Generations of children have enjoyed circuses; the death-defying acrobatics, wild animals, tight-rope-walkers, and clowns team up to entertain, intrigue, and dazzle the young crowd.

However, the life of a circus performer is not all successful stunts and cheering children. As these ten circus accidents demonstrate, life in the ring has seen its fair share of death and destruction as well.

We begin our list with a well-known tragedy—the execution of an elephant. On September 12, 1916, Mary trampled her handler, Red Eldridge, to death. There are various accounts of what led to the attack—from Eldridge prodding Mary with a stick and infuriating her to speculation that she was simply bored.

While Eldridge’s death was tragic and gruesome, Mary’s fate might be even more so. The people of Kingsport, Tennessee, demanded retribution for Eldridge’s death, so it was decided that Mary would hang for her crime. On September 13, a crowd of 2,500 people (mostly children) gathered to watch Mary’s execution. Mary was hung from the neck by an industrial crane. However, the chain around her neck snapped, and she slammed to the ground, breaking her hip. A heavier-gauge chain was used to hang Mary for a second time, and she swung for half an hour before being dumped in a hastily dug grave.

Cirque du Soleil has always been known for its extremely high levels of artistry and safety. Before 2013, the circus hadn’t suffered a fatal on-stage accident in its long history. Unfortunately, that record was broken by a terrible tragedy that occurred in Las Vegas during a performance of its Vegas staple, “Ka.”

Sarah Guyard-Guillot was a 31-year-old aerialist performing in the final battle scene of the show. She was wearing a motorized safety harness, but she ascended too quickly at one point and struck a catwalk above her. The cable jumped from the pulley wheel of the harness and was cut by a sharp edge. Guyard-Guillot fell more than 90 feet (27.4 meters) into an open pit below the stage while onlookers watched in confusion. She died of her injuries en route to the hospital. A new safety system was installed to lift performers more gradually, and the act eventually returned to the stage after a hiatus of 18 months. It’s still performed five nights a week at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Massarti (Thomas MacCarte) was a bold, but rash, one-armed lion tamer.  On January 3, 1872, he was performing in Bolton, England with Manders’ Menagerie. For unknown reasons, a lion named Tyrant attacked him—and the three other lions in the act quickly joined in. Massarti was nearly scalped when a lion bit his head and was torn apart in front of several hundred witnesses.

The trapeze is undoubtedly one of the most dangerous circus acts around and requires a good deal of strength and flexibility. All the training in the world, however, cannot prevent a mechanical failure. In 1872, Fred Lazelle and Billy Millson, two famous trapeze artists, crashed to the ground when their trapeze mechanism failed. George North, a gymnast, was unfortunately beneath the trapeze when it fell. All three men were injured; Millson likely broke his ribs, and North suffered internal injuries.

Another tragedy to befall circus workers comes from a dark chapter in American history.  On June 14, 1920, the James Robinson Circus arrived in Duluth, Minnesota. Nineteen-year-old Irene Tusken and eighteen-year-old James Sullivan watched African-American circus workers load the circus wagons. Later that night, Tusken claimed that six of those circus employees had held her at gunpoint and raped her. The police quickly arrested six men in connection with the rape.

Shortly afterwards, a mob of between five thousand and ten thousand people formed, broke into the jail, and after a mock trial, declared Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie guilty of the rape. The mob beat the men and dragged them to a light pole on the corner of First Street and Second Avenue East, where they were lynched.

The Flying Wallendas were an old circus family that consisted of Karl, his wife Helen Kreis, his brother Herman, and numerous other family members.  Karl Wallenda pioneered an act called the Seven-Person Chair Pyramid, in which seven people balanced on tightropes (and a chair) thirty-two feet in the air without the use of safety nets.

The Wallendas were undoubtedly excellent acrobats and daredevils; but in 1962, their act went horribly wrong. The lead man faltered, and three people crashed to the ground. Karl Wallenda’s son-in-law, Richard Faughnan, and Wallenda’s nephew, Dieter Schepp, were both killed. Wallenda’s adopted son, Mario, was paralyzed from the waist down.

Although there were no human fatalities, the Cleveland Circus Fire of 1942 was a horrific event that caused the deaths of over one hundred circus animals. A fire of unknown origin started near the menagerie tent of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Spectators and circus workers easily escaped the flames, but the fire spread so quickly, it became impossible to save all of the animals.

Nine cages—filled with lions, tigers, and zebras—burst into flames. Some animals were able to escape the blaze, but twenty-six others were so badly burned they were put down by policemen with machine guns.

In 1903, two separate Wallace Brothers Circus trains crashed into each other. The first train had slowed to a halt on the railway tracks, and although the conductor of the second train saw the warning light, the brakes failed, and the two trains collided. In all, 30 circus workers were killed and another 27 injured. Several animals also died in the crash, including an Arabian horse, three camels, one great dane, and an elephant named Maud.

On June 22, 1918, the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus was traveling via railroad to Hammond, Indiana. The train had stopped for the night, and many of the circus performers were asleep in the wooden train cars. At 4:00 am, a Michigan Central Railroad troop train slammed into the circus train at thirty-five miles per hour. The driver of the troop train, Alonzo Sargent, had fallen asleep at the wheel and so did not see the warnings posted about the stopped circus train.

As a result, 86 people died, and another 127 were injured.

This tragic event is arguably the most well-known on our list due to the scale of the fire and the extensive loss of life. On July 6, 1944, a small fire began in the southwest sidewall of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey big top circus tent. Because the tent was water-proofed with paraffin wax and gasoline, the fire spread rapidly.

Understandably, the crowd of 7,000 spectators panicked and rushed towards the exits. But two of these exits were blocked by chutes used to bring in circus animals—and in the ensuing stampede, circus goers were trampled, crushed, and asphyxiated under the weight of fallen people. As the flames spread, other spectators simply burned to death or else died as a result of smoke inhalation. In a panic, some people tried leaping from the bleachers to avoid the fire; but this attempt to escape actually killed more people than it saved.

In the end, an estimated 169 people died, and more than seven hundred were injured.

