Nowadays, we have a decent understanding of mental health and many who need help can find it in psychiatric hospitals.

That was not always the case, though. In the past, people with mental issues were sent to lunatic asylums; not to get treatment, but to keep them out of the way of the general population. Many historical figures finished their days in such an institution, long forgotten by the world around them.

10. The Savior of Mothers

Nowadays, Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis is remembered as the “savior of mothers” for his efforts to get maternity doctors to wash their hands to limit the spread of childbed fever. And the reward for his work was getting locked up in an asylum where he was abused and beaten by the guards, dying a short while later from an untreated gangrenous wound.

Semmelweis began his medical career in 1846 as an obstetrical assistant at the Vienna General Hospital. The institution had two maternity wards for underprivileged women, and Semmelweis noticed that the one where he worked had a much higher maternal mortality rate caused by childbed fever – almost five times higher, in fact. 

What was the source of this huge discrepancy? Semmelweis eliminated each possible motive one by one until he concluded. His ward was staffed by doctors, the other by midwives. What did they do differently? The midwives washed their hands, that’s what. Semmelweis told his students to start washing their hands before working with patients and he saw the mortality rate plummet. He then published his findings, hoping to start a medical revolution.

The medical world, however, was not ready to listen because Semmelweis’s ideas went against established opinion. Instead, he was ridiculed and criticized by his colleagues and spent the next two decades screaming into the void uselessly. Semmelweis became a pariah. He took to drinking and openly bashing his critics with vitriol and desperation. 

Eventually, Semmelweis had a mental breakdown and was committed to an asylum in 1865. He died of sepsis just a few weeks later and his passing was barely acknowledged by the medical community.

9. The Woman Who Joined the Army

Hannah Snell was an 18th-century British woman who became rather notorious for disguising herself as a man and joining the military. 

Snell’s unusual career path started in 1745 when she decided to assume the identity of her brother-in-law, James Gray, and head out into the world alone to find her husband who had left her a few years earlier. After discovering that he was dead, she enlisted in the army as James Gray. She kept her secret for a while but deserted after spotting an old neighbor and fearing that he might recognize her. Instead of going home, though, Hannah simply traded the army for the Royal Marines, thus likely becoming the first woman to join this fighting arm of the British military. 

She served for several years, sailing first to Lisbon and then to India where she took a bullet to the groin in battle and enlisted the help of a local woman to remove the bullet to maintain her secret identity. Snell finished her tour of duty in 1750 and returned home to her sister. According to legend, she revealed her deception in a pub full of soldiers. Hannah later sold her story to a London publisher and even received a lifetime pension for her service. She lived a long life, but her mental condition deteriorated towards the end, and she was committed to the infamous Bedlam asylum where she died in 1792.

8. The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet

Described as England’s finest rural poet, John Clare had an unrivaled knack for writing poetry that vividly depicted the natural beauty of the English countryside. 

Born in 1793 in the East Midlands, Clare’s working-class credentials were unimpeachable – he was the son of a farm laborer, who had to work the fields himself from a young age to help support his family. He published his first book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Live and Scenery in 1820, but despite his writing receiving lots of praise, he struggled financially all his life and had to keep working manual labor jobs to make ends meet.

This took a toll on Clare, both physically and mentally, and in 1836 his doctor recommended he stay at High Beech asylum in Essex to recuperate. He spent five years there before simply walking out one day and making the 80-mile journey home on foot. However, his respite was brief, and five months later, he was back inside, this time at the Northampton Lunatic Asylum where Clare lived out the last 23 years of his life. He described the place as “the purgatorial hell and French bastille of English liberty, where harmless people are trapped and tortured until they die.”

7. The Man Who Drew Cats

From an English poet, we move on to an English painter – specifically, Louis Wain, a 19th-century London outsider artist who became best known for his pictures of cats. It’s a shame he didn’t live in the Internet age, he would be the most famous artist in the world. Instead, he ended up penniless in a pauper’s asylum.

Unfortunately, his career had a tragic start. Married at 23, Wain’s wife was soon diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. To cheer her up, Wain would draw caricatures of their family cat, Peter. These were meant to be private, but an editor for the Illustrated London News saw them and liked them and commissioned Wain to draw more for his newspaper. Before you knew it, all of London knew Wain as “the man who drew cats.”

Compared to other entries, Louis Wain ended up in an asylum at an advanced age. He was always a bit on the eccentric side, but in his later years, his eccentricity turned to abuse and violence towards his sisters who lived with him. Therefore, in 1924, the 64-year-old Wain was committed to Springfield Hospital in Tooting. He was later moved to nicer accommodations in Bethlem Hospital following a public campaign backed by the Prime Minister at the time, Ramsay MacDonald, and he was allowed to quietly work on his art for the rest of his life. 

6. The Murderous Mathematician

In the mathematical world, André Bloch is remembered for his work in complex analysis, and for having a theorem and a constant named after him. However, his achievements sit under a dark cloud, as Bloch did all his work inside a mental asylum, where he spent most of his adult life after killing three people.

Born in 1893 in Besançon, France, André and his brother Georges were drafted into the army during World War I and both were injured during service. Georges, after losing an eye, was released from service. André, meanwhile, although he was allowed to return home to recuperate, was expected back. This never happened, though, because while on leave, André Bloch murdered his brother, his aunt, and his uncle. 

Afterward, Bloch was committed to the Charenton asylum in the suburbs of Paris, where he spent the next 31 years of his life. The motive behind his crimes remains unclear, but Bloch described it to his psychiatrist as a simple matter of eugenics. He said that mental illness ran in his family on his mother’s side, so he wanted to wipe out that entire branch and only lamented that he didn’t get to finish the job. When his doctor told him that this was a terrifying approach to life, Bloch simply responded:

“You are using emotional language. Above all there is mathematics and its laws.”

5. The Minister of Murder

Born in England in 1880, Thomas Ley moved to Australia in 1886 where he later served as the Minister of Justice for New South Wales and then a Member of Parliament. His career, however, was fraught with controversies and accusations, the most serious of which was the fact that several of his opponents and detractors ended up dead under mysterious circumstances. 

Eventually, the dark clouds surrounding Ley cost him his political career, so he moved back to England with his mistress, Maggie Brook, where he continued his dubious shenanigans. These included some shady real estate deals, promoting a bogus sweepstakes, and acting as a black market dealer during World War II. 

Thomas Ley reached the end of the line in 1947 when he was accused, charged, and convicted in a sensational crime dubbed by the British press as the “Chalkpit murder.” He arranged the death of a man named John McBain Mudie whom he believed was having an affair with Brook. He was due to hang but had his sentence commuted to life in prison at the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, since Ley had a cerebral hemorrhage and died soon after being imprisoned.

4. The Mad Archer

Despite what the title might suggest, this story is not about a deranged hunter, but rather a man named Archer – specifically, a 19th-century Scottish actor named Richard Archer Prince. Born near Dundee in 1858, Prince began working in theater from an early age and around 1875 moved to London to make it big.

He didn’t. He mostly had bit parts and always struggled financially, sometimes having to rely on a charity known as the Actor’s Benevolent Fund for assistance. He began drinking heavily and exhibiting odd behavior, which earned him the moniker of “the Mad Archer” from his fellow thespians.

At the exact opposite end of the spectrum sat William Terriss. He was one of the most popular actors of his day. He knew Prince and occasionally tried to find him work, but this did not stop the latter from resenting him due to his success. Eventually, Prince was denied assistance from the Actor’s Benevolent Fund and he, somehow, got it into his head that this was Terriss’s doing. He got his revenge one night by waiting for Terriss outside the Adelphi Theater and stabbing him to death when he arrived.

Prince showed no remorse for his crime. He was obviously found guilty, but judged insane and was sent to Broadmoor. He spent the next 40 years of his life there and became involved with the local entertainment, finally finding a captive audience.

3. America’s First Supermodel

That is just one of the monikers of New York beauty Audrey Munson. She was also dubbed the “American Venus,” “Miss Manhattan,” and many others. She was the model for the Walking Liberty Half Dollar and statues of her still stand proudly at American landmarks such as the Manhattan Bridge, the Pulitzer Fountain, and the Sleepy Hollow cemetery. And yet, she died forgotten in an insane asylum and was buried in an unmarked grave. 

Her troubles began in 1919. The man who owned the boarding house Audrey lived in with her mother, a doctor named Walter Wilkins, had become dangerously obsessed with her to the point that he murdered his wife so the two of them could be together. Although Audrey had no role in the killing, the scandal torpedoed her career and, unable to find any more work, she moved to Syracuse with her mother. Despite her fame, she never earned that much as a model, and what she did earn she spent, so the pair was broke and Audrey’s mother had to sell kitchen utensils door-to-door to make ends meet.

This drastic lifestyle change caused Munson to attempt suicide in 1922. In the years that followed, she became more unstable, so on her 40th birthday, her mother had her committed to the St. Lawrence State Hospital for the Insane. She was briefly moved to a nursing home, but Audrey kept running away from there, so she was moved back to the mental institution. She died in 1996, at the age of 104.

2. The Marquis de Sade

Donatien Alphonse François de Sade might be the most notorious French author in history, although everyone knows him better under the name of the Marquis de Sade. His novels outraged 18th-century France due to their depictions of sex, violence, blasphemy, and sadism, a word which, you guessed it, is named after him. 

It seems that the Marquis enjoyed at least some of the topics he wrote about in his own life, which led to his arrest and imprisonment on multiple occasions. Usually, he was let off with a fine or his family used its influence to secure his release following a brief stay in custody. 

This worked until it didn’t. Specifically, until the French Revolution which ended the monarchy and brought Napoleon to power. He absolutely loathed de Sade’s work, calling it “abominable” and the writings of “a depraved imagination.” Napoleon had the Marquis arrested again in 1801 and, this time, there was no reprieve. De Sade was diagnosed with “libertine dementia” and committed to an insane asylum for the last 11 years of his life. He spent that time writing and putting on plays. At least, until 1809 when he was sent to solitary confinement, had all pens and paper confiscated, and was denied any more visitors. 

1. The Great Composer

As one of the greatest German composers of the Romantic era, Robert Schumann needs no introduction. Born in 1810 in the Kingdom of Saxony, Schuman began studying music at age seven and, not long after, was working on his own compositions. Despite dying at the age of 46, Schumann composed almost 150 works. 

He might have been even more prolific if he hadn’t struggled with mental illness throughout his life. In 1854, his delusions became strong enough that he feared he might harm his family. After attempting suicide by jumping off the Rhine Bridge, Schumann requested that he be committed to an insane asylum where he spent another two years before his death.

What exactly was the cause of his psychosis has been hotly debated ever since and there is still no concrete answer. His doctor at the asylum claimed Schumann’s condition was brought on by overwork and exhaustion. Others believe that the composer suffered from schizophrenia or manic-depressive disorder, and even studied his works to see if any symptoms were reflected in his music. It’s possible it ran in the family, since Robert’s mother had bouts of depression, his father once suffered a nervous breakdown, and his sister committed suicide. 

Even the Nazis tried their hand at diagnosing Schumann, although they quickly concluded that he suffered from vascular dementia – a physiological condition. After all, to them, Robert Schumann was a hero of German music, and they couldn’t promote anyone with psychiatric problems like that.

It is tempting to believe that people who have achieved great success in their life must be happy people. When that success is joined by money and fame, surely, we think, they must live in a state of perpetual contentment.

See Also: 10 Gruesome Facts About Suicide And Death Cleanup

However, it seems, no amount of money, fame or success can prevent people from getting old, or ill, and, perhaps, success brings pressures of its own that most people will never understand. Whatever the reasons, there are times when those who appear to have it all, can struggle just as much, if not more, than the rest of us.

Here are 10 successful people who decided that life was no longer worth living, and expressed themselves, for the last time, in the form of a suicide note.

10 Clara Blandick

Clara Blandick had a forty-year career in films, although she is most famous for playing Aunt Em in The Wizard of Oz. She retired from films in 1950 and spent the rest of her life living at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where she received few visitors, and appeared to have largely been forgotten.

Her retirement coincided with a marked decline in her health. Her eyesight was failing, and she was in constant pain from her severe arthritis, which affected her mental health. One Sunday in April 1962, she went to church, then began to rearrange her room. She put out her favorite photos, the mementos of her long career, arranging them with care. On her desk, she laid out her resume, and a collection of press clippings and reviews, so that the emergency services would know who she was.

