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.

The Black Death was a pandemic that swept through not just Europe, but also parts of Asia and Africa, leaving an absolutely devastating death toll in its wake. Tens of millions of people died at the very least, and the populations hit were so decimated that they didn’t recover to previous levels for centuries.

During the time period of the Black Death, written records weren’t kept nearly as well as they are now (if they were at all), and the huge and constant loss of life meant that much knowledge of exactly how things happened is lost. This means that many rumors have spread about how it occurred, and many popular accounts are greatly exaggerated. Many of the common claims about the Black Death are either false or not entirely true.

10 The Catholic Church Has Been Blamed For The Black Death

The Catholic Church has been one of the most powerful organizations in the world for quite some time, so it is perhaps not too surprising that there are a lot of conspiracy theories about it, and it has become a popular scapegoat for many situations. In terms of the Black Death, no one is suggesting that the church tried specifically to cause it, but they do suggest that the church’s alleged backward thinking and practices helped it spread more effectively and cause more deaths overall. The claims say that the disease came mostly to humans from fleas and that these fleas came from rats. At this point, the popular theory does seem to unravel a bit, as fleas could travel along with many other animals besides rats.

Regardless, some like to claim that due to Catholic superstitions, cats were originally blamed for the Black Death. This led to a mass culling of cats, which caused the rats to spread and populate far quicker than they normally would have. According to popular mythology, this massive destruction of felines directly helped the Black Death get off the ground as a major pandemic, and it was all the church’s fault.

The problem with this theory—apart from many historians not believing that rats had as big a role as people claim—is that there is really no evidence of this mass cat culling due to Catholic superstition. It’s an oft-repeated story by cat lovers on the Internet to promote the virtues of their beloved choice of pet, but none of it appears to be sourced on anything solid.

9 Terrible Hygiene And Sanitation Practices Were A Huge Factor

Some people don’t like to picture it because it’s not a very romantic part of medieval history, but many researchers believe that one of the biggest reasons the plague spread so easily and with such deadly purpose was not just lack of advanced medical knowledge and preponderance of rats, but the fact that the hygiene habits of the time period were absolutely vile.

Now, we don’t mean that people didn’t bathe or try to stay clean, but rather that the infrastructure was lacking to a point that would be horrifying to most modern people today. Modern sewers and other sanitation didn’t exist, modern trash pickup was not a thing, and refrigeration along with proper knowledge of food safety was also something that people of the time seriously lacked.

Take, for example, the conditions in Bristol, the second-biggest city in Britain when plague hit Europe. It is said that the city was overpopulated and that there were open ditches with people’s waste and other filth running through them, without anything covering them at all. The outhouses were absolutely disgusting, and meat and fish were left out in the open, with flies all over them. And not only was the well water contaminated, but the booze also wasn’t safe to drink much of the time, either. According to historians, these were normal conditions that even the rich had to endure during this time period. With these conditions, it’s not too surprising that an pandemic was able to quickly spread.

8 The Role Of Rats Is Greatly Exaggerated

For many people, the cause of the Black Death is a combination of medieval people being disgusting and way too many rats around. However, researchers who have been studying the evidence for a long time smelled a rat, and after a lot of sniffing around, they came up with a completely different conclusion. Yersinia pestis, the bacterium usually considered responsible for the outbreak of the plague, isn’t usually native to Europe but actually comes from Asia.

After the first outbreak of the plague that killed millions across the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the plague was still taking mass victims. It would pop up occasionally across Europe and do damage again before disappearing for a bit. Many people attributed this to rises and falls in the rodent population increasing the incidence of plague.

However, researchers have discovered that the real culprit was likely climate shifts in Asia. As their climate fluctuated throughout the years, it created conditions more likely for carriers, especially fleas, to breed like crazy and to potentially find their way to Europe again. While this doesn’t mean that rats hold no responsibility at all, they are not nearly as dangerous a carrier as the flea itself, which can bother humans directly if its normal sources of sustenance are somehow interrupted, or if there are too many fleas for them to all eat from nearby smaller animals.

7 Some May Have Ended Up With HIV Resistance Genes

The plague swept through Europe and killed millions of people. Afterward, there were multiple repeated outbreaks over the years that continued to occasionally cause devastation until we finally figured out a way to keep the deadly disease under control. During that time, people from some regions of Europe had to either get extremely lucky or hope for an evolutionary genetic mutation to help their progeny survive the constant onslaught of deadly disease. While some people likely did simply get lucky by practicing extremely good hygiene and staying away from sick people, it seems that some people may have evolved in order to fight against it.

Researches have long been trying to find ways to beat HIV, and recently, they found out that some people seem to be entirely or almost completely immune. They have a rare mutation that stops the bad cells from ever entering their white blood cells. Scientists have been unsure how or why they have this mutation, but it certainly does seem to be advantageous in that situation. One researcher studying the issue has looked at the history and believes that the mutation likely came about due to struggles against the plague epidemics in Europe.

While understanding the mechanism behind this rare mutation could certainly help treat or prevent HIV in the future, it is hard to say for certain if there is actually a link to the plague. While there is interesting reason to believe it’s possible, the mutation only seems to occur in some Europeans. Despite Africa and Asia also having been hit incredibly hard by the Black Death, they do not seem to have the mutation in any quantifiable numbers.

6 ‘Ring Around The Rosie’ Has Nothing To Do With The Black Death

Just about everyone has heard the nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie” at least a few times in their life. It’s a nearly ubiquitous little song that has always been a kid favorite. After singing, they get to all fall down and be silly at the end. While it may just be an innocent song to the kids who enjoy it, some adults are convinced that it is much more serious. A great number of people are certain that “Ring Around the Rosie” is actually a song talking about the Black Death in Europe.

The claims usually suggest that the posies are either to honor the dead or to somehow cover up the bad smell. The ashes are a fairly self-explanatory reference to dead people, and “we all fall down” is supposed to be a reference to the fact that such an insane amount of people died. However, there is no evidence at all that the poem had anything to do with the plague.

There are multiple variations of it, the earliest of which showed up in the 1800s. That’s hundreds of years after we pretty much had the plague under control, so it’s quite unlikely that the two ever had anything to do with each other. There is no evidence of what the real meaning for the song was, but we know that it was written much more recently, so it couldn’t be about the plague and was probably just supposed to be fun.

5 It Completely Changed the Economy Of Europe And Hastened The Renaissance

While the Black Death was an incredible tragedy in human history, when millions of people who could have gone on to do great things were lost, no tragedy usually vanishes without some good coming out of it. At the time, as we mentioned earlier, some parts of Europe were extremely overpopulated. This not only made it easier for the plague to proliferate, but it also ensured that labor was not really worth all that much in terms of value, because there were far more laborers than were really needed.

After the plague killed millions, things suddenly changed. With so few workers compared to before, regular farmers and other peasants were now earning much more money. Merchants were also able to make a better living, and any craftsmen of skill became quite important, as there was now a shortage of living skilled and unskilled laborers.

While this can’t be said to be the only factor that led to the Renaissance, it can easily be said that it at least greatly hastened it. With regular citizens having way more economic power and being more on the level of those of noble birth, the old societal system quickly started to give way to something entirely new. While it may have been very bad for Europe and the world in a lot of ways, humanity showed its ability to flourish instead of flounder when hit by a serious crisis.

4 The Plague Still Kills A Handful Of People Every Year

Some people think of the Black Death as something long gone like smallpox, but unfortunately, as many people have learned with the absurd anti-vaxxer, movement, it can be very hard to permanently eliminate a disease, and it may decide to come raging back to cause trouble again when you least expect it. Yersinia pestis was never considered a truly extinct disease, but it still crops up every now and then even in North America, a continent not traditionally known for the plague.

Some trace the existence of Yersinia pestis in North America to the port of San Francisco many years ago. Supposedly, in order to make as much money as possible, the city was allowing people through without properly checking them. This allowed the plague into the city, and since then, it has made its way to the US Southwest, where it has been occasionally causing trouble ever since.

It may still be surprising that some people die of the plague, or even contract it, in this day and age, but it is an extremely deadly disease. It can easily kill in a few days if not properly treated, and because it’s such an old disease that most people are unfamiliar with, they may wait too long to get the medicine and help they need.

The plague may be mostly vanquished, but it still exists, and it still kills every year. If we are not prepared, it could still attempt to strike back and cause yet another massive pandemic of deadly disease.

3 The Miasma Theory And Scientific Ignorance Greatly Helped Its Spread

For those who haven’t heard of it, miasma is an old scientific theory in regards to how people get sick and or ill. As of today, germ theory is pretty well-accepted, and people generally know how to avoid catching something from someone else. However, back in the day, science wasn’t as well-understood, and many experts of the time believed that disease and illness spread through “bad air” that was allowed to accumulate and slowly led to people’s deaths. Considering all of the decomposing filth surrounding them at all time, it’s not too surprising that they considered the foul-smelling air itself to be a vector for disease.

This miasma theory led the people of the time, in desperation, to turn to the best contagion measures they could muster to fight off the disease. They believed that by removing filth from the streets, they could avoid bad air and greatly help to prevent disease. They also emphasized burials far from the city, so that the bodies couldn’t contribute to making the miasma even worse. In a way, these were actually good measures, and it shows that they were starting to understand how to fight off disease, but their knowledge was incomplete, which caused them not to address other, more important issues. Luckily, many humans lived through it with hard-earned knowledge on how to better stave off pandemics.

2 The Origin Of ‘Quarantine’ Is Rooted In The Plague Years

The idea of quarantine didn’t come with the Black Death; the practice of sequestering sick people from healthy people has existed for a long time. Many cultures throughout the world realized long ago that putting healthy people with sick people often led to more sick people. In fact, even the Bible suggests keeping those with leprosy away from healthy people so that they do not get leprosy as well.

However, the actual term “quarantine” is much newer and actually does indirectly have to do with the plague. During the repeated outbreaks of the Black Death throughout Europe, some leaders either sent those who were sick out to live in a field until they were better, sent them to a small area for sick people, or just made them stay at home and stay inside. At first, the period for which people were kept isolated was usually about 30 days. This may seem rather excessive, but with how little they knew about germs at the time, it may have actually been a good idea.

Eventually, for unknown reasons, the amount of time for sequestering a sick person became 40 days, and this is where the name comes from. The original name had actually been trentino, for 30, but became quarantino for 40 once the amount of time changed. Over the years, this evolved into the word “quarantine,” which we now use for any situation where a sick individual is sequestered from healthy people until they are better.

1 Some Researchers Argue That The Culprit Was Not Yersinia Pestis

Most people are certain that the Black Death was caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis, which infects people with the bubonic plague. It is so named because of the awful buboes that grow on you and the swollen lymph nodes that appear before you quickly die and succumb to the deadly disease. However, some researchers have suggested that it may not actually be the culprit behind the major pandemic that swept three continents so many centuries ago.

Plenty of scientists are still convinced that it was Yersinia pestis, but others who have looked closer are not so sure. Some have spent years exhuming those who died of the plague and researching it minutely, and they feel that the plague moved far too fast to fit with the modern strains of the plague that exist today.

Some scientists are convinced that it was an entirely different disease, perhaps even one that we are familiar with today, that actually caused so many people to die so very quickly. They have suggested that it behaved more like a virus and that it was perhaps something more similar to Ebola than the modern version of Yersinia pestis. Scientists have also recently discovered the existence of two unknown strains of Yersinia pestis that had been present in those who had died of the plague. This has led to the compromise theory between the two that perhaps it was Yersinia pestis, but not a strain that we are currently familiar with.

May is the month which offers the best chances for the hundreds of people who attempt each year to reach the top of the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest. And every climbing season on Everest, people die trying to reach the summit. You have to go all the way back to 1977 to find a year where no climbers have perished on Mount Everest. And this year has been no exception as eight people have died. This list will look at some of the lesser known fatalities and the amazing and harrowing stories behind their attempts to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

The urge to be “the first” on Mount Everest is powerful. The biggest “first” was accomplished in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay when they became the first to reach the summit and stand at the top of the world. Everything since then has been, well, second. Not to be deterred at the thought of being second, there have been all manner of attempts since 1953 at other “Everest firsts”. The first to paraglide off Everest, the first to ski down Everest, the first blind person to climb Everest, etc. The other route to “Everest fame” is to be the oldest person (or youngest) to reach the summit and as such there have been multiple people to achieve that goal and hold the title of “oldest” (“youngest”) to climb to the top of Mount Everest. That is, they hold the title until someone older or younger comes along and tops it.