On May 16, 1966, the Chinese Communist Party released a document expressing concern that bourgeoisie and counterrevolutionaries were trying to hijack the party. The May 16 Notification, as it became known, would spark the Cultural Revolution, an all-encompassing political movement that sought to purge the country from anti-Maoist opposition and thought.

Millions of people were arrested and terrorized by the Red Guards, the Cultural Revolution’s paramilitary youth organization. Those arrested were forced to endure brutal “struggle sessions,” where they were tortured and humiliated in public.

By the time the revolution ended in 1976, possibly as many as three million people had been killed. The violence and persecution during the revolution was catastrophic, and the decade arguably ranks as one of China’s darkest periods.

10 The Execution Of Fang Zhongmou

Fang Zhongmou, a Communist Party member and veteran of the People’s Liberation Army, felt proud when her two older children got caught up in the furor of the Cultural Revolution and became Red Guards. Fang’s enthusiasm, however, began to wane after her daughter got sick and died following a trip she made to see a Mao Tse-tung rally in Beijing.

Her husband was then accused a few months later of being a capitalist roader, a vague Maoist slur which referred to somebody who was working to betray the ideals of the Communist Party and lead China to a capitalist system.

Due to a past accusation of her father being a Nationalist spy, it wasn’t long before Fang was suspected of being a dissident as well. Like her “capitalist-roader” husband, she was put in detention multiple times and subjected to struggle sessions by the authorities. While home one day in 1970, Fang angered her husband and her son Zhang Hongbing after criticizing Mao Tse-tung.

Fang’s family duly reported her to the authorities, and she set the family portrait of Mao on fire in retaliation. She was then taken away by a soldier but not before Hongbing beat her on orders from his father. For the crime of “attacking Chairman Mao Tse-tung,” Fang was executed by firing squad on April 11, 1970. Neither Hongbing nor his father attended the execution.

In the years following his mother’s death, Hongbing realized what a terrible thing he and his father had done. With the help of his uncle Feng Meikai, Hongbing was able to influence his province’s legal system to clear his mother’s name in 1980. He has since become a lawyer, active in raising awareness of the Cultural Revolution’s victims and fighting to have his mother’s grave turned into a memorial.

9 The Paralysis Of Deng Pufang

From ordinary peasants to high-ranking party members, nobody in China was truly safe during the Cultural Revolution. Not even Deng Xiaoping, the high-ranking leader best remembered for his post-Mao capitalist reforms in China in the 1980s, was safe from the revolution’s purges.

In 1967, while serving as the Communist Party’s general secretary, Deng was denounced as a capitalist roader and removed from his position. He then spent the next two years under house arrest in Beijing, forbidden to leave or see his children.

While the worst thing that most of his children suffered was being forced to work in the countryside, Deng’s oldest son, Pufang, became paralyzed after an encounter with the Red Guards. In 1968, a group of Red Guards captured Pufang on the campus of Beijing University and tortured him for the sole reason of being his father’s son.

After clubbing him, the Red Guards locked a dazed Pufang in a fourth-story room. Pufang has never been able to remember what happened next. Either his torturers pushed him out an open window or he attempted suicide by jumping out the window himself.

Fortunately, Pufang survived the fall. But he did break his back and become paralyzed. Since the Dengs were political pariahs, Pufang was denied the treatment he needed. By the time some specialists finally examined him in 1974, Pufang was already permanently paralyzed.

While still bound to a wheelchair today, Pufang has worked tirelessly the past few decades for the rights of the handicapped in China. In 2003, he was awarded the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights for his humanitarian efforts.

8 The Murder Of Bian Zhongyun

One of the earliest victims of the Cultural Revolution was Bian Zhongyun, a 50-year-old vice principal at the prestigious Beijing Normal University Girls High School. In June 1966, some of the school’s students began to criticize school officials and organize revolutionary meetings.

Bian’s college degree and bourgeois background made her a natural target for the revolutionaries, although many of them were ironically from privileged families themselves. Over the next two months, Bian was repeatedly harassed by her students and even beaten during a meeting.

On August 4 of that summer, Bian was tortured and warned not to come to school the next day. But she decided to come in that morning anyway. It was a courageous decision that would cost Bian her life.

First, her teenage students beat and kicked her. Then they whacked her with nailed-filled table legs. The attack was so terrible that Bian soiled herself and was knocked unconscious before dying of her wounds. Nobody was ever punished for her murder, and even today, the perpetrators have yet to step forward.

In January 2014, Song Binbin, a famous Red Guard and one of Bian’s students at the time she was killed, made a public apology for her death. Although Song claimed that she had no direct part in Bian’s beating, she felt guilty for not being able to stop it.

Some critics, however, felt the apology was insincere and that Song had a larger role than she was willing to admit. Bian’s husband, Wang Jingyao, was also not impressed with the apology. In one interview, he said that Song was a “bad person,” although he believed that the Communist Party and Mao Tse-tung were also responsible.

7 The Down To The Countryside Movement

The Down to the Countryside Movement was a massive relocation program that ultimately sent over 17 million young urban Chinese into rural areas across the country between 1968 and 1980. While some of these “sent-down youth” left the cities voluntarily, the vast majority were coerced against their will.

Due to a variety of factors, including urban unemployment and the Cultural Revolution’s disruption of the education system, Mao Tse-tung proclaimed in 1968 that it was “very necessary for the educated youth to go to the countryside and undergo reeducation by the poor peasants.”

Ideally, the relocation program would cultivate the sent-down youth’s commitment to party ideology and foster economic growth in underdeveloped areas. The young urbanites, fresh from high school, university, and even elementary school, were forced to endure backbreaking labor jobs and the extreme poverty common in the countryside at the time. Although some of the youth saw the policy as a great opportunity for adventure or patriotism, others resented the harsh work and poor living conditions and yearned to return home.

Most of the sent-down youth did eventually return home, but the many years they spent in the countryside remained lost. They’ve become known as a lost generation, an immense group of people who were denied the chance to finish school and maximize their potential. As one Beijing history professor put it, “From the perspective of a historian, from the perspective of the entire nation’s development, this period must of course be negated.”

6 The Ping-Pong Spies

Rong Guotuan, Fu Qifang, and Jiang Yongning were three of the biggest names in Chinese ping-pong during the 1950s and 1960s. Rong was especially popular, and he was considered a national hero for being the first Chinese to win the World Table Tennis Championships in 1959. Despite playing for the Chinese, all three men had originally come from Hong Kong, which at that time was controlled by the British.

