In 1927, the Cecil Hotel (currently known as Stay on Main) opened with initially 700 rooms decorated in Art Deco style, intended to attract and entertain businessmen. Located at 640 S. Main Street in Downtown Los Angeles, it wasn’t long before the hotel fell victim to the hard times that hit during the beginning of the Great Depression. Situated close to the nearby Skid Row, the surrounding area became populated with more than 10,000 homeless people living within a 6.4-kilometer (4 mi) radius.

The local homeless situation was not the only problem the hotel would face. Stories of suicides, murders, and serial killers checking in for the night all turned this 19-story building into a place talked about more for its creepy history than hospitality. In its 90-year history, the Cecil Hotel gained a reputation for being one of the creepiest places to stay in the US—for very valid reasons.

10 The Death of Elisa Lam

In 2013, 21-year-old college student Elisa Lam was found dead and naked in a water tank on the rooftop of the Cecil Hotel.^[1] Her clothes were found nearby. The gruesome discovery was made after guests complained about low water pressure. The coroner listed Lam’s death as an accidental drowning, but the events surrounding her final hours were so mysterious that they led many to speculate that something more sinister was at work.

Lam had traveled alone from Vancouver to Los Angeles and went missing not long after she checked into the hotel. CCTV footage of Lam in the hotel’s elevator was released by the police, and her behavior was quite disturbing. She appears to be panicked as she pushes the buttons for several floors at a time and then leans her head out through the doors, looking for something unknown. She then hides in the corner of the elevator and even at one point appears to be talking to someone off-camera. When the doors fail to close, she exits the elevator and does not reappear. Theories surrounding her death range from Lam being chased by a potential killer to her suffering a manic bipolar episode.

9 Elizabeth “The Black Dahlia” Short

In 1947, a mother and her young child came across the naked body of 22-year-old aspiring actress Elizabeth Short in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Short’s body was so badly mutilated that at first, it was believed to be a mannequin. She was cut completely in half at the waist, and her face had been cut from the mouth to her ears, creating an effect known as the Glasgow smile. The corpse had been thoroughly washed, drained of all blood, and “posed,” with her hands over her head and the legs spread apart. Despite this brutal mutilation, there was not a spot of blood at the scene, and the killer was never caught.

It is believed that Elizabeth was seen at the Cecil Hotel not long before she was murdered.^[2] She wanted her big break in Hollywood and was well-known for frequenting bars where she met with producers who could secure her a movie. Instead, she became famous for very different and sinister reasons.

8 Richard ‘The Night Stalker’ Ramirez

Richard “The Night Stalker” Ramirez earned his nickname by stalking the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco from 1984 to 1985, looking for innocent victims to butcher. A known Satanist, he used handguns, knives, a machete, a tire iron, and a hammer to murder his victims. His crimes were so sinister that the judge described the murders as “cruelty, callousness, and viciousness beyond any human understanding.”

During his sadistic killing spree, Ramirez reportedly often stayed at the Cecil Hotel.^[3] Rooms were just $14 a night back then, and the area around the hotel was known for being a popular hangout for junkies, so Ramirez stalking the streets late at night would not have caused too much suspicion. He died on death row at San Quentin Prison aged 53 years old in 2013.

7 Jack Unterweger

Austrian serial killer and journalist Jack Unterweger was a guest at the Cecil Hotel in the early 1990s. Unterweger murdered 11 prostitutes in Vienna, Prague, and Los Angeles, often by strangling them to death with their own lingerie, between 1990 and 1992. His first murder was in 1974, but he was released as a successfully “resocialized” prisoner. Unterweger stayed at the Cecil Hotel while working for an Austrian magazine writing stories about crime in LA. He could use his status as a reporter to secure rides with the LAPD and drive around areas that would soon become crime scenes of his own making.

The method in which Unterweger strangled his victims—using a distinct ligature—tied him as a prime suspect to three homicides in the LA area, and he was eventually arrested in Miami. In 1994, in Austria, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. On the night of his sentencing, he hanged himself behind bars, applying the same knot that he used to strangle his victims.^[4]

6 Pigeon Goldie

The unsolved murder of “Pigeon Goldie” Osgood still haunts the Cecil Hotel to date. Retired telephone operator Pigeon Goldie was a recognizable face around the hotel, as she protected and fed the local pigeons at nearby Pershing Square. In 1964, she was found dead in her room at the hotel—she had been assaulted, stabbed, and strangled. Police found her Los Angeles Dodgers cap and a paper bag full of birdseed in the ransacked room.

One suspect was arrested, 29-year-old Jacques B. Ehlinger, who was seen walking through Pershing Square wearing bloodstained clothes. He was charged for the murder, but later, his name was cleared. This was the last widely reported death at the hotel until the body of Elisa Lam was discovered in 2013.^[5]

5 George Gianinni

One of the strangest deaths at the Cecil Hotel was that of 65-year-old George Gianinni. In 1962, 27-year-old Pauline Otton was arguing with her estranged husband in a room on the hotel’s ninth floor. After Otton’s husband left, she wrote a suicide note and jumped from the window to the pavement below. Unluckily, Gianinni was walking directly below, and Otton landed on him. They were both killed instantly.^[6]

When the police first arrived at the crime scene, they initially thought this a double suicide case. However, Giannini still had his hands in his pockets, which was inconsistent with a nine-story fall. After much police work, the truth was discovered that this was in fact a suicide that had caused an accidental death.

4 Baby out the Window

Tragically in 1944, one of the youngest victims at Cecil Hotel had their life taken from them. Dorothy Jean Purcell, 19 years old, was staying as a guest at the hotel when she threw her newborn son out a window. Purcell did not know she was pregnant and woke in the middle of the night with stomach pains when she was sleeping next to her partner, 38-year-old shoe salesman Ben Levine. Not wanting to wake Levine, she went to the bathroom and delivered the baby herself.

Purcell believed the boy was dead, and that’s when she got rid of the body from a great height. The lifeless baby was found on a roof adjacent to the building. Purcell was arrested, but after psychologists determined she was “mentally confused,” she was eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity.^[7]

3 Suicides in the 1930s

In 1931, a guest, W.K. Norton, 46, was found dead in his room after eating poison capsules. Although this was the earliest case of suicide at the Cecil, it would not be the last for that decade. The following year, 25-year-old Benjamin Dodich was found by a maid in a room, dead by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. In 1934, former Army Medical Corps sergeant Louis D. Borden was found with his throat slashed—he had written several notes about suicide while in the room.

In 1937, the body of Grace E. Magro was discovered wrapped in the telephone wires after she jumped from a ninth-floor window. A year later, the body of 35-year-old US Marine Roy Thompson was found on the skylight of a nearby building after he also jumped from his room. In 1939, Navy officer Erwin C. Neblett was found dead after ingesting poison; he was 39 years old.

The deaths were just a few of the suicides that occurred during the Great Depression. Tens of thousands of Americans took their own lives during the late 1930s, creating the highest-recorded level ever—more than 150 per one million annually in 1937 and 1938.^[8]

2 High-Profile Arrests

In 1976, 26-year-old Jeffrey Thomas Paley purchased a rifle, climbed to the rooftop of the Cecil Hotel, and fired 15 rounds at the street below. Shortly after the shots were fired, Paley was arrested. Luckily, nobody was injured by the gunshots. After his arrest, the former mental patient claimed he never intended to harm anyone; he just wanted to prove how easy it would be for someone—even a person with mental health issues—to purchase a firearm.^[9]

This would not be the first time police had to respond to a potential killer at the Cecil Hotel. In 1988, 28-year-old salesman Robert Sullivan was arrested at the hotel when the body of 32-year-old nurse Teri Francis Craig was found at the home she had shared with Sullivan for seven years. Sullivan was just another name added to the last of cold-blooded killers who have checked in at the hotel.

1 Paranormal Activity

One of the more recent creepy events at the Cecil Hotel was when a young boy from California captured a ghostly apparition on camera in 2014. The picture shows a transparent figure standing on the ledge outside a window on the fourth floor of the building. Several news outlets soon picked up the photo, the possible ghost being quickly linked to the gruesome past of the Cecil Hotel. The young photographer told reporters, “When I looked at that window, it just looked kind of creepy to me, and then I showed my friend, and he kind of freaked out. It just creeps me out still.” He also claimed that the photo was causing him many a restless night.^[10]

The hotel has long been considered one of the most haunted in Los Angeles, which attracts ghost hunters and morbid seekers all throughout the year. Many of the hauntings are believed to be linked to the high number of suicides that have taken place within the Cecil’s walls, as the souls of the spirits have been unable to move on.

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

When people with the notoriety and fortunes of celebrities and beloved icons die, it is expected that they have their ducks in a row and have a will to distribute their property and assets. However, this is not the case for many celebrities.

Whether they were young like Heath Ledger (and maybe felt as though he would handle it later in life) or older like Aretha Franklin (who recently died without a will), it has proven to be quite the affair for those left to sort out the details after the celebrity’s passing. When the dust settles, interesting and outright bizarre things may happen regarding the famous person’s legacy.

10 Kurt Cobain And The Muppets

When you are young, it is not usually at the forefront of the brain to create a will to protect your family, your assets, and your name after you die. Kurt Cobain was one of many young celebrities who died without a will and issues arose.

Courtney Love (Cobain’s widow) claimed “rape”—yes, that was the term she used—of Cobain’s legacy when the Muppets used the Nirvana song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in their 2012 film, which catered to an audience of mostly children.

Love claimed that she did not give permission for the use of the song. However, it was not needed as Primary Wave Music, which had bought half of Love’s shares when she sold them years earlier, did grant permission, as did the remaining members of Nirvana. One member even appeared in the movie.^[1]

9 Bob Marley And The RICO Conspiracy

As Bob Marley was a Rastafarian, creating a will would have affirmed a belief in death which was contrary to the faith. When Marley died at age 36, his estate was distributed to his wife, mother, and 11 children according to Jamaican law.

Since his wife, Rita, was granted such a small portion, her attorneys recommended that she forge and predate documents transferring mass amounts of his estate to her that appeared to happen prior to his death.

She was exposed by one of Marley’s former managers. The attorney and accountant involved—along with Rita—were found guilty in court, and Rita was removed as an estate administrator.^[2]

8 Marvin Gaye And ‘Blurred Lines’

After Marvin Gaye’s death, the California Probate Code granted songwriting rights to be equally distributed among his children. The estate of Marvin Gaye took Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke to task when it was claimed that their song “Blurred Lines” sounded like Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up.”