In 2011, the former Nepalese foreign minister, Shailendra Kumar Upadhyay, set out to be the latest oldest man to climb to the top of Everest. He was 82 years old. He made it as far as Camp I when he became ill. He was descending back to Base Camp for medical care when he collapsed and died. His body was airlifted to the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu. He was trying to break the record held by a 76 year old Nepalese man.

In 2013, in fact, just a few days ago, Japanese climber Yuichiro Miura at the age of 80 beat that record and became the oldest person to reach the top of Mount Everest. Not only has Miura, for now, claimed the “oldest to climb and reach the top of Everest” title, he also summited Everest twice before. Even more remarkable than his age is the fact he has had four heart operations and in 2009 he broke his pelvis while skiing.

Even casual observers of the history of climbing Mount Everest know of the dangers faced by climbers. Lack of oxygen, falls, and of course the cold, the ice, the wind and the storms. Lesser known is the threat posed by the landscape the climbers must pass through to reach the summit. The Khumbu Icefall is located at the head of the Khumbu Glacier just above Base Camp on the popular South Col route to the top of Everest. As such, to reach Camp I, all climbers attempting this route to the summit must pass through the Khumbu Ice Fall after leaving Base Camp.

The glacier is moving at a rapid pace and thus crevasses open up to swallow climbers with little warning. But the real danger are the seracs – huge, house-sized, towering blocks of ice, precariously balanced and ready to tumble over at any time, with no warning what so ever. Any climber caught in the wrong place when a serac decides to give way is out of luck. With no time to jump out of the way and nowhere to go, the climber is crushed. Many times the body cannot be recovered. The glacier moves down the face of the mountain at 3-4 feet per year. Sometimes the bodies emerge, years later, deposited back at Base Camp by the glacier.

One unlucky climber who was in the wrong place was Canadian Blair Griffiths. Griffiths was a Canadian Broadcasting Company cameraman documenting the Canadian Mount Everest Expedition in 1982. Griffiths and others were securing one of the many ladders used by climbers to cross over crevasses when the glacier decided to move. A six-story serac crushed Griffiths between two gigantic blocks of ice. After several attempts his climbing partners retrieved his body which was cremated on the mountain.

Many know of the tragic 1924 British Expedition that aimed to climb Mount Everest for the first time. This expedition led to the disappearance and death of climbing legend George Mallory and his partner Andrew Irvine. Mallory’s body would be discovered in 1999 and his death appears to have been as a result of a fall. No sign of Irvine has ever been found and it remains unclear if they were the first to summit Everest and died on their descent, or if they died trying to reach the top.

Lesser know is the story of another Englishman, Maurice Wilson who ten years later, on his own, in either a fit of English eccentricity or madness (perhaps both) attempted a solo ascent of Everest. Where huge British climbing expeditions had failed before him, Wilson thought he could “do it alone”.

Believing the problems of the planet could be solved through fasting and faith in God, Wilson set out to climb Everest so as to promote his beliefs. Injured in WWI, Wilson overcame his suffering through 35 days of prayer and fasting. Wilson convinced himself that his beliefs could allow him to succeed where Mallory had failed. His plan was to fly a plane close to the summit and crash it, then walk the rest of the way (eccentric, yes, but a plan none the less). Not being able to fly an airplane and knowing nothing of climbing mountains, Wilson set out to teach himself both. He bought a used Gipsy Moth plane (which he called “Ever Wrest”) and set off for Asia by air. His mountaineering experience and training was even worse than his flying. He took off in 1933, crashed his plane, was grounded by the British Air Ministry, ignored the ban, and took off again.

Somehow, in two weeks, he made it to India. He wintered over near Tibet; by chance meeting three of the Sherpa’s who had worked previous British Everest expeditions. They joined Wilson and slipped into Tibet. He made his first attempt and was beaten back by the weather and his inexperience. After a time to recover his strength he set off again, this time with two of the Sherpa’s to guide him. He made it to an altitude of 22,700 feet where he encountered a forty foot ice wall. Defeated again, he and the Sherpa’s turned back. The Sherpa’s begged him to come down the mountain with them but he refused and in a gesture of British stubbornness that would make Robert Falcon Scott happy, he made one more attempt. This too failed. He died days later in his tent, just like Scott.

Although recovering bodies from the Death Zone on Everest is extremely dangerous, it has been done. One such example was the recovery of the body of Canadian climber Shriya Shah-Klorfine. Born in Nepal, climbing Everest had always been a dream for the 33 year old Canadian when, on May 19, 2012, she died trying to descend the mountain. Three other climbers would die that same day. The dangers of dying and having your body left behind on the mountain are not unknown to climbers, in fact, some Everest guide services have climbers sign a form asking them to choose to remain on the mountain should they die, or have an attempt made to recover their body (which can cost upwards of $30,000).

Ms. Shriya Shah-Klorfine died very near the summit, at an altitude of over 8,000 meters (nearly 27,000 feet). This would make her recovery very challenging. First a team of 6-8 Sherpa’s must climb the mountain to reach her body – dangerous enough on its own. Then the real danger begins. The only way to bring down a body from that altitude is to place it in a sled while the Sherpa’s, slowly, carefully, lower it (in a controlled slide) down the mountain at angles as steep as 60 degrees. They also need to pick up the body and lift it by hand over any crevasses encountered along the way. The trip down the mountain can take an entire day. It is very dangerous work on the steep icy mountain face. One slip and everyone on the ropes could fall to their own deaths. The goal is to lower the body to the elevation of Camp II (6,500 meters) which is the highest point on the mountain reachable by helicopter (to land, take on a load, and take off again). On May 29, 2012, the body of Ms. Shriya Shah-Klorfine was safely recovered.

The goal of Marco Siffredi was simple – become the first person to snowboard down Mount Everest. At the age of 22 in May of 2001 Marco summited Mount Everest with the plan to snowboard the Hornbein Couloir. But there was not enough snow that spring for him to snowboard that route. Instead he went to plan B and set off on his snowboard down the North Col Route. On the way down one of the bindings on his snowboard broke but he and a Sherpa were able to repair it. He eventually snowboarded all the way down to Advanced Base Camp, becoming the first person to successfully snowboard, continuously, down Everest. It took him four hours to do it.

However, his true goal has eluded him. He returns to Everest the following year, but fatefully, he forgets to bring the lucky cross he always wears around his neck. Marco has come in August this time hoping the snow will be deep enough to snowboard down the “true face” of Everest, the Hornbein Couloir. The Hornbein Couloir is the most steep and most continuous descent possible from the summit. This time there is plenty of snow, too much and he needs to wait for avalanches to subside. He and his team begin their ascent, establishing base camp and higher camps as they climb, sometimes in waist deep snow. Along the way Marco’s radio breaks. A new one is on its way back up to Marco to aid him in communicating with Sherpa’s and those below as he snowboards down the mountain, but he receives a good weather forecast and jumps at the chance to summit and snowboard. He sets off without the radio.

At 2:00 PM he and his Sherpa helper’s reach the summit after a 12 hour climb through chest deep snow. Marco tells his Sherpa he is “tired”. His Sherpa is elated at reaching the summit, but then his Sherpa doesn’t have a 3,000 foot of descent by snowboard at 45-55 degree angles yet to do. It is late in the day, 3:00 PM and his Sherpa’s urge him not to go, but Marco has come too far to not give his dream a try. So he tells his Sherpa he will ‘see him tomorrow” and pushes off down the face of the Hornbein Couloir. The last the Sherpa’s see of him is when he hangs the left away from their descent route to snowboard down the Hornbein Couloir. Later they believe they see a figure sliding down the face of the North Col. But there is nobody else climbing Everest at this time of the year, they have the mountain to themselves. Who could it be? The Sherpa’s descend to the bottom of the Hornbein Couloir.

Marco should be there as it would only take him two hours to snowboard the route. The Sherpa’s reach the point on the North Col. where they are certain they saw the man. There are no snowboard tracks. It appears Marco has fallen to his death. With no radio to even try to contact him, Marco has disappeared. A search party finds his snowboard tracks end about 1,500 feet down the Hornbein Couloir from the summit where he set off. His body has still not been found.

As if climbing Mount Everest is, in and of itself, not difficult or “extreme” enough, some extreme sports people need to take it even farther. Such was the case of Swedish skier Tomas Olsson and his partner Tormod Granheim who in 2006 wanted to be the first to descend the North Col (North Face) Route by ski. That’s right, ski down from the summit of Everest via one of the most difficult of all the difficult routes to the top of the mountain.

On May 16, 2006, after a full day of climbing, the two met up on the mountain and reached the summit. Exhausted, they wondered if they had the strength to ski down. Undeterred by their fatigue, they set off on skis down the North Face via the Norton Couloir at angles as steep as 60 degrees and a shear 3,000 meter drop. Unfortunately, just as they set off, and after only skiing down the North Face approximately 1,500 feet, one of Olsson’s skis broke. They tried to repair the ski with tape but at 27,900 feet, they reached a 150 foot rock cliff on the couloir. This they could not ski even with undamaged equipment so they tried to rappel down.

They set a snow anchor because they could find no good rock to set screws. Olsson went first, rappelling down the cliff still wearing his skis, when the snow anchor they were using failed and Olson fell 2,500 meters to his death. Granheim continued on alone by ski and by climbing and made it down the mountain alive. Several days later Olsson’s body was found by Sherpa’s at 22,000 feet.

The popular South East Ridge Route to the top of Mount Everest was at one time called by climbers “The Rainbow Valley” because of the sheer number of bodies that littered the route to the summit, all dressed in various colorful climbing gear. It was impossible to summit by this route without coming close to and seeing many of these dead climbers. Over the years, climbers have cut ropes and pushed some of these bodies over the side while snow and ice have covered others. But even today, multiple bodies are visible along the South Ridge Route.

One infamous example was that of German climber Hannelore Schmatz. In 1979 she died on her descent after summiting. At the time she was the first woman to die on the upper slopes of Everest. Exhausted and caught at 8,300 meters (27,200 feet) just below the summit, Ms. Schmatz and another climber made the decision to bivouac as darkness fell. The Sherpa’s urged her and American climber Ray Gennet to descend, but they laid down to rest and never got up. Genet’s body disappeared and has never been seen, but for years, climbers would pass the frozen remains of Ms. Schmatz, still sitting and leaning against her pack, eyes wide open and long hair blowing in the constant wind. A climber who had to pass her body to reach the summit described the experience: “It’s not far now. I cannot escape the sinister guard. Approximately 100 meters above Camp IV she sits leaning against her pack, as if taking a short break. A woman with her eyes wide open and her hair waving in each gust of wind…..it feels as if she follows me with her eyes as I pass by. Her presence reminds me that we are here on the conditions of the mountain.”

Five years after she died, two climbers attempted to recover her body. Yogendra Bahadur Thapa and Sherpa Ang Dorje somehow became tangled in their ropes and both fell to their deaths while trying to recover the body. Years later the wind finally blew her body over the edge of the mountain.

Perhaps the most infamous of all the dead bodies climbers must pass along the Northeast ridge route to the summit of Everest is a body known as “Green Boots”, believed to be the body of Indian climber Tsewang Paljor. The name comes from the green mountaineering boots he is still wearing and which stick out from the entrance to the small cave where his body can be found lying on its side. The body and cave are located at 27,890 feet (8,500 meters). It is thought “Green Boots’ crawled into the cave in a desperate effort to survive.

In the same year (1996) as the ill-fated Everest climbing season told in the book “Into Thin Air”, a six man team from India was also trying to reach the top of Everest by the northeast route. Close to the top they were hit by the blizzard that would kill so many in the Rob Hall and Scott Fisher mountaineering parties going for the summit on the more popular southeast route. Three of the Indian climbers turned back but Paljor and two others tried for the summit and disappeared. They radioed that they had reached the summit (though there is some doubt that they did) and no further radio contact was heard from the three.