As foreigners, the three ping-pong greats were deemed untrustworthy by their countrymen during the Cultural Revolution, and they were all accused of being spies in 1968. Fu was subjected to struggle sessions and beatings by his own teammates, and he eventually committed suicide on April 16 of that year.

Jiang would hang himself a month later. His hobby of reading newspapers, along with a childhood picture he had of himself wearing a Japanese flag during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, was enough to convince the authorities that Jiang was a Japanese spy.

Given the humiliating accusations against him, Rong decided to follow in Fu’s and Jiang’s footsteps. Early in the morning of June 20, Rong wrapped a rope around the branch of an elm tree and hanged himself. In his pants pocket, Rong left a note that pleaded for his innocence.

“I am not a spy,” he wrote, “Please do not suspect me. I have let you down. I treasure my reputation more than my own life.” The National Sports Commission remained unconvinced, however, insisting that the three men were operating a Hong Kong spy network.

5 The Death Of Lao She

Lao She, the pen name of the Manchu writer Shu Qingchun, is widely regarded as one of the greatest authors of modern Chinese literature. His 1937 novel Rickshaw Boy, the tragic story of a poor rickshaw puller in Beijing, is so popular that there’s a statue of the main character on the city’s Wangfujing Street. Such was the admiration for the “people’s artist,” as Lao She was nicknamed, that Chou En-lai, China’s first premier, asked him in 1949 to come back to China after he had moved to New York three years earlier.

On August 23, 1966, as the Cultural Revolution began to gain steam, Lao She and 20 other writers were transported to Beijing’s Temple of Confucius, where a mob of 150 teenage girls beat them with bamboo sticks and theater props in a brutal struggle session. Later that night, after the writers were taken to the city’s Culture Bureau offices, Lao She was beaten for hours without end after he refused to wear a placard that said he was a counterrevolutionary. Finally, around midnight, the mob stopped and Lao She was allowed to go home.

The next day, after earlier leaving his house in the morning, Lao She’s body was found drowned in a lake. It’s believed that the humiliation Lao She suffered during his struggle session drove him to kill himself, although his wife Hu Jieqing suspected that he was murdered.

The exact circumstances surrounding Lao She’s struggle session are shrouded in mystery. It’s uncertain who organized the session and whether Lao She attended voluntarily or against his will. If Lao She did go freely, he might not have known what the unidentified organizers—possibly a trio of younger writers who disliked him—were plotting.

4 The Dao County Massacre

In summer 1967, a rumor began to spread around Hunan Province’s Dao County that there was going to be an invasion of mainland China by Taiwan. The Kuomintang, Taiwan’s ruling party and the former rulers of China from 1928 until 1949, was allegedly going to cooperate with antirevolutionaries to take back the mainland.

The antirevolutionaries were also planning to conduct a massive purge in the county, wiping out all the members of the Communist Party and the peasant leaders in the local government. The invasion was a completely groundless rumor, but the county government’s confirmation that it was true set off a massacre that claimed the lives of over 4,500 people in only two months.

Many of the victims were members of the Five Black Categories, a group that the Communists identified as landlords, rich farmers, counterrevolutionaries, bad influencers, and rightists. Some of the victims were killed by armed militias in their own homes, while others were given a mock trial and then killed by mobs.

Victims were variously shot, decapitated, buried alive, and in some instances, blown up with explosives. The violence got so out of hand that it spread to nearby counties, eventually resulting in another 4,000 deaths.

When all was said and done, over 14,000 people were thought to have participated in the massacre in Dao County. By the 1980s, 52 of the participants had been arrested and given prison sentences, but the vast majority were never punished.

3 The Cleansing The Class Ranks Campaign

To “cleanse the class ranks” of counterrevolutionaries and capitalists, the Communist Party operated revolutionary committees nationwide to root out its perceived enemies. From 1968 until 1971, the committees launched a campaign of terror across the country. One area especially hit hard was Inner Mongolia, where an alleged secret Mongolian separatist party was said to be carrying out counterrevolutionary activities. Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Mongolians, were arrested, maimed, or tortured. Another 22,900 people were killed.

Other provinces, such as Hebei and Zhejiang, also experienced huge purges. As part of a crackdown on an alleged Kuomintang spy ring, 84,000 people were arrested in Hebei. Over 2,900 suspects are recorded as having died from injuries they received from being tortured. In Yunnan, as estimated by the province’s Cleansing the Class Ranks Office, almost 7,000 people suffered “death from enforced suicide.”

The Cleansing the Class Ranks Campaign began to fizzle after only a year in 1969, although it lasted in some areas until 1971. The large-scale arrests and executions eventually unnerved Mao Tse-tung, who feared that the purges had gone too far and could hurt his public image.

2 Project 571

During the 1960s, the great general Lin Biao was one of Mao Tse-tung’s most trusted men. He was vice chairman of the Communist Party and Mao’s designated successor. While Lin survived the early purges of the Cultural Revolution unscathed, Mao became increasingly worried about his influence in the party. By 1971, Lin and his supporters had fallen out of favor with the Maoists, and Lin found himself isolated from the party leadership.

On September 13, 1971, Lin, his wife, and his son Liguo boarded a plane and tried to flee to the Soviet Union. The plane’s fuel was low, and the Lins were in such a hurry that they didn’t bother to bring a copilot or navigator with them. As government officials followed the plane on radar, it passed over Mongolia and then crashed. There were no survivors, and while the nine corpses that were aboard were scorched, autopsies conducted by the Soviet Union were later able to identify the remains of the Lins.

In the days before the crash, the Chinese government had uncovered a conspiracy by Lin Biao to launch a coup. The plot, code-named Project 571, also intended to assassinate Mao Tse-tung. According to the party’s account, the Lins attempted to escape China after the coup failed. Their plane crashed, however, after running into technical difficulties.

Despite what the Communist Party maintains, there is still a great deal of controversy over Project 571. Critics believe that it was Lin Liguo, not his father, who was probably the head of the conspiracy. In fact, Lin Biao might have been entirely innocent.