Then she did her hair and make-up, put on her favorite dressing gown, and sat on the couch with a gold blanket over her knees. She must have been quite a sight, although the plastic bag that she asphyxiated herself with probably spoiled the scene a little.

She left behind a note, which read, “I am now about to make the great adventure. I cannot endure this agonizing pain any longer. It is all over my body. Neither can I face the impending blindness. I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.”^[1]

9 George Eastman

George Eastman had a profound impact on modern life. He was the inventor of the Kodak camera, the first camera that made photography easily accessible to the public, and began the craze for amateur photography that is still going strong today. Cameras had previously been expensive, complicated to operate, and extremely unwieldy. His cameras were small, cheap, and simple to use, and his company became one of the most successful businesses in the world.

Eastman pioneered a number of developments in photography, but his Brownie camera, which cost $1 and could be used by amateurs and children was his most popular invention. It became a favorite of servicemen during World War I because it could be tucked into a kit bag.

George Eastman was endlessly inventive and a great businessman. He was respected by his employees, whom he treated well, and was known to be a generous philanthropist, giving away over $100 million during his lifetime. His health, however, began to degenerate, and he found it difficult to do the activities that he once enjoyed. In 1932, George Eastman committed suicide, with a gunshot wound to his heart.

The note that he left behind was brief but to the point. It seems that Eastman put his practical mind to the problem, and came to his own conclusion. “To my friends: My work is done. Why wait? G. E.”^[2]

8Tony Hancock

Tony Hancock was an actor and comedian who specialized in playing characters who had been treated badly by life. His characters were puffed up with a sense of their own self-worth, and bemused to realize no one else recognized his genius.

Tony Hancock’s alter-ego was, it seems, drawn very closely from life. Hancock was a troubled man who resented anyone stealing his limelight. He disliked his writers, the hugely successful writing team of Galton and Simpson, getting credit for his lines, and disliked his co-star, Sid James, getting any funny lines, which was awkward, since James was also a comedian. Hancock insisted that they drop Sid James from Hancock’s Half Hour, and then he fired his writers, a decision which he later bitterly regretted.

As his career began to falter without his writers, Hancock’s drinking, which had always been problematic, became much worse. In a last-ditch attempt to resurrect his fortunes he agreed to make a series in Australia. But Hancock was not happy, and, believing that the filming was not going well, he killed himself in his hotel room.

His suicide note had an echo of Hancock’s Half Hour and the character who believed that the world is against him. “Things just seemed to go too wrong too many times”, he wrote, not knowing the Australian TV company had already decided to commission a second series.^[3]

7 Vachel Lindsay

Vachel Lindsay was an American poet, who was particularly well known for his performance poetry, which he described as ‘higher vaudeville’. Much of his work is considered culturally insensitive today, particularly for his naive and racist portrayals of African-Americans. Sometimes, for example, he appeared in black face when he read his poem about The Congo, a place he had never visited.

But, it seems, this middle-class white man tried hard to depict small town America in all its vagaries. And, for a while, small town America appreciated his efforts. His patriotic verses were well appreciated throughout World War I, but, when the war was over, his popularity began to wane. His readings were sparsely attended, his income declined, and he was the subject of much mocking for his overly dramatic style.

At the same time, his health problems increased, until, in 1931, broke, ill and depressed, Vachel Lindsay killed himself by drinking a bottle of lye, which was a typically dramatic, but agonising, way to go. He left behind a note, which read, “They tried to get me—I got them first!”

Quite who ‘they’ were was not made clear.^[4]

6 George Sanders

George Sanders was a successful, Oscar winning, actor, but he was never able to enjoy his life. He had been married four times, including to the actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, and then to her sister, Magda. He was known for his rudeness, and even acknowledged it himself, saying, “I am not a sweet person. I am a disagreeable person. I am a hateful person.”

This self-awareness did not seem to enable him to enjoy life more, and neither did his seven psychiatrists. Sanders believed that he was passed over for roles that he wanted, and it seemed to eat away at him. In 1972, at the age of 65, George Sanders downed five bottles of Nembutal in a hotel room in Spain. Typically for Sanders, his suicide note was not one that expressed remorse, or love, but rather, disdain and more than a little contempt, for the whole of humanity.

“Dear World, I am leaving you because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.”^[5]

5 Lupe Valez

Lupe Valez was a young and beautiful Mexican actress, who seemed to epitomize the excitement of the frenetic jazz era the 1920s. She was often cast as the fiery Latin consort to the bad guy, and was nicknamed The Mexican Spitfire. Velez was known in Hollywood circles as a party girl, but she was also a staunch catholic. So, when Velez found herself pregnant, at the age of 36, she would not countenance a visit to the ‘health spas’ that many starlets of that era frequented when they were in the same situation.

She was briefly engaged to the father of her child, an Australia actor named Harald Ramond, but the engagement lasted only a few days before they broke up, the week before she died. On the night of her death, she held a dinner party at her home, and, after her friends left, Lupe Valez killed herself with poison, leaving a note which read, “To Harald, may God forgive you and forgive me too but I prefer to take my life away and our baby’s before I bring him with shame or killing him, Lupe.”

Lupe Valez’s death was certainly tragic, but the rumor that she meticulously planned a beautiful death for herself, only to succumb to nausea and die with her head in the toilet, appears to be an urban myth.^[6]

4 Terry Kath

Terry Kath was the lead guitarist in the rock band Chicago, and the musician who Jimi Hendrix called ‘better than me’. Like so many other musicians, Kath was addicted to drink and drugs, and prone to periods of deep depression. He also decided to collect guns as a hobby, which was a dangerous combination.

In 1969, Chicago opened for both Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, and they were riding high. By 1977, however, the band was beginning to fracture, and Terry Kath fell out with several band members. He was taking large amounts of cocaine, and had got himself a new hobby, Russian roulette. He played the game often. Carl Wilson, of The Beach Boys, once knocked a gun out of his hand in alarm and in return, Kath punched him in the face.

On the day of his death, in January 1978, Kath had been snorting cocaine for two days straight. He decided that was this was the right the time to clean his guns, and, after being told to be careful, replied “What do you think I’m gonna do? Blow my brains out?”

He fired the gun directly into his temple. Despite the fact that Kath had removed the clip, the gun still had one bullet in the chamber, and he died instantly. It is not clear whether he intended to shoot himself in that moment, or whether his death was the tragic result of his increasingly dangerous obsession with death, but his last words were horribly prophetic.^[7]

3 Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf was one of the most important writers of the 20th century. Her work received wide recognition, and her marriage was said to have been blissfully happy. However, Woolf had suffered periods of mental illness for the whole of her life, and it is believed that she probably suffered from bi-polar disorder which, at that time, had not been recognized and was untreatable.

Feeling that her mood was changing yet again, Woolf wrote a long and tender suicide note to her husband. “Dearest, I feel certain that I’m going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So, I am doing what seems to be the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier until this terrible disease came. I can’t fight it any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness in my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me, it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.”

On 28th March 1941, Virginian Woolf filled her pockets with stones and walked into the river near her home, and drowned.^[8]

2 Sid Vicious

Sid Vicious was probably the least talented member of a band which celebrated its lack of talent when it took the world by storm and ushered in the era of Punk Rock. The Sex Pistols were loud, brash, and defiantly aggressive. But it was Sid’s relationship with his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, that would lead to the destruction of them both.

Sid Vicious had a volatile personality. Occasionally driven to outbursts of violent anger, he was known to have assaulted several journalists and even members of The Sex Pistols’ audience, and he sought refuge in drugs and alcohol. Sid and Nancy both had an escalating heroin habit.

In October 1979, Vicious woke up in his Manhattan hotel, to find his girlfriend dead on the bathroom floor. She had been stabbed in the stomach, and she bled to death. Vicious acknowledged owning the knife, and he was arrested for her murder. Over several interviews he gave conflicting accounts of what happened, sometimes admitting to stabbing her, and sometimes saying that he didn’t remember because of the large amounts of drugs that they had both taken. He was charged with her murder.

After several failed attempts at suicide whilst on remand, Sid Vicious died the night that he made bail. His mother, who discovered his body, claimed that she found a note in his jacket pocket, which read, “We had a death pact, and I have to keep my half of the bargain. Please bury me next to my baby in my leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots. Goodbye.”^[9]

1Hunter S Thompson

Hunter S Thompson, the Gonzo journalist and author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, was a complicated man. Variously described as a southern gentleman and gun-toting anarchist, Thompson was famous for his wildly inventive style of writing, his prolific drug-taking and his love of explosions.

Having spent most of his career chasing, but never finding, The American Dream, Thompson became something of an expert on ‘the underbelly of America’, and his writing influenced a generation.

Thompson himself, however, suffered from a number of health problems, and disliked the process of aging. Counter-culture heroes, it seems, are not meant to grow old. In 2005, he shot himself in the kitchen of Owl Farm, in Woody Creek, Colorado, the home where he had lived for many years. He had written a note a few weeks earlier, which read, “No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax This won’t hurt.”

His prediction was not quite accurate. After his death, his friend, Johnny Depp, arranged for his ashes to be shot from a canon into space, in one last, very large, bomb.^[10]

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.
— From “Lady Lazarus”, by Sylvia Plath

If You Need Help: If you or a loved one needs to talk to someone due to suicidal thoughts or actions, there are resources dedicated to helping you:

• United States National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
• Canada Suicide Prevention Service: 1-833-456-4566
• United Kingdom Samaritans Helpline: 116 123

Other countries’ suicide prevention numbers are available here.

Some of our greatest buildings have endured for centuries to become the heavily visited and treasured wonders they are today. Many of the most impressive creations from history, however, didn’t make it to modern day. For example, consider the original Seven Wonders of the World, all of which (save the pyramids at Giza) were destroyed by either war, natural erosion, or neglect.

The survivors are protected in modern times but were not always so safe. Several escaped at the last minute from being nothing more than the memory of a great idea. Others never would have existed at all had forward-thinking individuals not intervened on their behalf.

10The Eiffel Tower
Petitioned For Destruction

The French people were not always in love with their most famous building. In fact, many still aren’t, but public opinion has shifted in favor of the iconic Tour Eiffel.

When the tower was planned to commemorate the French Revolution for the 1889 World’s Fair, a public outcry erupted even before the foundation was set. Parisians of the time considered Eiffel’s proposed tower an eyesore and a blight on the scenic vistas of Champ de Mars. Petitions were circulated attempting to ban the project from even starting.

With the understanding that the tower would be disassembled within 20 years after the celebrations concluded, a reluctant community allowed the tower to be built. Despite a change of heart by citizens who began to appreciate the tower (and because the antenna tower proved to be an invaluable wartime resource), it narrowly escaped the worst again during World War II when Hitler ordered its destruction. The order was never carried out.

Today, the tower accepts visitors numbering over seven million per year, making it the most visited pay-for-entry monument in the world. It houses restaurants and gift shops on the second level and enjoys possibly the best view of the city from over 275 meters (900 ft) at the third level. Over 500 people work in and on the tower to maintain and run the monument every day, ensuring that the image will continue to grace the Paris skyline.

9The Sphinx
Lost Beneath The Sands

The Sphinx, one of the world’s most popular and easily recognized landmarks, was for centuries neither of those things. It has also suffered from neglect, vandalism, political turmoil, and natural erosion.

At over 4,500 years old, the Sphinx has seen much of human history unfold from its place near the famous Valley of the Kings. It was erected in connection with the Egyptian god Harmakhis, but the popularity of the cult that worshiped the deity waned, and the colossal sculpture was left unattended. It was buried beneath the shifting sands, and only the head remained visible, inspiring the moniker “father of fear” from locals who were disturbed by the unusual silhouette.

Over the centuries, the sands were removed and then left to overtake the monument again and again. One undocumented attack damaged the statue and destroyed the nose. Seeking gold and other treasures, the Sphinx was again unburied in 1817, but archaeologists found nothing and had to battle back the corrosive sands time after time. Worse, it was discovered that salt leaking up from the base was destroying the foundation of the Sphinx and compromising its stability.

The concrete used by the Egyptians had eroded, and the entire structure was in peril. Conservation efforts have replaced the original mortar with a stronger material, and the Sphinx is safe, for now.

