3 Lincoln’s Cave Drawings

Speaking of the Lincoln Memorial, it isn’t immune to Hidden Historical Weirdness Syndrome (HHWS), either. Like other HHWS sufferers, Lincoln’s famous shrine hides its secrets well. Only a select few ever get to see it, but there is a man-made cavern full of modern cave paintings hiding just beneath Abe’s massive throne.

During the monument’s construction in the naturally swampy Washington, DC, terrain, workers had to dig down 12 meters (40 ft) to hit anything solid enough to build on. Then they poured several concrete pillars to support the weight of the memorial. This inadvertently created a huge artificial cave system beneath the structure. In the years following its 1922 completion, it even began growing stalactites.

But the truly bizarre bits are the cave drawings—charcoal graffiti left by bored workmen over 100 years ago. Perfectly preserved in their sealed tomb, intricate illustrations of dogs, horses, flapper girls, and men smoking pipes stare from the giant columns supporting Honest Abe.

Plastic sheets have been placed to protect a few of these drawings, but most are still exactly as they were left a century ago. Tentative plans are in place to open this otherworldly time capsule to the public in the near future.^[8]

2 The Roosevelt Geyser

Today, the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial sits on a quiet island in the Potomac River in Washington, DC. In honor of the 26th president’s love of nature and conservation, it largely consists of a simple park. However, upon Roosevelt’s death in 1919, proposals for a memorial began pouring in, and the current design was nowhere near the most likely.

At first, officials were drawn to a plan put forth by architect John Russell Pope. On the southern banks of DC’s tidal basin—home of the Jefferson Memorial—a fountain would be constructed in honor of Roosevelt’s spirit, which “sprang out of the deep sources of the nation’s history.” However, this would be no ordinary fountain. Larger than life, like Roosevelt himself, this fountain would blast water to a staggering 61 meters (200 ft), twice as tall as the Lincoln Memorial.^[9]

Obviously, the man-made geyser idea never saw the light of day. Not only did many agree that it was too soon to build a memorial to the only one-year-deceased president, but the irony wasn’t lost on the public. After all, was such a monumental waste of water really the best way to honor the greatest conservationist in history?

1 Lady Liberty’s Makeover

New York City’s Statue of Liberty is far and away the most powerful symbol of the United States. Instantly recognizable the world over, this (now) green behemoth has welcomed ships to NYC since 1886. But bizarrely, her iconic look was not her first one—she was originally a Muslim woman.

Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, the statue’s designer, had first planned to build the colossal statue/lighthouse for the opening of Egypt’s Suez Canal. She was to be a fellah (“Arab peasant”) clad in a simple Middle Eastern robe.

Entitled Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia, she would represent the Egyptians, her torch lighting the way for the rest of the world. However, after throwing obscene amounts of cash at the canal project itself, the Egyptian government passed on the costly—and entirely cosmetic—statue.

But Bartholdi was determined to bring his vision to life. So when the French government approached him to design a monument for the US for its centennial celebration, he jumped at the chance. After swapping her Muslim robe for a more Roman number and changing her official name to Liberty Enlightening the World, Bartholdi presented the United States with his now world-famous creation.^[10]

“What happened to your second wife?” an interviewer once asked Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

He was referring to Sara Northrup, the woman who’d been at Hubbard’s side while he developed Dianetics and who later divorced him in a messy, public scandal. The whole world had watched their divorce fill the headlines of every paper. But still, when the question came, Hubbard just smirked and told the interviewer: “I’d never had a second wife.”

It’s an incredibly brazen lie—and a sign of just how much damage Sara Northrup could do to him. Her life is a story that the Church of Scientology is still trying to cover up because the amount of suffering she endured at Hubbard’s hands is nothing short of heartbreaking.

10 She Met L. Ron Hubbard In A Sex Magick Cult

Sara Northrup’s life was difficult from the start. When she met Hubbard, she was living at the home of physicist and occultist Jack Parsons. Both she and Hubbard were members of Aleister Crowley’s sex magick cult.

Northrup’s life was already filled with sexual abuse. She’d been molested by her father from a young age, a trauma that likely explains why she was already sleeping with Jack Parsons by age 13. However, he wasn’t just twice her age, he was her sister’s husband.

When Hubbard showed up, he must have seemed like a savior. Granted, he was every bit as strange as Parsons was. In fact, the two worked together to summon a Babylonian goddess, believing they could bring her to life by chanting, dabbing runes with animal blood, and masturbating on magical tablets.

But Hubbard was a war hero, injured in battle, or so he claimed. He won Northrup over by spinning stories about his heroism that most of the cult members wrote off as “tall tales.” But the young Northrup bought into them completely.

“I believed everything he said,” Northrup later said. “It just never occurred to me he was a liar.”^[1]

9 She And Hubbard Stole Jack Parsons’s Life Savings

Jack Parsons believed in free love. Bound by his own principles, he couldn’t do a thing but watch as his new friend, L. Ron Hubbard, started sleeping with his girlfriend, Sara Northrup. Parsons had to pretend to be okay with every bit of it.

Other lodgers at his house, though, could tell just how angry it made him. “There [Hubbard] was, living off Parsons’s largesse and making out with his girlfriend right in front of him,” one would later recall. “The hostility was almost tangible.”

Still, when Hubbard proposed that the two start a business together, Jack Parsons readily agreed to give him $20,000 to get things off the ground. Perhaps he just wanted to keep up appearances and pretend like it didn’t bother him. Either way, he was the only one who was surprised when Hubbard and Northrup took off to Florida with the $20,000 and a brand-new yacht, bought with Parsons’s money.

“He has given away both his girl and his money,” Karl Germer, one of Parsons’s friends, reported in a letter to Aleister Crowley. “It is the ordinary confidence trick.”^[2]

Parsons tried to sue them but quickly dropped the case. He accepted a few dollars of payment and, in exchange, let Hubbard and Northrup keep the yacht. It was a bad deal for Parsons, but he didn’t have much choice. If he didn’t comply, he was warned, Hubbard and Northrup would let the world know that Parsons had had sex with Northrup when she was 13.

8 Hubbard Was Still Married To His First Wife When They Got Married

Sara Northrup married L. Ron Hubbard because he threatened to kill himself. He’d asked her multiple times already, but she had refused every time until he made it clear: If she said no, his death would be on her conscience forever.

What Hubbard hadn’t told her, though, was that he was already married. Thirteen years earlier in 1933, he’d married Polly Grubb. She was the mother of his two children, and in exchange, Hubbard had taken off to New York to cheat on her with other women.

At this point, the two were so estranged that they hadn’t seen each other in about two years. But they were still married at Hubbard’s insistence. Polly had repeatedly asked for a divorce, but he kept turning her down.

Hubbard only agreed to a divorce after he’d been married to Sara for a good year and a half. But he still kept his marriage to Polly a secret. Instead, he took Sara with him to Polly’s house without explaining a thing, which forced her to try to figure out why these people were so hostile toward her.

It was his son, L. Ron Jr., who told her. Sara was devastated. She rushed out of the house crying and tried to get onto the next ferry that would take her as far away from Hubbard as possible.^[3]

In the end, she didn’t leave. Her new husband begged and pleaded until she stayed.

7 L. Ron Hubbard Brutally Abused Her

L. Ron Hubbard started beating his wife during summer 1946. It began when Sara’s father died. Despite her complicated feelings toward the man, Sara was overwhelmed with grief and sadness.

To Hubbard, her sadness was nothing more than an annoyance. When she cried, he would beat and strangle her into silence, complaining that she’d distracted him from his work.

Hubbard was losing his mind. He wrote a letter to Veteran Affairs (VA), begging them to help him pay for psychiatric treatment. But the VA never responded, and Hubbard got increasingly worse.^[4]

One morning, he woke up his wife by pistol-whipping her across the face. She’d been smiling in her sleep, he told her, and he was sure it was because she was thinking of someone else. Northrup fled into the night, nearly escaping her abusive husband again. But once more, she came back.

She felt sorry for him because she knew he was losing his mind. She later said, “I kept thinking that he must be suffering or he wouldn’t act that way.”

Staying only made it worse. By the time Northrup really did file for divorce, she’d gone through what the divorce proceedings described as “repeated” and “systematic torture.” He strangled her regularly. He threw her out of a moving car. He once kept her awake for four days straight and then tried to force her to overdose on sleeping pills.

Some of those scars would never heal. On Christmas 1950, Hubbard broke into such a rage that he deliberately ruptured her left eardrum. Her hearing would be impaired for the rest of her life.

6 Hubbard Tried To Beat Her Into A Miscarriage

None of those beatings, though, could compare to what he tried to do to her when she got pregnant.

One night, after Hubbard had gone into one his mad rages, he threw his pregnant wife onto the ground. They would not bring a child into this world, he had decided, and he would make sure of it. L. Ron Hubbard tried to make his wife miscarry by repeatedly stomping on her stomach.

By some strange miracle, the child survived. But this was hardly the first time that Hubbard had tried to beat an unborn baby to death.

His eldest son, L. Ron Hubbard Jr., claims that, as a child, he had caught his father standing over his mother with a coat hanger in his hand. And Hubbard Jr. says that his own birth, nearly three months premature, was the result of a failed late-term abortion:

“I wasn’t born. This is what came out as a result of their attempt to abort me.”^[5]

Hubbard admitted to some of the abortions himself. In his private memoir, he wrote that he and Polly’s marriage had resulted in “five abortions and two children.”