The cause of the plane crash has also been disputed. Some skeptics have suggested that the plane was sabotaged or shot down. Strangely, the plane’s pilot Pan Jingyin was posthumously given the honorary title of “Revolutionary Martyr.”

1 Cannibalism In Guangxi Province

According to the research of Zheng Yi, a Chinese dissident and writer, hundreds or possibly thousands of people were cannibalized in the province of Guangxi during the Cultural Revolution. During his time as a Red Guard in Guangxi, Zheng heard stories about the cannibalism, but he never witnessed any incidents himself. In the mid-1980s, Zheng returned to Guangxi to see if the stories had any truth to them. Shockingly, he found and interviewed many participants, and few of them spoke with any remorse or fear of reprisal.

Zheng found that the participants ate their victims not out of starvation but as a commitment to political ideology. Simply killing the revolution’s enemies wasn’t enough. They believed it was necessary to eat and completely destroy them.

Participants ate brains, feet, livers, hearts, and even genitals. They held human flesh barbecues and banquets with their friends and families. In Wuxuan County, where the cannibalism was most prevalent, victims would be stalked by crowds and then pounced upon. Some of the victims were cut and skinned while they were still alive.

In one incident in 1968, a man was beaten on the head, castrated, and then skinned and cut open alive by a mob. Children and elderly people also took part in the cannibalism. One old woman was infamous for cutting out and eating victims’ eyeballs. In another incident, a female teacher was killed by her students and barbecued at their school.

The incidents of cannibalism in Guangxi remained unknown outside of China until Zheng left the country and publicized the episode in his book Scarlet Memorial in 1993. The Chinese government has banned Zheng’s book, and even today, officials are reluctant to talk about what happened in Guangxi.

Tristan Shaw is an American blogger interested in crime, literature, and history. His first two books, Mexico’s Unsolved Mysteries and 20 Unsolved Mysteries of Japan, are now available on Amazon for Kindle.

The first 100 years or so of the United States’ existence was filled with travesties like the Civil War and the enormous slave trade which flourished in the South. In addition, manifest destiny and the inherent racism involved with the “white man’s burden” led to a number of horrible massacres of the Native American population. Some are well-known, like the Wounded Knee Massacre, but there are other terrible examples that we shouldn’t forget.

10 Sand Creek Massacre

At Sand Creek in the Colorado territory in 1864, the Cheyenne village of around 800 was supposed to be protected territory. Chief Black Kettle had brokered a deal with a nearby US Army fort for his people’s safety, but this proved to be an outright lie.

Colonel John Chivington had decided that winning battles against local Native American tribes was the best way to become a territorial delegate to Congress. When spring 1864 proved fruitless for battle, he used a 700-volunteer militia to burn Native American villages.

On November 29, just one day after Black Kettle’s deal, the Colorado Volunteers attacked Sand Creek. Nearly all the Cheyenne men were out hunting, leaving the women, children, and elders with no one to protect them. Between 100 and 400 Native Americans were slaughtered.

Although Chivington was denounced by much of the country, he was never formally charged with anything.

9 Camp Grant Massacre

Shortly after the start of President Ulysses S. Grant’s “Peace Policy” toward Native Americans, the Camp Grant Massacre occurred in southern Arizona on April 30, 1871. The local Apache had recently agreed to live at Camp Grant via an order by Lieutenant Royal E. Whitman, who also pledged to provide the tribe with food.

Unfortunately, public opinion turned against the military in Arizona, declaring them unable to protect the territory’s citizens. A handful of Americans, some Mexicans, and some rival Native American tribesmen sneaked up on the peaceful village in the middle of the night.

Most of those killed were women and children because the men were out hunting for food. The perpetrators of the massacre had used unfounded claims of Apache depredations to justify murder. Although 104 men were charged with murder, all were acquitted at trial.

8 1860 Wiyot Massacre

In an act of genocide on a small tribe, the Wiyot Massacre took place on February 26, 1860. (Smaller attacks on the Wiyot tribe took place later that week.)

For at least 1,000 years, the tribe had lived off the northern coast of California on what is now called Indian Island. The peaceful Wiyot had just completed their annual world renewal ceremony, marking the start of their new year.

The men were out gathering supplies when a small group of white men crossed Humboldt Bay and slaughtered women, children, and the elderly. From 60 to 200 people died.

The local sheriff lied, citing revenge for cattle rustling as the reason. In reality, a local militia wished to be federally recognized as a state militia to receive money from the government. The militia leader believed that massacring local tribes would accomplish that goal, but it didn’t work.

7 Bridge Gulch Massacre

The Bridge Gulch Massacre against the Wintu tribe of northern California took place on April 23, 1852. Shortly before the attack, a man named John Anderson was killed, with his riderless mule returning to a nearby corral. Nearly 70 men set out after the perpetrators, who were reportedly members of the Wintu tribe, though they were of a different band than the ones who were brutally murdered.

Surrounding a part of the small valley known as Bridge Gulch, the men attacked early in the morning, shooting nearly every man, woman, and child they saw. Over 150 Native Americans were killed, and only two small girls survived. They were taken back to the town and “adopted” by white parents.

6 Cypress Hills Massacre

One of the driving forces behind the creation of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Cypress Hills Massacre took place in 1873 in what is now Saskatchewan. People of the First Nations had occupied the territory for thousands of years. Meanwhile, Montana fur traders had recently set up trading posts in the area, with tensions rising as the traders’ stocks began to dwindle.

Eventually, some disgruntled wolf hunters arrived, tired from tracking another Native American tribe who were supposedly horse thieves. When another horse went missing, the Assiniboine tribe was blamed.

The drunken Americans went to take one of the tribe’s horses as payment, but a handful of the Assiniboine, drunk as well, challenged them to a fight. The Americans slaughtered the Assiniboine, killing at least 20 of them.

Canadian officials tried in vain to prosecute those responsible, managing to capture three of them while they were still in Canada. But they were acquitted due to a lack of evidence.

5 Three Knolls Massacre

By 1865, the Yana tribe’s population had dwindled to fewer than 100 in northern California around Lassen Peak. After the murders of several nearby white people during a raid, hunters tracked the culprits to Three Knolls, where the Native Americans slept.