The estate won the lawsuit of $7.4 million for copyright infringement and 50 percent of all royalties from the song. This set in motion a new awareness for artists who use other works for inspiration and the importance of granting credit when it’s due.

This is not the only lawsuit against another artist that Gaye’s legacy has brought on. In 2018, Structured Asset Sales, a company which owns one-third of the copyright to Gaye’s hit, “Let’s Get It On,” filed suit against Ed Sheeran for $100 million for allegedly using the same music in his song “Thinking out Loud.”^[3]

7 Jimi Hendrix And Marijuana

Jimi Hendrix is a name often associated with the 1960s, and he is arguably the greatest guitarist known to man. Fitting with the times, Hendrix participated in his share of drug and alcohol consumption. Since the guitarist’s death without a will, his siblings have been feuding.

Most recently, his brother, Leon, has established companies to sell Jimi Hendrix–branded marijuana. While Hendrix did partake in related activities, he was also a musical part of a cultural movement that stood against commercialism. His sister, Janie, who was named executor of the estate, has barred this attempt and several more by Leon to allegedly exploit Jimi’s name by branding liquor, speakers, and paraphernalia.^[4]

6 Howard Hughes And The Handwritten Will

Falling on the bizarre spectrum of the scale, Melvin Dummar claimed that Howard Hughes handwrote a will that was delivered to Dummar after Hughes’s death. It stated that Dummar was entitled to one-sixteenth of the fortune of Hughes, who was once believed to be the richest man in the world.

Dummar claimed that this gift was for helping an unkempt old man on the side of a rural Nevada road in 1967. The man had said he was Howard Hughes, but Dummar hadn’t believed it at the time.

Initially, the court denied Dummar’s claim. He went back to court in 2006 with new evidence to corroborate his story and to argue that the executors of Hughes’s estate prevented him from getting a fair hearing. Ultimately, Dummar never received any of the inheritance.^[5]

5 Sonny Bono And His ‘Love Child’

Many have probably heard about this one. Sonny Bono had no will upon his death. While his family was trying to claim the estate, a man named Sean Machu came forward and announced that he was Bono’s love child.

Although Bono had admitted in his autobiography to an affair with Machu’s mother and his name was on the birth certificate, the court ordered that a blood sample containing Bono’s DNA be retrieved from the coroner for testing. Machu withdrew the lawsuit when DNA tests were ordered.^[6]

4 Princess Diana And The Godchildren

Princess Diana had a will, but it was improperly executed. She had a will made during her marriage to Prince Charles and modified it after her divorce. However, she also had a separate “Letter of Wishes” that was not considered part of the will upon her death.

The “letter” allotted a generous amount of money to her godchildren. Twenty-five percent of her estate was to be divided among 17 godchildren. The estate’s executors—Di’s mother and sister—obtained a “variation order” from the court to change what the godchildren received.

Instead of splitting the 25 percent, each godchild received one of Di’s possessions (of the executors’ choosing). These gifts were not given until Prince Harry, Di’s youngest son, turned 30.^[7]

3 Prince And The Cybersquatter

Prince’s estate has had its time with lawsuits over the past few years. A recent one is against Domain Capital. The company buys domains from owners and leases them back so that the owner can use the domain anonymously while maintaining privacy.

The company claimed to own Prince.com, allegedly to get a cut from the wealth of the estate. However, Prince’s estate asserts that the company has never used that domain name and that this isn’t the first time that Domain Capital has cybersquatted. Prince’s estate is honoring the celebrity’s persistence in protecting his intellectual property as he did during his life.^[8]

2 James Brown And The Missing Heirs

James Brown also had a will that was not updated and failed to include his most recent marriage and child. This has led to over 10 years of legal battles over his estate.

There was a dispute as to whether Tommie Rae Brown was a true widow of James Brown as she was still wedded to someone else when she married him. There was also an inconclusive DNA test of Daryl Brown, James Brown’s son and right-hand man. This led to further disputes and ultimately drained the estate of any remaining money.^[9]

1 Steve McNair And The Apartment

At age 36, NFL quarterback Steve McNair was shot and killed by his mistress. He didn’t have a will. As a result, the estate entered what’s known as probate. Probate is public, and creditors come forward to make claims for their cut of the estate before it gets distributed.

One of McNair’s creditors was an apartment building owner who claimed that there was unpaid rent. The person who lived in that apartment was a young woman, though not the same woman who had killed McNair. This brought to light that the married McNair had multiple girlfriends. If he had died with a will, this would have been dealt with more privately.^[10]

I work at a law firm and enjoy learning new interesting things.

In the United States and other Western nations, children are often taught about the Salem witch trials that saw 19 men and women executed by hanging for practicing witchcraft. These trials fell out of favor as society developed, but that’s not the case in other parts of the world.

Across much of sub-Saharan Africa and other places, the hunting and purging of witches and practitioners of the dark arts continues. Not only is it a pervasive problem, but the scale of these operations has only worsened with thousands of people falling victim to accusations of sorcery.

Here are 10 examples of modern witch hunts that you won’t believe happened so recently.

SEE ALSO: 10 Infamous Witch-Hunters From History

10 Ghana

Much like people in 17th-century Salem, Massachusetts, modern-day Ghanaians sometimes settle disputes by simply accusing someone of practicing witchcraft. An accusation can be all that is needed to remove a potential rival from a situation, and it happens far more often in Ghana than seems logical.

As witchcraft is such a perceived threat in the country, the nation has established eight sanctuaries for the victims/prisoners of witch hunts. Many of these sanctuaries are hundreds of years old; they’re also commonly known as witch camps.

In 2014, it was reported that over 1,100 people languished in these makeshift prisons/sanctuaries across Ghana. Hunts vary throughout the north and south of the country. But they often are instigated by supposed “penis-theft” hysteria, resulting in the accusation and rounding up of purported witches. Usually, these people are killed, though some make their way to the sanctuaries to live out their lives as outcasts.^[1]

9 The Gambia

Following an order by President Yahya Jammeh in March 2009, a group of government “witch hunters” went out into the nation of The Gambia and rounded up approximately 1,000 villagers. They were taken to secret government detention centers where they were forced to drink an unidentified hallucinogenic substance.

According to Amnesty International, “a lot of these people who were forced to drink these poisonous herbs developed instant diarrhea and vomiting while they lay helpless.” They were then beaten and forced to confess to being practitioners of witchcraft.

Those captured were rounded up over a five-day period and consisted of young men and women as well as the elderly. Fortunately, of the 1,000 captured and tortured, only two succumbed to the violence, but the violation of human rights is a serious problem throughout the country.

The incident was reported through Amnesty International, but this wasn’t the first time that Jammeh said or did something controversial. In 2007, he claimed to have found an herbal cure for HIV and ordered the execution of any homosexuals found in his country.^[2]

8 Kenya

The people of Kenya are no stranger to witch hunts, but they seem to come and go in spurts. The history of Kenyan witch hunts dates back centuries, but random acts of intense violence occur somewhat randomly.

In May 2008, it was reported that a mob rounded up and burned to death as many as 11 people accused of practicing witchcraft in the western region of Kisii. In total, eight women and three men between 80 to 96 years old were dragged from their houses into the street and individually burned.

The mob then burned down each of the victims’ houses with everything they owned still inside. That particular hunt began after someone found an exercise book at a local school containing the minutes of a so-called “witches’ meeting.” It had an accompanying list of people who were to be bewitched in the near future.^[3]

All of the victims’ families were forced into hiding. This attack was by no means an isolated incident. Kenyans have long suffered under the threat of witch hunts with no indication that it will end anytime soon.

7 India

You might not think India would fall on a list like this one, but certain regions of the country remain deeply enshrouded in a fear of mysticism. From 2001 to 2006, approximately 300 people were rounded up and killed in the northeast state of Assam.

The majority of those rounded up were women, which resulted in an increase in the number of homeless children in the region. The remaining children are often a major issue when it comes to the aftermath of a modern-day witch hunt, but the problem seems to be exacerbated in India.^[4]

Further killings took place throughout the country in various regions, usually resulting in as many as 5 to 35 deaths in each case. A report from 2010 estimated that 150 to 200 women are hunted down and killed each year throughout India. The estimate included accounts between 1995 and 2009. This puts the total number of women slaughtered in India due to a perceived practice of witchcraft during that period at over 2,500.

6 Nepal

A strong belief in witchcraft is common throughout Nepal, which is why hunting people suspected of practicing witchcraft isn’t as rare as it probably should be. The majority of people targeted in these hunts are low-caste women who are rounded up, beaten, tortured, humiliated in a public forum, and often murdered.

When these hunts occur, the families of the victims are often accused and dealt with in much the same way. In one instance in 2010, a woman was captured, beaten, and tortured for two days while she was forced to ingest human excrement until she “confessed” to being a witch.

She was targeted by a mob of around 35 people who showed up at her home and took her away. This kind of practice happens almost regularly to low-caste women throughout the country. But unlike other examples, the victim is often released after she confesses.^[5]

Murders do occur. But in many cases, the victim is released after being tortured for an extended period of time. That isn’t to say that the practice isn’t brutal and needs to be stopped, but the death toll in Nepal is significantly lower than some of the other examples on this list.

5 Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may be one of the richest nations on the planet, but its society still lives in fear of sorcery. The majority of Muslims believe in the practice of sorcery and witchcraft, which may be why the country defines its practice as a legitimate criminal offense.

Not only can someone accuse another person of practicing witchcraft in Saudi Arabia, they can then be tried by the government for committing said crime. If the person is found guilty, the punishment is death.

Reporting on the total number of these cases doesn’t get outside the country often. But several high-profile cases resulted in imprisonment and death at the hands of the Saudi government, which was accused by Human Rights Watch in 2009 of “sanctioning a literal witch hunt by the religious police.”

Numerous cases indicate that the punishment is beheading. In fact, that sentence was carried out as recently as June 19, 2012, on Muree bin Ali bin Issa al-Asiri, a man accused of practicing witchcraft and sorcery in the Najran province of southern Saudi Arabia.^[6]

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Bizarre Witch Burials

4 Indonesia

For 31 years, the people of Indonesia suffered under the rule of Suharto. But that all came to an end in 1998 when the militaristic dictator resigned.