8Statue Of Liberty
Stuffed In Storage

Millions of immigrants came from around the world to pass under Lady Liberty’s torch and find new lives in a nation that promised a better future. She has stood in the harbor attracting thousands of new visitors every year and representing the idealism of her country and its people.

You may know that the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France. This is both true and completely false. The artist, Auguste Bartholdi, originally approached Egyptian leaders during the World’s Fair with hopes of designing a massive statue to sit at the entrance of the Suez Canal. He was ultimately denied and searched for an alternative, turning to America with the hook of celebrating the young country’s independence.

It took 15 years and extensive fundraising to complete the statue, which was fully constructed in a Paris neighborhood with no significant funding from either government. In the end, Joseph Pulitzer saved the day by promising to print the names of every single contributor in his magazine. The plan worked. The gift was packed and shipped on the French ship Isere in 300 pieces in 241 crates across the Atlantic Ocean.

The cargo was nearly lost in rough seas. Once she reached the harbor, America’s icon was placed in storage for over a year. There it stayed, and there it would have remained indefinitely until it was de-mothballed and made the centerpiece of a publicity stunt, in which every person who donated to the cause of putting Liberty on her island got their name printed in New York World newspaper. Who could resist?

So bribery, luck, and good old-fashioned commercialism established America’s symbol in her current home.

7The Alamo
Bowie’s Blow-Up Plan

Remember the Alamo? Texas does, Mexico does, and Bowie sure did (Jim, not David).

The location that now stands as little more than the adobe facade of a once great building served many roles. Originally constructed as the chapel of the Mission San Antonio de Valero in 1718, it consisted of a few huts and a stone tower that was destroyed by a storm in 1724. The stone church building was constructed around 1744. It collapsed in 1756.

A second stone chapel, the one we see today, was started in 1758 and was slated to include two large towers and a domed ceiling, covering over four acres. It was never completed. Epidemics had reduced the population of Valero so much that not enough people were left to tend the building.

It was converted to a self-sustaining parish in 1793. It was stripped of its doors and windows and served as a parish for soldiers, eventually becoming San Antonio’s first hospital. A military unit—the Second Flying Company of San Jose and Santiago of the Alamo of Parras—gave the parish its modern name when they were stationed there for nearly 10 years starting in 1801 or 1802. Meaning “cottonwood,” the name has lasted for centuries.

The Alamo changed hands more than 16 times during battles between the Texan, Spanish, Mexican, Union, and Confederate forces that all fought for the land. What was left of the Alamo (probably only the first 7 meters (23 ft) of the walls that stand today) was almost completely destroyed for the last time when Sam Houston requested permission from Governor Henry Smith to remove valuable items and blow up the Alamo to keep it out of enemy hands. Smith refused, Houston left, Bowie stayed, and history was made. Bowie wrote to Smith on February 2, 1836 and stated, “Col. Neill & Myself have come to the solemn resolution that we will rather die in these ditches than give it up to the enemy.”

6The Washington Monument
Earthquake

The Washington Monument was almost a lost treasure before it even began. As the result of early financial troubles in young America, Washington himself pulled the plug on efforts to immortalize him with the massive and expensive monument. Instead, he founded the city that would one day bear his name. Due to a succession of political blunders and the inability to finance it, nearly 75 years passed before any significant construction began, and even that was eventually abandoned.

Though a pared-down and far less expensive monument was finally constructed, it contained a substandard base structure. In 2011, the integrity of that structure was put to the test. A magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck near Washington, D.C., causing extensive structural damage that required the monument to be closed to the public.

According to a report requested by the National Parks Service, the monument suffered several broken marble panels that adorned the outside of the structure, particularly at the pyramid section. Vertical supports that ran inside the monument cracked, and pieces broke off. Portions of the exterior facade cracked and fell off due to twisting during the earthquake. The keystones were damaged, and pieces had to be completely removed. Structural supports known as ribbing inside the monument cracked at crucial joints, and gaps in the mortar became so extensive that daylight could be seen through them, leading to leaking and water damage.

Repairs were completed to the extent needed for it to reopen to visitors. At over 130 years old, the Washington Monument was not designed for earthquake resistance. Though it was patched and approved by the NPS, another incident could prove disastrous for the landmark.

5The White House
Tornado

Historians remember with regret that the White House that stands today is actually only a shell of the original building, which has been burned, gutted, and restored many times throughout history. The worst destructive act on the country’s most famous residence was in 1814, when British soldiers invaded Washington, expelled all the residents, and set fire to the Capitol and the White House along with other public buildings.

The story of how the White House barely escaped complete ruin at the hands of the British army defies logic, common sense, and even science. Union forces were scattered in the wake of the attack, and Washington appeared to be lost. Then came one of the most remarkable and unseasonable weather events in American history.

On August 25, 1814, two days after the siege began, a tornado hit downtown Washington, D.C. Its torrential rains doused the fires and disrupted British forces, slamming their ships and throwing their cannons into the air. More British troops were killed by the storm than by gunfire.

Following the unexpected gale, the invading army retreated to its ships to regroup, left harbor, and never returned. Up to three tornadoes hit that day—quite an oddity, considering that only seven made landfall in the following 200 years.

4Taj Mahal
Military Armament

It’s shocking to hear the lengths former leaders and the public of Agra went to disgrace their country’s most famous monument. The Taj is now considered a must-see for travelers to India, a priceless remnant of the past, and a testimony to the enduring power of love. But it was nearly destroyed several times, defaced for decades, and the object of scorn by many former leaders.

Built as a tomb for the wife of former leader Shah Jahan, the monument was one of the grandest achievements of its time. After the emperor’s death, the memorial was ignored and fell into disrepair. The British intervened and converted the monument into a military compound. Marble facades were destroyed, barracks were built on the grounds, and the forts were converted into garrisons. In an effort to impress the Prince of Wales, the hall was painted in a coat of whitewash.

After their departure, plans were submitted to have the Taj destroyed and a government building erected in its place. Those plans were abandoned, but the destruction continued. Picnics, fairs, and other events were held on the grounds, where revelers would chisel away pieces of the adornments to take as souvenirs.

In 1828, Lord William Bentinck declared that many landmarks were to be destroyed and sold off in pieces in London. Several pavilions of the Taj were stripped to the brick and shipped off to Europe, some going to King George IV himself. Wrecking equipment was moved into place, and the Taj was ordered to be destroyed. Luckily, just as the crews began, auction attempts in London were declared a failure, and the project was abandoned.

In the early 1900s, Lord Curzon was shocked by the monument’s condition. He had it restored to its current state along many other mosques and tombs that had been turned into kitchens, police stations, and ticket offices. In 1983, the Taj was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

3The Colosseum
Struggles Against Time

The Colosseum in Rome, also known as the Amphitheatrum Flavium, has undergone as much structural damage as any building could while remaining standing. It’s nearly 2,000 years old, and the remaining two-thirds of the original Colosseum is a testament as much to the engineering prowess of ancient Romans as it is to conservation efforts.

The Colosseum has suffered not one but two direct lightning strikes that burned out the wood support structures and gutted the basement added by Titus’s brother Domitian. It took every firefighting official and member of the naval fleet to put out the flames and barely avert complete destruction. The fires also greatly damaged the stones and mortar holding the amphitheater together. It was decades before repairs were complete.

The greatest damage has come from people and time. The Colosseum narrowly escaped destruction at the hands of Christian emperors due to its significance as the death place of many Christian martyrs. This did not prevent it from being stripped bare of its impressive marble facade to be used in monuments and houses of the new elite class. The iron supports were stolen by robbers who sold them as scrap, and centuries of turbulent ground shifting has cracked and crumbled the remaining stones into certain peril. It was recently discovered that, a lot like a neighboring attraction in Pisa, the Colosseum leans—it’s 40 centimeters (16 in) higher at one end.

A conservation effort aims to reverse the damage caused not only by years of neglect but by subways and traffic whose vibrations compromise the Colosseum’s structural integrity. The initial effort was postponed several months as pieces of the Colosseum were already being found to fall from its walls.

2The Golden Gate Bridge
High Winds

On the 50th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge in May 1987, 300,000 people marched across the asphalt. Witnesses experienced motion sickness as the bridge swayed in the wind and the deck dropped by more than 2 meters (7 ft). Though no one made a big deal out of it at the time, saving a scene of mass panic, the bridge itself, normally curved, appeared to completely flatten from the side.

Engineers stated that there was no real danger. Each foot of the Golden Gate Bridge can comfortably withstand 2,600 kilograms (5,700 lb) of weight, while the marchers only exerted about 2,450 kilograms (5,400 lb) of weight on each foot of the bridge.

The bridge was actually more endangered (but never quite destroyed ) during its construction than it was that day. Scaffolding and dangerous tide problems during the foundation’s construction killed 911 workers. Then in 1951, the entire road was closed down for several hours when winds reached 113 kilometers (70 mi) per hour, causing the bridge to flutter. A sister bridge from the same designer as the Golden Gate, the Tacoma Narrows, had collapsed on film from winds reaching 65 kilometers (40 mi) per hour 10 years before this incident.

Structural damage occurred on the Golden Gate, while the winds bent the bridge so much that the light standards near the center touched the support cables. The bridge was almost destroyed, according to former Golden Gate chief engineer Daniel Mohn. The added weight of traffic could have resulted in catastrophe had officials not acted quickly.

1The Leaning Tower Of Pisa
War Orders

Many of wonders of the ancient world met their demise during intense battles. In modern times, countless artistic treasures are still missing after being misplaced during the height of war.

The famous Leaning Tower of Pisa nearly became one of those casualties. But it wasn’t bombings or the collateral damage normally experienced during firefights that nearly reduced to the tower to rubble. It was an order given to Sgt. Leon Weckstein by higher-ups during World War II.

The troops battling back Nazis in Pisa were ordered to eliminate all buildings that may have potentially served as sniper nests for German soldiers. Weckstein says that he received the command to blow up the tower and nearly did so except for overbearing heat. The heat was so intense that it was impossible to properly aim. After delay, he finally did take aim on the monument, but the troops were bombarded by enemy fire and forced to retreat. Military brass approved the fallback and spared the tower.

Whether the German soldiers had ever been in the tower is not known, but Weckstein’s procrastination bought the landmark just enough time to be spared a violent and unnecessary end. Today, efforts are underway to maintain the leaning tower, which has to be corrected every so many years to keep it from simply toppling over.

+The Kremlin
Blown Up

The Kremlin in Russia is considered to be of the most architecturally significant landmarks in the country. Home to the ruling family from its inception, the Kremlin (“the town”) marks the spot where Moscow was founded in the 11th century. Protected by a fortifying wall and moat, the Kremlin became the center of development for what would become the future capital city.

During the battle of 1812, the Kremlin was captured by Napoleon and nearly became his residence prior to the French retreat. On his departure, Napoleon ordered that the Kremlin be blown up. His plan nearly succeeded. However, a timely rainstorm dampened many of the fuses. Other explosive caches were discovered by residents who put out fires.

Still, the building did not escape unharmed. Five explosions rang out, destroying much of the structure and causing lasting damage. Two of the fortifying towers were demolished, the arsenal was partially collapsed, and several government buildings were damaged in the explosions. The initial blast, the strongest of the five, was so powerful that not only were all of the windows and glass in the Kremlin and neighboring buildings shattered—the window frames themselves were blown out.

Though the building was badly damaged and extensively burned, the residents of Moscow dedicated themselves to resurrecting the iconic landmark. It took decades of restructuring to finish the repairs, but today, the Kremlin stands a testament to the resolve of a centuries-old city and its proud inhabitants.

Twitter: @JSGestalt

Most of the time, we think of famous people as larger than life. They become idols that we look up to as something beyond human, and we forget what they really are.

However, sometimes, you hear about the silliest little personality quirks of famous people. It brings you back down to Earth, reminding you that they are really just people like you in the end.

These notable individuals may have incredible wealth, reputations, or similar traits. But they also have very funny things about them that will make you laugh and forget for a moment that you think of them as above you.

10 Mark Zuckerberg Will Only Eat Meat From Animals That He Kills Himself

Mark Zuckerberg is well-known for being a strange guy in general. He was privileged enough to go to Harvard but dropped out to pursue Facebook. Of course, this worked out well for him.