Later, a Japanese team headed for the summit may have passed the three Indian climbers but were unsure because of the conditions. When the Japanese climbers found out from one of the three Indian climbers who had turned back that their climbing companions were missing, the Japanese offered to help with the search. But the ferocious storm prevented them from searching until the next day. It is thought that “Green Boots” is one of the missing Indian climbers because he was wearing such boots on that day.

In 2006, British climber David Sharp would crawl into “Green Boots cave”. Many climbers walked right past the dying Sharp, believing him to be Green Boots. By the time aid was rendered, Sharp died.

In 2007 British climber Ian Woodall, who was on the mountain in 1996, and had been haunted by the memory ever since, attempted to climb to the cave and give “Green Boots” a proper burial. But he was unable to dig the body out of the ice due to bad weather. He was planning on making another attempt if he could raise the funds.

On May 22, 1998, climber Francys Arsentiev accomplished one of the “Everest Firsts”, by becoming the first woman from the USA to summit without bottled oxygen. Unfortunately, she never lived to celebrate this accomplishment. Arsentiev and her husband climbing partner Sergei Arsentiev were in position to reach the summit on May 20 and May 21 but had to turn around both times. On May 22nd on their third attempt they made it. But they had been in the “Death Zone” above 8,000 meters for almost three days. Because they were exhausted from spending so much time above 8,000 meters they summited late in the day and had to camp and spend another night above 8,000 meters. The next morning they descended but somehow got separated. Sergei reached camp and found she was not there. He immediately went back up to find her carrying oxygen and medicine.

Late that morning an Uzbek team found Arsentiev frozen and struggling to survive. They attempted to help her and brought her down as far as they could before they became too exhausted to do more. They saw Sergei on his way back up the mountain as they descended. That was the last anyone would ever see of Sergei Arsentiev alive.

The next morning a team of climbers including Ian Woodall and Cathy O’Dowd found Francys Arsentiev where the Uzbek team had left her, amazingly, still alive, but barely. Sergei had left his ice axe and rope but there was no sign of him. There was nothing Woodall, O’Dowd and their party could do to save her and she died that morning. For a true account of what happened as told by O’Dowd, read this article.

Woodall and O’Dowd gave up their own chance at summiting to stay with her and care for her as much as they could. But they had to leave her where she died, and her body remained as one of the “landmarks” along the path from high camp to the summit for all subsequent climbers to see as they passed her on their way to the top. Sergie’s body was found a year later down the mountain face. He apparently fell to his death trying to save his wife.

For almost ten years the memory of her death haunted Ian Woodall and he set out in 2007 to try to reach her body and give her some manner of dignified burial. Although he was unable to free the body of “Green Boots” on this mission back to Mount Everest he called “The Tao of Everest”, Woodall did reach the body of Francys Arsentiev. After a brief ritual, Woodall lowered her body to a lower section of the mountain where she would no longer be visible to climbers passing by on their way to the top of Mount Everest.

One of the tragedies of Mount Everest is climbing it has become such an obsession for thousands of people that the mountain is now littered with junk left behind by the hundreds of expeditions who have come and gone over the decades. The liter includes used oxygen cylinders, trash, as well as human bodies. By the 2000s the trash problem had become so bad that expeditions were formed to try to remove some of it (as well as the bodies). But it was not until 2010 and the “Extreme Everest Expedition”, organized and lead by mountaineer Namgyal Sherpa, that bodies and trash were removed from the higher elevations of the mountain where it is most difficult to reach. The expedition was composed of all Sherpa’s.

Its goal was to clean the slopes of Everest above 8‚000 meters. The expedition removed 2,000kg (4,000 pounds) of waste and two dead bodies. One of the bodies they did not recover and bring down was that of climbing expedition leader Rob Hall who died on Everest during the infamous 1996 Everest disaster. Hall’s widow requested that his body remain on the mountain.

Namgyal Sherpa was a legend among Sherpa’s and the clients and climbers he guided on Everest. He worked his way up from porter, to cook, to starting his own company and leading Sherpa teams on some of the biggest Everest expeditions. He himself summited Everest an amazing ten times. But his tenth summit would be his last. On May 16, 2013 at 8,000 meters, he collapsed. He had complained of feeling ill and then pointed to his chest before he passed away.

There are many mysteries surrounding people who have tried to climb Mount Everest and died in the attempt. Did Mallory and Irvine reach the summit and die on the descent, thus beating Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay by 29 years? What really happened during the tragic 1996 Everest climbing disaster made famous in the bestselling book “Into Thin Air”?

There is no mystery about what happened to Irish businessman John Delaney. He died on May 21, 2011 at the age of 42 only 50 meters from reaching a lifelong goal of summiting Everest. He died from a common cause of death on Everest – altitude sickness. While climbing, his wife gave birth to a baby daughter he would never live to see.

What is mysterious about Delaney is not his death, but what happened afterward. Delany was the CEO and founder of the Internet trading website Intrade. Intrade received popularity during the 2012 US Presidential election as people wagered whether Mitt Romney would defeat Barack Obama and later, for bets people placed on who would be made the next Pope.

However, in 2013 Intrade shut down and it was announced that in the last two years of his life, Delaney’s personal account had received un-authorized transfers of money from the company totaling $2,600,000. A March 2013 audit confirmed the lack of documentation to account for this money, but there still is no firm resolution as to how Delaney pocketed this company money or if anything improper was even done. Apparently uncovering possible financial fraud is now more difficult than climbing Mount Everest.

Patrick Weidinger is a frequent contributor to Listverse.

Eating the bodies of relatives, marrying the spirit of the dead to dolls, or dying after having bitten a corpse sounds to us like completely incomprehensible actions.

Yet, for more than a century, anthropologists have been living in close contact with populations all across the world, studying their attitudes toward death, and trying to understand their logic and meaning. Here is a selection of the strangest practices and beliefs about death that have been documented by anthropologists during their explorations.

10 The ‘Wine Of The Corpse’ In Borneo

Southeast Asia is widely known for its elaborate (and for a Western audience, sometimes unsettling) funeral customs. In his research, anthropologist Peter Metcalf noticed that the Berawan population in Borneo disposed of corpses with a method similar to that adopted for preparing rice wine, a local drink.

Just like rice, dead bodies are washed, laid out in front of a communal longhouse, and stored in big jars.^[1] The fluids of decomposition are allowed to flow out through a bamboo pipe and are collected in another vase. Meanwhile, the solid part of the body is laid to rest in a cemetery.

A similar treatment of dead bodies, centered on the separation between solid and liquid parts, was described by Robert Hertz among the Ngaju of Borneo. Hertz writes, “Relatives, especially the widow, are compelled either daily or at fixed dates to collect the liquid produced by the decomposition of the flesh, to smear it on their own body, or to mix it into their food.”

9 Compassionate Cannibalism In The Amazonian Rain Forest

The practice of cannibalism has fascinated anthropologists and explorers for centuries. For a long time, “cannibal” was used as shorthand to define peoples and cultures that were thought to be “uncivilized.” Anthropologist Beth Conklin described at length the practice of “compassionate cannibalism” among the Wari tribe of the western Amazonian rain forest.

To consume the flesh of a deceased relative was considered a sign of respect among the Wari. The earth was thought to be dirty and polluting, and burying a relative in the ground was deemed highly inappropriate.

At the same time, the body’s persistence and integrity would cause distress in those related to the deceased as they would keep on thinking about the corpse and the person’s absence. Therefore, people wanted to be eaten. Only in that way would the attachment to the dead body be diminished, allowing the survivors to go on with their lives.

Interestingly, Conklin noticed that the most distressing aspect of such cannibalistic rituals for the participants was not the eating of the corpse but its dismemberment before roasting it. In that moment, the body lost all resemblance to the person whom the bereaved had known and loved.^[2]

8 Doll-Bride Marriage In Japan

Anthropologist Ellen Schattschneider describes a funeral custom which began during World War II in northern Japan. In that period, many young men died before marrying and having the chance to procreate. This was considered a “bad death.” The spirits of these dead would be restless and return to haunt their families.^[3]

Even today, if unmarried children die, rituals must be performed to ensure the rest of their souls. A marriage is thus performed between the spirit of the dead (symbolized by a photograph) and a spirit bride, represented by a doll or figurine. These objects are put in a box, which can be preserved for a long time. The spirit bride will then accompany the dead person for 30 years until the deceased finally reaches the other world.

Similar behavior, involving not dolls but the illegally stolen corpses of young unmarried women, has reportedly occurred in China.

7 Sky Burial In Mongolia

For a long time in Mongolia, people would leave their dead to decompose in the open air. When a person died, a good spot was chosen, usually near a river populated by animals and birds which consumed the body as quickly as possible. For several months after the “sky burial,” the living would avoid the place so as not to witness the decomposition of the corpse.^[4]

In 1955, funeral reform was enacted because the socialist administration considered sky burials to be inappropriate in a modern and urbanized society. The local population often resisted the newly imposed practice of interring the dead in the ground as the earth was believed to be the domain of evil spirits.

As reported by anthropologist Gregory Delaplace, the funeral reform had mixed success. Although most people are buried today rather than left to decompose in the open air, “cemeteries do not have the appearance wished by the reformed. They never became the neat gardens of remembrance [ . . . ] hoped for by the government. Until today, cemeteries resembled more vast and vague grounds [ . . . ] apparently without order.”

6 The Stigma Of Death While Alive In Japan

A Japanese cultural trait that has long interested anthropologists is the figure of the muenbotoke (“disconnected spirit”). These are the spirits of people who died childless or without having family members to ensure their commemoration in ancestral tombs by performing rituals on their graves after their deaths.

People who have the prospect of dying “unrelated” suffer from a great social stigma while still alive. So, new funeral practices have emerged in recent years to alleviate the suffering caused by such a condition.

Anthropologist Jieun Kim documented the lives of the inhabitants of a quarter in Yokohama, which is mostly peopled by the homeless or individuals who may die in solitude without relatives willing to take care of their bodies. There, charitable associations have been created to ensure that medical personnel or volunteers monitor the inhabitants frequently so that their corpses can be promptly cremated and tended to with proper rituals at the moment of death.^[5]

The remains are then put in a common grave where volunteers perform regular memorial services, allowing the spirits of the deceased to find their final peace and helping them to reach the respected status of “ancestor” despite the absence of family members willing to honor their souls.

5 Constant Conversations With The Dead In India

When we think about the ways in which people try to establish “contact” with the dead, we tend to imagine a sensational event like a seance or an obscure, vague conversation with a spirit medium. This was certainly not the case among the Sora tribe in India.

As documented by anthropologist Piers Vitebsky, the Sora had the unusual custom of having prolonged conversations with their dead, which continued for years after the moment of death. These occurred through the mediation of a funeral shaman in a state of trance.

The contents and timing of such conversations are described by Vitebsky as follows:

In a large village of 500 people, a dialogue may take place from about five times a week to about 10 times a day. [ . . . ] Dialogues contain a quest for a verdict or for an increase in certainty. [ . . . ] People seek the cause of a patient’s illness, [ . . . ] while at a funeral, they seek understanding about the cause of the victim’s death.^[6]

In a recent book, Vitebsky described the waning of this practice. Deemed primitive and superstitious by present-day generations, extensive conversations with the dead no longer take place with such frequency as the Sora shift toward Hindu or Christian beliefs.

4 Biting The Dead And Restraining The Living Among The LoDagaa In West Africa

In a classical (and rather intense) anthropological text, Jack Goody analyzed the funeral customs of the LoDagaa of West Africa. After death, the body would be washed and anointed by old women.

If the deceased was a man, the widow would be prevented from helping out in these operations as it was feared that she might commit suicide by biting the corpse. In fact, it was believed that any contact with dirt on the dead body might be lethal and that a wife might take her life this way to follow her husband in the Land of the Dead.

After the body was prepared, it was taken out of the house through a special hole made into a wall of the courtyard and placed on a funeral platform. There, it could stay for months until all friends and kin, even coming from afar, could view it.^[7]

According to complex rules, the close relatives of the deceased who showed intense emotional reactions during the funeral ritual were then restrained using hide, fiber, and strings as it was feared that they might harm themselves or attempt suicide. The latter was a common way of showing extreme suffering during funeral rituals.

3 The Adoption Of Enemy Ghosts In Vietnam

The Vietnam War left great scars in the memories of both the American and Vietnamese people. Many missing corpses of fighters from both sides still lie unburied where they fell. We often hear mentions of the “ghost of the Vietnam War,” but in Vietnam, this sentence means what it says.