On the surface, Suharto’s resignation was a positive move forward for the country. But his leaving office caused widespread unrest, a severe financial crisis, and for some reason, an intense witch hunt resulting in the deaths of some 400 people. These hunts consisted of a series of brutal killings throughout many parts of the island nation, though many were likely called witch hunts to cover up murders.

In September 2000, a mob in West Java rounded up a 70-year-old woman who was accused of casting spells that made local residents ill. She was decapitated, her eyes were gouged out, and her limbs were torn from her body and tossed into the street.^[7]

The anger and hatred toward purported witches in the country often led to the brutal death and dismemberment of anyone accused of witchcraft. This is why Indonesia’s post-Suharto witch purge is one of the more brutal examples on this list.

3 Papua New Guinea

Interestingly, Papua New Guinea allows a legal practice called “white” magic, which is used for faith healing and other benign practices. In the 1970s, the nation passed a law called the Sorcery Act, which imposed a two-year prison sentence on anyone found engaging in “black” magic. As the country outlawed the negative aspect of using magic, the nation saw a rise in violence and extrajudicial torture committed against alleged practitioners of “black” magic.

As recently as 2013, four women were accused of witchcraft because their familial home was made of wood. All four women were tortured, and one was beheaded. That incident occurred not because the women were practicing magic, but because they were economically better off than their accusers.^[8]

Similar crimes have been committed throughout the country, typically against young women who are tortured and often beaten to death. Fortunately, the country repealed the Sorcery Act in 2013 and defined the killing of accused witches as murder.

2 Cameroon

Fortunately, not all witch hunts end in the brutal deaths of purported practitioners. When it came time for the mob to launch a witch hunt in the city of Buea, Cameroon, in January 2014, the unleashed fury only resulted in property damage.

Residents of the southern Cameroonian town rioted and destroyed the homes and vehicles of several people identified as witches. The rioters claimed that the victims were members of a cult responsible for some recent deaths in the region. Blogger and reporter Mathias Mouende Ngamo said, “16 homes and 10 shops were destroyed. There were also the shells of burned-out cars on the streets.”^[9]

In another incident in the 1970s, a child witchcraft scare spread throughout part of the country which resulted in the rounding up of several children believed to be witches. Fortunately, the children were not terribly harmed. After they were forced to confess, they were “rewarded” with large amounts of meat meant to induce a purifying vomit and were released to their families.

1 Tanzania

Of every example on this list, Tanzania is by far the worst. In the 21st century alone, it’s believed that an estimated 20,000 people have been rounded up and slaughtered for practicing witchcraft.

But these witch hunts aren’t strictly limited to the practice of the dark arts. In addition to denouncing people for witchcraft, Tanzania has targeted and slaughtered homosexuals or people accused of being homosexual.

Between January and June 2017, the Legal and Human Rights Center reported 479 deaths from so-called “mob justice” throughout the country. These deaths included mainly elderly women accused of witchcraft as well as government-sanctioned murders of homosexuals.^[10]

Many murders have been carried out under the direction of local governors, while others were the result of a mob frenzy. Regardless of their reasoning, Tanzania is the deadliest place to live for anyone accused of practicing witchcraft in the 21st century.

Keeping up with the news is hard. So hard, in fact, that we’ve decided to save you the hassle by rounding up the most significant, unusual, or just plain old mind-blowing stories each week.

This week, the phrase “spoke too soon” is the one that probably applies best to the news. You may recall last week’s column opened with us saying how it had been a blissfully dull week, with no major attacks. No sooner had we filed the dang thing than a mass killing in Kashmir threatened to send nuclear-armed India and Pakistan spiraling into war. More on this brewing crisis below, alongside all the other important stuff that happened this week.

10 A Terrorist Attack Pushed India-Pakistan Tensions To Boiling Point

A mountainous region in the Himalayas, Kashmir is a beautiful slice of Asia that also happens to be one of the biggest potential triggers for a nuclear war. Partially administered by both India and Pakistan, and wholly claimed by both, it’s a troubled place where unrest is common, and violence is never far from the surface.

Last Thursday, after this column had been written, that violence came erupting out. A suicide bomber attacked a convoy of India’s security forces, detonating a car bomb that killed 40. The attack was claimed by Pakistani militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed. It was the deadliest attack in Kashmir in decades.

Bad as this was, what comes next could be even worse. India believes Jaish-e-Mohammed is linked to Pakistan’s intelligence services. There’s now a real chance that these two nuclear-armed states could go to war.^[1]

So far, India has only implemented economic sanctions against Pakistan. Still, military options are said to be on the table, and even a limited military strike against Jaish-e-Mohammed could trigger countermeasures and spark a conflagration.

9 16 US States Sued To Stop Trump’s Border Wall

Late last week, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency to redirect federal funds and build his border wall. This week, the fallout from that announcement blanketed the news, in the form of 16 US states suing the White House.^[2]

Trump’s national emergency declaration was always going to be controversial. Controversial on the left because Democrats see the wall as a monument to racism. Controversial on the right because building the wall will eat up a ton of federal funds and involve eminent domain land purchases, all of which smacks of the sort of big government project many Republicans did not sign on for.

Now, the battle moves to the US courts, courtesy of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Virginia, and Michigan. If the decision goes to the Supreme Court, it could set a precedent for the use of executive power for decades to come.

8 Brexit Began To Rip Apart The UK’s Main Political Parties

Ah, Brexit. The gift that keeps on giving like a recurring bout of malaria. With barely a month to go until the UK exits the European Union and no Brexit deal in sight, the tensions in Westminster are starting to reach breaking point.

On Monday, they finally made a crack in the opposition Labour Party. Seven MPs, including former leadership contender Chuka Umunna, split from the party over Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of Brexit and a recent anti-Semitism scandal. They aligned themselves to something called the Independent Group, a brand-new, moderate political entity that didn’t exist last week. One day later, an eighth Labour MP joined them. Shortly after that, three MPs defected from the ruling Conservative Party, saying Theresa May was in thrall to Brexit extremists.

The Independent Group is now the joint fourth-largest force in the UK Parliament, behind the Conservatives, Labour, and the Scottish National Party and equal with the Liberal Democrats.^[3]

In a 650-seat House, 11 doesn’t add up to very much, but it’s what this could mean for the future that’s important. Already, there’s talk of yet more Conservatives defecting. Should it look like Britain is really about to go over the Brexit cliff-edge, the Independent Group might become much bigger.

7 A Wave Of Anti-Semitism Swept France

France is home to the single largest Jewish community outside of Israel and the US. Sadly, there are some who don’t see this as something to be proud of, and their numbers are apparently growing. This week, a wave of anti-Semitic incidents across the country prompted tens of thousands to take to the streets in protest.^[4]

The attacks were the standard litany of hate that unfortunately goes with this territory. In Alsace, a Jewish cemetery was vandalized with swastikas. The German word for “Jew” was spray-painted on a bakery. A synagogue was shot at with an air rifle. More swastikas were painted on pictures of a Holocaust survivor in Paris. A tree planted to commemorate a Jewish man tortured to death was chopped down.

Perhaps most disturbingly, this anti-Semitism seems to have found a home in the yellow vest protest movement. On the weekend, a gang of yellow vests surrounded a prominent Jewish philosopher and peppered him with verbal abuse.

6 A Prominent Actor Was Charged With Faking His Homophobic Attack

So, this was a scandal few of us saw coming. Way back on January 29, Empire star Jussie Smollett was hospitalized, saying he’d been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack that had included a noose being tied around his neck. It was the sort of awful story that’s sadly all too common, only Smollett’s version came with a twist.

This Thursday, Smollett was formally arrested by the Chicago police. The reason? It’s now believed that he orchestrated his own attack for reasons that remain totally unclear.^[5]

It’s said that Smollett knew his two attackers and may have paid them to assault him. On top of that, he’s been charged with sending a threatening letter to the studio where Empire is filmed. Smollett vehemently denies all charges.

5 North Carolina’s 9th District Voter Fraud Case Got Even Bigger

Remember the 2018 midterms? After all the dust settled, the House races were left with a puzzling postscript. North Carolina’s 9th district race remained uncertified, despite the Republican candidate, Mark Harris, winning by 905 votes.

This was because credible allegations of voter fraud began to swirl not long after. Harris, it was alleged, had used a firm to go around various towns and collect absentee ballots by hand. This is already illegal under NC law, but then came accusations that Harris’s operatives had gone further by potentially “misplacing” or agreeing to pick up and then not picking up absentee votes for Democrat Dan McCready. There’s even been talk that Harris’s people may have filled in absentee voter ballots themselves.

On Monday, the executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections laid out the state’s evidence that voter fraud did take place. While far from conclusive, it certainly looks plausible. It was enough that the five members of the election board unanimously ordered a new election on Thursday afternoon.^[6]

4 A Bangladesh Fire Killed Around 80 People

Chawkbazar is a centuries-old district in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, that houses just about everything from residential homes, to shops, to businesses storing propane in super-unsafe conditions. That last item is exactly why you’re reading about it right now. Late Wednesday night, a fire broke out in Chawkbazar. In no time at all, it had killed somewhere in the region of 80 people.^[7]

Buildings in Chawkbazar are built insanely close, with mere inches separating them. It’s this that allowed the fire to spread with such speed. After a minibus caught fire outside a chemical shop, it caused an explosion that set half the district ablaze. By Thursday morning, 78 had been confirmed killed, with many more still missing.

Dhaka is no stranger to devastating fires. A 2010 fire that killed over 100 people was similarly blamed on the storage of dangerous chemicals in residential areas. It’s just a shame that no lessons were learned.

3 Bernie Sanders Unveiled His 2020 Presidential Bid

In the febrile atmosphere of 2016, it briefly looked like both major parties were going to have a populist outsider running as their candidate: Donald Trump for the Republicans and Bernie Sanders for the Democrats.

Clearly, this didn’t happen. Hillary locked down Southern Democrats’ votes and, with a little help from the anti-Bernie DNC, first sealed the nomination and then went down in flames in the election. Ever since, many Democrats have wondered, “Could he have done it? Could Bernie have beaten Trump?”

Well, they may soon have an answer. On Tuesday, the Democratic Socialist from Vermont announced he was running for the Democratic nomination again. Less than 24 hours later, he’d already raised over $5.9 million in donations.^[8]

Sanders is a known quantity with a fervent fan base and amazing fundraising prowess. Should he get the nomination, he could also do well in the Midwest states Trump won in 2016. However, Bernie’s also getting challenged from the left this time, something he definitely didn’t have to worry about in 2016.