5 He Reported Her To The FBI As A Communist

As Dianetics started to take off and Hubbard became worth a small fortune, his eye started to wander. As he’d done with his first wife, Hubbard started to cheat on Sara with a young woman: Barbara Klowden, his 20-year-old PR assistant.

Sara didn’t take it lying down. After Hubbard forced her to go on a double date with Klowden, Sara started a revenge affair with one of his employees, Miles Hollister.

But nobody could bite back as hard as L. Ron Hubbard. He wrote the FBI a letter reporting his wife and her lover as “active and dangerous” Communists, calling Hollister “outspokenly disloyal to the US.”

J. Edgar Hoover actually answered Hubbard’s letter and invited him to meet with an FBI agent—which Hubbard did. He told them that Hollister had brainwashed his wife and driven her insane. Then Hubbard went into a mad rant about how Dianetics could bring an end to communism and how people said he was crazy but he definitely wasn’t.

The agent nodded politely, quietly making a little note in his book that just read: “Mental case.”^[6]

They never tried to bring in Northrup or Hollister. Perhaps, in part, it was because this was hardly the first time that Hubbard had tried to turn someone in. The FBI’s dossiers were full of letters from L. Ron Hubbard, reporting every German person he saw as an undercover Nazi and a “menace to the state.”

4 Scientologists Tried To Brainwash Her Into Staying With Hubbard

In their own ways, Hubbard and Northrup tried to make the marriage work. Northrup went to a psychiatrist and tried to convince Hubbard to get treatment for the paranoid schizophrenia that was destroying his life. But he wouldn’t listen.

Hubbard told her that she was in league with devils. Then he put two of his men, Richard de Mille and Dave Williams, to work at brainwashing her. As John Sanborne, one of Hubbard’s former confidants, recalls:

“He made this stupid attempt to get Northrup brainwashed so she’d do what he said. He kept her sitting up in a chair, denying her sleep, trying to use Black Dianetic principles on her, repeating over and over again whatever he wanted her to do. Things like, ‘Be his wife, have a family that looks good, not have a divorce.’ ”^[7]

It didn’t work. Northrup still wanted a divorce. In the end, Hubbard told her that he didn’t want to be with her, either. He was just worried about his reputation. There was only way out.

“If you really love me,” Hubbard told her, “you should kill yourself.”

In November 1950, Sara Northrup tried to do just that. While L. Ron Hubbard was out, she downed a bottle of sleeping pills and lay down, hoping never to wake up again.

It didn’t work. She woke up alive in a hospital bed, registered under a fake name.

3 Hubbard Kidnapped Her Baby

It was 1:00 AM on February 24, 1951, when L. Ron Hubbard and two of his friends dragged Sara Northrup out of her bed, still dressed in her nightgown. Hubbard had taken her baby. “We have Alexis,” Hubbard told her, “and you’ll never see her alive unless you come with us.”^[8]

They threw Sara into the back of a car and drove her to Yuma, Arizona. Not long after, Hubbard had a change of heart. He kicked her out, forced her to go back home, and kept the baby with him.

She tried begging Hubbard to give her back the baby, but Hubbard refused time and time again. Then, out of the blue, he called her and told her the worst thing imaginable: Alexis was dead, and he had killed her.

“He had cut her into little pieces,” Sara says he told her, “and dropped the pieces in a river and that he had seen little arms and legs floating down the river and it was my fault. I’d done it because I’d left him.”

Hubbard was lying. But Sara must have felt unimaginable pain when he said it. A little while later, he sent her a letter. He admitted that Alexis was alive and tried to blackmail Sara into giving him full custody.

“My will is all changed. Alexis will get a fortune,” he wrote, “unless she goes to you as she would then get nothing.”

He signed his blackmail note: “Goodbye. I love you. Ron.”

2 Polly Hubbard Had Gone Through All The Same Things

Sara publicized everything on the advice of a lawyer, who told her that she couldn’t keep all of this a secret any longer. “Tell the truth,” he told her, “for the truth will bring back [your] baby, if alive.”

She filed for divorce, and the papers became filled with horror stories about the man who had tortured her and taken her baby. Yes, she’d put it off too long. But now, it was clear that there was no other way to ever see her child again.

Polly Hubbard, Ron’s first wife, contacted Sara for the first time after reading about the divorce. Every word written by Sara was terrifyingly familiar to Hubbard’s first wife. Polly wrote Sara a letter of complete support:

“If I can help in any way, I’d like to. You must get Alexis in your custody. Ron is not normal. I had hoped that you could straighten him out. Your charges sound fantastic to the average person. But I’ve been through it—the beatings, threats on my life, all the sadistic traits you charge—twelve years of it.”^[9]

“Please do believe,” she wrote. “I do so want to help you get Alexis.”

1 Sara Had To Absolve Hubbard Of All Guilt To Get Her Baby Back

In June 1951, Sara Northrup got to see her baby again. For months, Hubbard had been hiding their child in Cuba, but now they were back in Wichita. Ron was willing to talk.

He’d completely given into his paranoid delusions. There was no sense of reality for him. Sara had no choice but to play along. In her words:

“He told me that I was under the influence of this communist cell. And that they were dictating to me what to do, and that I was in a state of complete madness. I told him, ‘Yep, I think you’re right. The only thing I can do is to work through it and do whatever they say.’ ”

He made her sign a paper absolving him of all blame. It was the only way that he would give her back her child.

“The things I have said about L. Ron Hubbard in courts and the public prints have been grossly exaggerated or entirely false,” the paper said. “L. Ron Hubbard is a fine and brilliant man.” That was what he cared about—not his child and not his wife, just his reputation.

But all Sara cared about was getting her child back. She signed the papers, and in exchange, he drove her and Alexis to the airport.

Hubbard stopped the car a few feet away from the airfield. He’d had a last-second change of heart. Shaking his head, he told her: “I’m not going to let you go.”

Sara clutched her child, got out of the car, and ran. She left her suitcase and all her things behind. Alexis’s shoe fell off, but Sara didn’t stop. She just kept running toward the airplane, toward freedom, with her child in her arms for the first time in four months.

“It was the 19th of June,” Sara later said, “and it was the happiest day of my life.”^[10]

In the 1950s, there was a real danger afoot. The Communists, as our brave senators warned us, had infiltrated the governments of the democratic world. And they’d brought with them their most powerful weapon: the gays.

As Senator Kenneth Wherry told the American people, “Only the most naive could believe that the Communists’ fifth column in the United States would neglect to propagate and use homosexuals to gain their treacherous ends.” We needed a device that could weed out these wily gays from their patriotic hetero peers. Our mission was clear: we needed a real-life, fully functioning gaydar.

The best minds in the world got to work. And they didn’t stop in America in the 1950s—in many parts of the world, our best and brightest are to working to build one today.

10 The Hoey Committee’s Investigative Techniques

In 1950, the best and brightest minds of the US Senate were organized into a special task force called the Hoey Committee. Their mission: to identify and root out the insidious gays hiding throughout America.

It would not, as they quickly learned, be as easy as they imagined. Senator Margaret Smith, during a meeting with America’s top medical minds, disappointedly asked: “There is no quick test like an X-ray that discloses these things?”

To her heartbreak, the surgeon general explained that homosexuality didn’t show up on most X-rays. He, at least, was answering their questions. Most medical experts, for some reason, rambled on with some nonsense about sexuality being “complicated” and “fluid” and refused to hand over the machine the senators apparently hoped would make all gay men in America start glowing with a neon red light.

After two years of research, though, the Hoey Committee identified some foolproof facts about homosexuals. Gay men, they announced, could be identified through a few key clues: They were unmarried, they “seldom refuse to talk about themselves,” and they tended to have what the council called “prissy habits.”

They started a complex system for tracking, eliminating, and destroying the lives of gay men, often crushing them so fully that they drove them to suicide.

And not a moment too soon. As their report warned, gay was contagious: “One homosexual can pollute a government office.”^[1]

9 The Canadian Government’s Fruit Machine

North of the border, the Canadians were hard at work on a special machine that they were convinced could identify any gay man. They called it the “Fruit Machine,” which, in the 1960s, was something you could name a machine, and nobody would say anything. In fact, the government would pay you $10,000, and everything would be fine.

It was a gigantic device, described by those who have seen it as looking “like something out of science fiction.”^[2] It had multiple cameras, giant steel girders, and a special screen designed to project gay porn.

A suspected homosexual would be called into the security official’s office and told: “We have evidence that you may be a homosexual. What do you have to say about this?”

If they denied it, the Fruit Machine would be their judge. They would be strapped in and shown a series of mundane images which, every now and then, would be livened up with the odd picture of gay porn. While they watched, the researchers would measure their pulse, skin reflexes, breathing, and pupillary response.

If your pupils expanded on the sight of gay porn, it meant that the pictures of naked men excited you. Or that the photo was a bit too dark for you. Or maybe that you were surprised. Or probably really nothing at all, since most tests showed that the Fruit Machine was wildly ineffective.

Still, the Canadian government was nothing if not cautious. Even if the machine didn’t work, they forced everyone who failed its test to resign from their jobs, thereby saving Canada from the horrors of having homosexuals walk through its streets leading normal, healthy lives.

8 The US Park Police’s Pervert Records

The United States Park Police played a special role in America’s mission to weed homosexuals out of government. They were put on a special task force when the government received some prized intel providing an insight into the mind of the homosexual man: Gay guys love parks.