Anthropologist Heonik Kwon has observed ritual practices through which local inhabitants establish relationships with ghosts in ways that go beyond the side for which the deceased fought during the war. Some Vietnamese people frequently build shrines and make offerings to the souls of dead American soldiers who died without proper burial rituals and thus became wandering, restless souls.

The ghosts of war dead can be dangerous or mischievous. (The anthropologist heard stories about a soldier from a previous war who scared young women or about ghosts entering the bodies of the living, which caused them to fall sick.) Sometimes, these ghosts become as important as local divinities.^[8]

The locals make offerings, adopt these restless souls by honoring them, and believe that the living reside near the dead. In this way, local inhabitants establish close relationships with these wandering ghosts, which are similar to those among family members.

Interestingly, a common form of paying respect to these spirits is to give them “ghost money,” namely offering replica dollars which are thought to help the wandering dead to overcome their state of suffering.

2 Voluntary Death Among The Siberian Chukchi

“Voluntary death,” the practice of being willingly killed by family members due to old age or illness, has been widely documented in Siberia. Already in the 18th century, an explorer reported the following about the people of the northeastern region:

In the year 1737, an old father admonished his son to hang him from the balagan [dwelling] because he was no longer useful. The son did; but because the strap broke on the first attempt, the father fell down and scolded his son for being clumsy. To correct his mistake and give better proof of his obedience and cleverness, the son hanged the father a second time with a double strap. It seems that the hope of getting to the lower, better world sooner has very much stimulated the Itelmen to suicide.^[9]

As described by anthropologist Rane Willerslev, voluntary death is still practiced today among certain groups of Chukchi people. There, the act of killing a relative who asks to die is regarded as both an honorable and terrible act.

On the one hand, ancestors are pleased to be joined by the spirit of the dead. But on the other hand, causing the death of a relative remains a painful ordeal. According to Russian law, voluntary death still counts as murder (and has led to people being prosecuted and imprisoned). So the practice is now kept secret.

1 Child Death By Soul Loss In Bali

In Bali, the death of children (and sometimes of adults) has often been attributed to a sickness known as kesambet. This is thought to result from a sudden fright or shock, which causes the soul to become detached from the body.

As reported by anthropologist Unni Wikan, the illness can be passed from the mother to the child through breast milk “infected” by the sudden shock experienced by the mother. The baby will start crying continuously, get a fever, and lose appetite—often with lethal consequences.

The precautions taken against the risk of kesambet are to control one’s emotional reactions and the environment in which children live by never exposing them to loud noises and turmoil. As local women say, “It is so hard to be a mother with us. A mother must never be angry, never be sad, always control her emotions.”^[10]

At the time that Unni Wikan undertook her fieldwork in Bali, almost half of the deaths of children were attributed by the locals to this syndrome.

The period soon after death can seem like a strange thing. During this time, the body undergoes various changes, shifting from living to being completely dead. While some of these changes—such as stiffening and changing color—are seen on crime TV shows, others seem a bit far-fetched for even the human body.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Ways To Dispose Of Your Body After Death

Still, the things corpses can do are shocking and a bit creepy. From giving birth to an awareness that it’s dead, the changes that occur in the body after death seem almost too unrealistic to be true. The following list is not for the faint of heart—or stomach.

10 Move

Stories of dead bodies sitting straight up have been told for many years—yet the probability of such drastic movement occurring is slim to none. The body can, however, make slight movements after death. Though the movements do not resemble ones that a person would do while alive, they can still be startling for those around them.

Cadavers can do such things as twitch, move, and even clench muscles. This occurs because the body’s muscles are still receiving nerve signals to contract or even relax, causing the corpse to appear as if it is moving despite being dead.^[1] Once the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is depleted, the body will make its final movements, which can be seen in fingers clenching, hands moving, toes wiggling, and muscles twitching. Another factor in strange movements is how the person died. If there is excess calcium, a temperature change, or, in some cases, violent death or even electrocution, the body can demonstrate such movements.

This process normally occurs between the time of death and rigor mortis, so if anyone tells you they’ve seen a body sit up, they’re probably just trying to get a rise out of you.

9 Give Birth

Unfortunately, death does not have a moral compass, and anyone, even those who are pregnant, can fall victim to its embrace.

Giving birth while alive is a beautiful experience; giving birth after one has died is the complete opposite, especially for those dealing with the dead body. These “births” are referred to as “coffin births” due to them happening inside coffins. Basically, the pressure of gases building up within the deceased pushes the fetus out. The fetus has to be positioned in just the right (or wrong) way for this to occur.^[2]

Even though most of these cases of coffin birth occurred during times without the benefits of modern medicine, they still happen to this day. In January 2018, a woman in South Africa, who had died suddenly ten days prior, shocked people at the funeral home when they saw that she had given birth inside her coffin. The woman had been nine months pregnant at the time of her death, and all arrangements for her funeral had been made when the staff made the spine-chilling discovery that her body had expelled the fetus after death.

8 Eliminate

During the process of death, the body goes through various changes. One of these is the relaxation of every muscle, including those which control certain bodily functions, such as the elimination of urine and feces.

Postmortem elimination is due to the sphincter muscles in the body relaxing. As the brain dies, it no longer sends the signals to keep these muscles contracted, and the contents left in the bowels and bladder will end up being released. ^[3]

These bodily functions do not always happen after death; it depends on how you die and how much food and liquid are in your bladder and bowels before death. In the case of ill patients, there may not be as much food in their system due to the lack of appetite that can accompany illness. However, in cases of sudden death, bodies are more likely to release whatever was left in their system.

The process can take a few hours, though, so it’s best to let nature take its course on this one.

7 Make Noise

Most depictions of dead bodies moaning and groaning focus on zombies rather than the actual dead. However, while corpses aren’t likely to scream or yell, they are likely to make noises such as moans, groans, hisses, and grunts.^[4]

These bodies aren’t making this noise voluntarily, of course. When cadavers are moved after death, the air still left inside the windpipe will escape and vibrate the vocal cords, making noises similar to grunts and moans. These sounds have spurred the horror stories of dead bodies making noise, though the reality is less horrifying. The sounds can often happen when coroners or morticians are prepping or turning the body over; the air will escape, causing what appears similar to human sounds but are just the simple result of the rest of the lungs’ contents leaving.

Another way these noises can occur is when the gases in the body begin to build up. They can escape through the windpipe, causing squeaks, hisses, and sometimes lower groaning.

6 Illusions Of Growth

Even though someone has been ruled dead, it may take time for the body to fully cease functioning. Once the brain shuts down, the body follows, but some have claimed that though the body is no longer alive, the hair and nails continue to grow.

As horrifying as that sounds, the truth is that the hair and nails only appear to have grown. When a body dies, it no longer has a supply of oxygen, making it impossible for glucose, which stimulates nail and hair growth, to be produced. What actually occurs is that the skin around the nails and hair begins to retract due to dehydration, making it appear that the nails and hair have grown longer, when in reality, they’re the same as they were before death. This also applies to men with stubble and hair on their chest; as the skin shrinks, the hair looks more prominent, making it seem as if the body has developed more stubble after death.

Goosebumps after death due to contractions of the muscles in the skin can also impact how hair can appear.^[5] In some circumstances, it will give the effect that the hair has grown longer, but once the contractions end, the hair will return back to its normal state.

Those of you with hair, such as men with beards, shouldn’t worry. Funeral staff will moisturize bodies to decrease the look of dry skin.

5 Self-Digestion

After death, the body begins to decompose. It goes through a process in which it begins to digest itself—yes, essentially feeding on itself to aid in decomposition—through a process called autolysis. We still know very little about human decay, but the growth of forensic research facilities, or “body farms,” together with the availability and ever-decreasing cost of techniques such as DNA sequencing, now enables researchers to study the process in ways that were not possible just a few years ago.

Soon after the heart stops beating, cells become deprived of oxygen, and their acidity increases as the toxic by-products of chemical reactions begin to accumulate inside them. Enzymes start to digest cell membranes and then leak out as the cells break down. This usually starts in the liver, which is enriched in enzymes, and in the brain, which has high water content; eventually, though, all other tissues and organs begin to break down in this way. Damaged blood cells spill out of broken vessels and, aided by gravity, settle in the capillaries and small veins, discoloring the skin.

This is when the bacteria in our bodies come into play. Our bodies host huge numbers of bacteria, with by far, most residing in the gut, which is home to trillions of bacteria of hundreds or perhaps thousands of different species. Most internal organs are devoid of these microbes when we are alive. Soon after death, however, the immune system stops working, leaving them to spread throughout the body freely. This usually begins in the gut, at the junction between the small and large intestines. Left unchecked, our gut bacteria begin to digest the intestines and then the surrounding tissues from the inside out, using the chemical cocktail that leaks out of damaged cells as a food source.^[6]

4 Explode

Tall tales have been told of bodies exploding from the inside out. Though this may seem a bit far-fetched, it isn’t too far from the truth—in a way.

Spontaneous human combustion has been an explanation for many of these tales, but the reality is a bit different. When a body dies, its temperature usually drops. In some cases, the temperature actually increases, which is referred to as “postmortem hyperthermia.” This continuous increase in temperature can be caused by different things, from drugs to trauma to even signals in the brain before death. The body can continue to grow hotter, but the likelihood of actual combustion is low, as the temperature will begin to drop back down as the corpse goes into the regular stages of decomposition.

Still, there have been cases of bodies exploding—although spontaneous human combustion isn’t responsible. What happens is that, as a body begins to break down after death, the gases inside (the same ones that can cause moaning and groaning) have to escape. The gases’ continuous buildup can lead to an “explosion” of bodily remains.

This rarely happens. In January 2013, however, a corpse did explode in a mausoleum in Melbourne.^[7] Those visiting the mausoleum bore witness to the event—and the smell. The experience was enough to traumatize witnesses and ensure that better precautions were taken to avoid another such incident.

3 Appear Aroused

Responding to certain stimuli when alive is natural and occurs even in the most inopportune of times. While it can be embarrassing if the moment isn’t right, it’s nothing near as creepy as a dead man getting an erection.

Once the heart stops beating, all of the blood that was previously circulating begins to trickle down and collect at the lowest part of the body available. In some cases, depending on how the man died, such as those who have suffered a spinal injury or passed facedown, this can be in the genital area. The continuous pooling of blood is only natural, as is the reaction it causes in the dead man’s penis, referred to as priapism.^[8]

While this is uncommonly seen now, it can also happen with women. When a woman dies similarly, her labia can become enlarged, and her clitoris can swell.

2 Orgasm

Even though this sounds a lot like necrophilia, it thankfully isn’t. In corpses that no longer have oxygen pumping through them, this is unlikely ever to happen, but for those that are clinically dead but being used as beating-heart cadavers or as organ donors, the possibility of the body having an orgasm is there.

This isn’t done on purpose. Doctors who work with these bodies sometimes have to trigger parts of the spine electrically. In some cases, when the sacral nerve root in the base of one’s spine is stimulated, it causes a reflexive reaction by the autonomic nervous system. Again, this only works because the bodies are still receiving oxygen, despite being clinically dead. When the doctors trigger this part of the spine, the reflex it causes in the system can result in an orgasm.

However, because the body is clinically dead, no actual enjoyment or pleasure comes from this experience. The brain is no longer sending out signals, and while the body may react, it’s only doing so out of pure reflex.^[9]

1 Know They’re Dead

There are countless stories of those who have come back from near-death experiences and have given their interpretation of what they believe the afterlife is like. While many are left to wonder what happens after we die, scientists may have at least part of an answer.

Scientists have found that after death, the brain can retain some semblance of awareness. This means that after one has passed, they might actually be aware they’re dead. In a study of 2,060 cardiac arrest survivors who had been declared legally dead, meaning that they no longer had identifiable brain function, around 40 percent claimed they were still aware of their surroundings and conversations going on around them.^[10]

The period doesn’t seem to last long, research has found. As death is a process, the time between oxygen leaving the system and the brain sending its last signals can leave room for awareness. Scientists believe that there is an average time of 10–20 seconds of awareness after death. A severed head, for example, still produces EEG waves even after death, though a portion of these seconds have lead scientists to believe the brain enters a stage of unconsciousness.