2 The Supreme Court Slapped Down Civil Forfeiture

Civil asset forfeiture has long been one of the craziest things that a supposedly pro-individual rights country like the US allows to happen. In short, state and local governments can seize your stuff if they think you’ve committed a crime. In some cases, this has meant states grabbing everything they can get their hands on, even when the crime in question has been on the petty side, or even if the suspect has never been proven guilty.

The basic unfairness of all this still hasn’t gone away, but it’s gotten a little more palatable. This week, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling that civil asset forfeiture was covered by the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause, which prevents governments or corporations issuing disproportionate fines.^[9] From now on, anytime the state seizes your stuff, they will have to go to court to explain why they did so and why it was fair.

Some of the abuses of civil asset forfeiture have been jaw-dropping. The plaintiff in this case had been fined $1,200 for selling $225 of heroin but also had his $42,000 Land Rover seized. The Rover had been bought using his dad’s life insurance policy, not drug money.

1 A Shocking Attack Derailed Nigeria’s Elections

Last Friday, Nigeria’s government made a surprise announcement. They were delaying the country’s elections by one week due to violence. When asked why, they pointed to an attack on a Muslim minority community in Kaduna state earlier in the week.

At first, the attack was reported as having killed scores. By last Friday, the number had climbed to 66. On Tuesday, we got a final body count that was shocking. Over 130 people had been killed in the assault, making it equal in death toll to the horrific 2015 Paris attacks. According to the state governor, the attack had been intended to “wipe out certain communities.”^[10]

Last October, violence in the region led to the deaths of 55 people, mainly from the local Christian communities. This latest attack, which hit two villages at once, was apparently revenge-driven.

If that’s the case, it’s certainly upped the ante. With 130 dead, it seems the region of Kaduna could now be trapped in a cycle of bitter ethnic violence.

Keeping up with the news is hard. So hard, in fact, that we’ve decided to save you the hassle by rounding up the most significant, unusual, or just plain old mind-blowing stories each week.

This week, the main story exploding the news waves seemed to be the terrible, horrible, no good week Donald Trump has been having. The House voted to rebuke him, his Vietnam summit with Kim fell way short of expectations, and Michael Cohen delivered testimony that amounted to several hours of sustained (and possibly deserved) character assassination. But fear not, those who hate politics! There were other stories out there, too. Exactly seven of them, to be precise.

10 The Second Trump-Kim Summit Ended In Failure

“Sometimes you have to walk.” That was Donald Trump’s take on the dramatic damp-squib ending to his second round of talks with North Korea’s Kim. (Can a damp squib be dramatic? Discuss.) Taking place in Vietnam and billed as being the diplomatic event of the year, the talks instead broke down, leaving the entire North Korea peace process in disarray.^[1]

So what happened? How did the success of 2018’s Singapore summit become the failure of Vietnam’s? Well, the simple explanation is that US and DPRK expectations were simply too far apart. The North wanted to give up little in return for a lot, and the US wanted Pyongyang to denuclearize faster than Kim was willing to give on.

This won’t mean a return to the bellicose rhetoric of 2017. Both sides remain committed to the process, despite this huge setback.

9 The House Voted To Block Trump’s Emergency Declaration

And so we continue on with the demolition derby that was Trump’s week. Back home, the Democrat-controlled House was giving him problems, too. You may remember that Trump recently declared a national emergency to fund his controversial border wall. Well, the House has now voted to block that declaration.^[2]

Thirteen Republicans joined forces with every single darn Democrat to deliver the rebuke, a blow for the president. The Senate is now required by law to take up the vote, and signs are that they may follow in the House’s footsteps. Three Republican senators have indicated that they will vote in favor of the rebuke. Only a single additional GOP senator is required to flip to shoot down Trump’s declaration.

If that happens, things will get complicated. Trump can veto the bill, meaning Congress will have to vote again. This time, a two-thirds majority in both chambers would be required to actually halt the declaration. It’s unlikely to happen, but you never know.

8 Cardinal Pell Was Found Guilty Of Abuse

Cardinal Pell was once known as the third most important man in the Vatican. Today, he has a new reputation: as the highest-ranking Catholic priest to ever be convicted of child abuse. On Tuesday, it was revealed that Pell had been found guilty of abusing two young boys in Melbourne in 1996. Cardinal Pell will now appeal the sentence.^[3]

Pell was actually found guilty in December, but a worldwide gag order meant that no media outlets could comment on the verdict until this week, lest they prejudice a separate trial which has since collapsed. However, it’s worth pointing out that some (though not all) experts believe Pell’s appeal has a relatively high chance of succeeding. We’ll know for sure in the next few months.

7 R. Kelly Was Arrested For Abuse

Last Friday, R. Kelly was forced to do something campaigners have been dreaming of for years. He turned himself in to Chicago police and was arrested on charges of sexual abuse. After spending the weekend in a cell, the R&B legend was released under a $1 million bail.^[4]

The allegations against Kelly span back to 1988 and include things that have been brought up in public time and time before. They range from the infamous (the abuse of 14-year-old girls) to the, frankly, ridiculous. In one case, Kelly is alleged to have abused an underage girl who sought out his autograph during his 2008 trial for sexually abusing an underage girl.

There are also vicious accusations of misogyny, including Kelly pleasuring himself in front of a woman and then repeatedly spitting in her face when she refused to give him oral sex. If true, the charges will see Kelly go away for a very long time.

6 Japan Suffered Its Worst Measles Outbreak In A Decade

Wow. Who could have predicted that sparking a panic about the measles vaccine would result in an actual measles outbreak? Well, that’s exactly what is currently happening in Japan. This week, it was revealed that the Asian nation is in the grip of its worst measles outbreak in a decade. Many of the cases can be traced back to a single anti-vaxxer cult, Kyusei Shinkyo.^[5]

In one of those head-slapping moments that would be hilarious if it weren’t so simultaneously tragic, many of those currently affected by the outbreak are people who attended a Kyusei Shinkyo seminar on why they shouldn’t vaccinate. Unlike many other anti-vaxxer groups, though, Kyusei Shinkyo has since apologized and removed misleading testimonies from its website.

Unfortunate as it is, the Japanese outbreak is a stark reminder that peddling nonsense conspiracy theories can harm people out in the real world.

5 Pakistan Shot Down An Indian Jet

Remember last week how we told you about tensions rising between India and Pakistan? This week, the temperature got even hotter. Following Indian attacks in the Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir, Pakistan responded midweek by shooting down two Indian fighter jets. The incident is the worst confrontation between the two nuclear nations in years.^[6]

The current flare-up started when a suicide bomber killed around 40 Indian security personnel. India believes the bomber was working with Pakistani intelligence services, a claim Islamabad denies. India subsequently fired artillery at Pakistan-administered territory, an action Pakistan claims killed six civilians.

And now this. With two fighter jets downed, India may well feel under pressure to respond with even more force. The idea of another India-Pakistan war has the potential to cause huge bloodshed.

4 The UN Told The UK To Hand The Chagos Islands Back To Mauritius

Way back when, as the UK was in the process of ending its colonies in Mauritius, London struck a deal with the local authorities. The deal separated the Chagos Islands from Mauritius proper and kept them under Britain’s control.

This would already be controversial enough, but what happened next really blew the issue up. Britain evicted all the Chagos Islanders from their homeland, dumped them on Mauritius, and refused any right of return. They then handed over one of the islands to the US, which maintains a military base there. The evicted Chagos Islanders, meanwhile, are treated like second-class citizens in their new homes.

This week, the UN ruled that the UK had breached the rights of Chagos Islanders back in 1965. The UK was told—albeit in a nonbinding way—to get the heck off the islands and hand them back over.^[7]

While it seems unlikely London will comply, the ruling is still a blow to Britain’s international standing. It’s also a welcome boost to the Chagos Islanders’ campaign to right this historic injustice.

3 Israeli Politics Split Into Insane New Factions

Although we didn’t cover it at the time, last Wednesday, Benjamin Netanyahu shocked many in Israel by announcing an alliance with a right-wing extremist party for the upcoming election. Barely had the dust settled on that announcement when the main rivals to Bibi’s bid dropped a bombshell of their own. They were now going to run against Netanyahu on a joint ticket to try and lock his extremist new faction out of power.

Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid are polling second and third, currently. Together, they are a hair ahead of Netanyahu. The new alliance is projected to win as many as ten seats more than Netanyahu’s Likud, although it should be noted that Netanyahu often does well in elections when he’s the seeming underdog.

Still, it was a major shakeup of Israeli politics and a clear sign that Netanyahu will go to almost any length to save his political skin. We’ll see what happens now that Israel’s attorney general has announced that Netanyahu is to be indicted on corruption charges.^[8]

2 The UK Edged Closer To A Second Brexit Referendum

Yep, it’s another Brexit story. Yep, you’re probably gonna be seeing a whole lot more of these over the next few weeks. With only a month left until the UK breaks with the EU and no exit deal yet agreed on, things are starting to smack of desperation in London, which may be why the opposition Labour Party finally broke with over two years’ worth of policy on Thursday to announce that they would be backing a second referendum, commonly called a “people’s vote.”^[9]

Clearly, as the opposition party, Labour cannot make a second referendum government policy. But with a potential cliff-edge Brexit nearing, MPs are starting to panic, and anything seems possible. Already, a motion to take the “no deal” concept off the table has been approved, meaning the government could soon find itself in an impossible position.

If a second referendum does take place, polls suggest it will be as close as the last one, which was won by Leave 51.9 percent to 48.1 percent. Labour activists will be hoping that this time, the figures are reversed.

1 Michael Cohen Testified Before Congress

And we’re finally back with Trump’s awful week. Just as things were fizzling with Kim in Vietnam, former advisor Michael Cohen was sitting down before Congress to dish the dirt on the president. Almost everything he said was as incendiary as a stockpile of napalm.

From the beginning, Cohen set out his stall. He called Trump a liar, a cheat, and a racist, before going on to accuse him of having knowledge about Donald Trump Jr.’s attempts to collude with Wikileaks and Russia during the 2016 campaign, alongside knowledge of a controversial Trump Tower project taking place in Moscow during the same.