Determined to rid the area of any remaining natives, the settlers attacked, killing dozens of Native Americans. Only a handful escaped.

A Yana tribesman named Ishi was present at the massacre as a small child, and he and his family eventually hid in some nearby mountains for almost 40 years. 1n 1911, he emerged as a frail, elderly man—the last of his people—to tell his fantastical story.

4 Marias Massacre

The deadliest massacre of Native Americans in Montana’s history was a mistake. Colonel Eugene Baker had been sent by the government to “pacify” a rebellious band of the Blackfeet tribe.

Eventually, Baker’s men tracked the tribe to a village along the Marias River. On January 23, 1870, the men surrounded the village and prepared to attack.

But a scout recognized some of the painted designs on the lodges and reported to Baker that this was the wrong band. Baker replied, “That makes no difference, one band or another of them; they are all [Blackfeet] and we will attack them.”

Most of the Native American men were out hunting, so the majority of the 173 massacred were women, children, and the elderly. When Baker discovered that the survivors had smallpox, he abandoned them in the wilderness without food or shelter, increasing the death toll by 140.

3 Yontocket Massacre

The Tolowa people laid claim to territories in northwestern California and southern Oregon that were continuously encroached upon by white settlers. By 1853, a “war of extermination” had been going on for a while, with settlers forming makeshift militias and slaughtering any Native Americans they encountered.

In the fall of that year, the Tolowa and other tribes came together to pray at Yontocket, the spiritual center of their universe, and to perform the world renewal dance. Unknown to them, a group of white people, led by J.M. Peters, was slowly creeping upon the camp.

Surrounding the Tolowa, the men began firing, indiscriminately slaughtering everyone in sight. Peters, who lost no men during the massacre, reportedly said that “scarcely an Indian was left alive.” By the end of the violence, hundreds of people had been killed.

2 Clear Lake Massacre

An island in Clear Lake, California, was renamed Bloody Island after the massacre of the indigenous Pomo tribe there in 1850. Thanks to severe mistreatment, including rape and murder, at the hands of white men who had taken various members of the tribe as slaves, the Pomo people attacked, killing two men and escaping to a nearby lake.

Captain Nathaniel Lyon, a soldier in the US Cavalry, and other men set off into the woods to find the offending tribe. The men discovered the hidden camp a short time later.

After failing to successfully reach the tribe, which had taken refuge on an island in the lake, the soldiers built a handful of boats, loaded them with cannons, and attacked. From 100 to 400 Native Americans were killed.

A local newspaper originally declared the massacre to be tantamount to state-sponsored genocide but reversed course four days later, calling it a “greatly exaggerated” story.

1 Bear River Massacre

Perhaps the deadliest massacre of Native Americans in US history, the Bear River Massacre has remained in obscurity largely because it occurred during the Civil War. The Northern Shoshone called present-day southeastern Idaho home, and it was there that they were attacked.

Mormon settlers had been progressively taking more land from the Native Americans, appropriating nearly all of the arable territory. Striking back at those stealing their land, the Shoshone soon saw themselves in the crosshairs of Colonel Patrick Connor and 200 California Volunteers, who vowed to take no prisoners.

At daybreak on January 29, 1863, the soldiers attacked, brutally killing nearly 250 Native Americans. They raped any women who hadn’t been killed, used axes to crush the skulls of the wounded, and set fire to all the lodges.

The legend of Pocahontas and explorer John Smith is cherished as one of the most touching love stories in American history. The problem is that none of it is true. The real story of Pocahontas is a story of massacres, rapes, and genocides, full of some of the darkest moments in American history.

10 Pocahontas’s Father Committed Genocide

When John Smith first arrived in America, he landed at Chesapeake Bay. However, the Chesapeake tribe, who had given the bay its name, was nowhere to be found. Instead, Smith met Pocahontas’s father, Chief Powhatan.

Powhatan led a confederacy of 30 tribes and 15,000 people that spanned across the area of modern Virginia. He was an extremely powerful man who was capable of terrible things.

A year before Smith had arrived, Powhatan’s priests had prophesied that a nation would arise from Chesapeake Bay that would “dissolve and give end to his empire.” At that time, only a small tribe of 300 to 400 peaceful people lived around Chesapeake Bay.

Powhatan assumed that the prophecy was a warning about them. So he and his 30 tribes rounded up every man, woman, and child in the Chesapeake tribe and systematically murdered them.

9 Pocahontas And John Smith Weren’t In Love

When Pocahontas met John Smith, she was 11 years old and John Smith was 28. There was no romance between them. That was a fictional tale that grew from a story Smith told about Pocahontas saving his life.

Powhatan was worried about the Europeans encroaching on his territory. So his brother, Opechancanough, captured Smith and brought him to the chief. There, Powhatan put Smith’s head on a block and prepared to beat his brains in. Smith was saved when Pocahontas threw herself into harm’s way and pleaded with her father to let Smith go.

The story was later rewritten into a romance, but it was nothing more than sympathy. Some historians have even suggested that Smith may have made up the story to take advantage of Pocahontas’s popularity with the English.

8 John Smith And Powhatan Threatened To Kill Each Other

Smith arrived with a group of English gentlemen who weren’t used to working—and some who flat-out refused to do so. The English settlers literally wouldn’t plant a crop to save their own lives. As hard as Smith tried to get them to work, the group started to starve.

Smith’s only option was to barter with Powhatan, but Powhatan refused. He pretended he didn’t have any food to share, hoping to starve Smith and his men out of the country. In the end, Smith got Powhatan to cooperate by threatening his life.

“The weapons I have can keep me from want: yet steal, or wrong you, I will not,” Smith told Powhatan, “unless you force me.”

Powhatan didn’t take the threat lightly. He planned a surprise attack to kill Smith in retaliation and only gave up the plan because Pocahontas warned the settlers before Powhatan could strike.

7 John Ratcliffe Was Flayed And Burned Alive

In the Disney film Pocahontas, John Ratcliffe is depicted as a greedy villain. But the real Ratcliffe was a well-liked, generous man. After Smith was injured in an accidental explosion and had to return to England, Ratcliffe was given command—and he paid a terrible cost for the responsibility.