Still, the idea that a body may be aware that it’s dead is nothing short of unsettling.

Whether we refer to the act of living or to all sentient beings in this world, life has always been a difficult concept for humans to understand. Even when life has preceded us on this planet for 3.5 billion years—and we ourselves have roamed Earth for plenty of millennia—there are many questions about it that we still cannot answer. What is the meaning of life? Is there life after death? These, among many others, are typical questions of any philosophical debate, questions as old as humankind itself.^[1]

But then we have strange questions, unconventional doubts about life that do not usually come to our minds on a normal day. Have you ever wondered what Earth would be like if it were devoid of all life? Then this article is for you. If not, keep reading anyway; some of the answers, or the questions themselves, exposed here will certainly not leave you indifferent.

10 How Much Life Has Ever Existed?

Currently, the human population is slowly approaching eight billion people. That is certainly quite a number, but it does not even compare with the 100 trillion ants under our feet. And it is estimated that, at any given time, there are five nonillion bacteria in the world—that’s a “5” followed by 30 zeros. There is no doubt that there are so many living organisms on Earth that trying to count them all would be an unachievable task. And again, all this is just about the currently existing life-forms. But what about all the life that has existed in the past?

Determining how many creatures could have inhabited Earth throughout the history of the planet is extremely difficult. It is believed that complex life has been around in this world for at least 570 million years. And the fossils we have managed to recover are a minimum percentage compared to the prehistoric remains that are either out of our reach or have been destroyed by geological processes. But using their ingenuity, scientists have come up with a correlation between the number of fossils and the currently known species to estimate the total of life that has ever existed. Today, the experts are pretty convinced that 99.9 percent of all species on Earth are extinct.

This number is understandable, considering that the Earth’s biosphere has suffered five mass extinctions during the last 400 million years. On average, more than 80 percent of all living beings were erased from the face of the Earth in each of these five events. And a significant part of the scientific community believes that today, we are facing a sixth mass extinction. Estimates say that species disappear 100 times faster today than before our existence, and in the last 50 years, humans have eliminated 60 percent of animal life. So, unfortunately for us, death is much more common than life in this world.^[2]

9 Is Life On Earth Of Alien Origin?

Today, most scientists are sure that all life on Earth comes from a common ancestor. This primal being would have been nothing more than a unicellular organism, created by random chemical reactions in the early Earth. However, what scientists do not yet understand is exactly how these processes took place. And all their attempts to replicate the origin of life have failed so far. Perhaps the answer to this mystery could be found in a theory called lithopanspermia.

The theory of panspermia suggests that early life-forms were brought to Earth from somewhere else in the universe, such as nearby planets. Within the same idea, lithopanspermia states that rocky fragments of another world containing microbial life were ejected into space after some kind of planetary impact. Millions of years later, those rocks reached Earth, and the life they carried inside began its evolutionary cycle here. The concept behind panspermia appeared several centuries ago in France, and since then, it has been an object of scientific study, although other theories generate more interest nowadays.

Nevertheless, there are several indications supporting the possibility that lithopanspermia really occurred. Using collision simulations, researchers at Pennsylvania State University have concluded that it is statistically possible that a space rock containing microbes can travel from one planet to another by ejection.^[3] Of course, there is the problem that space is too hostile to allow the survival of life, due to factors such as radiation and extreme temperatures. But we know that there are multiple bacterial species capable of resisting the harshest environments, from the hottest places on Earth to the nothingness of outer space.

In addition, a recent study shows that the main elements that make up life on Earth are common in stars, existing more abundantly toward the center of our galaxy than in our planetary region. In short, the matter we are formed from literally comes from another region of the universe. So life may not be so special across the cosmos after all.

8 Is It Possible To Be Dead And Alive At The Same Time?

The answer to this question has nothing to do with some kind of quantum theory, where someone can be in two states at the same time. Nor does it refer to whether we can be like zombies, the classic description of the “living dead.” We can say that, yes, some creatures seem to be alive and dead at the same time. But everything has to do with the inability of scientists to agree on what exactly differentiates a living being from dead matter.

Some scientists understood that all life-forms must share immutable similarities in their nature and behavior. So in 1997, they proposed a list of seven conditions that something must meet to be considered a living being. Every living organism must have a complex chemical composition and be made up of basic structures called cells. It must be able to grow, reproduce, and respond to external stimuli. The creature must also have a metabolism to produce its own energy and be able to adapt to the environment.

Now let’s consider the case of viruses. Generally, and even from the scientific point of view, viruses are considered to be biological entities—that is, they are living beings. A virus has complex genetic material inside and definitely adapts to the environment. But a virus cannot grow or produce its own energy. (It feeds on the energy already produced by its host.) It also does not reproduce but replicates itself using the cells of the host. In fact, a virus is not even made of a single cell, and it remains to be seen if it responds immediately to external stimuli.^[4] So we know that a virus is alive, but it does not meet most of the requirements to be alive, sharing more similarities with a machine instead.

It happens that many inert objects partially fulfill several of those conditions, too. Even fire could once have become a tricky phenomenon when it came to differentiating it from a true living being. As our knowledge of the elemental processes of life increases, we will be able to make the difference clearer.

7 How Much Does All Life Weigh?

Compared to the rest of our solar system, anyone who sees the Earth from space can quickly notice that it is a planet covered in life. More than 30 percent of the continents of our world are covered by green vegetation. This, along with the blue of the oceans, makes Earth look like a living oasis in the midst of emptiness. But then one might wonder what the real, physical weight that life exerts on our planet is. For obvious reasons, until recently, it was very difficult to estimate the total mass of life on Earth. But studies conducted in 2018 show that even all living creatures put together are negligibly small in comparison to the vastness of our world.

In May 2018, American scientists published a report containing measurements of the mass of all carbon-based life on Earth.^[5] Since all known life-forms are carbon-based, and carbon is an abundant element inside every living being, using it to estimate the total biomass seems appropriate. The results showed that in total, life on this planet weighs at least 550 gigatons of carbon, or, to simplify, 550 billion tons. Considering that the whole Earth weighs approximately 6.57 billion gigatons, that means that all living beings combined account for about one ten-millionth of the total mass of the planet.

As we can see, living nature is just a tiny portion of everything that makes our world. In this estimate, plant life represents more than 80 percent of the total biomass. Meanwhile, humans only represent 0.01 percent among all life. This is surprising, considering that our cities and buildings cover at least three percent of the Earth’s land surface, a huge proportion compared to the effect of other species. That means that although we are few, we are good at what we do, whether it’s something good or bad.

6 Is The Universe Itself Alive?

There are several philosophical theories that point out that the universe is in itself a living entity. For example, hylozoism holds that all matter is alive, while panpsychism is the idea that every object in the cosmos has a certain degree of consciousness. Over time, these theories were left aside, after the acceptance of new concepts such as evolutionism. But now, new discoveries and theories have allowed the idea of a sentient universe to gather strength again.

First, we have the case of some experts who have hypothesized about how consciousness could be an intrinsic part of any existing structure.^[6] British physicist Roger Penrose theorized that human consciousness is the product of quantum processes within small regions of our brain cells. Taking this into account, astrophysicist Bernard Haisch conceived the possibility that “quantum fields”—the elementary structures that make up the universe—are capable of producing consciousness. In other words, any structure in the universe (be it a person or a star) can be sentient, since quantum properties are part of its own nature.

On the other hand, both its very structure and behavior serve as possible evidence that the cosmos really is a thinking entity. According to a 2005 study, the intricate structure of the material universe looks strikingly similar to the neural network in our brains. In addition, it has been known for a long time that the structure of an atom is similar—even in proportional distances—to the planetary arrangement of our solar system. And as if that were not enough, new studies show that certain stars make unexpected corrections in their orbits across the galaxy. More information will be needed to confirm if the latter behavior is common in the rest of the universe, but the idea of a living cosmos is captivating science now more than ever.

5 Is It The Same To Die As To Stop Living?

The short answer is no, it is not the same. Here comes the long answer: The concept of death has constantly changed over the centuries, becoming more accurate as our knowledge and technologies advance. For example, in the 19th century, a person was pronounced dead after simply ceasing to breathe. A hundred years ago, someone was officially dead once their heart stopped beating. And today, we believe that death occurs when our bodies suffer irreversible cell damage—that is, our vital functions can no longer be reactivated.

But even after a person dies and their body begins to decompose, that does not mean he or she is entirely dead. In fact, new research indicates that some processes occurring in a corpse challenge our understanding of death. A group of American and European scientists discovered in 2017 that after certain animals die, many of their cells are still fighting to survive. And they not only remain alive for days after death, but in some types of cells, their activity increases.

Everything points to the fact that, in an attempt to repair themselves, the cells in a dead body accelerate the process by which they transform DNA into instructions to make new proteins. And stem cells in particular are able to continue living not for hours or days but for weeks after the death of the creature. It is understandable if we take into account that every animal is a being composed of multiple populations of different cells. For this reason, some cells are more resilient than others, even after the apparent death of the body. And the same researchers state that this behavior occurs in all multicellular beings, including us.^[7] So it is clear that the line between life and death is much more blurred than we thought.

4 Why Is Life So Diverse?

So far, scientists have discovered and studied nearly two million different living species. Among these, humans are part of a handful of 5,000 known species of mammals. In comparison, we know 360,000 species of plants and one million different types of insects. However, our knowledge about Earth’s biodiversity is very limited, and today, the scientific community believes there could be up to two billion life-forms on this planet. Knowing this and that, as previously mentioned, at this point, almost all life on Earth is extinct, one cannot help but wonder, why is there so much diversity of living beings?

We can say that life has a tendency to continue to multiply, no matter what, even if that means to radically change its nature. Since the emergence of life, the Earth has undergone multiple mass extinctions, hundreds of minor ice ages, and constant fluctuations in the sea level (on the order of hundreds of meters). Yet here we are, and studies indicate that in our time, biodiversity has expanded more than ever, at an exponential scale.

This is primarily due to the fact that every time a cataclysm erases much of life on the planet, survivors tend to adapt to the new environment, resulting in new species.^[8] A clear example is the explosive increase of mammal species after the Cretaceous extinction event, 66 million years ago. It is also well-known that in order for an ecosystem to survive, its different life-forms will have to specialize and help each other. The air we breathe and the food we eat, for example, are conditioned for our consumption thanks to the work of other living beings such as plants and insects. Even forests are more resistant to disasters when they are composed of multiple tree species. So in a few words, try to erase life, and it will grow even more instead.

3 Which Organisms Have The Shortest And The Longest Life Spans?

As we have just seen, life-forms on Earth are so diverse that the concept of a long life varies between species. What can be synonymous with longevity for one creature is only a fleeting moment in time for another. So in the following point, it will be more appropriate if we see some life spans of organisms very different from each other.

Let’s start by looking at the life spans of bacteria. As they do not grow in the way other living beings do, it is difficult to determine the age of a bacterium. But we do have a fairly precise estimate of its reproduction, the generation time. This term refers to the time that passes before a cell multiplies. If we presume that a bacterial population remains stable over time, then a bacterium will live at least as long as its generation time. In this case, the shortest-lived bacterium is the microbe Clostridium perfringens. It is estimated that its generation time is just 6.3 minutes. In the time it takes you to read four points of this list, a Clostridium perfringens has already lived and died.

In the animal world, the mayfly Dolania americana is surely one of the animals that lives the least. If we only consider the adult stage of its life in which the insect is fully developed, D. americana emerges, reproduces, and dies in 30 minutes or less. On the other hand, a clam found in Iceland in 2006 had lived for 507 years and could have lived longer if it hadn’t been killed as a result of being collected.^[9]

Of course, we can’t leave out plants, which we know are among the most perdurable beings in the world. In fact, the oldest-known individual tree is a bristlecone pine from California that is more than 5,060 years old. When the humans of antiquity were beginning to develop writing, this tree was a youngling in its early years. On the other hand, the shortest-lived plants are believed to be the so-called ephemeral plants. Among these, plants of the genus Boerhavia can complete their entire life cycle in less than four weeks.

2 What Would The Earth Be Like If Life Did Not Exist?

So it is true that, in quantitative terms, life is a tiny part of what makes our planet. But it’s one thing to measure living beings according to their mass or volume and quite another to determine the effects these beings produce on Earth. So, what would happen to the Earth if life did not exist? Well, we can be pretty sure that without life, our good blue planet would no longer be good or blue.