He is now worth a staggering amount of money, but that hasn’t changed the fact that he is weird. During recent Congressional hearings, people often joked that his behavior seemed strange and compared him to an android or an alien in disguise who was trying to mimic human behavior.

While these jokes are amusing, some of Zuckerberg’s real habits are even stranger. Every year, he likes to challenge himself to do new things. In 2011, his new commitment was to only eat animals that he killed. With his riches, he believes that he shouldn’t take healthy eating for granted and should have to participate in the process up close.^[1]

Zuckerberg has his own livestock that he slaughters, and then he has a butcher friend prepare it for him. Yes, he obsessively uses every last part of the animal, even if it means making a stock out of chicken feet.

9 Ronald Reagan Liked To Touch The Earlobes Of His Friends And Relatives

Ronald Reagan was the first major celebrity to become an elected politician and then president. He had a certain charisma that really struck a chord with a large portion of the American people, securing himself a second term and remaining fairly popular throughout that time. Also a bit of a joker, he was a very affectionate man with his friends and family.

Although most people think about him as a politician and president, his friends and family knew him as a warmhearted man who really had a thing for earlobes. He grabbed the ears of immediate family members, friends, and even actors (during Screen Actors Guild negotiations while he was president of that group).^[2]

There is no reason to believe that it was at all sexual in nature or at least not overtly so. As far as anyone ever knew, Reagan had just grown up to feel natural showing affection and closeness to others by grabbing a bit of their ears.

8 Kanye West Falls Asleep All Over The Place And Always Blames It On Jet Lag

Kim Kardashian is famously married to Kanye West. During a recent appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden, Kim took part in a game called “Spill Your Guts Or Fill Your Guts.”

Essentially, the host and a celebrity guest ask each other questions prepared by the show’s writers. The individual who is asked the embarrassing question gets to choose whether to answer or eat something disgusting that the other person picked out—such as a 1,000-year-old egg, pickled pig’s feet, clam juice, or something similarly repulsive.

When asked to dish on Kanye’s weirdest habit, Kim immediately explained that Kanye tends to fall asleep everywhere—in inappropriate places or situations—and doesn’t understand why his behavior might be a bit of a problem.

She has had situations where he took her to see designers whom she had never met. Then he fell asleep during the meeting, leaving her feeling rather awkward as she faced the new people on her own. According to Kim, anytime she gets a little annoyed with him about it, he blames it on jet lag—even if he hasn’t flown anywhere in months.^[3]

7 Jeff Bezos Dismantled His Own Crib As A Child Because He Wanted To Sleep In A Bed

Jeff Bezos has been in the news a lot recently, mainly because he is now neck and neck with Bill Gates and had beaten him for the top spot on Forbes’ 2019 list of richest people in the world. Also, as Amazon becomes more and more of a household name, it is no surprise that the founder and leader would increasingly become known to everyone in America and in most of the world as well.

While most people only know Bezos as the bald, wannabe supervillain who is running the largest e-store in the world, he was a precocious genius even at a young age. Back then, he surprised everyone around him with his desire to change his surroundings and move up in the world—before he even knew how to properly read and write.

The stories claim that when Jeff Bezos was a toddler, he dismantled his crib with a screwdriver when the adults were not watching. He no longer wanted to sleep in a crib. Instead, he wanted to move up to a real bed like a big boy.^[4]

This precocious youngster was so obsessed with moving to greater heights even at such a young age that he took apart his entire cot to prove a point. Even then, his parents likely realized that he was destined for great things. They certainly did everything they could to foster and nurture his intellectual growth.

6 Donald Trump Is Convinced An Exercise Regimen Will Do Him More Harm Than Good

When US President Donald Trump was first given a serious presidential physical by White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson, he stated that the president was mostly okay except that he was close to the line of obesity. Jackson recommended that Trump eat less in terms of portion size, cut down a bit on unhealthy foods, and add some regular exercise to his routine.

The president took to the diet advice fairly well. He has reportedly cut his portions and removed a bit of fat from his meals. But he’s struggling with the exercise routine.^[5]

He is convinced that exercise mostly does more harm than good. As a slightly younger man, he once was quoted as believing that humans overall have a finite amount of energy, like a battery, and may die younger if they regularly exercise.

Actually, we are more like rechargeable batteries. Nevertheless, working out too much or in the wrong way can hurt you, so there is a certain level of truth to how he came to believe what he does.

5 President John Quincy Adams Took A Naked Bath In The Potomac at 5:00 AM Every Day

John Quincy Adams was known for being an incredibly stern man. He was the sixth president of the United States and a no-nonsense leader who had almost no sense of humor. As a leader, he was especially known for being a great negotiator, having spent much of his earlier career helping to craft treaties with various foreign powers. This included the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war of 1812.

However, like all men, he had his silly quirk and it once got him into a bind. Adams liked to go for a naked bath in the Potomac River every morning around 5:00 AM. He was a creature of habit, so he could be relied upon to do this.

Now presidents did not answer questions from female reporters during that time period, and Adams was no exception. For a while, female reporter Anne Royall had been trying to get an interview with the president. When she learned about his quirky, publicly nude bathing habit, she came up with a devious but effective plan to secure her interview once and for all.

She waited until he had gone into the water for his morning swim and had been moving around for some time. Then she asked him for the interview again. When he refused to answer her questions, she explained that she had his clothes and he could have them back after he talked to her. And that’s how Royall became the first woman to get an interview with a sitting president.^[6]

4 Eminem Refused To Star In Elysium Because He Won’t Leave Detroit For That Long

The movie Elysium was a sci-fi thriller set in a dystopian future where the rich lived in space with a magic heal box that could keep them healthy and alive almost forever. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the remaining people were living in squalor and with horrible diseases on the surface of the planet.

Eventually, the hero manages to bring a bunch of heal boxes down to Earth, as if this will somehow solve things like hunger, dehydration, or the desire of most humans to take the best land for themselves. Nevertheless, it was a fairly popular movie at the time, but it could have been very different.

The movie starred Matt Damon, and most people would say that he fit the role well. However, the part had originally been written and planned out with Eminem in mind. They asked him to do the film, and he wasn’t entirely uninterested. But he wanted the movie shot in Detroit because he did not want to leave home for that long. He is really just a huge homebody.

Eminem was willing to star in 8 Mile because it was about his life and could be filmed at home. However, with the producers unwilling to meet his demand to film Elysium in Detroit, he backed out of any role in the project.^[7]

3 Lady Gaga Is A Traditionally Minded Catholic Who Doesn’t Believe In Premarital Sex

Lady Gaga is one of the most famous pop stars in the world mostly because she shocked the living daylights out of almost everyone when her type of act was far beyond what anyone would expect from a pop idol. Her garish displays, ridiculous dance numbers, and provocative outfits and lyrics kept everyone talking about her.

Most extremely religious people considered her a bad influence. They imagined her to be quite the promiscuous individual who promoted such a lifestyle to others.

However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Lady Gaga is a devout Catholic who went to a Catholic school as a youth and still believes strongly in her faith. While she isn’t one to push it on others to an evangelical degree, she does not believe in premarital sex for herself as it is against her faith.^[8]

Now we aren’t saying that being against premarital sex is itself a weird quirk as this is a belief held by many who adhere to various religions around the world. Rather, it is strange that a woman known for being so provocative and using the trappings of a sex symbol to her advantage could not imagine using her body in the way that so many people would accuse her of doing.

2 Bill Gates Used To Keep Track Of Employee License Plate Numbers In His Head

Bill Gates is known for being one of the most philanthropic rich people of all time. Despite being the richest man in the world for many years, he pledged a huge portion of his billions to charity, fought tirelessly for charitable causes, and convinced many other rich people to do the same.

Since actively leaving the management of Microsoft, Gates has done incredible good in the world. However, while he is now a billionaire who has apparently seen the light, he was once a man who was trying to create a thriving business.

Back when Microsoft was a small start-up, Gates would mentally keep track of all employee license plate numbers to better know their comings and goings. This gave him a better idea of who was staying late, showing up late, or coming in early and helped him keep an eye on productivity.^[9]

Some people would find this behavior rather weird, and it certainly does have a bit of a stalker vibe to it. But it didn’t hurt overmuch as Microsoft continued to grow to the point that he simply couldn’t keep track of all the license plate numbers anymore.

1 Ulysses S. Grant Was Extremely Sensitive And Would Not Let Others See Him Naked

Ulysses S. Grant was one of the most important men in the early days of America, but he was also a really strange guy. Although he was the brilliant leader who led the Union troops to victory over the South, he wasn’t much of a politician. He only managed to make his way into the presidency because of his fame as a war hero.

Once Grant became president, he mostly just put many of his friends into office and failed to do the job properly at all. A lot of people say that he regretted taking the position once he fully understood what it entailed.

However, Grant strangest trait was perhaps his inability psychologically to allow others to see him naked. Today, Grant’s position on being seen naked may not seem that weird, but for the time, it was really rather odd.

Even if you were of a high rank, soldiers tended to get naked rather publicly and servants would douse them with water. It was also common for servants to dress higher-status people and see them naked all the time.

While Grant showed no aversion to seeing others showering around him, he was a very private man and preferred to bathe by himself in his own tent. He did not even want servants to see him. As far as anyone knows, only his wife and perhaps his physicians ever saw Grant naked during his adult life.^[10]

History isn’t always kind to the sisters in the shadows. Traditionally, their opportunities were less, even though many were equal to or more brilliant than their famous siblings. They were the muses who inspired and the heroes who walked away for all the wrong reasons when fame came. Sometimes, their lives were tragic.

10 Maria Anna Mozart

Maria Anna Mozart (left above) was a musical genius. A child prodigy before her brother, Wolfgang Amadeus (center above), she dropped jaws all over Europe. At only 12, she fluently performed difficult piano pieces. She might even have been the root of Wolfgang’s remarkable legacy: Maria was trained only by her father, Leopold (right above), a court musician, but both Maria and Leopold guided Amadeus from age five onward. Amadeus received top-class training and toured for years, playing with Maria in front of thousands.

When Maria turned 18, Leopold terminated her musical career because it wasn’t acceptable for women to tour as musicians. Amadeus never lost admiration for his gifted sibling, though. In 1770, he wrote to Maria, praising one of her compositions, which he called “beautiful.” Unfortunately, the world will never hear the piece that so impressed Amadeus Mozart; it has been lost.

9 Rosalie Poe

Many aspects of Edgar Allan Poe’s life were weird, but the life of his sister, Rosalie, two years his junior, was tragic. From a young age, their nursemaid pacified them both with gin and opium. The two lost their parents early on. Rosalie was adopted by Mrs. Mackenzie, who had helped the poverty-stricken Poe family. Edgar was adopted by the Allan family.

Rosalie’s mental and physical development didn’t progress beyond a certain level, possibly from the alcohol and drugs she was fed as a child. She suffered from melancholy and weakness. Even worse, her brother had no time for her. After her adoptive mother died and war left the rest of the Mackenzies destitute, Rosalie was forced to live on the streets. By this time, Edgar had already died. Eventually completely broken, Rosalie died in a charity home.

8 The Wilde Sisters

Emily and Mary were Oscar Wilde’s half-sisters. Whether he knew about their existence or not remains unknown. They were the illegitimate offspring of Oscar’s father, an esteemed surgeon who went through great pains to keep the girls out of sight—even when they died.

In 1871, when Emily was 24 and Mary 22, he sent them to live with a relative in Monaghan, Ireland. A welcome ball was held in their honor. During a waltz, Emily’s dress caught fire near the fireplace, and while trying to put the flames out, Mary’s clothing also ignited. Suffering full-body burns, Mary perished within days, but Emily languished for three weeks before the end came. Due to the influence of their father, their deaths received minimal newspaper coverage, only a small obituary with changed names.

7 Muriel Earhart

Amelia Earhart’s sister was an activist, author, and award winner. Amelia might have gotten the media coverage and the immortality due to her famous disappearance, but Muriel made waves in different places.

For most of her life, Muriel lived in Medford, Massachusetts, where she taught high school English. Very active in her community, Muriel helped others, taught, and sat on several committees and organizations. She was Medford’s “Citizen of the Year” in 1979, and award-winning poetry flowed from her pen. Muriel also wrote educational articles, her husband’s biography, and (unsurprisingly) the story of Amelia Earhart. She lived to be 98 and died in her sleep in 1998.