With Smith gone, Powhatan stopped sharing crops with the settlers, once again hoping to starve them out. The settlers blamed Ratcliffe and accused him of keeping a secret hoard of food for himself.

When Ratcliffe finally convinced Powhatan to share his corn, Ratcliffe thought he’d saved his people. Instead, he and the men who went to pick up the corn were ambushed by tribal warriors. The warriors killed every man except for Ratcliffe, who was stripped naked, tied to a tree, and slowly burned and flayed alive.

6 Pocahontas Was Kidnapped And Raped

The settlers and the tribes broke into an all-out war. People died and did terrible things on both sides—until Pocahontas was kidnapped.

A European called Captain Argall captured Pocahontas, hoping that he could trade the chief’s daughter for prisoners and weapons. Argall killed her husband, Kocoum, and tried to slaughter her baby son, who only survived because another woman hid him. Pocahontas was brutally raped and then dragged to Europe and forcibly trained in European culture and religion.

Powhatan gave into Argall’s demands. Powhatan released the prisoners and returned the stolen weapons, hoping to see his daughter alive again. But Argall didn’t honor his part of the deal. Pocahontas was kept in Europe and never told that her father had agreed to the trade.

5 Pocahontas Gave Birth To Her Rapist’s Child

In Europe, Pocahontas realized that she was pregnant. In time, she gave birth to a child who was half-white. According to some accounts, this happened before she ever met her European husband, John Rolfe, meaning that Pocahontas’s son was conceived in a rape.

She married John Rolfe in the hopes that it would make peace between their people. But their marriage caused a scandal because a princess had married a commoner. Powhatan had been crowned by England and written about as an emperor, so the English viewed Pocahontas as royalty.

Rolfe risked the scandal, though, because he thought Pocahontas could help his business. Rolfe had already made a small fortune planting Trinidadian tobacco in Virginia, which would soon become the colony’s most valuable export. He hoped that marrying Pocahontas would get Powhatan to help him grow his crops.

4 The Settlers Told Pocahontas That John Smith Had Died

Pocahontas had heard that John Smith was injured in a gunpowder accident, but she wasn’t told that he had returned to England. Instead, the settlers told Pocahontas that Smith was dead.

When she unexpectedly spotted Smith in England, she broke into tears. The reunion was emotional for Pocahontas, but Smith was cold and formal. In America, she had called Smith “father” as a term of endearment. In England, he spoke to her as though she were a stranger he’d only heard about in the news.

“Lady,” Smith explained, “I dare not allow that title, for you are a king’s daughter.”

“You were not afraid to come into my father’s country and cause fear in him and in all his people,” she replied. “Fear you here that I should call you father?”

3 Pocahontas Died At 21

In America, Powhatan and the settlers had an uneasy truce. While Pocahontas was in Europe, the war was called off. Powhatan wouldn’t risk the death of his favorite daughter.

When word came that Pocahontas and her new husband were coming to Virginia, Powhatan was elated. He thought he would finally see his little girl again and meet his grandson. But Powhatan never did.

As soon as their ship left the dock, Pocahontas became sick. She had no immunity against the diseases of Europe. Like many of her people, contact with the Europeans had left her stricken with a deadly illness. John Rolfe had the ship sent back to England, where Pocahontas died.

Powhatan still held out hope that he’d meet his grandson. But Pocahontas’s boy was left in England, and Rolfe traveled to Virginia without him. Powhatan died within the year without meeting his grandson.

2 Pocahontas’s Uncle Led The Jamestown Massacre

With Powhatan dead, his brother, Opechancanough, was put in charge of the 30 tribes. Rolfe’s tobacco trade was booming, and his success attracted settlers from all over Europe. White men were rushing into the country in droves, spreading their colonies and their diseases across the land.

Opechancanough no longer had any reason to keep the peace. He took a harder stance than Powhatan and plotted to get rid of the English colonists altogether.

Opechancanough and his men entered Jamestown unarmed, pretending that they wanted to sell a few goods. Once they were in, though, they grabbed every tool and weapon available and slaughtered every person they could find, sparing neither women nor children.

One-quarter of the settlement’s population died in the attack. It was a horrific massacre, and it meant the end of the fragile peace between Pocahontas’s and John Smith’s people.

1 Pocahontas’s People Were Almost Entirely Exterminated

After the Jamestown Massacre, open war began again. Opechancanough opened up a new era of cruelty in battle tactics, and the settlers repaid him with the same cruelty he showed them.

The English lured 200 Native Americans to a supposed peace talk. There, the settlers poisoned their guests and then chased down and scalped the few who survived. Even Pocahontas’s son was sent to kill his own Native American people.

In the end, Opechancanough was captured and paraded through Jamestown before a jeering crowd. The rest of his people were killed off, either by the settlers or their diseases. The few natives who survived were sent into slavery.

The prophecy of Powhatan’s priests had come true. Due to his brutality, his empire was wiped off the map, his daughter was raped and stolen away from him, and his grandson raised up arms against his own people.

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

10Diagnosis And Treatment

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

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

9Vile Concoction

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

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

8Punctuality

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

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

7Infertility

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

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

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

6Criticism And Irony

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

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

5Spanish Fly

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

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

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

4Burial Dispute

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

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

3Dehydration

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

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

2Washington’s Will

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

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

1Bloodletting

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

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

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

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

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

Amusement parks are built to be place of thrills and entertainment, wonder and awe. They should give fond memories and bring smiles to faces. But, some parks are shrouded in mystery and misfortune, causing fear and shivers instead. In this list, we will discuss ten parks that have a past dark enough to ruin any fun.

10 Lake Shawnee Amusement Park

The rusted and overgrown rides of Lake Shawnee Amusement Park serve as a reminder of the failed West Virginia attraction, but its eerie past lives on in folklore for the area.

To start, the park was built over a Native American burial ground, with an archeological dig uncovering thirteen bodies, mostly children.^[1]

But that’s not the darkest history of the land.

In 1783, Mitchell Clay was the first European settler to make a home in the area, which was heavily inhabited by the Shawnee Native American tribe.