The Earth’s atmosphere is 21 percent oxygen, an essential element for life-forms like us. But oxygen is an unstable gas that tends to combine quickly with other elements. Plant life on the surface is what replenishes the atmosphere with oxygen, filtering the gas constantly. If life on Earth did not exist, only small traces of oxygen would remain in the environment, while the atmosphere would be mostly composed of carbon dioxide. By this process, the temperature on the Earth’s surface would end up rising drastically.

In turn, higher temperatures would cause the melting of the polar ice caps and the subsequent rise in the sea level by tens of meters. Without life on the planet, the landmasses would suffer rapid erosion, and the mountainous regions would be seriously affected. After a long time, it is believed that the Earth’s temperature would rise to at least 290 degrees Celsius (554 °F). At this point, the oceans would end up boiling, leaving the planet completely uninhabitable. In a period of millions of years, a thick layer of clouds would cover the planet, aggravating the greenhouse effect and making the Earth look more like Venus.^[10] If this sounds crazy, scientists believe that Venus—the same planet that today is pretty much Hell—once had liquid water and a pleasant temperature on its surface.

1 When Do We Start To Die?

The aging process occurs, in broad terms, because the number of new cells in our bodies is not enough to replace the number of cells that are dying. So when too many cells have died or no longer function, and therefore our organs can no longer function properly, we finally die. In short, we do not begin to age and die as long as our body can maintain a balance in the vitality of its cells. And even in fewer words, death happens when aging becomes too much for us. But then, when do we begin to age?

Certain literary authors and prominent figures have said over time that we begin to die from the moment we are born. That may be a thought-provoking reflection (and a good phrase, of course), but science would say that is not entirely true. For a child to become an adult, countless billions or even trillions of body cells will have to be formed, multiplied, and replaced in the meantime. And during such time, the person does not show tangible signs of aging but becomes more capable both physically and mentally.

In fact, we now know that until around the age of 25, the new cells outnumber or at least equal the number of cells that die in the body.^[11] It is from the age of 25 that the cells begin to die faster than they can regenerate, thus causing our aging. In addition, studies show that at the age of 24, the brain also starts to lose cognitive speed. So aging, the process that eventually worsens to an unsustainable degree and causes our death, begins in our mid-twenties.

Economy student, passionate about Graphic Design, an avid enthusiast of the art of writing.

At the end of World War II, the death marches, which claimed the lives of countless people, were considered among the worst atrocities. Some were simply done to kill prisoners or to keep them from being freed by the advancing Allies, while some were marched for later use as hostages. Survivors were witness to the cold-blooded murder of family, friends, adults, and children. They lived to tell of some of the darkest days of World War II.

10 David Friedmann

Before the Holocaust, David Friedmann was one of Berlin’s most important and prolific portrait artists. Although he and his family escaped to Prague in 1938, they were deported to Lodz’s Jewish Ghetto in 1941. Friedmann was ultimately sent to Gleiwitz I and was a part of the death march to Blechhammer. His family died at Auschwitz.

Friedmann and the other prisoners left on January 21, 1945, and marched the 100 kilometers (60 mi) to the next camp. Friedmann wrote of the execution of those too weak to walk and remembers that he was nearly one of those people. Friedmann gave credit to a doctor named Orenstein and two friends for saving his life and getting him to Blechhammer, where they were liberated days later by the Soviets.

After the war, Friedmann continued to paint and immortalized scenes from the concentration camps he was in as well as the death march.

9 Salvator Moshe

Salvator Moshe was born in Greece, where his family had settled generations before, fleeing persecution by the Spanish Inquisition. Moshe and the other Jewish residents of Salonika were deported to German concentration camps in 1943.

Moshe and his brother-in-law were a part of the 4,000-person death march from the Warsaw Ghetto to Dachau in 1944. The march went on for days. On the third day, they were told to stop alongside a river, where the escorting officers told them they could finally have a drink. As they went to the water, Moshe recalled, “[A] fellow next to me, he was drinking water, but I heard bullets. They shooting. Zzz, zzz, zzz. Coming.”

The officers shot their charges as they kneeled to drink, and when the survivors made it back to the road, he saw another officer shooting those who couldn’t continue. Moshe and his brother-in-law survived and were liberated by US troops outside Seeshaupt.

8 William Dyess

A US fighter pilot, William Dyess was one of the soldiers who survived the Bataan Death March. He escaped in 1943 and made his way back to the States.

Dyess published an account of the horrors he witnessed, starting with the first murder. He described an Air Force captain being searched by a Japanese private, who found a handful of yen. As soon as the private, who Dyess described as a giant, saw the yen, he stepped to the side and beheaded the captain.

Dyess also talked about the so-called “Oriental sun treatment,” where captives were forced to sit in the blazing sun for hours on end, with no protection or water. The marchers were followed by a “clean-up squad” of Japanese soldiers who killed those who fell behind.

Once at San Fernando, Dyess and the other survivors found themselves in conditions so dire that they couldn’t even bring themselves to protest.

7 Eva Gestl Burns

When Soviet forces approached Auschwitz and the surrounding labor camps, those being held there were forced to walk. Eva Gestl Burns was working at an ammunition factory when they were told to start walking, and she later recounted a courageous escape.

The prisoners were clad in winter coats, and each coat was marked with a striped square. The women, many of whom were carrying scissors and thread, were able to remove the striped squares, cover the hole with a piece of plain material from somewhere else on the coat, and then replace the striped piece until they saw their chance for escape.

For Eva and a single companion, that chance came as they were being assembled into rows. When no one was paying attention, they ran, tore the striped fabric off their coats, and ultimately joined a group of German refugees heading to Sudentenland.

6 Stanislaw Jaskolski

In January 1945, prisoners at the Stutthof camp system were herded from their camps. Around 50,000 people were scattered. Around 5,000 were marched to Baltic Sea, ordered into the water, and shot. Others headed into Eastern Germany.

Stanislaw Jaskolski later described the march. He remembered freezing cold temperatures and the small bag of supplies they were handed. It included shirts, long johns, half a loaf of bread, and some margarine. They were given a scattering of blankets that were meant to be shared and were herded onto the road.

As they marched, Jaskolski thought of what they were leaving behind—the gallows, the gas chambers, and the crematorium. They were freezing, he remembered, but he also remembered thinking that they were, at that moment, doing pretty good.

5 Jack Aizenberg

Jack Aizenberg was one of 60 people (out of 600) who survived the 160-kilometer (100 mi) death march from Colditz Castle to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The 16-year-old boy was already starving, and he marched for a week with no food. Those alongside him were so hungry they were eating grass.

When they stopped to spend the night at a factory, Aizenberg found a single pea. He wanted to boil it over a fire they had started, and he was terrified that someone was going to try to steal it. He cut it into four pieces to make it last longer, and it was the only food he had for the entire march.

Aizenberg made it to Theresienstadt, and he knew he was dying—but he no longer cared. Soviet forces liberated the camp days later, and he would be taken to Britain as part of a resettlement program for the war’s orphans.

4 John Olson

Colonel John Olsen survived the Bataan Death March and the horror that came after it—Camp O’Donnell.

When survivors arrived at the camp, locals were granted permission to give them food. They were also given a welcome speech by a Japanese captain who made it clear that his only regret was that the code of honor to which he had to abide forbade him from killing the prisoners outright.

As personnel adjutant, Olson kept a meticulous record of what went on every day in the camp and would later use his notes to write a book. His journal records things like an increase in daily sugar rations (to 10 grams each) and the daily death toll. He also wrote about the burial detail and how men would volunteer for the task in order to make sure that their friends could at least have a proper burial.

3 Ingeborg Neumeyer

After World War I, around three million ethnic Germans were living in the area that became Czechoslovakia. By the time World War II rolled around, those Germans were no longer considered racially pure and became subject to the wrath of the Third Reich.

Ingeborg Neumeyer was 15 when she and her family were dragged from their apartment on May 31, 1945, and herded into the streets to join what would be known as the Brno death march. Later, she would recall seeing people shot for falling behind as well as her mother’s attempt to make sure her daughter at least had clothing. She was wearing three dresses when they started the march, but when she tried to discard two of the dresses, she was seen. She was beaten bloody, her clothes were taken, and her shoes were thrown away.

2 Marie Ranzenhoferova

Marie Ranzenhoferova was 24 years old when she walked from Brno to the Austrian border. She was offered the chance to stay by a would-be suitor who promised that if she and her baby went to live with him, she would be safe. She refused, and he would later force her at gunpoint to join the march.

Marie talked about families forced to leave homes they had been in for generations, dropping priceless family heirlooms as they walked, unable to carry them anymore. She remembered being supervised by guards from concentration camps, who were nowhere near as cruel as the men from the Zbrojovka arms factory. Those men were violent drunks, and she remembered one grabbing a baby from a woman’s arms and throwing it into a field because it would not stop crying.

When they reached the border, Marie left the march, and around 700 people followed her into the village of Perna. She stayed there for a while and eventually moved to Mikulov.

1 Keith Botterill

Keith Botterill (pictured above on the right) is one of only six people who survived the Sandakan death march. He and the other survivors only lived because they were able to escape their Japanese captors on the march from Sandakan Camp.

Botterill would later remember the camp itself as decent enough for the first 12 months they were there. As the war dragged on, the beatings and starvation got worse. As he and his companions planned for their escape, they were caught stealing rice in preparation. Botterill’s friend, Richie Murray, stepped forward and confessed to the theft. He was bayoneted.

After their escape, another companion, weakened by dysentery, slit his own throat to keep from slowing them down. The other survivors were Owen Campbell, Nelson Short (pictured left above), Bill Moxham, Bill Sticpewech (pictured center above), and James Richard Braithwaite. All Australian, they had been warned to escape by a sympathetic Japanese officer who knew about an upcoming slaughter.

Botterill died in 1997, just after the completion of a book about the remarkable story of the Sandakan Six.

+Further Reading

Here is a small selection of lists from the archives based around World War II.

10 Bizarre World War II Weapons That Were Actually Built
10 Little-Known Alternative Plans From World War II
10 Amazing Untold Stories From World War II
10 World War II Soldiers Who Pulled Off Amazing Feats

Tupac Shakur was only twenty-five years old when he was ambushed while he sat in a parked car on a Las Vegas strip on 7th September 1996. The attack came following the Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon fight which Shakur had attended. He died in hospital six days later on 13th September.

See Also: 10 Crazy Conspiracy Theories Clouding The Music Industry

Conspiracy theories almost immediately began to fly. Many claimed that he was killed by fellow rapper, Biggie Smalls, who himself would be gunned down several months later. As time went on though, the theories strayed into “Elvis” territory, with claims that the rapper and actor had faked his own death, theories that still circulate today. Here are ten reasons some people firmly believe Tupac Shakur is alive and well . . . somewhere . . .

10 Lock Down At The Hospital

After he was admitted to hospital following the shooting, it is claimed only his mother, very close friends and certain designated medical staff were allowed to see Shakur. Perhaps because of this lock down, people began to speculate there was possibly more going on behind the scenes.

The rapper spent six days fighting for his life, during which time it was said he had to be revived several times, eventually succumbing to internal bleeding as a result of his gunshot wounds.

Perhaps the most controversial statement came recently from author Michael Carlin who claimed that the rap star was likely “finished off” in hospital by persons unknown. Carlin has worked closely with Los Angeles Police Department in researching Tupac’s killing. One thing he claims he is certain of is that the police and medical records regarding the rapper’s death are “bogus!”^[1]

9 The Person Who Performed His Cremation Disappeared

Perhaps one of the most mysterious parts of the Tupac Shakur murder is that the person who performed his cremation has apparently since vanished from the face of the planet.

Close friend of Tupac, and the person who was in the car he was riding in when he was ambushed and shot, Marion “Suge” Knight, reportedly claimed that he paid for the rapper to have a private cremation. Not only has the person in question allegedly disappeared, but the amount that Knight claimed he handed over for his services is also questionable given that it was $3 million. Was this part of the “missing millions” as they came to be known?^[2]

8 Tupac’s Missing Millions

It is claimed that Tupac Shakur was worth a little over $100,000 when he died, which doesn’t make him a pauper by any stretch of the imagination, but when considering the immense wealth he had accumulated from his music and his acting career, it is a drop in the ocean of the money he would, at one time, have surely had.