The Park Police were expanded, with countless more officers brought on to help them with their missions, including weeding out “sex perverts.” Parks, the government had learned, were “popular cruising spots for gay men.” They needed a team to watch them.

One group of Park Police spent 12 hours, from dusk to dawn, staring at the bathroom in Lafayette Park and placing bets on whether or not the visitors were gay. In their report to Congress, they declared: “I do not believe a half a dozen legitimate persons go in there to answer Nature’s call.”^[3]

Thanks to their tireless work, the US government came to an important conclusion: Pretty well anyone who goes to the bathroom in a public park can be assumed to be a homosexual. And they took that intel seriously, even firing a CIA employee on the charge that he’d been spotted “hanging around the men’s room in Lafayette Park.”

7 J. Edgar Hoover’s Sex Deviates Program

J. Edgar Hoover personally pushed the FBI into leading what he called the “Sex Deviates” program. For decades, they would stop wasting so much time tracking down organized crime and domestic terrorists and, instead, focus their resources on America’s real threat: the gay menace.

Any person accused of being a closeted homosexual, on the FBI’s orders, was to be immediately reported to the chief of investigations.^[4] The FBI would take over from there, and they would put every resource at their disposal to work. FBI agents would follow men to their homes, keep tabs on which bars and restaurants they ate at, and have professional psychologists examine detailed records of their habits, searching for those telltale patterns of gayness.

Then they’d strike. Some eager FBI agents would pull the suspected homosexuals in early, while they were still just loitering outside those notorious park bathrooms. The truly diligent, though, would wait until they were the middle of what they called “an act of perversion” and until they’d gotten really good photographs of the act before bringing them in.

It was hard work, or work that made them hard, or one of those two—but it had to be done. Nobody understood that more than J. Edgar Hoover. After all, if the rumors about Hoover are true, he had an unfortunate habit of showing up at homosexual orgies—clear proof that those contagious gays had been coughing all over him.

6 The Gulf Cooperation Council Homosexuality Test

The quest for a foolproof way to spot gays didn’t end with the 1950s, and it wasn’t limited to the United States. Decades later, in 2013, Kuwait’s director of public health, Yousuf Mindkar, took up the cause himself.

Mindkar promised his people that he would introduce sweeping reforms to improve the nation’s gaydar, declaring to the world: “We will take stricter measures that will help us detect gays.”

His plan was to revise Kuwait’s visa stipulations to require doctors to certify any incoming visitors as heterosexual before letting them into the country.^[5] Mindkar wasn’t entirely clear on how the doctors would test their patients for homosexuality, but he was confident that it would be a simple procedure. He assured the press that any doctor in any country would be able to run a thorough test for the telltale physical markings of homosexuality.

Mindkar backed down because of criticism in the international community. FIFA expressed concern that his plan might bar some fans from watching the 2022 World Cup. The concern was echoed by many in the US, who suggested that the plan would bar everyone who likes soccer from entering Kuwait and then high-fived each other.

5 The Malaysian Guide To Spotting A Gay

A 2018 issue of Sinar Harian, a Malaysian newspaper, came with a helpful checklist to teach readers “how to spot a gay.”^[6]

The article came with a checklist of the classic telltale markings of homosexuality. Gay men, it explained, love beards. They also love branded clothing, are close to the family, and like to go to the gym. But once in the gym, it warned, the homosexual male will not exercise. Instead, he will merely ogle the other men, his eyes lighting up with joy whenever he spots a particularly handsome one.

Lesbians, it said, could be detected through their venomous attitudes toward men. Toward women, the article explained, lesbians are open and carefree. They will hold each other’s hands and hug each other openly. But they behave very differently around men. Lesbians, the article explained, hate men. What little joy they get out of life, they get from belittling them.

4 The Scientific Study Into Gay Faces

In 2008, Nicholas Rule and Nalini Ambady of Tufts University conducted an experiment into one of the great questions that have plagued scientists for centuries: Do gay people have gay faces?^[7]

They took pictures of heterosexual and homosexual people, carefully chosen to eliminate the effect of what they called “self-presentation.” They even Photoshopped out their hair and pasted them onto white backgrounds, trying to leave nothing but their cheekbones and eyebrows as hints into their sexuality. Then they showed the pictures to a group of 90 people and asked them to guess which faces were gay.

The participants, Rule and Ambady claimed, got the right answer more often than not, thereby proving that everyone can tell you’re gay just by looking at you (even if they don’t realize it). Apparently, you’re not fooling anybody, and you might as well drop the act.

3 Stanford University’s Gaydar Machine

In 2017, Stanford professor Michael Kosinski took spotting gay people by looking at their faces into the next era. He turned that idea into what he claims is a working “gaydar” machine.

Kosinski and his coauthor, Yilun Wang, had a facial recognition program scan 75,000 online dating profiles, organized into groups of “gay” and “straight.” Their AI was programmed to identify patterns in “gay facial features,” searching for the unique quirks that unite all gay men. Then they pitted their machine against humans to see who was better at identifying homosexuals.

The humans weren’t much better at telling if someone was gay by looking at their face than a coin flip, which sort of ruins the entire point of the study in that last entry, but anyway, the point is that the machine got it right 81 percent of the time for gay men and 74 percent for lesbians.^[8] Finally, they had created an effective gaydar.

Or, at least, it was an effective gaydar when it looked at people’s Tinder profile pictures. When they tried using it on pictures that people hadn’t put up on dating apps, it was significantly less effective. Still, they had finally developed a machine that could identify the sexuality of people who are actively and deliberately trying to make their orientations as visible as possible.

2 The Attempt To Isolate The Gay Gene

During the 2015 conference of the American Society of Human Genetics, a University of California researcher named Tuck Ngun made a bold declaration to the world: He had isolated the gay gene.^[9]

Specifically, Ngun had found “methylation marks” that he believed could be connected to homosexuality. His study had looked at 37 pairs of identical male twins that consisted of one homosexual brother and one heterosexual brother and identified five methylation marks that he claimed were clear biological indicators of homosexuality.

Sort of. The scientific community wasn’t exactly supportive. They pointed out that he looked at 6,000 methylation marks in just 37 sets of twins, which made it pretty much inevitable that he’d be able to find some kind of pattern between them, just by the sheer law of averages. And in this case, Ngun hadn’t even found a particularly good pattern—even in his test subjects, the “gay gene” he’d identified only showed up in 67 percent of the time.

1 Penile Plethysmograph

Some devices that have been employed as gaydars still see fairly widespread use today, like the penile plethysmograph. The Czechoslovakian Army once used it to determine if men claiming to be gay to avoid being drafted were telling the truth.

Here’s how it works: first, a scientist attaches a device shaped like a thin strip of metal to the penis. Then he puts on a variety of gay pornography (or whatever else they’re attempting to determine the subject’s response to) and uses the device to measure how erect the man gets looking at each image.

Admittedly, there are probably easier ways to figure out someone’s sexuality—like, for example, if a man attaches a thin strip of metal to people’s penises, shows them gay porn, and then takes careful notes on how erect they get, it might be a clue that he himself is gay—but somehow, this one has caught on and is still used in various scientific studies today.

It has been hailed as the most accurate sexuality test known to man—and with good cause. This test has proven to be an accurate determinant of a man’s sexual preferences 32 percent of the time,^[10] making it the most effective, proven way to tell somebody’s sexuality—other than flipping a coin.

The story of the Amber Room has all of the elements of an Indiana Jones film: the bounty of kings, the spoils of war, theft by dastardly Nazis, a tireless search by the Soviet Union, mysterious deaths, and a priceless treasure waiting to be found.

Construction of the opulent “Eighth Wonder of the World” began at the command of the king of Prussia in 1701. Although estimates of its size vary, the Amber Room was believed to span about 55 square meters (592 ft²) after 18th-century renovations. It contained over six tons of amber backed by glittering gold and set with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds.

As a peace symbol between allies, the Amber Room was moved from its place in Charlottenburg Palace twice—once to Winter House in St. Petersburg and then to Catherine Palace in Pushkin. As an act of war, the room was moved once more before being lost forever.

In 1941, invading Nazi soldiers tore down the room, packed its panels into 27 crates, and shipped it to Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad), Germany. When the city was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1943, the room went missing.

In subsequent years, governments, historians, archaeologists, bounty hunters, and treasure seekers alike have sought it out, interviewing thousands of witnesses, poring over records, digging up locations all over Europe, and spending fortunes along the way. As of this writing, the room has never been found.

10 Unmoved From Kaliningrad, Germany

Although the prominent theory holds that the Amber Room must have been destroyed by the bombs which rained down upon the city then called Konigsberg, some evidence contradicts this. In over 1,000 pages of reports compiled by the decade-long Soviet investigation, no witnesses attest to any unusual odors as the city burned. Officers involved in this investigation believed that it would be impossible to miss the equivalent of 6 tons of incense burning at once.

In 1997, a German raid in Bremen lent credence to the idea that the room had survived the bombing.^[1] One of its Florentine mosaic panels turned up for auction. After its seizure, the panel was authenticated but the seller claimed ignorance as to its origin. His father, a deceased Wehrmacht soldier, never shared the secret of the panel, not even with his own flesh and blood.