While Clay was gone to town one day, the Shawnees surrounded three of the Clay children, who were working in the fields. Bartley was shot first. Tabitha, hearing the gunshot, ran to her brother, where she was attacked and cut by a knife, her body dismembered. Both of their scalps were taken by the Shawnee group. Their brother Ezekiel was captured and burnt at the stake.

A historical marker on the road leading to the park commemorates their memories.

One could wonder if the tragic history of the grounds is the reason for the six deaths that occurred at the park, eventually leading to it being closed down in 1966, and many locals, including the park’s new owner Gaylord White, claim the park to still be haunted.

9 Holy Land, USA

With a Hollywood-style sign and a cross marking its entrance, Holy Land in Waterbury, Connecticut is hard to miss as you drive along Interstate 84.

Originally opened in 1960, the theme park contained replicas of famous biblical scenes, including the Last Supper, Garden of Eden, and an inn featuring a “no vacancy” sign. The park saw more than 50,000 visitors each year while it was open until owner John Baptist Greco closed the park in 1984 in order to expand it. Before he could reopen the park, however, Greco died, and the park was bequeathed to a group of nuns who maintained the grounds but never reopened it.

People still found a way in, though, and vandalism and trespassing occurred, destroying many of the parks statues and attractions.

In 2010, Chloe Ottman and her friend Francisco Cruz decided to explore the park. The two had been friends for a couple years, and Chloe clearly thought they were just in for a night of creepy fun and underage drinking at the old park. Cruz, however, had different motives, and after Chloe refused to have sex with him, he raped and killed her, stabbing her in the neck, under the giant cross before throwing her body and belongings in the woods.^[2]

Though he initially helped with the search to find Chloe, Cruz confessed to her death and led police to her body.

He was charged with capital felony, murder, and sexual assault and sentenced to fifty-five years in prison for his brutal act, leaving the park with a more sinister reputation.

8 Gulliver’s Kingdom

Japan is known for having some interesting ideas when it comes to parks and architecture, and one of their most interesting, and largest failures, was Gulliver’s Kingdom, located at the base of Mount Fuji.

The theme park, based on the Jonathan Swift book, cost $350 million to build and featured a forty-five meter long statue of Gulliver himself, with the main attraction being a bobsled ride, making it not exactly your typical amusement park.

The location of the park, however, makes it even stranger.

Right next to the park is Aokigahara Forest, better known as “suicide forest,” which is considered the second most popular suicide location after the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

The doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, the group behind the Sarin gas attacks^[3] on the Tokyo subway, also had their headquarters and nerve gas production facility in the nearby village of Kamikuishiki. Residents and park goers claimed they could smell the chemicals when they were on the park grounds.

The park was thoroughly demolished in 2007, leaving nothing behind except for the strange memories and photographs and the questions as to why anyone thought it would be a popular attraction.

7 Rocky Point Amusement Park

Rocky Point Amusement Park in Warwick, Rhode Island was one of the most popular attractions in the state, drawing crowds to its over twenty-five attractions and the famous Shore Dinner Hall and Palladium Ballroom. Most Rhode Islanders have a fond memory of visiting the park while it was open.

Through all the happiness and memories, there is a dark mark on the park’s past.

In August of 1893, Maggie Sheffield, a five-year-old girl, was killed by her father Frank while they attended the park. Frank had suffered a head injury shortly before Maggie was born, making him incredibly mentally unstable. Though it is not known exactly what made him flip on that late-summer day, after a meal at the Shore Dinner Hall, he took his daughter to the shoreline, where he smashed her head in with a rock, killing her.

Frank was found not guilty of his daughter’s murder due to reason of insanity.^[4] Maggie’s death is the only murder in the park’s long history.

The thrills of the park left Maggie’s murder quickly forgotten, and Rocky Point carried on for over one hundred years.

Unfortunately, due to financial issues, the park was forced into foreclosure and closed in 1995, ending over 150 years of family fun in Rhode Island.

6 Joyland Amusement Park

When it opened in 1942, Joyland was considered the biggest amusement park in the southwest, featuring a train, Ferris wheel, merry-go-round, Tilt-a-Whirl, and a roller coaster, it’s main and most infamous attraction.

The park would eventually grow to include a log flume ride, a haunted attraction ride, swings, bumper cars, and many other carnival-type attractions, as well as host concerts and outdoor festivals.

Though the park experienced a handful of ride-related deaths, the murder of a park employee would throw some shadows over the park in 1982. Michael King, an employee, would get into an altercation with four men, aged 17 to 21, after the men snuck into the park after hours. King was stabbed to death, and police arrested the men responsible, letting the two underage boys go, and brought charges up against Dwight Sayles and Victor C. Walker.

Sayles would plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter and given five to twenty years in prison, with the eligibility of parole in eight years.^[5]

After the murder, the park would continue to operate and grow in size, adding another rollercoaster, but tragedy would continue to plague it. A park maintenance employee would be killed after getting hit by a rollercoaster and, in 2004, a thirteen-year-old girl would be injured after a thirty-foot fall from the Ferris wheel, which would lead to a series of financial issues and disputes that would eventually bring the park to close.

The 57-acres of Joyland were purchased in 2018 by Gregory and Tina Dunnegan, tent company owners who plan to bring new joy to the abandoned park by making it into an outdoor event venue for weddings, concerts, and traveling carnivals.

5 Kejonuma Leisure Land

Kejonuma Leisure Land was once a thriving amusement park in Tohoku, Japan, boasting the typical park rides such as a train, Ferris wheel, and carousel, as well as a driving range, and a campsite. Today, however, nature has taken over the structures, leaving the park to look like a ghost town, and ghosts are what it is more infamously known for.

The legend of the park begins with a beautiful woman who lived near the lake that sits on the site of Kejonuma Leisure Land, which was well-known for housing an abundance of snakes. The woman became pregnant, and when she gave birth, the baby was a serpent who escaped into the water. Every night, the woman could hear her serpent-baby cry, driving her mad, and she eventually committed suicide by drowning herself in the lake. It is said her and the baby’s cries can be heard at night.

The translation for “Kejonuma” is literally “ghost woman,”

With how superstitious the Asian culture can be at times, it is no surprise the story of Kejonuma Leisure Land is mentioned in every article about the park, but it did not stop nearly 200,000 people visiting the site each year while it was open, leaving many to question the validity of the curse.