Furthermore, he had no property in his name when he died and his only possessions appeared to be two cars. There seemed to be concerns about the rapper’s contract with his record label, and exactly how much money he was actually paid, while his record company, the infamous Death Row Records, claimed it was Tupac’s own lavish lifestyle that had left him (relatively speaking) destitute.

Others though have speculated that the “missing millions” may have been discreetly “moved” elsewhere – remember the $3 million paid for the cremation?— in anticipation of a life to be lived out in secret.^[3]

7Detective Claims He Was Paid To Help The Rapper Fake His Death

In September 2015 a former detective, David Myers, made the claim that Tupac Shakur had faked his own death, and what’s more, he had been paid $1.5 million to help the rapper achieve it. Myers made the announcement from his death bed while in critical condition in hospital, stating that he “could not die without letting the world know” and that he was “ashamed” of his involvement. According to Myers, a body double was even arranged to be taken to the morgue in place of Shakur.

It should be noted however, that while this story appeared on several well-known web sites, there does not appear to be a definite source. Myers, if indeed he did exist, also didn’t state why the rap star wished to have the world believe he had died. One thing of interest though is the claim of a body double, particularly when inconsistencies concerning the mortuary records came to light.^[4]

6 Different Height and Weight Records

According to official records there was some discrepancy regarding Tupac’s height and weight as recorded by the mortuary. His driver’s license, as well as various celebrity “measurements” sites, listed Shakur’s height at 5” 10 and his weight at 168 pounds. But the mortuary records showed him to be two inches taller at a straight six feet and at a weight of 215 pounds – considerably heavier.

Could this simply have been sloppy record keeping at the mortuary? It’s certainly a possibility and realistically most likely, but nevertheless it has been a talking point for those who believe there is something being hidden about the rapper’s alleged death.^[5]

5 Alleged Last Photograph Inconsistencies

One of the most famous photographs of the Tupac Shakur murder, was said to be taken in the immediate minutes before his death. It shows him in the passenger seat of a car, with none other than larger than life, Suge Knight driving.

However, eagle-eyed fans and researchers quickly spotted that the date on the photograph was incorrect, and appeared to have been taken on the 8th of September – the day after the shooting had taken place. While in all likelihood the camera was just set to the wrong date in error, some believed the photo had been “set up” to circulate to the media following the rapper’s “death”.

Furthermore it was also pointed out that there didn’t appear to be any keys in the ignition of the car. There were automatic-start cars in 1996, albeit not as widespread as they are now, but to some this was further proof that the photo was staged.^[6]

4 No Bulletproof Vest The Night He Was Shot

Since his shooting in New York several years earlier, Shakur had become increasingly paranoid. He had suspected Biggie Smalls and people close to him to have been behind the shooting on the east coast, and was increasingly convinced that people wanted him dead. So much so that he had taken to wearing a bullet proof vest everywhere he went.

However on this evening, with the “East Coast-West Coast War” in full swing, and despite being in a very public place, he suddenly decided not to wear one. It was rumoured by some that Knight had told the rapper to remove his vest because “it was hot” inside the arena where the Tyson-Seldon fight was being contested – there is said to be footage of this conversation although it certainly doesn’t appear to be widely available. There also appears to be confusion as to whether the rapper had a bulletproof vest on at all that evening, with some sources that Knight and others close to Shakur had tried to insist he wear one that evening but he declined.^[7]

3The Makaveli Conspiracy

Tupac was known to be a huge fan of Italian renaissance man Machiavelli, and was particularly enthralled by his line, “To fool your enemies, fake your death.” For his last album, “The Don Killuminati – The 7 Day Theory” Tupac changed his on-stage moniker to Makaveli and, as he had done in many of his songs before, spoke of how he would fake his own death and then return to enact his vengeance on those that had wronged him.

When Biggie Smalls was himself gunned down only six months later, conspiracy theories began to circulate that perhaps Shakur was making good on his promise. Incidentally, Smalls’ death also remains unsolved.^[8]

2 Tupac Is Alive and Well, and Living In Cuba

This particular theory would be regarded as complete nonsense by even the most enthusiastic conspiracy theorists, particularly the claims that he was “seen” partying with Rihanna recently, were it not for the fact that the rapper does have a genuine connection to the country of Cuba.

His aunt, Assata Shakur, was a political activist and former Black Liberation Army member. She had fled to Cuba in 1979 following her conviction for the 1977 murder of a New Jersey State Trooper and sought political asylum there. Given Shakur’s political awareness, he almost certainly would have been very much aware of his aunt’s situation and possibly her whereabouts.

As Cuba is one of the few countries that the United States (at the time) had no access to, it is an ideal place for anyone who is looking to disappear.^[9]

1 Scores Of “New” Songs Released After His Death

Since his death there has been a litany of new material released by the rapper. This has fuelled speculation from some that Tupac is alive and well and recording new material from afar. It is true that a wealth of new material has seen the light of day in the years following Shakur’s death. What’s more is that these new releases have arguably netted as much profit, if not more, than the rapper managed to while he was alive.

While the theory sounds plausible, the fact is that Tupac was well known for being a seriously hard worker in the studio, sometimes recording several songs in a session – sessions that could last for days at a time. It is not at all beyond the realms of possibility that he would have had hundreds of unreleased tracks waiting in the wings when he died. His estate and any royalties from his music were in the control of his mother, Afeni, until her death in early 2016.^[10]

About The Author: Marcus Lowth—writer at Me Time For The Mind—http://www.metimeforthemind.com/
Me Time For The Mind on Facebook—https://www.facebook.com/MeTimeForTheMind/

A towering figure in American history, General George Washington will forever be remembered for the bravery, principles, and integrity that led him to become the first President of the United States. The following facts focus on Washington’s excruciating demise that he endured in his final hours and the events that transpired following his passing.

10Diagnosis And Treatment

Since 1799, speculation has arisen as to whether or not Washington fell victim to medical malpractice. In an article written in The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. David Morens states that accusations of malpractice “were very much in the air during and immediately after the great man died.” Morens goes on to state, however, that he would not consider it malpractice in context of today’s usage. What remains troubling is that of the three doctors providing Washington’s care, no two agreed about the means of treatment.

Morens hints that the doctors were perhaps protecting their reputation to avoid potential charges. Washington’s diagnosis was also subject of debate and to date. It remains unclear as to what he truly succumbed to, be it an acute infection, malpractice, or a combination of both.

9Vile Concoction

It’s hard to imagine the pain Washington endured as the hours passed and his infected throat became more red and inflamed. To lessen the swelling in the early morning hours, Washington’s personal secretary, Col. Thomas Lear, provided the president a tonic of molasses, butter, and vinegar.

Washington had labored breathing and could barely speak, let alone drink a vile concoction that he could not swallow. His attempts to do so were met with choking, distress, and convulsions. If that alone didn’t notify the reaper, Washington was advised to gargle with vinegar and sage tea, followed by bouts of suffocation and expectorating phlegm. His difficulty grasping his breath substantially worsened as the hours passed and did so until 10 minutes prior to his passing, when his breathing became less strenuous, slowly letting go.

8Punctuality

Following Washington’s retirement, he spent much of his time working outside on the lands of his estate at Mount Vernon. Even through the intolerable winter conditions of snow, rain, hail, and high winds, Washington pushed through for five long hours, seeing to it that his work was completed for the day.

Priding himself on his punctuality, he remained in his damp clothes throughout dinner. The following day, Washington subjected his immunity to the harsh outdoors yet again even though he had developed a painful sore throat throughout the night. This would be the last day Washington would roam his estate, retiring for the evening with worsening symptoms that would awake him in agony around 3:00 AM. Had it not been for his fixated and stubborn ways, Washington would have lived to see spring. Instead, three physicians were summoned, undoubtedly sealing his fate.

7Infertility

From endocrine disorders to STDs, historians have long speculated the possible causes of Washington’s infertility. One theory was his extensive exposure to mercurous chloride, which he received in his twenties for treatment of abdominal pain and chronic bloody diarrhea.

Even on his deathbed, Washington’s physicians were prescribing him the toxic substance in combination with potassium tartrate, which causes intense nausea and vomiting. In layman’s terms, America’s founding father was inadvertently being poisoned by perilous medical remedies.

When these failed to produce beneficial results, Dr. Dick suggested a tracheotomy. A debate ensued between him and Dr. Craik, who ultimately vetoed the suggestion. Dr. Dick had only recently been trained in the procedure, leaving the outcome awfully uncertain.

6Criticism And Irony

News traveled much slower in the late 18th century, and in December 1799, it took four full days for word of Washington’s passing to reach Congress in Philadelphia. In fact, Congress was in session when notified, while Washington’s funeral was taking place hundreds of miles away at Mount Vernon.

As Washington was lowered into the ground, so was the harsh criticism he had faced in life. He had been viewed by many as a sell-out to the British, but this was overshadowed by the loss of the country’s founding father and dignified hero. Interestingly enough, the Union Washington so courageously fought to establish would be threatened nearly 69 later by Robert E. Lee, the son of the man who had spoken the infamous words, “First in War, First in Peace, First in the Hearts of His Countrymen.”

5Spanish Fly

As Washington’s condition worsened, his discomfort reached new heights upon the tortuous application of Spanish Fly. This powdered concoction was applied to the very source causing Washington’s agony, his throat.

Spanish Fly (cantharides) is a poisonous extract from the dried bodies of the beetle Cantharis vesicatoria. It causes blistering and has been used criminally as an aphrodisiac, often with dire consequences. In fact, it has been known to poison African cattle via contaminated drinking water, causing excitement, diarrhea, and inflammation of the kidneys.

It was assumed that the “treatment” would draw out the toxins plaguing Washington’s haggard body, not knowing the blistering pain was further exhausting his immunity. This senseless and excruciating false remedy continued throughout the day.

4Burial Dispute

Washington instructed in his will that his remains be buried in a new family mausoleum, unaware of the obstacles his request would face throughout the following century.

Despite his wishes, the House and Senate appealed to the Washington family to transfer his remains from Mount Vernon to the Capitol to be entombed under a marble monument. Martha Washington chose not to oppose the wishes of the public. However, disagreements arose over the type of monument, and funding stalled the project for years. Approaching Washington’s centennial in 1832, John A. Washington, owner of Mount Vernon, rejected any further plans to transfer the patriarch’s remains, effectively settling the issue that had spanned 33 years.

3Dehydration

In the late hours of Washington’s suffering, he was subjected to throat swabs of salve followed by an enema. This not only further incapacitated him but reduced him to a debilitated and vulnerable soul. The complications lead to a serious loss of body water, not including the noxious mineral imbalance in his blood. These, in turn, often lead to grave illnesses of the kidneys and heart. In addition, abdominal pain and cramping with persistent dizziness and nausea is often noted for those who have abused enemas.

In Washington’s case, where his perceived treatments were deemed beneficial, his soul was inadvertently being siphoned under a degrading set of circumstances.

2Washington’s Will

For a momentary respite from the agonizing details of Washington’s final hours, let us focus on one positive aspect of December 14, 1799: the last will of America’s founding father. It was written five months prior, on July 9, and Washington instructed Martha to retrieve his will hours just before his passing.

She handed her husband the two revisions, and in his frail and gravely ill state, he asked Martha to burn one and safeguard the other. Of the notable provisions made, Washington laid out instructions for freeing his slaves as well as the support for those who were too old, ill, or young to support themselves. In addition, Washington provided stocks to finance a school for orphaned children. His concern for the future of the United States and the well-being of those who had served him, all the while clinging to life, is a testament to the nobility of his character.

1Bloodletting

Washington’s physicians postulated that his airway obstruction was due to inflammation of the tongue, upper trachea, and larynx. In accordance with medical professor William Cullen’s recommended treatment, Washington was bled over a period of 9–10 hours with a quantity of blood estimated around 3.75 liters.

Six weeks after his passing, Dr. James Brickell expressed disgust in an article that was not made public until 1903 pertaining to the clinical wisdom of Washington’s physicians and the therapeutic modalities administered. Dr. Brickell argues that given Washington’s age and fragile state, the bleeding led to speedy and inevitable death.