But by far the biggest bombshell was when Cohen revealed what he claimed was evidence that Trump had directed him to pay adult film actress Stormy Daniels hush money. The hush money is considered to have been a campaign finance violation—one Cohen has already been charged with—and could implicate the president in illegal activity.^[10]

Of course, Cohen has lied to Congress before, so there’s no reason to assume he’s definitely telling the truth now. Still, if there really is “no smoke without fire,” Trump is currently walking at the center of a swirl of noxious black fumes that could soon engulf his presidency.

Life under Mao Tse–tung was strange and brutish. While he was chairman of China, he introduced some policies that didn’t work well and that eventually killed an estimated 45–75 million of his own people. Under the feverish sway of Mao’s cult of personality, people in China got a little weird—and there are some lesser-known stories from Mao’s rule that you’d never imagine.

10 Mao Sent Mangoes To People, And They Went Crazy

In 1968, a Pakistani foreign minister gave Mao a gift: a cart full of mangoes. To the minister, this was probably nothing more than a simple gesture. But in China, it sparked a wave of complete insanity.

Mao gave the mangoes to a few people on his propaganda team, and they reacted as if Mao had just dragged an angel down from Heaven and dropped him on their doorstep. The People’s Daily wrote an article saying that “tears swelled up in their eyes” with the joy of getting a mango and that they “cried out enthusiastically and sang with wild abandonment.”

A textile factory put their mango in a shrine and had workers pass by and pay respects to it when they entered. When the mango went bad, they made a replica of the mango and kept it in the shrine so that no worker would have to start their day without giving thanks for the mango.

9 A Man Was Executed For Comparing Mangoes To Sweet Potatoes

As most Chinese people had never seen a mango before, the experience was life-changing for every single person honored enough to behold this juicy tropical fruit. That is, every person except for one.

A dentist got the chance to see a mango in person and somehow was not impressed. He denounced the mango as being similar to a sweet potato, which made the people furious.

The dentist was arrested on charges of “counterrevolutionary speech.” He was sent to prison and, shortly after, executed for the crime of saying mangoes kind of look like sweet potatoes. Nobody ever dared to scoff at mangoes again.

8 Stamp Collecting Was Made A Crime

Mao tried to put an end to every hint of bourgeoisie in his country. Sometimes, this meant putting an end to corrupt businesses and wealthy landowners. Other times, it meant tearing up children’s stamp collections.

Reportedly, Mao hated stamps. He viewed collecting them as a bourgeois pastime and, when the Cultural Revolution began, banned his people from keeping stamps in any collected form.

The ruling stayed in place until Mao died, and it took until he was gone before Chinese hobbyists could openly show off the stamps they’d slipped off envelopes. Ironically, the effect of Mao’s ban is that stamps from the Cultural Revolution are now among the most prized and sought after in the world.

7 Students Were Encouraged To Beat Their Teachers

The Communist Party of China encouraged its people to “clear away the evil habits of the old society” and tear down the old ideas of their forefathers. Although there’s no proof they ever explicitly said that meant “beat your teacher to death,” that’s definitely how people took it.

In 1966, students in at least 91 separate schools dragged their teachers into the streets and beat them until they decried their corrupt ways. In some instances, the students splashed ink on the teachers’ clothes and hung boards on them with their names crossed out with red X’s. Then the students beat these teachers with nail-spiked clubs and burned them with scalding water, often until they died.

By the end, 18 educators had been killed by their students and many more had committed suicide over the humiliation. Meanwhile, Mao sat back and ordered his security not to interfere with what the students were doing. He didn’t let the army try to restore order for a full two years.

6 The Great Wall Was Torn Down For Building Materials

During the 1970s, the Chinese government realized that it didn’t need to waste so much money on building materials for housing. After all, the longest wall in the world was just sitting there taking up space. With another chance to destroy an old relic, they encouraged people to start dismantling the Great Wall for the spare bricks.

Villagers living near the Great Wall tore parts of it down and then worked the bricks into their homes. Even the government tore down whole sections and used the parts to build a dam.

The Great Wall eventually became a heritage site, and the area was protected. To this day, though, there are still a few houses with great chunks of history holding up their walls.

5 Tigers Were Declared An Enemy Of The People And Nearly Eradicated

In 1959, Mao got fed up with tigers. After farmers in China were attacked by animals, Mao announced that tigers—along with wolves and leopards—were “enemies of the people” and should be destroyed.

The Communist Party sparked a number of “anti-pest” campaigns that encouraged people to seek out and kill predatory animals. In just a few years, the Chinese had slaughtered nearly 75 percent of the world’s population of South Asian tigers and brought these animals to the brink of extinction.

4 The Red Guard Wanted To Make People Go On Red Traffic Lights

The Red Guard was on a constant lookout for anything that might be counterrevolutionary. In September 1966, some of them noticed something insidious—people were stopping their cars when they saw red traffic lights.

Since red was the color of the party, the group decided that stopping on red and driving on green was “obstructing the progress of revolution,” and they marched to demand an end to it. From then on, the men declared, they would force people to drive on red.

Fortunately, the Red Guard was stopped by China’s Premier Chou En-lai before they could put their plan into motion. Premier Chou sat the men down and assured them that stopping on red symbolized how the party “guarantees the safety of all revolutionary activities.” An onslaught of riots and traffic accidents was just barely avoided.

3 People Were Arrested For Owning Ties

According to writer Liang Heng, you could get into trouble in Mao’s time just for dressing well. Liang recounts a story in which his father was nearly sent to prison because he was found in possession of a tie.

Members of the Red Guard had broken into Liang’s home and were searching through his father’s things when they found a tie. A Red Guard held up the tie and announced that it was “capitalist.” When Liang’s father was found to own a suit and cuff links, he was denounced as a “stinking intellectual,” and then his clothes and books were gathered together and burned.

Liang’s father escaped imprisonment by agreeing to state that burning his possessions was “a revolutionary action” and a good thing. Still, he didn’t emerge unscathed. The Red Guards took his radio and a month’s salary as payment before leaving his home.

2 People Cannibalized Each Other To Show Their Dedication To The Party

In Mao’s China, cannibalism was a major problem. According to some reports, some of the students who killed their principals ate the dead bodies as a way of celebrating their triumph over counterrevolutionaries. A government-run cafeteria also allegedly displayed the bodies of traitors on meathooks and served their flesh for lunch.

The worst cases were in Guangxi Province. In the late 1960s, at least 137 people were killed and eaten in that province alone. These bodies were usually shared with others, suggesting that there were likely thousands of people who committed cannibalism.

While there’s almost no doubt that starvation was part of the reason this happened, the people who did it didn’t see themselves as desperate. The acts of cannibalism were touted as a way of showing just how feverishly dedicated a person was to the cause of the party. If you were willing to eat China’s enemies, they figured, no one could say you were taking the cause lightly.

1 Mao Tried To Gift 10 Million Women To The US

In 1973, in Mao’s later years, he sat down with Henry Kissinger, hoping to negotiate a bilateral trade agreement with the United States. At first, Kissinger reportedly tried to keep the conversation on serious topics, but Mao’s mind was on other things.

Mao told Kissinger that China was a “very poor country” and had little to offer in a trade agreement—except, that is, for women. He offered to send 10 million women to the US, saying that he had them in excess and that they only caused problems.

As Mao riffed on about how women were ruining the country, one of his party members warned him that, if his words got out, “it would incur the public wrath.” The dying Mao, though, was getting old and tired. He didn’t seem too worried.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” the chairman said between heavy coughs. “God has sent me an invitation.”

Death comes to us all. No matter how rich, powerful, or well-loved you might be, no one lives forever. When it’s a celebrity that’s died, the news tends to travel fast—so fast in fact that it precedes the actual death. Sometimes news outlets jump the gun, sometimes rumours are spread online as clickbait, and sometimes people just remember something that never happened. Whatever the explanation, here are the most notable cases of people who were (literally) gone before their time.

Top 10 Horrifying Premature Burials

10 Tom Kenny

You may not recognise the name or even the face of Tom Kenny, but after five minutes you’d definitely recognise his voice. The voice actor is best known as the voice of Spongebob Squarepants, but has also done work for other children’s shows on Cartoon Network, including The Batman (The Penguin), Adventure Time (Ice King), and PowerPuff Girls (the Narrator).

It’s perhaps because of his far-reaching impact on many a millenial’s childhood that his death had such an impact when it was announced as part of a clickbait hoax in 2012. Rest assured, Kenny is alive and well, currently doing voice work for background characters in Rick and Morty, most notably Squanchy.^[1]

9 Eddie Murphy

Eddie Murphy has been killed off not once, but twice—once in a snowboarding accident in 2013, and then in a car crash in 2017—although some estimates have claimed that Murphy has been falsely declared dead as many as eight times.

Some believe that Murphy was conflated with his brother, Charlie, who passed away from leukaemia in April 2017. The 2013 rumours may have come from desperate fans hoping that Paul Walker’s accident—which happened around the same time—was also a hoax. One thing’s for sure—when Eddie Murphy does leave us, no one will believe a word of it.^[2]

8 Pope John Paul II

The undisputed king of falsely being declared dead, however, is Pope John Paul II, who was prematurely axed off not once, not twice, but three times before his actual death in 2005. The most recent example happened two days beforehand—FOX got their wires crossed and believed the terminally ill Pope was already dead.

The first time was the result of poor wording and even poorer timing. After a botched assassination attempt in 1981, a report from CNN for some reasons kept referring to the Pope in the past tense, leading some to believe the assassination had been a success. You’d think that CNN would have learned their lesson after that, but in 2002 a great number of their obituaries were prematurely leaked to their website, including one of His Holiness, claiming he had died in 2001. The Queen may have two birthdays, but only the Pope can die four times. Speaking of which…^[3]

7 Queen Elizabeth II

Just after Christmas 2016, rumours of a media blackout in the United Kingdom snowballed on Twitter, somehow getting twisted into reports that the Queen herself had died. A fake BBC News account tweeted a picture ‘confirming’ the rumour, which only added fuel to the fire.

To be fair, the Queen had been ill over the Christmas period, and this was back in 2016 when celebrities were dropping like flies, so it is possible that people believed the Grim Reaper was going for the final boss. While the Queen remains in good health, celebrating her 93rd birthday and her 72nd wedding anniversary this year, reports that George Michael and Carrie Fisher had passed away earlier that same week sadly turned out to be true.^[4]

6 Bill Bailey

Sometimes, a fake death is just a classic case of mistaken identity. Appearing on the Graham Norton show in 2018, British comedian Bill Bailey claims to have woken up one morning to discover that BBC had pronounced him dead overnight, even going so far at to claim that “tributes were pouring in” to celebrate his life and work.