6 Katharine Wright

The Wright brothers not only had a sister, but she flew with them. Born in 1874, Katharine became the only Wright sibling to hold a college degree. While working as a teacher, she also handled her brothers’ business affairs and managed to charm investors with her trademark shyness. She encouraged Orville and Wilbur in their flight experiments, kept the press on track (staving off many rumors), dealt with sponsors, warded off the weirdos, and supplied information to scientific requests.

When Orville crashed during one of his flights, killing his passenger and injuring himself grievously, she nursed him back to health. France awarded the Wrights the Legion of Honor, and Katharine remains one of the few US women to hold this award. In her fifties, she married an old friend, but three years later in 1929, an aggressive case of pneumonia claimed her life.

5 Ilse Braun

Ilse Braun (left above) was a receptionist for a Jewish doctor when her sister, Eva, got involved with Hitler. The eldest of three Braun sisters, Ilse was the one who kept away from Nazi ideals. Eventually forced to quit her job for her own safety once the Nuremburg Laws were passed, Ilse resisted Eva’s attempts to get her a job with Hitler’s personal physician. She also didn’t believe Eva’s second suicide attempt was serious, though Hitler fell for it. (Eva drank too few pills to actually overdose.)

It was inevitable that Ilse would meet with the fuhrer. When she did, she was not impressed. She thought Hitler looked better in his propaganda portraits than he did in real life, and she found his hands rather white and feminine. Later, Ilse became a deft journalist for a right-wing newspaper. She passed away in 1979, in Munich, from cancer.

4 Paula Hitler

Paula was the only full sibling of Adolf Hitler. As a boy, Hitler was beaten by their father, and in turn, Adolf beat his sister. One of her earliest memories was a teenage Hitler hitting her in the face when she was eight. The Hitler children were seriously dysfunctional; Paula believed being manhandled by her brother was “good for her education.”

Researchers were stunned by a discovery regarding Paula Hitler. Historically seen as the innocent victim of her brother’s madness, newly unearthed Russian interrogation papers revealed that she was engaged to a particularly horrific Nazi: euthanasia doctor Erwin Jekelius, who gassed 4,000 people. Unlike Eva’s sister Ilse, Paula went along with the Nazi movement. The Russians caught her fiance before they could marry, and Paula ended up living under a false name near Berchtesgaden. She died in 1960.

3 Wilhelmina Van Gogh

With the spotlight on Vincent van Gogh cutting off his own ear, few are aware that his sister, Wilhelmina, spent decades in a psychiatric institution. Born in 1862, she was the artist’s youngest sister. After her two brothers died when she was in her early thirties, Wilhelmina started working at a hospital. She was also one of the first feminists and helped raise money to open the Dutch national bureau for women’s work.

In terms of historical records, Wilhelmina disappeared until 1902, when she was placed in psychiatric care with a dementia diagnosis at age 40. According to records, she spent another 40 years in the lounge just sitting in her chair and had to be force-fed. What happened during the years between working at the hospital and reappearing in a madhouse, or even if she was truly insane, will probably never be known.

2 Sundari Nanda

Princess Sundari Nanda was a much-loved figure during her life but is nearly unknown outside Buddhist communities today. This remarkable woman was not only the half-sister of the Buddha, but she also became enlightened.

Inspired by the Buddha, Sundari’s mother became the first nun of the new belief system, and later, Sundari followed her into the order. However, she did so out of family obligation and was more preoccupied with her beauty and popularity than her work as a nun. Noticing this, the Buddha summoned her. He gently instructed her in a difficult lesson: that all youth and beauty fade.

This vision so shook Sundari that she realized the impermanence of everything. Through intense meditation, she broke free from vanity. Her dedication brought her enlightenment, peace, and her brother’s recognition that she was best in the practice of jhana—complete meditative absorption.

1 Ama Jetsun Pema

As a child, Jetsun played in the gardens of her brother’s palace. Her brother was, and still is, the 14th Dalai Lama. Before tensions with China exiled her brother to India, Jetsun was sent there to start school. The Catholic environment prevented her from pursuing Buddhism, but she picked up English and French. Hoping to work for her brother, she studied at a secretarial college in London. But then fate threw Jetsun into a role that would comfort many refugees.

Refugee children, smuggled from Tibet to India, landed under Jetsun’s care when her sister fell ill and could no longer manage them. Soon, the Tibetan Children’s Village was founded, the first of many. Throughout the years, Jetsun has provided education and hugs for thousands of children. Fondly nicknamed “The Mother of Tibet,” the 73-year-old is finally starting to study Buddhism.

Dissociative identity disorder (DID), often called multiple personality disorder (MPD), has fascinated people for over a century. Although it is a very well-known disorder, mental health professionals are not even sure if it exists. It is possible that it is a form of another illness, like schizophrenia.^[1] Another theory is that it doesn’t exist at all, and those who have it, including the following people, are simply acting.

10Louis Vivet

One of the first recorded cases of multiple personalities belonged to Frenchman Louis Vivet. Born to a prostitute on February 12, 1863, Vivet was neglected as a child. By the time he was eight, he had turned to crime. He was arrested and lived in a house of treatment into his late teens.

When he was 17 years old, he worked in a vineyard, and a viper wrapped itself around his left arm. While the viper didn’t bite him, it terrified him so much that he had convulsions and psychosomatically became paralyzed from the waist down. While paralyzed, he was housed in an asylum, but he started walking again after a year. Vivet now seemed like a completely different person. He didn’t recognize any of the people at the asylum, his mood was much darker, and even his appetite was different.^[2]

When he was 18, he was released from the asylum but didn’t stay out long. Over the next several years, Vivet was in and out of hospitals. During a stay between 1880 and 1881, he was diagnosed with multiple personalities. Using hypnosis and metallotherapy (placing magnets and other metals on the body), a doctor discovered up to 10 different personalities, all with their own traits and history. However, upon reviewing the case in later years, some experts believe he may have only had three personalities.^[3]

9Judy Castelli

Growing up in New York State, Judy Castelli suffered physical and sexual abuse, and afterward, she struggled with depression. A month after she enrolled in college in 1967, she was sent home by the school psychiatrist. Over the next several years, Castelli struggled with voices inside her head telling her to burn and cut herself. She nearly ruined her face, almost lost sight in one eye, and almost lost the use of one of her arms. She was also hospitalized several times for suicide attempts. Each time, she was diagnosed with chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia.

In the 1980s, she began singing in clubs and cafes in Greenwich Village. She almost got signed to a record label, but that fell through. However, she was able to find work and headlined a successful off-Broadway show. She also found success in sculpting and making stained glass.

Then, during a therapy session in 1994 with the therapist she’d had for over a decade, multiple personalities started to emerge, seven at first. As she continued her therapy, 44 personalities appeared.^[4]

Since finding out that she has DID, Castelli has become a strong advocate for the disorder. She was on the board of the New York Society for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation. She continues to work as an artist and teaches art to people with mental illness.

8Robert Oxnam

Robert Oxnam is a distinguished American scholar who has spent his life studying Chinese culture. He is a former college professor, the former president of the Asian Society, and currently a private consultant for matters regarding China. While he is quite accomplished, Oxnam has struggled with his mental health.

In 1989, a psychiatrist diagnosed him with alcoholism. That changed after a session in March 1990, when Oxnam planned to leave therapy. While speaking with Oxnam, the doctor was addressed by one of his personalities, a young, angry boy named Tommy, who lived in a castle. After that session, Oxnam and his psychiatrist continued their therapy and found that Oxnam actually had 11 separate personalities.

After years of treatment, Oxnam and his psychiatrist whittled down the personalities to just three. There is Robert, or Bob, who is the core personality. Then there is Bobby, a younger, quizzical, free-spirited man who loves rollerblading in Central Park. Another is a “Buddhist-like” personality known as Wanda. Wanda used to be part of another personality known as the Witch.^[5]

Oxnam wrote a memoir about his life titled A Fractured Mind: My Life With Multiple Personality Disorder. It was published in 2005.^[6]

7Kim Noble

Born in the United Kingdom in 1960, Kim Noble says her parents were factory workers who were unhappily married. From a young age, she was physically abused, and then she suffered from many mental problems as a teenager. She overdosed a few times and was placed in a mental institution.

In her twenties, her other personalities emerged, and they were incredibly destructive. Kim was a van driver, and one of her personalities named Julie took over her body and plowed the van into a bunch of parked cars. She also somehow got involved in a pedophile ring. She went to the police with information, and when she did, she started receiving anonymous threats. Then someone threw acid in her face and set her house on fire. She couldn’t remember anything about the incidents.^[7]

In 1995, Noble was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, and she has been getting psychiatric help ever since. She is currently working as an artist, and while she does not know the exact number of personalities she has, she thinks it is somewhere around 100. She goes through about four or five different personalities a day, with Patricia being the most dominant one. Patricia is a calm, confident woman. Another notable personality is Hayley, the one involved with the pedophile ring that led to the acid attack and the fire.

Noble (as Patricia) and her daughter appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2010. She published a book about her life, All of Me: How I Learned to Live with the Many Personalities Sharing My Body, in 2012.

6Truddi Chase

Truddi Chase claims that since she was two, in 1937, her stepfather physically and sexually assaulted her, while her mother emotionally abused her for 12 years. As an adult, Chase was under tremendous stress while working as a real estate broker. She went to a psychiatrist and discovered that she had 92 different personalities that were vastly different from each other.

The youngest was a girl about five or six years old named Lamb Chop. Another was Ean, an Irish poet and philosopher 1,000 years old. None of the personalities worked against one another and seemed to be aware of one another collectively. She didn’t want to integrate the personalities because they all had been through so much together. She referred to her personalities as The Troops.”^[8]

Chase, along with her therapist, wrote the book When Rabbit Howls, and it was published in 1987. It was adapted into a TV miniseries in 1990. Chase also appeared on a very emotional segment of the Oprah Winfrey show in 1990.^[9]

Chase died on March 10, 2010.

5Karen Overhill

In 1989, Dr. Richard Baer began treating a young 20-year-old mother suffering from depression and surgical pain. She was also suicidal. After working with the woman he calls Karen Overhill, he was unsure what was happening with her. She explained to the doctor that she had gaps in her memory and that there were times when she would find herself somewhere but not remember how she got there. After a while, Dr. Baer received a letter from a 7-year-old-girl named Claire, who stated she lived inside Karen. The doctor now determined what was happening with Overhill. After three years of sessions, he finally had a diagnosis, determining that she had 17 personalities—girls, boys, women, and men.

Each personality revealed parts of Overhill’s traumatic childhood, ranging from satanic rituals to torture and rape. Her father and grandfather founded a cult that allegedly practiced ritual abuse of children, both physical and sexual. Through one of her personalities, Overhill claimed that her father and the cult took her to a funeral home after hours and placed her on an embalming table. According to the alter, her father then jabbed her in the abdomen with needles while strangers “caressed” her. Other personalities spoke of some other instances of abuse, such as being pierced with coat hangers and fish hooks, carved with knives, and beaten with hammers and baseball bats.^[10]

Overhill was also allegedly raped by an older relative at the age of 12. Her alter, Jensen, was formed to help Overhill cope with this, yet another, trauma. Eventually, Dr. Baer met all 16 of her personalities and stated that she and the alters were consistent in their stories and recollections for more than 10 years, leading him to decide that she was not faking the condition. He also convicted some research after some years and discovered that Overhill’s father was convicted on 19 counts of sexual abuse in 1993. He reportedly assaulted Overhill’s niece.

After nearly twenty years of working with Overhill, Dr. Baer integrated her personalities into one and continued to treat her issues of self-esteem, self-worth, and shame over what happened to her in the past. Overhill married and had children, although she does not remember her wedding or the birth of a daughter. She is now divorced from an abusive husband and raising her children. Dr. Baer chronicled Overhill’s case in a book titled Switching Time.^[11]

4Shirley Mason

Born January 25, 1923, in Dodge Center, Minnesota, Shirley Mason apparently had a difficult childhood. Her mother, according to Mason’s accounts, was nothing less than barbaric. Her many acts of abuse included giving Shirley enemas and then filling her stomach with cold water.