In his final moments, Washington appeared calm and had stopped struggling, leading some to believe he had suffered profound hypotension that lead to shock and ultimately his death.

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

Most people never have a clue when they are going to die. You might live to be a centenarian, or you might suffer a horrible accident tomorrow. There’s simply no way to know.

However, a small number of people have been lucky enough to have a preternatural warning of upcoming death—assuming, of course, that “lucky” is the right word to describe the situation. These omens of doom are sometimes attached to families and have a history. Others are single occurrences. None are generally welcomed.

10 Eglinton’s Observation

Archibald William Montgomerie, more commonly known as the 13th Earl of Eglinton and 1st Earl of Winton (1812–1861), is said to have been well-known and liked by his fellow countrymen. He’s most remembered for his attempt to revive jousting tournaments as a public spectacle in 1839. Unfortunately, heavy rains chased off the crowd of 10,000 people. When the event was reconvened a day later, most of the crowd didn’t return.

Less well-known is a tale that, on October 4, 1861, Lord Eglinton was playing a round of golf on the links of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland, when he suddenly stopped in the middle of the game. He told his companion, “I can play no more. There is the Bodach Glas. I have seen it for the third time; something fearful is going to befall me.”

The Bodach Glas—the “dark gray man”—of Scotland was rumored to haunt certain clans. Eglinton died suddenly that very night of internal bleeding, possibly caused by a stroke, as he was handing a candlestick to a lady who was retiring to her room.^[1]

9 Death Gives Hugs

In 1924, Mrs. Bliss Coleman and her husband were living out of a rented room in a house in Oakland, California, and she was in the habit of going back to her room each day when she had a 4:00 PM break at work.

One day as Mrs. Coleman was returning at 4:00, she entered the house and saw a woman who was a third-floor tenant talking to the landlady in the hall . . . and there was a 183-centimeter-tall (6′) skeleton standing next to the tenant with a bony arm wrapped around her waist. Neither the third-floor tenant nor the landlady seemed the least bit aware of the third figure in their meeting. Coleman, terrified but knowing she couldn’t explain the weird vision, rushed past the two women and took shelter in her room down the hall.

Three weeks later, the third-floor tenant died, leaving her children motherless.^[2]

8 Questionable Hospitality

The English Civil War, which lasted from 1642 to 1651, upended the lives of Sir Richard Fanshawe and his wife, Ann, the Lady Fanshawe, in 1649, when they found themselves obligated to quickly vacate their residence in Cork, Ireland, before their neighbors tried to hang them. As they made their way to Spain, they stayed in the homes of a number of friends. This is how they found themselves spending a night at the castle of Lady Honara O’Brien. After dinner and some polite conversation, the Fanshawes excused themselves to their room for the night.

At around 1:00 AM, Lady Fanshawe was awoken by a voice coming from the window. She went to it and opened the curtain to discover a woman leaning into the window from outside. The woman wore white and had red hair and a “ghastly complexion”; she cried out the ancient Irish call of mourning, “ochon, ochon, ochon! and then melted away like a cloud. Lady Fanshawe immediately woke her husband to tell him what happened.

The following morning, before the Fanshawes could find a way to describe the strange event to Lady O’Brien, the latter told them that she, herself, had not slept well that night, for in a different part of the castle, she had stayed up to care for an ailing cousin of hers who had died at around 2:00 AM. She then expressed hopes that the Fanshawes slept well, for she gave them the best room in the castle . . . but forgot that a spectral woman appeared in that room’s window whenever a family member was dying.^[3]

The Fanshawes didn’t stay a second night!

7 Hand Off

In 1934, author Elliott O’Donnell made note of the strange experience of a young woman of the MacKenzie family in Scotland. Said young woman had gone upstairs one morning to fetch something from her bedroom and heard something in the room fall as she was leaving. Annoyed, she looked around for source of the noise and found that an old-fashioned silver candlestick had fallen next to her dresser. She walked over to pick it up and stopped as she realized what had knocked the candlestick over to begin with.

An arm was protruding from the wall!

It was only visible from the elbow down, with very white skin and long fingers and finely finished nails that showed it belonged to a woman, but the rest of the woman wasn’t there. As the young woman stared at this unnatural sight, the limb slowly faded from view.

She immediately feared for her mother, as she had been told that a phantom hand was an omen that appeared before a death in her family, and her mother was very ill at that moment. Luckily, her mother fully recovered, but a few days after the arm was seen, a letter arrived to inform them of the untimely death of one of the young woman’s cousins.^[4]

6 The Family’s Curse

The problem started with young Ewen MacClaine’s greed. In 1538, Ewen was the son and heir to the chief of the MacClaines of the Lochbuie district, and he didn’t understand why he had to wait to take his father’s wealth. Harsh words were said, and soon, the demands turned into an argument and the argument into a fight. That fight then became a split in the clan, leaving father and son to lead opposing forces into battle against each other. During the heated battle, one of the elder MacLaine’s supporters beheaded Ewen with a single stroke of his weapon . . . but Ewen’s body didn’t fall from his horse.

Instead, the corpse lashed out to the left and right, striking nearby clansmen before his horse bolted from the field of battle for home. When the horse arrived back at Ewen’s castle, the servants were horrified to see their master minus his head. The corpse was still sitting up in the saddle, twitching randomly. Convinced that only the Devil himself could be to blame for this matter, the servants decapitated the horse before burying what they had of master Ewen.

Ever since that grisly battle, the MacClaine clan of the Lochbuie district has lived in fear of encountering the headless ghost of Ewen MacClaine, still riding his favorite horse and sporting the green cape he wore to the final battle. To see his ghost has but one meaning: The unfortunate witness will soon die.^[5]

5 Gwrach Y Rhibyn, The Hag Of The Mist

In Wales, stories are told of the Gwrach y Rhibyn, a profoundly ugly winged hag that comes in the dead of night to flap its wings against the window of a house in which a death will occur, while calling out the name of the doomed party. To say its visits are feared and its deadly warning unwelcome is an understatement, but it’s just a Welsh tale, a curious bit of folklore. Or, at least, that’s what Wirt Sikes thought before he started collecting tales from Welsh farmers for his 1880 book British Goblins.

One of the farmers Sikes talked to told of a strange thing that happened to him on November 14, 1878. The farmer was visiting an old friend in Llandaff when he was awoken around midnight by “a frightful screeching and a shaking of [his] window.” Startled, but mostly curious, the farmer ran to the window and threw it open. He saw a figure flying away, which looked over its shoulder back at him, and he knew it was the Gwrach y Rhibyn. The strange hag had disheveled red hair, chalky skin, wings, and teeth like tusks. She wore a long, black gown that trailed behind her on the ground. It appeared as if she had no body below her arms within the billowing material!

She screeched again at the window of a house just a little down from where the farmer was, and then she vanished. The farmer kept looking into the darkness and soon saw her again as she entered at the front door of the nearby Cow and Snuffers Inn. He waited for some time but saw and heard nothing more. The following day, the farmer found out that the man who kept the inn had died that night.^[6]

4 The Abused Cat

Sometime in the early 1800s, Mrs. Hartnoll’s family were staying in a manor house which was so large that they only occupied one wing of it, keeping the rest locked up most of the time. Part of the unused manor was a hallway that had a sinister feel to it, but Mrs. Hartnoll, in her adventurous youth, decided to investigate it on various occasions. She experienced many strange things in that hallway, but the strangest was the apparent ghost of a mutilated black cat with one eye and paw missing, torn ears, and a slow, curious way of moving. Three times she encountered this strange creature.

The first time she saw the cat, it crept out of a doorway and slowly tried to reach her leg to rub against it, instead sinking into the floor. That evening, her brother died. Two years later, she found herself exploring the hallway again when something struck the small of her back. Spinning around, she found the cat again, as bloody and maimed as before and convulsing as if on the edge of its own death. Hartnoll fled the room. Her mother died that night.

Four years later, she was in the hall again, but not by her own choice. She had been sent on an errand by her father that required her to pass through the hall, and, presumably, she had not told him anything of her previous experiences there, as she was not supposed to be in that part of the house to begin with. She completed the task as quickly as possible and was on her way out when a shadow appeared in the doorway before her . . . and she once again saw the cat. Her father dropped dead that afternoon.

With the loss of his father, Mrs. Hartnoll and her remaining siblings had to leave the house and make their own way in the world. None of them ever returned to the manor.^[7]

3 The Oxenhams’ Questionable Omen

In 1641, a pamphlet was published in London entitled A true Relation of an Apparition in the Likeness of a Bird, with a white breast, that appeared hovering over the deathbeds of some of the children of Mr. James Oxenham of Sale Monachorum, Gent, which tells you a lot about the pamphlet! This treatise explained how five relatives of its author, James Oxenham, were each visited by a white-breasted bird that mysteriously appeared and disappeared before their deaths in 1618 and 1635.

The story proved popular, and it soon became a well-known legend of a family omen . . . except it wasn’t. The story in the original pamphlet had been invented just to have something to sell. Three of the victims never existed, one died on a different date than mentioned in the pamphlet, and the family never lived in “Sale Monachorum,” as the title states. The witnesses named in the pamphlet also do not appear to have existed, so the whole story was a fraud to begin with, which makes what happened after its publication even stranger.

In 1743, over a century after the false pamphlet had been published, William Oxenham was in his chambers with some friends when, for reasons unknown, a white bird flew through. Oxenham, aware of the rumored death omen for his family, quipped that he was not sick enough to die and that “he should cheat the bird!” This surely brought a laugh from those in attendance. Oxenham died two days later after a short, sudden illness.^[8]

2 A Castle’s Shame

Dr. Walter Farquhar (1738–1819), who was made a baronet in 1796, had an odd experience in his younger days as a physician before he settled in London in 1769. While visiting the area of Devin, he was called to assist the wife of the steward at Berry Pomeroy Castle. When he arrived, he was shown to an outer apartment and asked to wait there as they prepared the patient to see him.

As he waited, a young and well-dressed woman, who he took to be a member of the family, entered the room. He offered polite greetings, but she ignored his presence; she seemed very worried about something and constantly wrung her hands as she crossed the room to the bottom of a stairwell, where she hesitated a moment before ascending the stairs. As she climbed, a sunbeam lit up her face, and Dr. Farquhar was struck by both how beautiful she was and how fantastically sad and hopeless she looked. In a moment, she was gone, and he was called to attend to the ailing wife, whose condition required his immediate and full attention.

Farquhar returned the following morning to check on his patient, who was clearly doing much better than the day before. Now that the emergency had passed, Farquhar asked the steward about the young lady he had seen. Farquhar couldn’t have predicted the reaction he got. “My poor wife! My poor wife!,” the steward started to lament. When pressed as to why, the steward explained that the daughter of a previous baron of Berry Pomeroy had given birth to her own father’s child. The unfortunate young woman had then later strangled the child to death in the chamber above the room Farquhar had been waiting in.

The young woman Farquhar had seen was a ghost—one that only appeared to presage a death within the castle. She had appeared before the steward’s son drowned, and now the steward was sure that her presence meant his wife was doomed. Despite Farquhar’s assurances that she was recovering and that the steward’s worries were groundless, the steward’s wife died that day at noon.^[9]

1 A Friendly Visit

It was a beautiful summer day in 1974, and Dr. Julian Kirchick was enjoying it to the fullest, lying back in a chaise lounge next to his pool as the day was slowly becoming the evening. A cool breeze and the sound of birds comforted him. There was a sudden noise in the bushes near the house, so he stood up to go see what it was. He stopped two steps later.

Kirchick was looking at a skeletal figure wearing a monk’s hood and robes, and despite the apparition’s eyes just being hollow, dark holes, he could sense the figure looking back at him. The thin skin was pulled so tight over the face that the structure of the skull was highlighted, and its visible teeth were partly open in what Kirchick felt was meant to be a friendly smile. The strange figure beckoned to Kirchick with a bony hand. Kirchick was frozen in place with fear. Eventually, this strange vision faded.

If Kirchick had wondered what the odd visit was about at the time, he felt he knew a few months later, when he was diagnosed with a terminal cancer.^[10]

Garth Haslam has been digging into strange topics for over 30 years and posts his research on varying anomalies, curiosities, mysteries, and legends at his website Anomalies—the Strange & Unexplained. Check it out at http://anomalyinfo.com.