It turns out that someone called Bill Bailey, a DJ from Kentucky, really had died the night before, but someone at the BBC obviously didn’t feel like doing a whole of research.

Top 10 Bizarre Celebrity Conspiracy Theories

5 Marilyn Manson

Another case of mistaken identity, albeit one Manson brought upon himself. In 2017, cult leader and mass murderer Charles Manson, from whom Manson (real name Brian Warner) takes his stage name, died in prison. Since Manson was imprisoned for life in 1971, its very possible that he has a little bit less name recognition than Warner, whose fans were too busy mourning him online to notice that we weren’t all talking about the same person. Or that Warner was still alive.^[5]

4 Mark Twain

Of course, faulty reports of celebrity deaths long predate the internet. Mark Twain, who is one such example, was widely reported to be on his deathbed just under thirteen years before he actually was. In reality, it was Twain’s cousin that was seriously ill, which newspapers then spun into a scoop that claimed Twain was dying.

Twain telegrammed a friend to let him know he was alright, signing off with one of his most famous (and often misquoted) quips: “The report of my illness grew out of his illness. The report of my death was an exaggeration.” This story even has a happy ending. According to Twain, his cousin made a full recovery.^[6]

3 Barbara Bush

When there’s an announcement that someone is dying however, sometimes they really are dying. That said, there is still such a thing as jumping the gun. When the Bush family released a press statement announcing that former first lady Barbara Bush was on her deathbed, CNN (of course) drafted an obituary titled “DO NOT PUBLISH” in very big letters. Naturally, someone published it, and Barbara Bush was reported dead a whole two days too early. Fortunately, the obituary had chosen to remember her as a “witty, gregarious matriarch… that propelled two [relatives] to the White House.” Not everyone’s obituary ends up being quite so warm…^[7]

2 Marcus Garvey

While Barbara Bush may have had the chance to read her own obituary, at least it wasn’t what killed her in the first place. In 1940, noted political activist Marcus Garvey suffered from a stroke which left him paralysed, causing some newspapers to report that he had died.

His obituary was not quite as flattering as Bush’s, claiming that he had died “alone and unpopular”, causing Garvey to have another stroke that finished him off for real.^[8]

1 Nelson Mandela

By far the strangest and most famous of deaths that never actually happened was that of Nelson Mandela. When the news broke that he had actually died in 2013, many were baffled, convinced he had already died in prison years prior, with some even going so far as to cite seeing his funeral on TV.

This has given rise to the so-called Mandela Effect, a testament to the frailty of human memory, where people remember things that have never happened. Or at least, not the way they think. Its perfectly possible that they are remembering the deaths of other black activists like Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X, or possibly conflated Mandela’s death with his release in 1990. But, as we all know, the only rational explanation is that we all died in 2012 and traveled to a parallel world where the Monopoly guy doesn’t have a monocle.^[9]

Top 10 Mandela Effects (Movie And TV Edition!)

The world is full of derelict buildings, many of which are in a truly dismal state of disrepair and give off an eerie, desolate vibe. Most of us will pass structures of this sort in the town or city we live in on a regular basis without even giving them a second thought, let alone wondering what events led them into their current dilapidated state.

Of course, lots of these buildings have been abandoned for fairly mundane reasons, but in some cases, the stories that lie behind them are darker and sadder. The following are ten derelict buildings with stories that ensure nobody will want to use them in the future.

10 Chateau Miranda

This neo-Gothic building in Celles, Belgium, was also known as Chateau de Noisy and was constructed between 1886 and 1907. The original plan was for the wealthy Liederkerke-De Beaufort family to use it as their summer home. However, the building was claimed for use as a base by the Nazis during World War II, and at one time, a number of German soldiers were living in it.^[1] There is nothing particularly creepy about this, apart from the inherent creepiness of Nazis, but the chateau became one of the places where the Battle of the Bulge was fought, which meant that a number of men died there.

If the thought of the spirits of all of those dead soldiers roaming around a Gothic-looking building in the middle of nowhere isn’t unsettling enough, this chateau went on to be used as a place for sick children to stay after the war ended. It was referred to as a “holiday camp,” although it does not seem like a place that many kids would want to spend their holidays at. Inevitably, not all of the children who stayed there recovered from their illnesses, so the chateau became even more associated with death. Sadly, Chateau Miranda was demolished in 2017, meaning all of its ghosts had to find somewhere else to haunt.

9 Sanzhi UFO Houses

These futuristic pod-shaped buildings in New Tapei, Taiwan, were proof that modernism offers us no defense against creepiness. The Sanzhi UFO Houses looked like something we might expect to see in a 1950s sci-fi movie. Work on building them began in 1978, with the intention being for the site to be a resort once the houses were complete.^[2] The idea was that officers in the US military who had been posted to the area would use the finished development, but nobody ever got to take a vacation there because work on it was scrapped two years after it began following a series of mysterious deaths among the construction crew.

It has been reported that some of the workers died in car accidents, while others committed suicide, but the precise reason for the seemingly cursed nature of the development has been a source of debate ever since. Some believe that the decision to split a sculpture of a Chinese dragon that was situated near the gates led to a curse, while others think that it was built on a site haunted by Dutch soldiers. The buildings were demolished at the end of the 2000s.

8 Willard Asylum

An abandoned asylum is always likely to have a fairly eerie atmosphere, but the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane takes it to a whole other level. Situated in Willard, New York, it was originally built in the 1860s to be a place of safety for the mentally ill at a time when “treatments” such as imprisoning them in cells or leaving them chained up in poorhouses were common. The idea came from Dr. Sylvester D. Willard, and the asylum was organized in a way that was typical for the period, with men and women kept apart, but with a cinema, gym, and bowling alley among the facilities, there was clearly an effort being made to make its residents happy.^[3]

Despite the attempts to make Willard Asylum a more progressive place for treating the mentally ill, the presence of a graveyard full of thousands of unnamed markers for those who died there is grim reminder that it was still essentially a prison. However, what really gave Willard Asylum its unsettling reputation are the suitcases that were discovered in an attic after the facility was shut down in 1995. Numbering more than 400, these suitcases contained personal items that had been brought to the asylum by new inmates. They provide a melancholy glimpse into the lives of its residents, many of whom never left and are among those buried anonymously in its cemetery. Among the possessions found in these suitcases were everything from children’s toys and books to family photos.

7 The Murder House

The Scottish city of Dundee has known its fair share of violent crime, but the events that took place at its infamous “murder house” have earned a place in local folklore. The large three-story house is located in the wealthy Roseangle area of the city, and it is a place that most of us would be happy to live in—but it remained derelict for decades. It was the home of a retired doctor named Alexander Wood and his wife Dorothy, both of whom were in their late seventies when their lives were brutally ended in May 1980. The frail elderly couple were attacked by an intruder, who beat them to death using a hammer. The scene of the killings was so gruesome that Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Cameron, who was in charge of investigating the crime, said at the time that the degree of violence involved was “not normal.”^[4]

The killer turned out to be a local man named Henry John Gallagher, who committed a further two horrific killings in Kent before being captured. Gallagher was judged to be insane and went to Broadmoor Hospital instead of prison, which seems reasonable, given that the scene he left behind at the house in Roseangle was described as looking like an abattoir. Meanwhile, the murder house became a bleak feature of the landscape in the center of Dundee and part of the Dark Dundee visitor tour. As of August 2018, plans had been made to turn the murder house into a bar and restaurant.

6 Fort Douaumont

This fort is situated not far from Verdun, France, and it was designed to prevent the Germans from invading that region in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War. It did not actually come into play until World War I, but by this time, the French had abandoned the use of fixed fortifications as a military defense, and the small garrison left at the fort were easily overpowered by the Germans when the latter staged a surprise strike at the start of the Battle of Verdun.

The French army eventually regained control of it in October 1916, with the public in France demanding that all energy be put into reclaiming a building they saw as a symbol of their nation as a whole. The battle to win it back was bloody and involved intensive shell attacks, which hit the supplies of ammunition and grenades that were kept in the center of the fort. Some 800 Germans were killed by the mix of toxic smoke and explosions.

With the fort under assault, the dead could not be buried outside and had to be put into one of the fort galleries and sealed in.^[5] Some of the skeletal remains are now buried in the fort cemetery and ossuary, but others remain forever walled in within the building itself.

5 St. Gerard’s Hospital

Abandoned hospitals have the same potential as asylums for creepiness, and St. Gerard’s certainly fit that particular bill. It was located in Birmingham in the UK and was built by a local charity called the Father Hudson Society as a facility for poor children who were suffering from tuberculosis and other illnesses caused by poverty. It was originally constructed back in the 1890s and remained in use for almost a century before closing its doors for the last time in 1988. It lingered for roughly 30 years before it was finally knocked down.

What made St. Gerard’s such an unnerving place to walk around was the fact that the contents of the building weren’t removed. These included beds, wheelchairs, hospital equipment, syringes coated in blood, X-rays and medical charts of children who were treated there, and the toys and coloring books that they amused themselves with.^[6] Most of these items had been damaged by weather conditions over the years since the hospital shut down but remained intact, making the presence of those who once worked and received treatment there feel almost tangible for anyone exploring the derelict building.

4 Church Of The Nine Ghosts

The actual name of this 14th-century church is St. George’s Church, and it is in Lukova in the Czech Republic, where it was consecrated in 1352. From the very beginning, it developed an association with darkness, as it was ravaged by fires on more occasions than anyone would expect of a church. However, despite this spate of strange events, the church was continually rebuilt and repaired until one final disaster in 1968 proved the last straw for residents of the village. During a funeral service that year, the roof of the church caved in, which led many local people to believe that it was haunted, so the church was finally abandoned.^[7]

That’s creepy enough, but it wasn’t the end of the story. After it stopped being used as a church, the inside of the building started to fall into disrepair, and Jacob Hadrava, an artist from the local area, decided to save it from being knocked down by turning it into an art installation. He created nine shrouded figures made of plaster that sit in the pews—hence the nickname “Church of the Nine Ghosts.” Hadrava called his finished work My Mind, and it has become a popular tourist attraction among the sort of people who listen to Joy Division on their summer holidays. More ghostly figures have since been added to the original nine.