9 Hidden In A Silver Mine On The Czech Border

Helmut Gaensel was a bounty hunter. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the bounty he hunted was the bejeweled panels of the Amber Room. Former SS officers living in Brazil had tipped him off to a location. According to them, the panels were deposited in the 800-year-old Nicolai Stollen mine near the border between Germany and the Czech Republic.

Gaensel was not the only man to hear the tale. While he and a team of engineers, mining experts, and historians attempted to dig into the mine from the German side, a rival group led by Peter Haustein, then mayor of the town of Deutschneudorf, tried burrowing in from the Czech side. Though the competition led to international headlines and legal headaches, neither team proved successful.^[2]

8 Covered In A Murky Lagoon

The mayor of the Lithuanian town of Neringa believed that the Amber Room was hidden beneath the dirty waters of a nearby lagoon. According to Stasys Mikelis, SS soldiers were seen attempting to hide wooden crates in the shoreline near the end of the war. They did not count on rising sea levels to submerge their loot.^[3]

Not only did Mikelis believe it, he assembled a research team in 1998 to find it, hoping to put his town on the map. His dream was not realized.

7 Lost In A Bavarian Woodland

Georg Stein was a strawberry farmer and an avid treasure hunter. His heart was set on finding the Amber Room, but he got too close according to some sources.

Stein claimed to have discovered a secret radio frequency and to have listened to the last-known communication about the transfer of the Amber Room. This message was reportedly sent from the Castle Lauenstein on the border of Thuringia on a direct shortwave to Switzerland.

Stein then arranged to meet a “search competitor” in Bavaria. The meeting was not to be. In 1987, Stein was found dead in the woodland.^[4] His body was stripped, his stomach slashed open with a scalpel. The death was ruled a suicide.

6 Beneath Wuppertal, Western Germany

Pensioner Karl-Heinz Kleine believes that he knows the location of the Amber Room and who hid it there. According to Kleine, the Nazi’s chief administrator in East Prussia, Erich Koch, secreted the treasure in his hometown of Wuppertal in the industrial Ruhr area.^[5]

It would not be a far stretch to imagine it of Koch. Even the Nazis were appalled by his brazen thefts and use of concentration camp inmates for personal gain. Koch was tried for corruption before a Nazi court in 1944 and sentenced to death. Later reprieved, he returned to favor and continued amassing his personal fortune until the end of the war.

Once captured in Poland, he was sentenced to death for the murder of 72,000 Poles and for sending another 200,000 to labor camps. But he escaped his sentence yet again. Koch’s ill health prevented Poland from carrying out his death sentence, and he lived in prison for 27 years, unrepentant to the last.

5 Shipwrecked In The Baltic Sea

The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff on the night of January 30, 1945, was the worst disaster in maritime history. Under the press of the Red Army and rumored defeat, a great evacuation of German civilians began on the Baltic Sea. Every seaworthy vessel was placed into service.

So it was that the Wilhelm Gustloff, a luxury liner designed for fewer than 2,000 people, carried 10,582 shivering evacuees on that fateful night. It was flanked by only one military escort, which stood no chance when a Soviet submarine fired three torpedoes at the Gustloff. Each torpedo hit its target. An estimated 9,343 people died that night, half of them children.

The exact location of the Gustloff has long been known and searched. But some still claim that it may contain the hidden remains of the Amber Room. As the wreckage of the Gustloff is recognized as a war grave, diving to it, penetrating it, or both is illegal. But a lack of resources has left Polish authorities unable to protect it.^[6]

4 Aboard A Ghost Train, Walbrzych, Southwest Poland

It has long been said that a Nazi train loaded with treasure was lost in secret tunnels under a mountain in Walbrzych. Nobody knows the name of the train, its mission, or from where its precious cargo came.

Some speculate that the lack of written evidence of the train strengthens their hypothesis. Secrecy, the theory goes, was more important than paperwork, even to the Germans. Some theorize that the train may have carried the stolen wedding bands and other personal jewels of interned Jews, while others insist that the train bore the crated panels of the Amber Room.^[7]

In 2015, two men, a German and a Pole, claimed to have found the train. The local government of Walbrzych refused to comment on the matter except to warn that the train may be booby-trapped by mines if it exists.

3 In a Bunker In Mamerki, Northeastern Poland

In 2016, officials of the Mamerki Museum reported to have found a hidden room inside a World War II–era bunker using geo-radar. Bartlomiej Plebanczyk of the museum believed it possible that the panels of the Amber Room were hidden inside.

His theory was based upon the testimony of a turncoat Nazi soldier. In the 1950s, the former Nazi told Polish soldiers that he had witnessed heavily guarded cargo trucks delivering their load to the bunker in winter 1944.^[8]

2 Buried In Tunnels Under The Ore Mountains In Eastern Germany

In 2017, treasure hunters Leonhard Blume, Peter Lohr, and Gunter Eckhardt claimed to have deduced the location of the room via archival and radar sleuthing. Both the East German and Russian secret police held years-long searches for the Amber Room. It is from their records that these men reportedly found a clue as to the room’s whereabouts.

Eyewitnesses claimed that a shipment of crates had been hidden inside the tunnels. The entrance to the tunnels, they said, was then blown up. Blume, Lohr, and Eckhardt eagerly surveyed the “Prince’s Cave” near the Czech border, and the results were astounding.

Mr. Blume said, “We discovered a very big, deep, and long tunnel system and we detected something that we think could be a booby trap.” Their search continues.^[9]

1 A Secret Russian Location Known By Stalin

The impending raid of Winter Palace was known to the officials and curators of Catherine Palace. According to the official record, they attempted to disassemble and hide the Amber Room. When the brittle panels began to crumble, they chose to wallpaper over them instead. But they could not outwit the Nazis, who discovered the trick almost at once.

This conspiracy theory holds that Joseph Stalin fooled the soldiers after all. The panels they stole were replicas, while the real Amber Room had already been shipped off and hidden elsewhere. If true, the Amber Room may have been cleverly saved, only to be lost forever.^[10]

Olene Quinn is the historical fiction author of The Gates of Nottingham and Prince Dead. A self-described armchair historian, she resides in Northern California.

On January 1, 1917, the body of Grigori Rasputin, the advisor to the rulers of Tsarist Russia, was found trapped under the frozen surface of the Neva River. He’d been shot three times and horribly mutilated; his killers, it seemed, had even gouged out his right eye.

Everyone was a suspect. Rasputin was seen as a sorcerer and a corrupting influence on the tsar. He was hated by the Tsarists and the Bolsheviks alike. Even outside Russia, he’d made powerful enemies. Prince Felix Yusupov took the credit for Rasputin’s death, claiming that he and four co-conspirators had killed him together. And to this day, Yusupov’s story is the one that usually appears in the history books.

But Yusupov’s confession didn’t fit a single one of the facts. Every single detail in his story contradicted the autopsy and the evidence—and to this day, no one really knows for sure how Grigori Rasputin met his grisly end.

10 The Death Threat The Morning Before He Died

On the morning of December 29, 1916, Rasputin received a strange phone call. The voice on the other line, he told his daughter Maria, wasn’t one he recognized. The message, though, was clear: Rasputin’s days were numbered.

It was a death threat, though by no means the first one Rasputin had received.^[1] At this stage in his life, Rasputin was used to getting multiple death threats every day. They would come in the mail or through the phone, always warning him that he deserved to die for the greater good of Russia.

This one, though, deeply unsettled him. Multiple sources described Rasputin as “nervous” and “agitated” that day. For some reason, after countless threats on his life, the one he received the morning before he died terrified him.

Nobody knows who placed the call. The only thing we know for sure is that it wasn’t Felix Yusupov, the man who has taken credit for Rasputin’s death. Yusupov spent the day trying to charm his victim so that he could lure him out to his home, and nobody involved in his conspiracy has ever claimed responsibility for the call.

9 The Cyanide That Failed To Kill Him

Yusupov’s plan was to poison Rasputin. He lured Rasputin out to his home, where he had plates full of cakes and wine that had been laced with cyanide by one of his co-conspirators, Dr. Stanislaus de Lazovert. The plan was to feed Rasputin the poisoned food and watch him die.

There is no question that Rasputin went to Yusupov’s house. The last person who saw him was his daughter, Maria, to whom he bid goodbye at 11:00 PM on December 29. Everything that happened after that, though, is a mystery.

Yusupov claims that he fed Rasputin the poisoned cakes and wines and that Rasputin gorged down enough cyanide to kill an elephant. But no amount of poison would hurt him. Instead, Rasputin kept asking for more.

His story, though, doesn’t quite add up. The autopsy notes say that Rasputin’s body showed “no trace of poison.”

Nobody knows for sure why there was no poison in his body. Yusupov’s story seems to imply that Rasputin really did have supernatural powers, but there are certainly other explanations.

Dr. Lazovert, years later, would claim that he only pretended to poison the cakes out of a pang of conscience—but not everybody’s convinced he was telling the truth. More recently, forensic scientist Dolly Stolze concluded that Rasputin was poisoned, but the doctor performing the autopsy missed the signs.^[2]

But then, of course, there’s always the other possibility: Yusupov could have lied.

8 The Gunshot That Failed To Kill Him

Frustrated that his poison didn’t work, Yusupov pulled out his pistol and shot Rasputin in the chest. Rasputin collapsed onto his back, blood spilling out of his body, and convulsed in spasms. It took a full minute for his body to become still, but by then, Yusupov’s co-conspirators had rushed into the room.