Starting in 1965, Mason sought help for her mental problems, and in 1954, she started seeing Dr. Cornelia Wilbur in Omaha. In 1955, Mason told Wilbur about weird episodes where she would find herself in hotels in different cities with no idea how she got there. She would also go into shops and find herself in front of destroyed products with no clue what she had done. Shortly after the admission, different personalities started to emerge in therapy.

Mason’s story about her horrible childhood and her multiple personalities was turned into a best-selling book, Sybil. It was turned into a top-rated TV miniseries of the same name featuring Sally Fields.

While Sybil/Shirley Mason is one of the most well-known cases of DID, it also has come under a lot of scrutiny for its authenticity. Many people believe that Mason was a mentally ill woman who adored her psychiatrist, and Cornelia planted the idea of multiple personalities in her head. Mason apparently even admitted making everything up in a letter she wrote to Dr. Wilbur in May 1958, but Wilbur told her it was just her mind trying to convince her she wasn’t sick. So Mason continued with therapy. Over the years, 16 personalities emerged.^[12]

In the made-for-TV version of her life, Sybil lives happily ever after, but the real Mason became addicted to barbiturates and dependent on her therapist, who paid her bills and gave her money. Mason died on February 26, 1998, from breast cancer.

3Chris Costner Sizemore

Chris Costner Sizemore remembers her first personality split when she was about two years old. She saw a man pulled out of a ditch and thought he was dead. During this shocking event, she saw another little girl watching.

Unlike many other people diagnosed with DID, Sizemore didn’t suffer from child abuse and came from a loving home. However, from seeing that tragic event (and another gory factory accident later), Sizemore claims that she started acting strange, and family members often noticed. She would often get into trouble for things she had no memory of doing.

Sizemore sought help after the birth of her first daughter, Taffy, when she was in her early twenties. One day, one of her personalities, known as “Eve Black,” tried to strangle the baby, but “Eve White” was able to stop her.^[13]

In the early 1950s, she started seeing a therapist named Corbett H. Thigpen, who diagnosed her with multiple personality disorder. While working with Thigpen, she developed a third personality named Jane. Over the next 25 years, she worked with eight different psychiatrists, and during that time, she developed a total of 22 personalities. All the personalities were quite different when it came to demeanor, age, sex, and even weight.

In July 1974, after four years of therapy with Dr. Tony Tsitos, all the personalities integrated, leaving her with just one.

Sizemore’s first doctor, Thigpen, and another doctor named Hervey M. Cleckley wrote a book about Sizemore’s case called The Three Faces of Eve. It was adapted into a film in 1957, and Joanne Woodward won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of three of Sizemore’s personalities.

Sizemore died of a heart attack in hospice care on July 24, 2016, in Ocala, Florida. She was 89 years old.

2Billy Milligan

From October 14-26, 1977, three women around Ohio State University were kidnapped, taken to a secluded area, robbed, and raped. One woman claimed the man who raped her had a German accent, while another one claimed that (despite kidnapping and raping her) he was actually kind of a nice guy. However, one man committed the rapes: 22-year-old Billy Milligan.^[14]

After his arrest, Milligan saw a psychiatrist, and he was diagnosed with DID. Altogether, he had 24 different personalities. So, when the kidnapping and rapes happened, Milligan’s defense attorney said it wasn’t Billy Milligan who was committing the crimes. Two different personalities were in control of his body—Ragen, a Yugoslavian man, and Adalana, a lesbian. The jury agreed, and he was the first American found not guilty due to DID. He was confined to a mental hospital until 1988 and released after experts thought that all the personalities had melded together.^[15]

In 1981, Daniel Keyes, the award-winning author of Flowers for Algernon, released a book about Milligan’s story called The Minds of Billy Milligan. Hollywood has made several attempts at adapting the book into a feature film. None have yet to be made, but it may be developed into a 10-episode TV series in 2021.

Milligan died from cancer on December 12, 2014, at the age of 59.

1Juanita Maxwell

In 1979, 23-year-old Juanita Maxwell was working as a hotel maid in Fort Myers, Florida. In March that year, 72-year-old hotel guest Inez Kelley was brutally murdered; she was beaten, bitten, and choked to death. Maxwell was arrested because she had blood on her shoes and a scratch on her face. She claimed she had no idea what happened.^[16]

While awaiting trial, Maxwell saw a psychiatrist, and when she went to trial, she pleaded not guilty because she had multiple personalities. She had six personalities besides her own, and one of the dominant personalities, Wanda Weston, committed the murder.

At her trial, the defense team, through the use of a social worker, drew Wanda out on the stand. The judge thought that the transformation was quite remarkable. Juanita was a soft-spoken woman, but Wanda was boisterous and flirtatious and liked violence. She laughed while she admitted to beating the senior citizen with a lamp over a disagreement about a pen. The judge was convinced that she either had multiple personalities or deserved an Academy Award.

Maxwell was sent to a psychiatric hospital, where she says she didn’t get proper treatment and simply received tranquilizers. She was released, but in 1988, she was again arrested, this time for robbing two banks. She again claimed Wanda did it; the pressure of the outside was too much, and Wanda had taken over again. She pleaded “no contest” and was released from prison for time served.^[17]

Robert Grimminck is a Canadian crime-fiction writer. You can follow him on Facebook, on Twitter, or visit his website.

Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. But it seems that people will always prefer myth and mystery over the truth. Legends evoke a sense of wonder and fascination, especially when they mention famous places or even people. On this list are 10 famous landmarks surrounded by awesome legends.

10The Sphinx

Some of the only facts agreed upon by experts regarding the Great Sphinx of Giza are that it is one of the biggest and most ancient statues in the world and that it has the body of a lion and the head of a man resembling an Egyptian pharaoh. The rest all comes down to speculation and legend.

One of the most retold legends of the Sphinx is the one about a prince of Egypt, known as Prince Thutmose. The prince’s grandfather was Thutmose III who descended from Queen Hatshepsut. According to the legend, Prince Thutmose was the apple of his father’s eye, making him the target of extreme jealousy when it came to his siblings. Some even plotted to murder him.

Because of the turmoil in his personal life, Thutmose preferred to be away from home and started spending a lot of time in upper Egypt and the desert. Being a strong and skilled man, he enjoyed hunting and archery. One particular day during a hunt, Thutmose left his two servants behind in the heat of the day to go say his prayers near the pyramids.

He paused in front of the Sphinx, known in those days as Harmachis—god of the rising sun. The massive stone statue was up to its shoulders in desert sand. Thutmose stared up at the Sphinx, praying that it would take away all his problems. Suddenly, the great big statue seemed to come to life and a loud voice sounded up from it.

The Sphinx beseeched Thutmose to release it from the sand that was weighing it down. As it spoke, the Sphinx’s eyes grew so bright that as Thutmose looked into them he couldn’t bear it and fainted. When he woke, the day had already started growing long. Thutmose rose slowly and then made an oath to the Sphinx as he stood before it. He promised that if he became the next Pharaoh, he would rid the Sphinx of all the sand covering it and immortalize the event in stone. He went on to do exactly this.

As all good legends would have it, Thutmose indeed became the next ruler of Egypt, his problems long left behind him. The story gained notoriety as little as 150 years ago when an archaeologist cleared away the sand from the Sphinx and found a stone tablet between its paws describing the story of Prince Thutmose and the oath he made to the great Sphinx of Giza.

9The Great Wall Of China

A tragic romance is just one of the many legends associated with the Great Wall of China. The story of Meng Jiangnu is one of the most infamous tales and heartbreaking right from the start. It is said that a man and woman with the family name of Meng lived next to another couple who went by the family name of Jiang. Both of these couples were very happy, but neither had children. As the years went by, the Meng couple decided to plant a gourd vine. The vine grew successfully and ended up sprouting a gourd on the property of the Jiang couple.

Having been friends for a long time, the two couples decided to share the gourd. To their absolute amazement, when they split the gourd in the middle they found a baby inside it. It was a beautiful little girl. Just as with everything else, the two amazed couples decided they would share the upbringing of the little baby. They called her Meng Jiangnu.

Meng Jiangnu grew up to be a very beautiful young woman. She married a young man named Fan Xiliang after finding him hiding away from officials who were trying to force young men to start building the Great Wall. However, he couldn’t hide forever, and a mere three days after they wed, Xiliang was taken away to help others with the construction of the wall.

Meng was alone for an entire year, having received no news of progress on the wall nor of her husband’s well-being. After having a disturbing nightmare about Xiliang, Meng decided she couldn’t bear the silence anymore and went looking for him. After a long journey that saw her trawling through rivers and climbing hills and mountains, Meng reached the wall only to hear that Xiliang died of pure exhaustion and his final resting place was underneath the wall.

Meng could not control her grief and, after crying for three days straight, the part of the wall she was next to crumbled and collapsed. The emperor at the time felt that Meng needed to be punished for damaging the wall, but once he saw her beautiful face he asked for her hand in marriage instead. She agreed but requested three things from the Emperor in return. She wished mourning for her husband Xiliang (including the emperor himself as well as his servants). She wanted a burial arranged for Xiliang, and she expressed the need to see the sea.

Meng Jiangnu never married again. After she attended the burial of Xiliang, she committed suicide by throwing herself into the ocean.

Another version of the legend says that as Meng Jiangnu cried and cried, the wall collapsed to the point where the skeletons of those workers who died were protruding from the ground below. Knowing that her husband was down there somewhere, Meng cut her fingers until they bled profusely and watched as the blood dripped over the bones of the dead. When her blood suddenly started centering around a particular skeleton and flowed into it, Meng knew she had found her husband. She then had him buried and ended her own life by jumping into the ocean.

8Forbidden City

Back in the day, you couldn’t just show up at the Forbidden City. If you did, you’d most likely have left without your head. Literally. The Forbidden City consists of several ancient building and palaces and is the largest of its kind in the world. It couldn’t be visited under Qing rule, and no one but emperors and their servants saw the inside of the city for over 500 years.

At least in modern times, visitors are allowed to explore the ancient complex and perhaps hear about some of the legends surrounding it. One such legend has it that the four watchtowers in the Forbidden City were built as the result of a dream.

Allegedly, the Forbidden City under Ming rule had only very high walls, but not a watchtower in sight. The Yongle emperor was in charge in the 15th century and, at one point, had a vivid dream about the city. In his dream, he saw fantastic watchtowers decorating the four corners of the city. When the emperor awoke from his dream, he immediately set his builders to task to transform the dream into reality.

The tale goes on to say that after a failed attempt by two sets of builders (and their eventual execution by beheading), the master builder of the third set of builders was very nervous about taking on the job. However, after modeling the watchtowers after a grasshopper cage he had seen, the emperor could not be happier.

The master builder also took care to include the number nine in the design of the building in order to please the emperor even more. The number nine is said to represent emperors. Also, the old man selling the grasshopper cages that inspired the master builder of the watchtowers was said to be Lu Ban, who just happened to be the grandfather of all Chinese carpenters.

7Niagara Falls

The legend of “The Maiden Of The Mist” may have been the inspiration for a boat ride being launched with the same name at Niagara Falls. This legend, as is the case with most legends, has many different versions.

The most well-known one, however, tells of a Native girl named Lelawala who was offered to the gods in order to appease and please them. The offering came in the form of the girl being thrown down Niagara Falls. One of the original legends states that Lelawala was out in a canoe when she was swept down the waterfall by accident.

She was then rescued from certain death by the thunder god named Hinum, who afterward gave her a lesson in defeating the huge monstrous snake that inhabited the river. She relayed the message to her village, with the people then declaring war against the snake. Many believed that the fighting that ensued caused the Niagara Falls to form in the way it is seen today.

Misdirected versions of this legend have been in print since the 17th century, with many blaming the several flaws on one Robert Cavelier de La Salle, who was an explorer from Europe. Robert made fantastic claims such as that he visited the Haudenosaunee people and witnessed the chief’s virgin daughter being sacrificed, with the chief falling victim to his own conscience at the very last minute and then falling to his own death alongside her. The daughter, Lelawala, then became “The Maid of the Mist.”

However, Robert’s own wife turned against him and accused him of depicting the Haudenosaunee people as ignorant so that he could take their land from them.