3 Hulme Hippodrome

This abandoned theater is located in Manchester, England, and opened its doors in 1901, staging music hall performances for years before being given the new name of the Second Manchester Repertory Theater in the 1940s. It later went on to play host to legendary artists like Nina Simone, but after a period when it was used as a venue for bingo during the 1970s, it was closed down and went on to become a source of fascination for many people living in Manchester.

While any derelict theater has an element of eeriness about it because it was once full of life, laughter, and people, the connection Hulme Hippodrome has with the strange Gilbert Deya Ministries is what really makes it creepy. This organization bought the building and used it to hold church meetings, at which Deya allegedly told infertile couples that he could provide them with what he called “miracle babies.” Deya and his church were investigated by the BBC in 2004 over suspicions that these babies were being kidnapped from families in Nairobi, Kenya. The investigation found that the babies that he claimed had been born to couples in the UK did not have the same DNA as the people who were supposed to be their parents, and Deya was eventually sent back to Kenya to face charges of child trafficking in 2017.^[8]

2 Hirta

This entry is actually several buildings that make up a settlement on the Scottish island of Hirta. Hirta is part of the St Kilda archipelago and is one of the most remote places in the whole of the UK—as well as being empty since the residents left in 1930. At one time, Hirta was the place on St Kilda where the majority of people lived, with the residents of the island growing potatoes and barley, catching fish, and eating eggs and meat from seabirds.

Life in this detached location was surely never easy, but the story behind the final abandonment of it is very bleak. The settlement had survived a number of tough experiences, including an epidemic of smallpox in 1727, but the winter of 1929 proved to be so brutal that it led to multiple deaths, decimating the community and leaving only 36 remaining. Grief and desperation led those who had survived the harsh winter weather to plead with the government for a move away from the island to the mainland. Although the island was evacuated almost 90 years ago, buildings such as houses and the school hall are still there and are now sometimes visited by tourists.^[9]

1 Red Dress Manor

The actual name of this abandoned farmhouse in Powys, Wales, is Calcott Hall, and it was originally built back in 1725. The last person to live there was a woman named Ellen Jones, who died during the 1970s. Everything in the house has remained exactly as she left it since her death, making it appear as if she is still alive and has simply gone out. The house still has the food that she left in the fridge, as well as paperwork with her personal details on it and photographs from different parts of her life.

The odd nickname that the building has been given by local people stems from the presence of a red dress that belonged to Jones and that she left hanging over a door, where it has remained for over 40 years. Just in case there is any doubt that she was the owner of this dress, there is also a framed photograph of her wearing it hanging on one of the walls.^[10] Little is known about Jones, her life, or what she died of, but it would be hard to walk around her home without feeling her ghost haunting the place.

I am a freelance writer based in Dundee who has previously written sketches and jokes for BBC radio shows. I also make short films as a member of Wardlaw Films.

People love movies. There is almost nothing better than watching an epic tale unfolding on the big screen while you sit on the edge of your seat munching on popcorn. But behind the scenes there are often terrible sacrifices made in order to get the movie out into the world. People die, are injured or left with mental scarring (these include actors and stunt doubles). And what’s more, sometimes the directors simply don’t care as they are too focused on executing their vision. On this list are 10 examples of things that went terribly wrong during filming.

Top 10 Movie Sets Abandoned After Filming Wrapped Up

10 Stuntman attacked by shark

Many directors are embarrassed by their earliest works. Samuel Fuller directed White Dog and The Big Red One but wished that he had never been involved with Shark! which was released in 1969. So much so that he even requested for his name to be removed from the credits. However, Fuller wasn’t simply embarrassed because the film was bad. The movie, starring Burt Reynolds, also cost the life of Mexican stuntman, Jose Marco.

Marco filmed a scene with a bull shark attacking him. While he was struggling with the bull shark, a great white shark broke through the netting that was set up in the open waters and also attacked Marco, ripping open his stomach. Sadly, Marco passed away a few hours later, after crew members succeeded in scaring off the great white. Disgustingly, the producers of the film changed the name from its earlier moniker, Caine, to Shark! and proceeded to release it. Even worse, they publicized the stuntman’s death to promote the film.^[1]

9 Stunt pilot killed in plane crash

The Flight of the Phoenix, starring Jimmy Stewart, was not a terrible movie. In fact, it was nominated for two Academy Awards in 1965. However, it was a dismal failure at the box-office despite taking its plot from a best-selling novel and having an all-star cast.

But bombing at the box-office was the least of the producers’ troubles. Director producer Robert Aldrich and 61-year-old stunt pilot Paul Mantz wanted to re-shoot a scene where Mantz lands the “Phoenix” in the dunes. As the cameras were rolling, Mantz landed but hit one of the dunes too hard. This caused the fuselage to break and the plane’s nose to pitch forward at a sharp angle, killing Mantz instantly. Bobby Rose, a 64-year-old stuntman flying with Mantz broke his shoulder and pelvis. The cameras caught the entire horrific accident and the video can still be viewed online.^[2]

8 Light fixture nearly kills actor

Working on a true horror movie set is sure to rattle some nerves, no matter how seasoned the actors and crew. Director of the first Annabelle movie, John Leonetti, claimed that there were two supernatural events that happened on set during filming.

One of these events saw three claw marks drawn through the dust on the window of the living room set they were shooting from. It terrified those on site, considering the demon in the movie has three talons.

The second incident was a lot scarier, though. While shooting in an apartment building near Koreatown, the demon was brought into the shot. As the actor playing the janitor of the building headed into the shot as well, a massive light fixture promptly fell on his head. This incident became even creepier after it was revealed in the script that the demon kills the janitor in the hallway where the light fixture used to hang.^[3]

7 Boat sinks during filming

The making of Jaws is just about as legendary as the movie itself. There are lots of jaw-dropping tidbits surrounding the film, including Stephen King’s son claiming that an extra in the movie was an unidentified murder victim found in Provincetown in 1974. Also, one of the scariest scenes in the entire film, involving a severed head, was shot in a swimming pool.

There was drama on set as well, as might be expected when filming in the ocean. What was meant to be a 55-day shoot turned into 159 days. Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw were feuding, and people were getting restless. To make matters worse, while filming the final scene, the boat used in the movie had its hull ruptured and started sinking with the actors still on board. Director, Steven Spielberg, panicked and shouted: “get the actors off the boat.” Another boat was sent in to rescue the sinking Orca and fortunately no one was injured in the incident.^[4]

6 Actors suffer near mental breakdown

While James Cameron is well-known for movies like Titanic and Avatar, he also directed the 1989 film The Abyss. This movie has gained the reputation of being one of the toughest to shoot because most of it was filmed under water.

The whole experience was very taxing on the cast and crew alike. The actors spent up to 12 hours a day on set which was 40 feet underwater in an abandoned nuclear reactor. The crew went up to 50 feet underwater and had to decompress regularly in a specialised decompression chamber. Everyone had to relieve themselves in their wetsuits which caused algae to bloom and extra chlorine to be required. Eventually star Ed Harris’ hair turned white because of the chlorine and he once broke down crying while driving home due to the sheer stress of filming. His co-star Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio had an emotional and physical breakdown on set and even walked off once.

Cameron himself nearly died on set after he ran out of oxygen underwater and had to be rescued by a safety diver.^[5]

10 Ridiculous Myths We Believe Because Of Movies

5 Stunt double paralyzed after stunt gone wrong

David Holmes was Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double in the Harry Potty films. He and Radcliffe had worked together on 6 of the films when tragedy struck. During filming at the Warner Brothers Studios for the next instalment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Holmes was practising a ‘jerk back’ stunt. He was thrown into a wall at one point and pulled back by a high-strength wire. Things went awry though, and he ended up with a broken neck and was instantly paralyzed.

He spent the next six months in hospital and was told he would be paralyzed from the chest down for the rest of his life. Next up was months of rehab. Daniel Radcliffe assisted Holmes with his medical bills by hosting a charity auction dinner and the two remain friends. Holmes went on to start his own production company with two new friends who are also paralyzed.^[6]

4 Camera assistant dies during freight train accident

Midnight Rider only ever had one scene made. And that scene was edited from footage depicting a horrific train accident that killed crew member Sarah Jones and injured 7 others.

The movie was supposed to be a biopic about rock star Gregg Allman and would have starred William Hurt. The raw footage from that tragic incident shows several crew members and actor Wyatt Russell struggling to get off a set of train tracks, while also trying to move props on the movie set out of the way. The next minute a freight train is upon them. William Hurt later told a news agency that he had felt very unsettled when they arrived at the tracks and he asked the assistant director, Hillary Schwartz, whether they would be safe there. She said they would be safe, but these words would come back to haunt her later. She was fined $5,000 and sentenced to 10 years’ probation for her role in the accident. It was also revealed later that the filmmakers had been denied permission to film at the train tracks by the company who owned the railway. The movie’s director, Randall Miller, received a two-year prison sentence and 8 years’ probation for trespassing and involuntary manslaughter.^[7]

3 Stuntman left with brain damage after head-on collision

During the filming of The Hangover Part II, stuntman Scott McLean was performing a stunt that he had rehearsed over and over beforehand. He was inside a moving truck and leaning out of the window for the shot, when the car driving towards the truck skidded and hit him.

McLean was rushed to hospital where he was placed in a medically induced coma to help him recover. He stayed in the coma for two months and unfortunately retained brain damage. McLean had to move to a rehabilitation clinic and went on to sue Warner Bros film studios for financial damages. The former stuntman now suffers from ongoing seizures as well as speech and physical impediments.^[8]

2 70 injuries by wild animals on set

In 1974, shooting began for Roar, a movie about a family being attacked by jungle animals. Tippi Hedren and her husband Noel Marshall couldn’t get anyone to rent them forty lions for their script requirements, so they started their own ‘zoo’.

The couple started off raising a lion cub named Neil until neighbors complained. They then moved to a ranch outside Los Angeles where they added tigers, more lions and elephants to their animal family. They used this site to shoot their movie. What should have been nine months of shooting dragged out to become 5 years and included several injuries inflicted by the wild animals. The cinematographer had his scalp lifted by a massive lion, resulting in around 220 stitches. Hedren tried to ride an elephant and was kicked off for her efforts, resulting in a broken leg and scalp wounds. Her daughter, Melanie Griffith, almost lost an eye after being attacked and needed 50 stitches to her face.