“The doctor [Lazovert] declared that the bullet had struck him in the region of the heart,” Yusupov wrote in his memoirs.^[3] “There was no possibility of doubt: Rasputin was dead.”

The conspirators, he claims, then drove to Rasputin’s house, one of the men dressed up in Rasputin’s clothes to convince the neighbors he’d made it home safely that night. Then they came back and got ready to dispose of Rasputin’s body.

“Then a terrible thing happened,” Yusupov wrote. “With a sudden violent effort Rasputin leapt to his feet, foaming at the mouth.”

Yusupov and the other men ultimately shot Rasputin several more times before one of the conspirators, Vladimir Purishkevich, finally took him down with a gunshot to the head. Even while they tied him up and threw him into the river, though, Yusupov insists that Rasputin’s body continued to move.

“I realized now who Rasputin really was,” Yusupov wrote. “It was the reincarnation of Satan himself.”

7 The Autopsy That Contradicts Everything Yusupov Said

Yusupov’s story certainly is exciting—but it doesn’t fit the facts. The autopsy report on Rasputin’s body, conducted by Professor Dmitry Kosorotov, contradicts every single word.

In his memoirs, Yusupov claims that he shot Rasputin in the heart and even says that he had Dr. Lazovert check the body and confirm that was where the bullet had hit its mark. Kosorotov’s autopsy, though, found only three bullet wounds, and not a single one had even come close to the heart. Instead, the bullets went through his stomach, liver, kidney, and skull, with wounds that no physician could possibly mistake for a gunshot to the heart.^[4]

Likewise, Yusupov claimed that Rasputin was taken down by a long-range shot from Purishkevich that took him in the back of the head. The bullet in Rasputin’s skull, however, had entered from the front at point-blank range, while Rasputin was lying on the ground.

It’s hard to reconcile Yusupov’s story with the facts. Some have suggested that he blew the murder up to make Rasputin more of a threat—but his account is nowhere near the truth. It’s almost as though Yusupov had no idea how Rasputin died.

6 The Rumor That Rasputin Drowned

Yusupov claims that he saw Rasputin move, even after he’d taken a bullet to the skull. Still, the co-conspirators tied up Rasputin’s arms and legs, wrapped up his body in a piece of heavy linen, drove it to the top of a bridge, and hurled it into the water.

Legend has it that Rasputin was still alive when they threw him in. When he was found, his hands were unbound and lifted over his head. He’d freed his hands under the water, Rasputin’s daughter Maria would later claim, and died drowning.

It’s very difficult to tell what the autopsy says. During the trial, an expert witness claimed that the autopsy showed “there was air in Rasputin’s lungs” and that he had still been alive when he was thrown into the water.^[5]

But this is a rare case where even reading the autopsy report doesn’t give us a clear answer. For some reason, different transcriptions say different things. Even today, you can find copies of Kosorotov’s original autopsy that say there was no water in his lungs and others that say there was. We’ve even found versions of Kosorotov’s autopsy that unambiguously claim Rasputin was alive, saying, “The victim was still breathing when he was thrown into the river.”

Somewhere along the line, whatever Kosorotov wrote was changed. Did the rumor pervade so far that people rewrote his autopsy? Or was the report altered to hide that Rasputin was still alive?

5 The Horrible Mutilation Of His Body And Genitals

Whoever killed Rasputin didn’t just shoot him. They brutally and horribly mutilated his corpse.

The description, in Kosorotov’s autopsy, is nothing short of horrifying:

The left-hand side has a gaping wound inflicted by some sharp object or possibly a spur.

The right eye has come out of its orbital cavity and fallen on to the face. At the corner of the right eye the skin is torn.

The right ear is torn and partially detached. The neck has a wound caused by a blunt object. The victim’s face and body bear the signs of blows inflicted by some flexible but hard object.

The genitals have been crushed due to the effect of a similar object.^[6]

The wounds, Kosorotov would later say, appeared to have been inflicted after Rasputin had died. This wasn’t the result of a violent scuffle. It was the brutal desecration of a dead body, a merciless beating that isn’t mentioned anywhere in Yusupov’s confession.

There are explanations. Some have theorized that Rasputin may have incurred these wounds in the water, while his body floated and dragged underneath a thick layer of rough ice. The ice, it’s believed, may also have broken the ropes off of Rasputin’s wrists.

But every explanation is nothing but speculation. All we know for sure is that his body was mutilated; whether it was by the force of man or the force of nature, we cannot know for sure.

4 Yusupov’s Strange Insistence On Taking Credit

Yusupov and his co-conspirators went to great lengths to cover up Rasputin’s death. They faked him driving home, they threw him in the river, and Yusupov repeatedly told the police that the gunshots from his house had just made by a drunken guest shooting at a dog.

According to police reports, though, the conspirators confessed pretty well immediately. The officer sent to Yusupov’s house, following up on reports gunshots, said that Purishkevich threw open the door and declared:

Listen here, he [Rasputin] is dead, and if you love the Tsar and the Motherland, you’ll keep this quiet and won’t tell anyone a thing.^[7]

The police certainly found bloodstains in Yusupov’s backyard, even if the autopsy didn’t fit his story. And while he denied the murder at first, Yusupov started hungrily trying to profit off his reputation as soon as he was implicated. He even ended up writing a whole memoir describing how he’d killed Rasputin in intricate, storybook-like detail.

When an MGM film called Rasputin and the Empress came out about Rasputin’s death, Yusupov even sued the filmmakers in a court case that, in the end, had Yusupov put down on the legal records as the man who killed Rasputin.

3 The British Spy Who Might Have Killed Him

Every bullet in Rasputin’s body, according to the autopsy, came out of a different caliber gun. At least three people—or at least three guns—had to have been involved in his death.

The bullet holes in his stomach and kidney could have been made by Yusupov and Purishkevich’s guns, but the one in his skull didn’t fit. It was made with a revolver, specifically, according to the most popular theory, a .455 Webley—a gun none of the conspirators carried.

A British friend of Yusupov’s named Oswald Rayner, though, carried a .455 Webley on him at almost all times. And though Yusupov denies that he was ever there, a lot of people think that Rayner fired the shot that finished Rasputin off, all under the orders of British Intelligence.

The British had a vested interest in seeing Rasputin dead. He was trying to broker peace between Russia and Germany, and his treaty would have turned the tide of World War I against the Allies. In Rasputin hadn’t died, it’s possible that the Germans would have won the war.

And there’s a letter that seems to completely give it away. A man named Stephen Alley, stationed in Petrograd, sent a missive to England on January 7, 1917, that read:

Our objective has clearly been achieved. Reaction to the demise of ‘Dark Forces’ has been well received by all, although a few awkward questions have already been asked about wider involvement.

Rayner is attending to loose ends and will no doubt brief you on your return.^[8]

2 The MI6 Archives That Say Otherwise

The British government, more than 100 years later, still denies having anything to do with Rasputin’s death. The suggestion that Rayner killed Rasputin, they insist, is “an outrageous charge, and incredible to the point of childishness.”

They might be telling the truth. Rayner was not listed as an active agent when Rasputin died, and although countless historians have scoured through every available MI6 record, they can’t find the slightest trace of evidence that the British were involved.^[9]

Some of the arguments against Rayner fall flat, as well. One book dedicated to proving Rayner was the killer claims that the bullet in Rasputin’s head could only be “the work of a professional killer”—but that bullet, as we already know, was fired at point-blank range while Rasputin was lying down. It was hardly an expert shot.

Nor was the murder. Police Chief Serda described Rasputin’s murder as the work of “incompetent” killers whose methods were clumsier than he had ever seen in his entire career.

It was, in short, hardly the work of a secret agent.

1 The Burning Body That Sat Up

The most popular explanation for Yusupov’s outrageous story is that he was trying to erase a guilty conscience. He’d killed a defenseless man in cold blood, but he still wanted the people to believe that he was a hero. And so he changed the truth, making himself look better by selling Rasputin as a demonic monster who couldn’t be killed.

But one strange moment in March 1917 almost makes it tempting to believe that Yusupov was telling the truth: that Rasputin really a supernatural being.

A group of soldiers exhumed Rasputin’s body, threw it onto a pile of logs, doused it in gasoline, and set it on fire. They destroyed his body, afraid his tomb would become a monument to the Tsarist regime.

A whole crowd of villagers came out to watch Rasputin’s body burn—and almost every one of them insists that they saw his decomposing corpse rise up in the fire.^[10]

There are scientific explanations, of course. It’s been speculated that Rasputin’s tendons shrank in the fire, causing his body to bend at the waist. Or else the whole thing has been written off as a great mass delusion.

But Rasputin, they say, predicted every bit of it. In a letter that Rasputin (supposedly) wrote to Tsarina Alexandra shortly before his death, he said: “I feel that I shall leave life before January 1.”

Even dead, the sorcerer predicted, he would not be left in peace. His body would be burned, his ashes scattered into the winds.

In the early 1800s, Britain and America found themselves in a whirlwind of scientific and medical discovery. The study of anatomy and surgery was extremely popular. This led to a gruesome trade in bodies, a practice which was mirrored elsewhere around the world.

Grieving families could no longer bury their dead and expect them to remain that way. Resurrection men roamed churchyards late at night, looking for freshly dug graves. They would disinter the body, undress the corpse, and toss its clothes back into the grave before carrying it away into the night. After that, the body would be dissected, often in front of an audience, for the betterment of mankind.