6Devil’s Peak And Table Mountain

Devil’s Peak is one of the most infamous mountain spires in South Africa. And it has a great legend to tell (so to speak) every time fog rolls in from the ocean and covers it along with Table Mountain. Capetonians and others from around South Africa still relay the tale to their children and grandchildren.

It is said that a pipe-smoking pirate by the name of Jan van Hunks settled in the Cape in the 1700s, eager to leave his pirating ways behind him. He married and then found himself a house at the foot of the mountain. His wife hated his pipe-smoking habit and would chase him out of the house whenever he lit his pipe.

Van Hunks got into the habit of going some ways up the mountain and then finding a good spot to smoke in peace. On a perfectly normal day, van Hunks started up the mountain again only to find a strange man sitting on his usual spot. He couldn’t see the man’s face as he was wearing a very large hat and was dressed in all black.

Before van Hunks could say anything, the stranger greeted him by name. Van Hunks then sat down next to the man, and they started up a conversation that inevitably led to Jan’s smoking habit. Jan van Hunks liked to boast about the amount of tobacco he could handle, and he did so with the stranger as well after he asked van Hunks for some tobacco.

The stranger mentioned to van Hunks that he could very easily smoke more than the pirate could, and this immediately led van Hunks to challenge him in proving who could smoke the longest without getting sick.

With massive plumes of smoke surrounding the two men and much of the mountain, the stranger suddenly became agitated and couldn’t go on smoking. As his hat fell from his head, van Hunks suddenly gasped. He was facing the Devil himself. Being very annoyed that a mere mortal had showed him up, the Devil snatched both himself and van Hunks away in a lightning flash to an unknown destination.

Now, every time fog rolls over Devil’s Peak and Table Mountain, it is said that van Hunks and the Devil have retaken their spots on the mountain and are gearing up for another go at the smoking competition.

5Mount Etna

Mount Etna, located on the eastern coast of Sicily, is one of the highest and most active volcanoes in Europe. The first recorded eruption occurred in 1500 B.C., and the volcano has erupted at least 200 times since then. In a single eruption that lasted four months in 1669, the lava covered 12 villages and destroyed surrounding areas.

Greek legend has it that the eruptions are caused by none other than a 100-headed monster (the heads resemble dragon heads) that spews massive fire columns from one of its heads when it becomes angry. Apparently, this huge monster was known as Typhon and was the son of Gaia, the goddess of Earth. Typhon became quite the rebellious kid and was then banned by Zeus to live under Mount Etna. So, every now and then, his anger takes the form of boiling hot lava that shoots into the sky.

Another version has a terrible one-eyed monster known as Cyclops that lived inside the mountain. Odysseus was sent to battle the monster and he managed to reach Cyclops even though the monster threw huge boulders at him from the top of the mountain. Odysseus also managed to defeat Cyclops by lancing him in his only eye sending him into the depths of the mountain. The legend further states that the Mount Etna crater is actually the damaged eye of Cyclops and the lava spewing forth from it is the flowing blood of the monster.

4Avenue Of Baobabs

It is not just the lemurs in Madagascar that make the island resonate with people around the world. The island’s main claim to fame is the breathtaking Avenue of Baobabs situated in its western part. Known as the “mother of the forest,” 25 massive baobab trees line a dirt road on the island. They are indigenous to Madagascar and also the largest of the baobab trees. Naturally, their strange appearance has paved the way for legends and myths aplenty.

One of the legends surrounding the Avenue of Baobabs is that the trees kept running off while God was making them, so God decided to plant them upside-down. This would explain their root-like branches. Others tell a different story. Apparently, baobabs started out as really magnificently beautiful trees. However, they became so full of themselves and bragged so much about their beauty that God promptly turned them upside-down so only their roots would show. It is also said that, for this reason, baobabs only have flowers and leaves for a couple of weeks every year.

Legend or not, six of the baobab species belong in Madagascar alone. However, deforestation poses a serious threat even amid all the conservation and reforestation efforts implemented there. If more isn’t done to protect them, the subjects of these legends will disappear, likely forever.

3Giant’s Causeway

Picking a fight with a giant led to the inadvertent creation of the Giant’s Causeway, located in northern Ireland. Or so legend would have you believe, anyway. Whereas scientists believe that the perfectly formed hexagonal basalt columns are the result of 60 million years worth of lava, the legend of Benandonner the Scottish giant is a little more entertaining.

The legend tells of Irish giant Finn McCool, who had a long-standing feud with Scottish giant Benandonner. On one particular day, the two giants were yelling at each other over the Sea of Moyle when McCool became so enraged he grabbed a handful of earth and tossed it at the Scottish giant. The clump of earth landed in the sea and is now known as the Isle of Man while the spot where McCool dug into the ground is known as Lough Neagh.

The feud grew between the two giants and Finn McCool decided to build a causeway for the Benandonner to reach him since the Scottish giant couldn’t swim. This way they could have a real fight and see who was the bigger giant. After spending some time on building the causeway, Finn was tired and he fell asleep easily.

At some point while he was sleeping, Finn’s wife heard extremely loud thundering sounds outside and she realized she was hearing Benandonner’s footsteps coming closer and closer. When the Scottish giant reached the couple’s house, Finn’s wife immediately saw that Benandonner would spell the end for her husband as he was much bigger than Finn. Thinking fast, she wrapped a massive blanket around Finn and placed the biggest bonnet she could find on his head. Then she opened the front door.

Benandonner yelled into the house for Finn to come out, but the woman shushed him, warning that her “baby” would wake up. Legend has it that when Benandonner saw the size of the “baby,” he didn’t care to stick around to see the size of its father. He swiftly ran back to his own home, destroying some of the causeway as he went along, so that no one could go after him.

2Mount Fuji

Mount Fuji is a massive volcano located in Japan. It is not only a huge landmark, but it has become intertwined with Japanese culture, so much so that it is the subject of many songs, movies, and of course, legends and myths. In what is believed to be the oldest story originating from Japan, an explanation is also given for the fires of Mount Fuji.

A bamboo cutter was going about his daily task when he stumbled across something very strange and unusual. A tiny baby no bigger than his own thumb was gazing up at him from inside the bamboo he was busy cutting. Seeing how beautiful the tiny baby was, he took her home to his wife so that they could raise her as their own.

Soon after, the bamboo cutter started making more discoveries while working. Every time he cut a piece of bamboo, he found a gold nugget inside it. After a short while, the bamboo cutter and his family were very rich. The little girl grew into a stunning young woman. The bamboo cutter and his wife had learned in the meantime that the girl named Kaguya-hime was sent from the Moon to Earth so that she would be protected from a war raging there.

Because of her beauty, Kaguya-hime had several marriage proposals, even from the emperor, but she declined all of them in her quest to get back home to the Moon. When her own Moon people finally came to take her home, the emperor was so distressed at the prospect of losing her that he sent his own men to fight Kaguya-hime’s true family. However, a blinding light sent them reeling.

As a parting gift, Kaguya-hime (the Moon princess) sent the emperor a special letter and an immortality elixir which he refused to drink. He, in turn, wrote her a letter and requested that his men take it to the highest peak in all of Japan and burn it and the elixir together on it, in the hopes of it reaching the Moon.

However, all that happened when they burned the letter and the elixir on Mount Fuji is that the fire they started could not be extinguished. And this is, according to legend, how Mount Fuji became a volcano.

1Yosemite

Half Dome at Yosemite is a major challenge when it comes to hiking, but hikers and rock climbers absolutely love it. When the Native Americans lived close to Half Dome, they named it Cleft Rock. At some point due to the repetitive thawing and freezing of the rock, a large chunk of it fell away, which gave it the look it has today.

The origin of Half Dome has been the subject of a great legend still being told today: the legend of Tis-sa-ack. The tale also seeks to explain the strange silhouette of what looks like a face that can be seen on the side of Half Dome.

The legend tells of an old Native woman and her husband who made the journey to a valley called Ahwahnee. All the while, the woman carried a heavy basket made from grass and reeds while her husband simply swung his walking stick around. This was tradition in those days, and no one would have thought it strange that the husband didn’t offer to carry the basket.

The woman, called Tis-sa-ack, was very thirsty by the time they reached the lake at the mountain because of her heavy burden and the hot sun beating down on her. Therefore, she wasted no time in rushing to the lake and drinking gulping mouthfuls of the water.

To her husband’s dismay, he found that his wife had drunk so much that the entire lake had dried up by the time he got there. And things got worse from that point on. Due to the lack of water, a drought struck the area and all things green withered away. Her husband was so angry that he picked up his walking stick and aimed to strike Tis-sa-ack.

She burst into tears and started running away from him, her basket in her hands. She turned around at one point and threw the basket at him so that she could get away. It was as she looked at him that the Great Spirit residing in the valley turned them both into stone.

Today, they are known as Half Dome and Washington Column. It is said that if you look closely at Half Dome you can see the woman’s face on it, her tears still flowing silently.

Estelle lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. She loves myths and legends of all kinds. She also kinda wishes giants were still around because of their sheer awesomeness.

Witchcraft and magic are nebulous and often dangerous concepts. For much of human history, anyone who has seemed to have uncanny powers has either been hailed as a holy person or put to death as a demon.

When some people achieve success, it is deeply galling to their enemies. The only way those individuals can have reached the top is with witchcraft! Here are 10 times that famous people throughout history have been accused of witchery.

10 Anne Boleyn

Few people have had as great an effect on British history as Anne Boleyn. When the marriage between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon failed to give the king the male heir he desired, he felt that God had cursed him for marrying his brother’s widow.

Already, the king had strayed from his marriage vows and fathered a number of illegitimate children. So he believed he would be able to produce a prince to follow him if he had a different wife. That new wife was Anne Boleyn.

When the Pope of the day refused to annul Henry’s marriage to Catherine, his beloved Anne encouraged him to break with Rome and proclaim himself head of the Church in England. From this act came England as a Protestant nation amid the destruction of the monasteries. Anne was wed and made queen. All was going according to plan.

When Anne gave birth to a daughter and then a stillborn son, Henry again felt cursed. He began to claim that Anne had seduced him using “sortilege”—sorcery and witchcraft.^[1]

The queen’s many enemies were quick to add more flames to the fire by claiming she had witch’s marks like moles and a sixth finger on one hand. Although she was never formally charged with witchcraft, the accusations blackened her reputation and quickly led to her fatal meeting with the executioner’s sword.

9 Joan Of Arc

Joan of Arc achieved remarkable things in her short life. A little too remarkable for some.

Before she was 19, she had ditched her peasant robes for armor and joined an army to break the siege of Orleans. Given visions, she claimed, by saints and archangels, her advice was heeded by kings and nobles.

For her English enemies, however, she was considered an agent of evil. One described her as “a disciple and limb of the Fiend . . . that used false enchantment and sorcery.”^[2]

When she was captured by Burgundians, she was given over to the English. They charged her as a heretic but used her supernatural abilities to paint her as a witch or tool of the Devil.

Accordingly, the voices that she heard were not angelic but diabolical. Her ability to recognize people she had never met before was a gift from hell. And the predictions that led to her military victories were gifts from Satan.

Found guilty of heresy, she was placed in prison as punishment because only those who were convicted twice could be put to death. It was Joan’s habit of dressing in men’s clothes that was her undoing. By wearing military garb while in prison, she had committed heresy again and so was condemned to be burned at the stake.

8 The Clintons

Something about Hillary and Bill Clinton seems to cause people to go witch mad. One website has a multipart series on the couple’s connections to dark forces. It accuses Bill of using Haitian voodoo to win his election, Hillary of being the Whore of Babylon, and the pair of performing bizarre rituals for their own nefarious purposes.

You might think that this was on the outer fringe of beliefs. But at the 2016 Republican convention, one attendee accused Hillary of being a member of the Illuminati and a witch. A photograph of her playfully trying on a witch’s pointed hat was taken as proof positive of her satanic associations.

Another sartorial mistake was wearing a bird-shaped brooch that either symbolized her attachment to the New World Order or was a sign of loyalty to the Antichrist.^[3] Who knew jewelry could have so many meanings?

When Hillary talked about having conversations with figures from history like Mahatma Gandhi, she meant holding imaginary discussions to shape her thinking. Of course, some people took this literally and she was accused of communing with spirits.