As if the constant injuries weren’t bad enough, the ranch even flooded at one point, resulting in the death of three lions. And, adding insult to injury, the film performed very poorly after its release in 1981.^[9]

1 Radioactive set causes actors to develop cancer

The film, The Conqueror, starring John Wayne and Susan Hayward, was released in 1956. Unfortunately, this film too performed badly at the box office and is often ranked as one of the worst movies of all time.

The controversy surrounding the locations where the film was shot far overshadowed its poor performance, however. The makers of the film thought it wise to shoot the exterior scenes a mere 137 miles away from the Nevada National Security Site, regardless of the nuclear weapons test that had taken place near there. The federal government assured the public at the time that the tests would pose no hazard to anyone’s health.

They were badly mistaken. By the end of 1980, 91 of the 220 cast and crew that had worked on the film had developed cancer and 46 had died from the disease. Director Dick Powell developed terminal kidney cancer and committed suicide in 1963. John Wayne developed lung cancer and eventually died of stomach cancer in 1979. Susan Hayward died of brain cancer in 1975. While many argue that some of the cancers cannot be linked to the location’s hazards, experts say that the sheer number of cancer cases in people who worked on the film cannot be a coincidence.^[10]

10 Influential Movies With Dark And Surprising Origins

It’s terrifying to think that there are still people out there in the world who refuse to believe that the Holocaust was real. In the face of so much evidence, it takes an incredible combination of hatred and will to convince yourself that the deaths of at least six million people were faked.

Despite what a small fringe believes, though, the Holocaust really happened—and we can prove it. Even discounting the stories of the million Jewish survivors who witnessed it firsthand, there is a wealth of physical evidence that the Holocaust happened just the way history records—and that the details were not exaggerated.

10 The Jewish Population Dropped By A Third

In 1939, there were 16,600,000 Jews in the world. When the war ended, that number had dropped by a third. Even after seven years of new lives being born, there were a mere 11,000,000 left alive.

The Nazis took a deep interest in these numbers. They monitored the number of Jews still living in Europe, working to get the number down to zero. We have proof of that. In 1943, Heinrich Himmler commissioned a report called “The Final Solution of the European Jewish Problem”—one of the Nazi documents that most clearly shows their approval of Jewish genocide.

This was a statistical report, listing the number of Jews still left in Europe. It notes how the numbers are dropping and takes a twisted pride in Germany’s role in getting the Jewish population down.

“Altogether,” the report boasts, “European Jewry must have been reduced by almost half since 1933, that is to say, during the first decade of the development of the power of National Socialism.”

9 The Gas Chambers

The gas chambers used to exterminate Jews were left behind, but they were not in the same condition they’d once been in. The Germans tried to destroy them, dynamiting some in the hopes of erasing the evidence.

It didn’t work. The chambers were still intact, along with the doors that were lined with airproof seals around the edges. There’s no question that these airtight seals were meant to keep poisonous gases from leaking out of the chambers. In the work order sent by the Auschwitz Construction Office, the doors are specifically described as “gas-tight.”

We’ve also found holes in chamber rooftops. These holes perfectly match survivors’ descriptions of how the Germans would pour Zyklon B crystals into the chambers. Zyklon B also left a residue that proves it really was used. The insides of the chambers are lined with hydrogen cyanide—a key component of Zyklon B.

8 Catalogs Of Cremated Bodies

In a letter dated June 28, 1943, Auschwitz administrator Karl Bischoff wrote up a tally of all the cremations his men had performed on a single day. In just 24 hours in one camp, his men had cremated 4,756 Jewish people.

It seems like an impossibly high number, but the people who burned the bodies insist it is accurate. One, Henryk Tauber, reported that “on average, we incinerated 2,500 bodies a day.”

They used cremation equipment that was only meant to burn one body at a time, which would have made those numbers impossible. The Nazis, however, ignored basic decency to get through the work more quickly.

“Generally speaking, we burned four or five bodies at a time in one muffle,” Tauber explained, “but sometimes we charged a greater number of bodies. It was possible to charge up to eight.”

7 Photographs Of Open-Air Pits

Sometimes, the Nazis killed too many people to cremate in a single day. On those days, the Nazis took the dead out to a large burning pit to dispose of the bodies.

We have pictures of these burning pits—and it took an incredible act of bravery to get them out of the camp. The Nazis suppressed or destroyed most photographic evidence of the camps. The pictures of the open-air pits are among the only pictures that survived. These were taken by a prisoner who smuggled the film out of the camp in a tube of toothpaste.

We also have aerial photos of the burning pits letting out plumes of smoke. These were taken in 1944 by Allied reconnaissance planes that happened to photograph Auschwitz, not fully aware of what they were seeing. They caught, on camera, smoke emanating from one of the burning pits as Jewish lives were brought to an end.

6 The Reinhard Death Camps

“Operation Reinhard” was the code name given to three death camps in southern Poland: Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor. While some Auschwitz prisoners were put into lives of forced labor, these camps were used purely for extermination.

Mass graves have been found in all three. Inside the graves are the cremated remains of the dead and a few bones that had been crushed into tiny shards.

In 1943, a telegram reporting on the Reinhard death camps was intercepted by the Allies. It was coded, referring to the camps by their first letters, and was ignored by the men who found it. It took until 2001 before anyone realized what it was.

The telegram was a death tally of Jews in the camps. Belzec: 434,508 dead. Sobibor: 101,370 dead. Treblinka: 713,555 dead.

By the end of the war, an estimated two million people died in these camps alone.

5 The Gas Vans

In some death camps, Jews were exterminated in gas vans. These were large black vehicles with massive, airtight cargo compartments in the back. Thousands of Jews were forced into those compartments, and there they died.

The exhaust pipes were curved, turning under the car and up through holes in the floor. When the ignition was sparked, the carbon monoxide of the exhaust would fill up the compartment, killing everyone inside.

Several German officers left behind letters about the vans, most complaining about the way the vans were built. One, Dr. August Becker, wrote that he “ordered that during application of gas all the men were to be kept as far away from the vans as possible” to ensure their safety.

Another suggested moving the exhaust “so that the gas is fed from the top downwards” to keep the vehicles from rusting. In another letter from an SS officer to the Reich Security Office, the officer complained that he didn’t have enough gas vans to kill everyone he was expected to kill. “A transport of Jews, which has to be treated in a special way, arrives weekly,” he complained. “The three S-vans which are there are not sufficient for that purpose.”

4 Anne Frank’s Diary

Some Holocaust deniers believe that Anne Frank’s diary was faked. They claim it is a forgery, a scheme by her father to get rich. One denier called it “just one more fraud in a whole series of frauds perpetrated in support of the ‘Holocaust’ legend and the saga of the Six Million.”

Most people just ignore the Holocaust deniers, but the Dutch government actually tested their claim. The government analyzed Anne Frank’s original diary and proved in several ways that it was legitimately written by Frank herself.

For one thing, the handwriting was consistent throughout the diary and with other examples of her handwriting. According to the report, the diary entries also had characteristics that fit the way young girls tend to write.

The materials were also proven to have been purchased before the end of the war. The paper, ink, and glue used in the diary were all created before the early 1940s. Different types of glue and ink were introduced in 1950, and the materials that made up Frank’s diary were extremely rare after the war ended.

The government also found that Anne Frank had passed the time by making a second draft of her diary. Fittingly for a teenage girl, she’d wanted to adapt her life into a detective story. So she rewrote her own life, using the family name “Robin” instead of her own.

3 Witnesses To The Babi Yar Massacre

The Babi Yar Massacre was one of the worst mass killings of the Holocaust. On a single day in September 1941, 33,771 Jews were massacred in a ravine in Ukraine. There were few survivors. But some faked their deaths and escaped to tell the story.

However, the victims aren’t the only witnesses who confirmed that the massacre really happened. Some of the killers did, too, and their versions of the story perfectly corroborate the ones told by the survivors.

A German truck driver named Hofer said that the victims were forced to lie down on top of the bodies of the dead. “A police marksman came along and shot each Jew in the neck with a submachine gun,” he described. “It went on this way uninterruptedly, with no distinction being made between men, women, and children. The children were kept with their mothers and shot with them.”

Kurt Werner, one of the executioners in the massacre, described the same scene. “I had to spend the whole morning down in the ravine,” he said. “For some of the time, I had to shoot continuously.”

2 The Einsatzgruppen Reports

When the German Army marched into the Soviet Union, a group called Einsatzgruppen followed behind them. These were Nazi death squads who sought out and massacred Jews, usually gunning them down. The death squads murdered at least one million people before they were turned back, leaving a trail of mass graves in their wake.

The Einsatzgruppen sent weekly reports back to Berlin with updates of their massacres—and 194 of the 195 reports have survived to today. The reports list the dates, numbers, and ethnicities of the people killed by the Einsatzgruppen. Most of their victims were Jewish.

“I consider the Jewish action more or less terminated as far as Einsatzkommando 3 is concerned,” one report reads. “I am of the view that the sterilization program of the male worker Jews should be started immediately so that reproduction is prevented. If, despite sterilization, a Jewess becomes pregnant, she will be liquidated.”

1 Hitler Knew About It

There is no question that Hitler knew and approved of what was going on. To keep his records clean, Hitler never wrote and signed an official order. But there is more than enough evidence to show that he was behind it.

In 1922, Hitler told Josef Hell, “Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews.” Likewise, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary, “Regarding the Jewish question, the Fuhrer is determined to clean the table. [ . . .  ] The world war has come, therefore the annihilation of the Jews has to be its inevitable consequence.”

In 1923, Goebbels recorded in his diary that he had informed Hitler that mobs were holding demonstrations in which they burned down synagogues. Goebbels recorded Hitler’s response: “He orders: Let the demonstrations go on. Withdraw the police. The Jews must for once feel the people’s fury.”

Hitler, worried about the public reaction to the Holocaust, seems to have given orders verbally rather than writing them down. So we don’t have his Holocaust order in writing.

Nazi soldiers confirm, though, that the orders came from Hitler himself. SS officer Adolf Eichmann wrote in his memoir that Reinhard Heydrich told Eichmann in 1942 “that the Fuhrer had ordered the physical destruction of the Jewish opponent.”

Despite all his caution, Hitler’s name is on one damning piece of paper. The “Report to the Fuhrer on Combating Partisans” announced that 363,211 Jews had been executed. On it are marked the words: “Shown to the Fuhrer.”