Obviously, some relatives took exception to this, and they came up with a number of ingenious ways to foil the body snatchers.

10 Mort Safes

Mort safes were iron cages placed over and sometimes around the coffin to prevent it from being reached by the resurrection men. The cages were left over the graves for up to 10 weeks until the bodies were sufficiently putrefied that they were of no use for dissection. Sometimes, the cages were left in place permanently.^[1]

At that time, Edinburgh had a noted surgical school and was a center of excellence for the study of anatomy and surgery. There was also a steady supply of cadavers due in no small part to two of its inhabitants—Mr. William Burke and Mr. William Hare. Surgeons’ Hall Museums in Edinburgh explore some of the less edifying history of surgery. Now they even boast an interactive dissecting table for visitors to have a go themselves—thankfully, not on a real body!

However, the inhabitants of Edinburgh at that time were not quite so happy. Evidence of mort safes can still be seen at a cemetery called Greyfriars Kirkyard, along with a number of other precautions taken by the residents to prevent the untimely resurrection of the dead.

9 Iron Coffins

Wealthy families sometimes resorted to constructing the entire coffin from iron to prevent the body snatchers from reaching the remains inside. In St. Brides Church in Fleet Street, London, an iron coffin, riveted shut, was discovered bearing the date 1819. Meanwhile, the body of a boy found in an iron coffin near Washington is believed to date from the 1850s.^[2]

A number of patented coffins were guaranteed to be tamperproof, with the iron coffin proving a particular favorite. Special lifting equipment was required to lower the coffins into the ground. This made things difficult for the cemetery keepers who were often reluctant to accept iron coffins.

In one case, the body of a woman lay unburied in her coffin for three months while the courts decided whether the cemetery keepers were entitled to refuse her entry. Which made the whole thing a little redundant.

8 Mort Houses

Mort houses were fortified and guarded buildings used for storing bodies prior to burial to render the corpses unfit for dissection. Each mort house would store a number of bodies for a fee, and they would stay there for several weeks until the decomposition was advanced.

The design of the mort houses was usually extremely secure. They were constructed along the lines of prisons and bank vaults. For example, the mort house at Belhelvie near Aberdeen is built of large granite blocks with a single doorway down three stone steps which is protected by a further set of double doors.

The inner door is covered with a sheet of iron and has a massive lock. The outer door is made of strong oak planks and is studded with iron bolts and two large mortise locks. The two keyholes are covered and protected by two iron bars, one hinged at the top of the door and the other at the bottom. Where the bars intersect, they are secured with a huge padlock.

It would take a committed body snatcher to get past that.

Scotland had a large number of mort houses, including one at Udny which boasted a revolving coffin platform for the easy addition and extraction of bodies.^[3]

7 Delaying Burial

For those who couldn’t afford a place at a mort house, there remained the option of keeping the body at home until it had decomposed. It is unlikely that people found that to be a pleasant choice.

Mourners would also mix the earth in which the body was to be buried with an equal measure of straw to make it more difficult to dig through. But with the elaborate measures taken by the wealthy for their burials, the poor dead were especially vulnerable.

The penalties for body snatching were also relatively minor as long as the perpetrators did not carry away any of the deceased’s possessions. This accounted for the clothes being tossed back into the grave.

Those people who were unfortunate enough to die in the workhouse were especially vulnerable. “Charitable” hospitals would often sell the bodies of any inmates without kin directly to the dissecting hospitals, and resurrection men often arranged for someone to make a claim on the bodies by pretending to be a relative. It is a sad fact that they were valued more in death than they were in life.^[4]

6 Mort Stones

Graves were most likely to be robbed in the first week or two following the funeral when the corpse was freshest and the soil in the grave had not yet been firmed up. As a temporary measure, mort stones were sometimes used to cover the top of the grave site.

At Inverurie near Aberdeen, several mort stones can still be found in the graveyard. These large granite stones had the same dimensions as the plot and completely covered the coffin beneath. They required a special hoist to lift them into place and to remove them again after decomposition so that a headstone could be put in the same place.^[5]

In 1816, Superintendent Gibb of Aberdeen Harbor Works gifted a mort stone, costing half a crown, to St. Fitticks churchyard. The lifting equipment cost considerably more and had to be kept securely under lock and key to prevent the sack-em-up men from getting to it.

5 Vigils

Relatives often took turns sitting at a graveside every night for the first week to deter the grave robbers. Sitting in the dark beside a grave waiting for robbers to show up could not have been an easy task. But people were so afraid of the body snatchers that they did it.

There was a popular view that a body had to be “whole” to enter Heaven. So the dissectors were therefore stealing not only the bodies of the dead but also their eternal rest.

A churchyard in Somerset, England, records the tragic tale of Miss Rogers who was engaged to a sailor. He was sailing home so that they could marry. But his ship wrecked, and he drowned.

As in all the best Gothic romances, his fiancee died soon after from a broken heart. She was buried in her wedding dress, wearing all her jewelry. About that time, there were rumors that resurrection men were searching for new corpses for surgical reasons. The family servants kept nightly vigil at the grave until such time as a mort stone could be laid over it.^[6]

4 Watchmen

Those who did not fancy the task of sitting in the graveyard all night often procured the services of a watchman. The parish of Ely, for example, employed a watchman to be “constantly in the churchyards for the protection of the bodies buried.”

In some of the larger churchyards, watchhouses were built to lodge the watchmen between shifts. One near Aberdeen has a two-story tower with the upper floor used as a lookout. It even has a special hole through which the watchmen could shoot at intruders and a bell on the top of the tower which could be used to raise the alarm and to seek assistance.

Some body snatchers posed as watchmen themselves, which meant that they knew where all the traps were. Some were in league with the body snatchers and took a commission on the sale of the bodies.^[7]

Being an honest watchman was a dangerous occupation. When bribery or intimidation couldn’t persuade the watchmen to look the other way, the sack-em-up men would take their chances anyway and turn to violence if they were caught. One poor guard was even attacked with a saber.

3 Coffin Torpedoes

Among the more ingenious forms of burial security was the coffin torpedo.

Patented in 1878 in Columbus, Ohio, by Philip K. Clover, the coffin torpedo was designed to “successfully prevent the unauthorized resurrection of dead bodies; and . . . be readily secured to the coffin and the body of the contained corpse in such manner that any attempt to remove the body after burial will cause the discharge of the cartridge contained in the torpedo and injury or death of the desecrator of the grave.”^[8]

The torpedo featured an intricate mechanism that exploded “with deadly force” if the coffin was disturbed. Little thought appears to have been given to the legality of such a weapon.

Luckily for Mr. Clover, there is little evidence that the coffin torpedo actually went into production. Churchyards were dangerous enough at that time with body snatchers creeping around with sabers in the middle of the night and armed watchmen shooting intruders through the walls without adding high explosives to the mix.

2 Coffin Collars

Rather more practical was the coffin collar. The collar was made up of a very heavy iron ring mounted on a board of thick oak. This was secured to the base of the coffin with heavy bolts, thus rendering it impossible to remove the corpse without decapitating it and seriously reducing its value.

This was a practical and comparatively cheap method of defeating the resurrectionists, and examples of their use have been found in churchyards in Scotland. The collars were not pretty and would have been very visible in an open casket. But they did give the deceased’s relatives some peace of mind.^[9]

1 Booby Traps On Graves

The feeling against the dissectors was so strong that some mourners even went so far as to booby trap the graves. They set spring-loaded guns into the ground and embedded sharp objects there, too. In Dublin, it was reported that a grieving father went so far as to plant a land mine in the coffin of his infant child.^[10]

Whether the land mine was genuine is debatable. Certainly, no resurrection man took the trouble to find out.

The feelings against the resurrection men ran high, with citizens demanding that something be done to protect the dead. The passage of the 1832 Anatomy Act in England and similar bills in America and elsewhere ended the trade in bodies almost overnight.

It allowed for corpses to be obtained for medical research from a number of sources, particularly the poor and the unclaimed. Surgeons, medical students, and scientists could expand their knowledge of the human body while leaving the dead to their everlasting peace.

Ward Hazell is a writer who travels and is an occasional travel writer.

From ancient Greece, where small fried fish were peddled, to Aztec marketplaces, where tamales, insects, and stews were a delicacy, ready-to-eat street food sold by vendors has been around for centuries. It’s still a staple of many cities today. Whether you want a hot dog, taco, or something more unique, there’s a food truck for that.

These days, many who have taken to the profession have indubitably experienced their share of ups and downs, predicated on a volatile economy and uncertain monetary prosperity. The following ten entries examine several unsavory street vendors who boiled over in events too bizarre and disgusting to comprehend or imagine prior to eating.

10 A Spicy Sriracha Shower

You never know when you might cross paths with an unhinged individual destined to ruin someone’s day. For Carlotta Washington, her run-in with Islam El Masry turned into a racist food fight after she attempted to pay for her lunch in quarters in June 2018. El Masry, the owner of Small Pharoah’s halal cart in Portland, Oregon, became so perturbed about Washington’s change that he responded in the only eloquent way he knew how: by calling her the “n-word,” a “stupid f—ing b—” and demanding that she “get the f— away” from his cart.

As if his romantic tirade wasn’t classy enough, El Masry took his fury a step further by and hurling a Gatorade bottle at her. Not long after that, he proceeded to douse Washington in sriracha. Numerous onlookers came to Washington’s defense as she sobbed in disbelief, covered in hot sauce. Three police officers arrived on scene a short time later and arrested the temperamental vendor on misdemeanor harassment and assault.