7 Backwards Masked Music

Backmasking is a recording method where a message is put into a song that only makes sense when the song is played backwards. This has been used to hide fun Easter eggs for hard-core fans to find, like when Weird Al put “Wow, you must have an awful lot of free time on your hands” into one of his tracks. In the past, there have been people with too much time on their hands because they have found hundreds of satanic messages hidden in rock songs.

It was claimed that the Styx song “Snowblind” contained the subliminal and backwards message “Satan moves through our voices.” While Styx found the idea that they were the heralds of Satan laughable, there was enough of a backlash against backmasking that Arkansas passed a bill demanding that records with backmasking be identified as such to purchasers.^[4]

Those looking for Satan in Soundgarden’s songs “665” and “667” will be disappointed. Instead, there is a backmasked song about Santa.

6 The British Royal Family

While some have claimed that the British royal family are in fact shape-shifting reptilian creatures, there is an older tale that links them to demons and witches. The counts of Anjou were one of the great noble families of France. Their might and prowess in battle led people to wonder just where their uncanny knack for coming out on top—and vicious tempers—had come from. The answer was, of course, a demon.

In the 12th century, rumors abounded that an earlier count of Anjou had married a mysterious woman. This beautiful lady always found a reason to absent herself from church and never attended mass.

One day, her suspicious husband forced her to remain for the consecration of the Host. At the holiest moment of the ceremony, she tore off her cloak, levitated in the air, and flew out a window, never to be seen again.^[5]

From this count and his demonic wife came the Plantagenet line of kings. Richard I used to joke about his hellish ancestry: “We come from the Devil, and we’ll end by going to the Devil!” Who knows, there may be a drop of demon blood in the blue blood of the Windsors today.

5 Pope John Paul II

Pope John Paul II, now a saint of the Catholic Church, is held by many to be a heroic figure of the 20th century. Some credit his stand against Communism as among his best acts.

Others have a more dubious view given the sex scandals in the Church that emerged in his last years and still blight public perception of Catholicism. And then there were those who thought he was the Antichrist.

When Pope John Paul II addressed the European parliament in 1988, Ian Paisley, a notoriously loud and vociferous Protestant, greeted the Pope by heckling his speech and declaring, “I refuse you as Christ’s enemy and Antichrist with all your false doctrine.”

While his opposition may have been more symbolic than a real accusation of the Pope, some people see occult signs everywhere around Pope John Paul II. Everything from his birth, supposedly during a solar eclipse, to his funeral rituals have been claimed as signs of his diabolic origin.^[6]

4 Christine O’Donnell

It’s rare for a politician to have to begin a campaign message with the words, “I’m not a witch.” But that is what Christine O’Donnell did in 2010. It followed what some could see as a self-accusation of witchcraft.

In 1999 on the Bill Maher show Politically Incorrect, she had said:

I dabbled into witchcraft—I never joined a coven. [ . . . ] I hung around people who were doing these things. [ . . . ] One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that. [ . . . ] We went to a movie and then had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar.^[7]

Bill Maher later apologized for making her political run into a joke, but the damage was done. In today’s political climate, it seems that a politician can overcome any scandal except going on TV and saying that he or she is not a witch.

3 Stevie Nicks

Since at least the 1970s, Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac has been associated with witchcraft. “Rhiannon,” a song written by Nicks and recorded by Fleetwood Mac, is about a Welsh witch-goddess. Ever since its release, people have been asking the singer whether she is really a witch.

The song features lyrics like: “Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night, and wouldn’t you love to love her? Takes to the sky like a bird in flight, and who will be her lover?” What else could this mean but a witch riding a broom through the sky?

Flight did have something to do with it. Nicks saw the name “Rhiannon” in a book at the airport and wrote a story about a woman who was free as a bird. Despite this mundane explanation, people looked as Nicks’s long black dresses and decided she really was a witch.^[8]

After years of denying her witchy nature, she embraced it in 2014 when offered the chance to play a fictionalized version of herself in the TV show American Horror Story where she was a white witch.

2 Pope Sylvester II

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, but too much knowledge can see you accused of witchcraft. According to legend, Pope Sylvester II was not only a naturally gifted scholar but also a supernaturally gifted one.

Supposedly, he sold his soul to the Devil in return for hidden knowledge. It was said that Sylvester was “the best necromancer in France, whom the demons of the air readily obeyed in all that he required of them by day and night.”^[9]

The greatest achievement of his dark arts was a statue to which he would ask yes-or-no questions and always get the right answer. We are told that Sylvester traveled to Spain, then under the control of the Muslim Saracens, to study with them.

From one of their greatest philosophers, he stole a book of magical spells and learned how to sell his soul to the Devil. Using his new powers, he created his wise “brazen head” and used its guidance to rise to the papacy.

Of course, it seems more likely that Sylvester had studied in Spain with teachers who had access to knowledge unknown in the rest of Europe and that many of his colleagues saw him as compromised by this non-Christian education.

1 Beyonce

To get to the top in the music industry requires talent and a whole heap of good luck. It may also take just a pinch of witchcraft. In 2018, Beyonce was accused by a former drummer of using “extreme witchcraft” against her and conjuring spells of sexual molestation. Allegedly, the singer had also bewitched the drummer’s kitten.

The court filing of Kimberly Thompson was an attempt to get a restraining order placed against the musical icon. Thompson wrote that Beyonce’s actions led to “loss of many jobs, theft of homes, the murder of my pet kitten, magic spells on my lovers, and numerous broken relationships.”^[10]

The drummer’s kitten was apparently cursed to attack her by Beyonce, a “fact” confirmed by two psychics. Thompson also said that Beyonce was able to inhabit other people’s bodies to watch the drummer have sex with others.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the restraining order was not granted. This was either because no one turned up in court to pursue the matter or because Beyonce had once again used her magic powers to win.

The horror genre has a long and fascinating history, going hand-in-hand with the very history of film from almost the very start. As long as people have been using film to tell stories, they’ve also been using those stories to scare people senseless. From innovative camera tricks to impressive makeup wizardry, the films listed here all have their place within film history for good reason. So turn off the light, get comfortable, and get ready for ten silent horror films that’ll give you the chills. 

10. Nosferatu (1922)

You can’t have a discussion about classic silent horror without vampires, more specifically one of cinema’s earliest versions of the classic folktale. When most people think about classic vampires, they usually think about Bela Lugosi’s legendary portrayal of Count Dracula in Tod Browning’s 1931 Universal adaptation. However, it was director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and actor Max Schreck who introduced cinema to vampires just 9 years earlier with Nosferatu.

The film was developed as an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a task that proved difficult when Florence, Bram Stoker’s widow, refused to allow for a sanctioned adaptation. So Murnau, ever the rebel, decided along with his crew, to simply change some key details and go ahead with the film anyway. The film now only barely resembles an adaptation of Dracula, the biggest change being the titular vampire, Count Orlock, played by Schreck. 

Schreck just exudes an unnerving vibe, enhanced by the still-impressive makeup and the way the film is shot. From Orlock rising from his coffin to his demonic shadow ascending the staircase, the film is dripping with timeless and creepy imagery. Despite Stoker’s best efforts to sue the filmmakers and destroy all existing copies, the film would survive and go on to be hailed as an influential masterwork. Countless filmmakers have been inspired by Nosferatu, including director Rob Eggers whose big-budget remake will be hitting theaters in December 2024. 

9. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

When going through the history of classic silent horror films, it’s important to understand the trend of German expressionism. Starting in the late 1910s and lasting until the 1930s, German expressionism was an artistic movement that prioritized the artist’s feelings and imagination over portraying realism. This meant movies could follow suit and push boundaries with their visuals and storytelling they’d previously been unable to. So a film like Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari could run wild with its surreal storytelling, especially with its art direction. 

The entire film, told entirely via flashbacks, tells the story of the titular Doctor Caligari and his somnambulist, Cesare. It soon becomes clear that Caligari is using Cesare to carry out moonlight murders, and even goes after Jane, the main character’s love interest. The story is a bizarre and disorienting one, helped in major part by the visuals which are perfectly in line with German expressionism. Shadows are painted across the floor and background, often contorting into offputting spirals and patterns, as well as defying any physical logic. Additionally, things like doors and windows are anything but normal looking, frequently looking more like something you’d see in a child’s drawing. The whole film feels like a very creative nightmare and still stands out as a classic to this day. 

8. The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Long before he was belting out showstopping ballads on Broadway, the Phantom was gracing movie screens with his macabre presence. Adapted from Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, the film tells the story of a deformed murderer known as the Phantom who is haunting the Paris Opera House. Amidst his rampage, the Phantom takes an interest in Christine, a singer whom he wants to see become a star. This leads Christine down into the sewers beneath the opera house where she soon uncovers the truth of the Phantom, as well as his horrific true face.

The Phantom is played by Lon Chaney, often referred to as the “Man of a Thousand Faces,” due to his incredible makeup talents. Chaney had previously played Quasimodo in the screen adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, so he was more than prepared. The makeup for the Phantom is simple yet effective, giving him a horrific pig-like nose, as well as piercing and demonic eyes. These enhancements work beautifully in tandem with Chaney’s performance which, given the film’s silent nature, is completely physical. Every second he’s on screen you can’t take your eyes off of him and he perfectly embodies the Phantom’s foreboding yet alluring presence. If your only knowledge of the character is the musical, definitely give the original silent horror film a watch, it’s more than worth your time. 

7. Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922)

Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages is an oddity of a film, even amongst other silent films of its time, especially due to its unique format. Long before the likes of The Blair Witch Project or Hell House LLC, Häxan was utilizing a faux-documentary format to tell its story. It would be more accurate to describe the film as an early example of a video essay with dramatized sequences about the occult and witchcraft. 

This means several sequences dedicated to the history of witchcraft, often explaining aspects of it with models and illustrated diagrams. Despite its dry tone, the film is quite enthralling, almost as if you’ve been transported back in time to a 19th-century lecture on occult history. 

This doesn’t mean the film is without any artistic merit, as the dramatization sequences showcase some truly memorable visuals. For a film from 1922, it definitely pushed boundaries, including depictions of satanic worship, female nudity, and even horrific demons brought to life through impressive makeup effects. While it doesn’t get brought up as much as the likes of Nosferatu or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the film still has its appreciators. So this Halloween, if you need something a bit different to set the mood, check out Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages. 

6. The Golem (1920)

Jewish folklore has a rich assortment of legends, myths, and fables, many working their way into various pieces of different media. One of the more famous among these tales is the Golem of Prague, a clay being sculpted by a 16th-century rabbi. 

The Golem: How He Came into the World from 1920 is very much in line with the aforementioned legend, doing ample justice to the Golem’s cultural context. Rabbi Loew, a rabbi in the ghetto of medieval Prague, creates the titular Golem out of humble clay to protect his fellow Jews from an impending disaster. The film, directed by Paul Wegener and Carl Boese, sets many impressive precedents for horror cinema, especially when it comes to the presentation of the Golem. This is most evident in the Golem’s makeup, worn by Paul Wegener himself, which is still an impressive use of prosthetics even now. The design is imposing and a bit offputting which, given the nature of the film, is more than appropriate. 

One could easily see this film as a precursor to the likes of Frankenstein, especially with the angle of a man creating a monster. The Golem is a great watch, especially if you are interested in seeing a key piece of Jewish folklore brought to life. 

5. The Cat and the Canary (1927)

The horror genre, like many other genres, has countless sub-categories that encompass a wide range of styles and subjects. Horror comedy is by far one of the most widespread, with countless films that possess both great humor and horror simultaneously. Films like Night of the Creeps, Shaun of the Dead, or Freaky are all perfect examples of this. But long before any of those films hit the scene, The Cat and the Canary was balancing chills and giggles as far back as 1927. 

The film concerns Cyrus West, a wealthy man who has ordered that his last will and testament go unread until the 20th anniversary of his death. This brings his greedy, conniving family out of the woodwork, all looking to acquire his West’s vast fortune. However, on the night the family arrives to hear the will’s contents revealed, an escaped lunatic called the Cat breaks into the house! While the film boasts quite a fair bit of comedy, it never forgets to lay on the thick eerie atmosphere of an old dark house film. 

The Cat and the Canary isn’t brought up as much as other famous 20s and 30s horror films but deserves its roses for being such a unique outing. 

4. The Man Who Laughs (1928)