Incensed by the vendor’s demented actions, local residents began harassing the owner of an Egyptian food cart in downtown Portland the following day. The only problem was that it was a completely different individual with no association to the sriracha-wielding cook. Some 15 to 20 people holding signs shouted obscenities at Gharib Muhammad’s wife as she operated their food cart. One man staed, “I remember what you did yesterday.”^[1]

9 ‘Can I Get A Large Coke?’

When approaching the food truck of Johnny B. Jones (aka “Big Dad”) in Springfield, Tennessee, one could order a burger and fries with a side of cocaine. It eventually became public knowledge that the beloved neighborhood cook was offering hot dogs along with the daily special, his infamous booger sugar. Booked into Robertson County jail on a six-count indictment in spring 2018, the 57-year-old could very well be trading in his apron for a fashionable orange jumpsuit.

Jones’s dire predicament began following a joint investigation by the Robertson County Sheriff’s Office and the Springfield Police Department’s narcotics division nearly a year prior to his arrest. It seems that arrogance was more of a factor than logic for the peddler, as detectives observed an innumerable amount of transactions at Big Dad’s stand, all while he turned famished frowns into smiles and, perhaps, rapid heartbeats. “It was a shock to us, what we found out,” said Detective Houston Evans. “I’m sure everyone else who heard about this is shocked, as well.”

The distinctive red and yellow truck that had become so loved by Springfield locals throughout the years is now a grim reminder of the growing drug problem throughout their state. In a final twist of irony, Jones’s home-style cooking food truck was situated near one of the most laughable localities, a police station and sheriff’s office.^[2]

8 Daily Specials

A woman in Long Island was smoking more than just sausage when she converted her hot dog truck into a miniature brothel. In 2012, Catherine Scalia, 45, decided to expand her business by handing out suggestive cards titled “Strips-R-Us” and advertising a “topless cleaning service” and “one-on-one strips.”

Disgruntled and nauseated neighbors not privy to her marketing strategies eventually complained to authorities, stating, “In the summertime she’s out in her bra and panties. It’s disgusting. She’s filthy, she’s dirty. How could men take that?” In her own defense, the mother of four contentedly gloated about her professionalism and unyielding restraint when it comes to children, asserting, “I zip up when I see kids.” In spite of such morality, Scalia soon found herself inside a jail cell after offering one of her daily specials to an undercover police officer.

This was not the first time that her flesh-peddling ways led her to the slammer. Scalia was arrested eight years prior after performing sexual acts on her co-chef in the “captain’s chair” of the same hot dog truck. According to one local resident who observed several satisfied clients blissfully leave her establishment, “They seemed pretty happy. Now I can see why.” One can only hope that her proficiency in cleaning is as highly regarded as her “home cooking.”^[3]

7 The Hot Dog Nazi

Michael Anderson of M.A.’s Gourmet Dogs in Anchorage, Alaska, garnered quite the reputation after serving up sizzling hot dogs with an attitude. Known as “the hot dog Nazi,” Anderson was infamous for his strict rules (such as refusal to serve anyone talking on a cell phone) and his tendency to lose his cool if customers dared to stray from his stringent regulations.

His bizarre tirades became endearing to local residents for nearly 20 years. That was until he was charged for unwanted sexual contact with a teenage employee in 2015. Ironically enough, the incident occurred near Anderson’s pushcart, situated in front of the old Federal Building, of all places. According to Anderson’s accuser, he coerced her with alcohol before touching her “down there.” In addition to his appalling advances, the 54-year-old vendor took a liking to gorging on marijuana brownies while on the job and washing it down with pints of vodka.

With several charges stacked against him and his reputation in shambles, Anderson killed himself in 2016, one day before he was set to go to trial. To date, the vacancy on the infamous corner he stood on for over two decades echoes a sobering memory of a troubled and wasted life.^[4]

6 Virgin Boy Eggs

An unmistakable, pungent aroma reminiscent of a nursing home is what you can find permeating the streets of the Chinese city of Dongyang. As local residents flock to their neighborhood vendor, buckets of boys’ urine boil over as eggs are soaked and cooked in the fragrant yellow “broth.” The unique snack, popular for its “fresh and salty taste,” is a local tradition that has been passed down by ancestors for centuries. “Virgin boy eggs,” as they’re so eloquently named, are claimed to have remarkable health benefits. Gallons of piss are collected from primary schools and used as the main ingredient by egg vendors throughout the city.

Virgin boy eggs are not only served up on street corners but in residences as well. In those instances, the magical yellow liquid is personally collected by locals from nearby schools under the guise of a therapeutic appetizer. “If you eat this, you will not get heat stroke. These eggs cooked in urine are fragrant,” said egg vendor Ge Yaohua. “They are good for your health. Our family has them for every meal. In Dongyang, every family likes eating them.” Interestingly enough, government officials listed the nauseating treat as part of the city’s cultural heritage, ensuring its popularity and consumption for centuries to come.^[5]

5 Satay Chicken

“Satay chicken, not dog?” asked a skeptical tourist on a Bali beach after purchasing mystery meat from a vendor. “I’m happy just as long as it’s not dog,” the man said before he naively devoured poor Lassie. Sadly, such revolting grub is commonplace in Indonesia, where dogs are tortured prior to their slaughter for human consumption. An investigation led by Animals Australia found that vendors throughout Bali have been deceptively selling canine meat to unsuspecting tourists under the guise of chicken. “Tourists will walk down a street, they’ll see a street store selling satay but what they are not realising is the letters RW on the store mean it is dog meat being served,” Animals Australia’s campaign director Lyn White said.

In a place where dog meat is legal, hoards of unscrupulous vendors hunt, steal, beat, hang, or poison the canines in order to turn a quick profit. An unapologetic 83-year-old, for example, resorted to snatching an average of 12 dogs a week due to the fact that he could not find another source of income. After capturing his prey, be it an older dog or a puppy, the elderly man described bludgeoning the animals with a metal pipe in a nonchalant fashion without the slightest hint of remorse.

As grotesque as his method is, it is far more troublesome that countless vendors have been known to use cyanide as a means to kill. Dr. Andrew Dawson of the New South Wales Poisons Information Centre stated that its use poses a significant threat, considering that, “Cyanide is not going to be destroyed by cooking. So there will be cyanide throughout the dog’s body. The actual risk depends upon how much poison is in the dog meat.” To date, no human deaths have been reported from the consumption of dog meat in Indonesia, yet. Time will tell.^[6]

4 A Special Ingredient

As if urine-soaked eggs weren’t stomach-churning enough, a 59-year-old paani puri vendor in India was arrested in 2011 for adding his own special flavor to his sauces. Naupada resident Ankita Rane, 19, began keeping a close eye on vendor Rajdev Lakhan Chauhan, who had a reputation for being “quite gross,” from the confines of her balcony. “We have seen him scratching himself or picking his nose if no one was around. I had always asked my friends to refrain from eating there, but they were so hooked to the taste that they rubbished whatever we said.”

That all changed, however, after Rane witnessed Chauhan urinating into his saucepans before blending his tangy delicacy into the paani puri mix or the neighborhood favorite, ragda. After several days of dousing his utensils with golden showers, the saucy street vendor was filmed in the act. The video was then shown to local residents. When neighbors in the area learned of Chauhan’s special ingredient, they surrounded his cart and took turns beating him up before dragging the devious urinator to the police station.

When questioned, Chauhan simply stated that he had nowhere else to pee and that urinating into the pans kept the residential streets of Bhaskar Colony clean. Despite his righteous intentions, police decided to detain Chauhan but were confused about what to charge him with: “In the end, all we could book him under was the Bombay Police act for urinating in public places.” Chauhan ultimately pleaded guilty and was fined 1,200 rupees before being let off with a warning.^[7]

3 Turf Wars

In 2016, when ice cream man John Cierco pulled up to his “favorite spot” in New York City, a sense of ire pulsed through his veins upon finding a pretzel vendor encroaching on “his” corner. Moments later, the pretzel peddler was pummeled over the head with a baseball bat.

Such barbaric acts over turf become surprisingly commonplace when profit-oriented territory determines ones success. In spite of cities not dictating certain locations for food carts or trucks, unwritten rules have allowed vendors to virtually own particular spots for decades on end. This has spawned violent turf wars by established vendors, who see newcomers as competition in a desperate economy.

In 2012, bullets flew outside Yankee Stadium when 52-year-old Horace Coleman shot two competitors multiple times with a .357 magnum. According to witnesses, Coleman, known on the streets as “Ace,” had been at war over his sidewalk turf for quite some time. “They were trying to bully him out of his spot,” said Coleman’s friend Gracie Olivera; that is until the pistol-packing vendor—dressed in a pinstripe suit, a flamboyant derby hat, and gold-framed sunglasses—took matters into his own hands. “He didn’t say anything. He walked up, pulled out and started firing. Bang! Bang! Bang!”^[8]

2 Human Tamales

Working on an anonymous tip in 2004, Mexican police raided the home of a tamale vendor suspected of having a dismembered corpse in his kitchen. Upon the discovery of carved-up body parts, detectives noted that the appetizing ingredients were in the process of being boiled on the stove with herbs and spices.

The homicidal vendor, who worked as a butcher for eight years, vehemently denied using human meat in the tamales that he sold from his cart. Nonetheless, police took it upon themselves to test the tamales for human remains as opposed to taking the word of a man halfway into the process of filleting a fresh cadaver. According to the resourceful chef, he killed the unidentified man in a drunken argument the day prior to seasoning him for lunch.

Following an analysis, police found no trace of human flesh in the food. However, police claimed to have found “other materials” and ingredients suggesting that the unorthodox cook was preparing to make a “new batch” of tamales while in the vicinity of his decomposing, edible victim, or soon-to-be cuisine.^[9]

1 Tarek El-Tayeb Mohammed Bouazizi

The only vendor on this list worthy of accolades is Tarek el-Tayeb Mohammed Bouazizi, who, on December 17, 2010, set himself ablaze, igniting a revolution. Working as a vegetable seller in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, Bouazizi’s dream was to save enough money to purchase a food truck. Sadly, the 26-year-old’s hopes and aspirations came crashing down when a policewoman confiscated his unlicensed vegetable cart and his produce. To add insult to injury, the officer slapped Bouazizi, insulted his dead father, and spat in the scrawny vendor’s face.

After his complaints to local municipality officials fell on deaf ears, a humiliated and dejected Bouazizi doused himself with fuel in the town’s square and set himself on fire. As Bouazizi clung to life in the hospital, outrage erupted throughout the country over the high unemployment, corruption, and autocratic rule.

Following his death on January 4, 2011, Bouazizi became a legend, with his martyrdom symbolizing the people’s struggle for survival and how it has shaken despotic Arab governments in what many have referred to as the “people’s revolution.” In response to the growing protests, Tunisia’s President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia On January 14, 2011, bringing an end to his dictatorship after 23 years of power.^[10]

Adam is just a hubcap trying to hold on in the fast lane.

Throughout history, the world—particularly the the United States—has seen its fair share of conspiracy theories come and go. From reptilians disguised as humans to chemtrails, it’s fair to say that most of these theories are entirely absurd.

From time to time, though, a conspiracy theory that many thought to be ridiculous is shown, in fact, to be correct. In such cases, the truth can prove to be much more terrifying than fiction. The following are ten examples of such real-life conspiracies.

10 Project SUNSHINE

Despite its cheery name, Project SUNSHINE was by far one of the darkest conspiracies ever conceived and the most horrifying to be proven real. The project was commissioned by the US Atomic Energy Committee and the US Air Force.

Designed to investigate the effects of nuclear radiation on humans and the environment, Project SUNSHINE saw the US government harvest and use, often without the permission of parents, the body parts of dead children and babies. Younger children typically have higher amounts of strontium in their bones, meaning that their tissues are more susceptible to radiation damage. Thus, they made better test subjects for the project.^[1]

9 Project MKULTRA

MKULTRA is one of the better-known conspiracies. The general premise—now proven to be true—was that the US government was testing psychedelics and hallucinogenic drugs on unsuspecting American citizens and military personnel, in order to investigate the viability of behavior modification programs. Essentially, the US government was testing mind control techniques on its own populace and left many of its “participants” with trauma and even brain damage.

There are plenty of cases of MKULTRA subjects acting violently or dangerously, and the fact that the US government was so willing to endanger the lives of its own citizens without their consent is perhaps the most chilling part of the whole conspiracy.^[2]

8 The US Government’s Alcohol Poisoning

This conspiracy doesn’t have a particular name, but it’s one that has been the subject of much discussion over the years, particularly recently. During Prohibition, the US government tainted industrial alcohol with methanol—a commonly used antifreeze—in an attempt to curb the drinking of it. Reports differ on just how much methanol was added, though most agree that it wasn’t enough to be lethal and was intended more as a deterrent than a punishment.

On the other hand, it has also been reported that there were around 10,000 deaths during this period as a result of the poisoning, so perhaps the intention was darker than we think.^[3]

7 US Government Spying

In June 2013, intelligence contractor Edward Snowden released thousands of top-secret documents to various journalists, which detailed the sophisticated intelligence network the US, in conjunction with several other Western countries, had been using to spy on civilian populations around the world. Much of this spying was done through social networking companies; for instance, in 2016, US government agencies sent approximately 50,000 requests for user data to Facebook, roughly 28,000 to Google, and about 9,000 to Apple.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of this story is how the National Security Agency conducted multiple espionage operations on US-allied governments, such as Germany, Belgium, France, and Spain. Creepy stuff.^[4]

6 Gulf Of Tonkin Incident

On August 2, 1964, in the midst of the Vietnam War, the USS Maddox, on an intelligence mission along North Vietnam’s coast, allegedly fired upon and damaged several North Vietnamese torpedo boats that had been stalking it in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Maddox was also reportedly attacked by North Vietnamese vessels on August 4.

In 2005, an undated NSA publication was declassified, revealing that there was no attack on the Maddox on August 4.^[5]

Since the NSA’s disclosure, many have accused the US government of intentionally faking the incident to increase support for the US war in Vietnam and to justify further military action in the region. In fact, on August 10, the US congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a bill that authorized President Johnson to do whatever was necessary to assist “any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty.”

This technique was also seen in the early 2000s, when the government administrations of President Bush of the US and Prime Minister Tony Blair of the UK asserted that the Iraqi government was actively constructing and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, prompting the Iraq War. Later, US-led inspections found that Iraq had in fact not been stockpiling or producing WMDs to begin with.

5 The First Lady Who Ran The Country

In October 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke that rendered him incapable of governing. Some of us probably know that part. What you might not know, however, is that after his stroke, his wife, First Lady Edith Wilson, decided what matters were important enough to bring to Woodrow’s attention, essentially giving her the unofficial role of president until Warren Harding took over in 1921. Because Woodrow never technically resigned, the vice president at the time, Thomas Marshall, could not take over, and Wilson instead decided to allow his wife to govern for some time.^[6]

Perhaps the scariest thing about this whole story is that the US government didn’t inform the public of this. (The people only learned of Wilson’s stroke in February 1920, and even then, the full details weren’t known.) It’s events like these that are the framework of the relatively modern and widely believed Deep State conspiracy theory, which posits that there is an unknown party in the government, independent of changing administrations, that makes most of the decisions.

4 The US Government’s Weather Manipulation

In 1993, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the US military, and the University of Alaska created the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, otherwise known as HAARP. Since then, numerous conspiracy theories have sprung up surrounding the mysterious project, everything from satellites that can cause earthquakes to huge transmitters that can create tornadoes and tsunamis. However, what most people don’t know is that there actually was documented weather manipulation project during the Vietnam War—decades before the creation of HAARP.

Operation Popeye was an five-year project in which the US government used the age-old technique of cloud seeding to increase precipitation during the rainy seasons over North Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh Trail in order to disrupt the NVA’s moving of vehicles, weapons, and rations across the trail. The general idea of cloud seeding is to send an airborne object, typically an airplane, flying through a cloud while releasing small particulates that give water vapor something to cling to so that it can condense and become rain.^[7]

What’s scary about this is if the military has done it in the past (and given the length of the operation, it must have been at least partly successful), what’s to stop them from doing it again?

3 The Canadian Fruit Machine

Despite being one of the strongest proponents of the LGBT community today, Canada’s history isn’t as clean as one would think. In the 1960s, the Canadian government hired a university professor to create a “gaydar,” what it called the “Fruit Machine” at the time. The university professor, Frank Robert Wake of Carleton University, went about this by forcing subjects to look at same-sex erotic imagery while he measured pupil dilation, perspiration levels, and changes in pulse to gauge just how “fruity” they were.^[8]

The program was part of a long-term effort to remove homosexuals from positions of civil service. In the late 1960s, funding was cut off—but not before the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had collected files on over 9,000 suspected homosexuals.

2 The Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama is the designated spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. Those carrying the title are generally seen as embodying the tenets of Buddhism: inner peace, enlightenment, and virtuousness. However, CIA documents published by the State Department in 1998 indicated otherwise: For much of the 1960s and some of the 1970s, the current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatzo, along with many other prominent Tibetan figures, were funneled millions of dollars by the CIA. This funding was part of a concerted effort by US intelligence to undermine Communist China, and global communist presence, by propping up Tibetan guerrillas in their fight against the communist state. According to the report, the CIA funded approximately 2,100 Tibetan guerrillas with $500,000 annually and gave the Dalai Lama himself an annual $180,000 subsidy.

The funding ended in the early 1970s, after President Nixon began to open up more to China in efforts to improve crumbling relations. The official CIA report stated that the purpose of the program was to “keep the political concept of an autonomous Tibet alive within Tibet and among foreign nations, principally India, and to build a capability for resistance against possible political developments inside Communist China.” The Dalai Lama wrote in his autobiography that he saw the cutting off of the funding as “a reflection of their anti-Communist policies rather than genuine support for the restoration of Tibetan independence.”^[9]

1 Operation Mockingbird

Operation Mockingbird was a 1950s program in which the CIA recruited and propped up various media organizations to influence public opinion. In April 1976, the Church Committee, a US senate task force, conducted an investigation into the CIA’s influence over both foreign and national news organizations and stated that the CIA maintained a huge global network that provided intel for the organization and “at times” attempted to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda.^[10]

The damning report also stated that these same individuals gave the CIA direct access to a large number of “newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets” and claimed that approximately 50 of the CIA’s assets were individual American journalists or employees of US media organizations.

I’m a freelance writer and student who loves writing.