The park officially closed in 2000, citing a drop-off in visitors due to Japan’s declining birthrate and economic crisis, but the notoriety of the curse keeps the legend of the park alive, and those interested can buy the park,^[6] as it is currently up for sale.

4 Dreamland Park

Dreamland Park began with a dark past that would continue to get darker. Built in the 1930s, the park would be open for less than two decades before it was shut down for rampant gambling and ties to the mafia.

Then, in 1969, Dreamland Park would make headlines again when two decomposing bodies would be found in the woods on the grounds of the park.

Due to the wooded and secluded area surrounding it, the park was a popular destination for couples to have a romantic drive and a little private time. On the night of August 12, 1969, Marilyn Sheckler, 18, and Glenn Eckert, 20, would set out for a drive to the park and never be seen alive again.

Their decomposing remains would be discovered feet from each other, in shallow graves, nearly two months later by state police. Autopsies would conclude that Marilyn had been raped repeatedly, and beaten, her head severely fractured, while Glenn had been shot in the forehead and side of the head and had also been beaten.

Investigators immediately suspected members of the Pagan motorcycle gang, as they had arrested ten members of the gang for beating and stabbing three men in the parking lot of Dreamland Park on the same night Marilyn and Glenn were last seen. Robert Martinolich, 22, and Leroy Stoltzfus, 24, would ultimately be arrested for the murders of the couple.

Martinolich and Stoltzfus would both be found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Each wold maintain their innocence and appeal their cases until they each died while incarcerated.^[7]

3 Magic Harbor

Just four miles south of Myrtle Beach, Magic Harbor Amusement Park had all the makings of a fun attraction — a roller coaster, bumper cars, Tilt-a-Whirl, arcade, hedge maze, Ferris wheel, and other all-ages rides, but it never really succeeded. Financial issues, changes in ownership, and deaths attributed to the park’s failure.

After the park closed on Labor Day, 1976, Franklin Loftis shot and killed the park’s owner Harry Koch and his sixteen-year-old stepson Carl Derk outside their trailer on the grounds of the park. Koch’s wife Carol survived the attack by hiding under the trailer. For years, the case went unsolved, making it the oldest cold case in Horry’s County history, until Loftis was charged. It was determined Loftis shot Koch over a wage and workman’s compensation dispute after Loftis, a carpenter for the park, was injured on the job.

Loftis was given two life sentences for the murders and was denied parole multiple times. Koch’s surviving wife had no desire to keep up Koch’s plan of expanding Magic Harbor, and the park went into foreclosure, was bought back by the bank, and then changed hands multiple times until it was sold to Geoffrey Thompson, president of the largest amusement park operation in Europe.

It seemed like the park’s luck was about to turn around with Thompson managing, but in 1984, tragedy would strike the park again.

Thirteen-year-old Sherri Lynn Depew was launched out of the park’s Black Witch rollercoaster. She died from her injuries, and her father sued Magic Harbor for $12 million, claiming negligence by the park for failing to supervise the ride properly.^[8]. Thompson tried to claim the girl had failed to stay seated and follow safety guidelines for the ride, but the bad publicity alone was enough to hurt the park’s reputation once again.

In the mid-1990s, the park was closed and the land was bought by the neighboring campground, resulting in all of the buildings and rides to be completely demolished.

2 Brandywine Springs

Brandywine Springs Amusement Parks was a Wilmington, Delaware attraction from 1886 to 1923, and a solid example of early twentieth century fun.

There was a castle house, train, wooden rollercoaster, restaurants, pavilion, and a magnificent archway leading into the park.

In 1916, tragedy would strike the park when Catherine Bouidecki was shot and killed and Areti Nichols was shot by Samuel Gongas, who then set fire to the park’s restaurant, railway, and photography gallery, as well as some concession stands. Gongas was infatuated with Bouidecki, who was a waitress at the restaurant, and was apparently upset she turned down his advances, prompting him to snap and kill her.^[9]

The park would close in 1923 when automobiles made it easier for people to travel and the park admission declined. Concrete slabs and muddy pools are all that remains of the amusement park today, but local historians are working on excavating and marking sites of where the major attractions stood, putting up signs and photographs to educate those who walk through the site.

1 Pripyat Amusement Park

Maybe the most horrific history behind an amusement park is one that never came to be.

Pripyat Amusement Park in Pripyat, Ukraine was supposed to open on May 1, 1986, but five days before its scheduled opening, the Chernobyl disaster occurred nearby, resulting in thirty deaths in the months following the explosion.

The park consisted of attractions, bumper cars, swing boats, a swing-carousel, and a Ferris wheel. The Ferris wheel still stands today, unfinished and towering over the scene of destruction and the bumper cars are the strongest area of radiation in the park due to the overgrown vegetation.

It is believed the park was opened early for one day, April 27, to calm people from the disaster before they were forced to pack up their belongings and be bussed out of the city, never to return.

Today, the whole city of Pripyat, including the unfinished amusement park, is a destination for “dark tourism,”^[10] guided tours through the Chernobyl ruins and abandoned towns.

Tracy spends her days writing and designing in a tourist town where she lives with her dog.

For many, there are few things that can be as frightening as the moments leading up to surgery. In a perfect world, we’d expect that anxiety to subside, given the years of education and skill that surgeons have acquired. Patients should be able to wholeheartedly place their lives in their doctor’s hands. Unfortunately, surgical blunders, also known as “never events,” occur as often as 80 times a week, according to the American Medical News. The following 10 cases are perhaps some of the unluckiest individuals to ever go under the knife.

10 A Man’s Worst Nightmare

In November 1999, 67-year-old Hurshell Ralls underwent surgery at the Clinics of North Texas in Wichita Falls after a biopsy determined that he had bladder cancer. The operation consisted of removing Ralls’s bladder. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be the only organ removed during the procedure. When Ralls awoke following the operation, to his horror, he found that his penis and testicles were gone.

Clearly, Ralls wasn’t consulted nor did he give permission for the amputation. The surgeons who performed the operation claimed that while removing Ralls’s bladder, they determined that the cancer had spread to his penis. However, they did not confirm their educated guess by taking tissue samples, stating that they felt that to do so wouldn’t be “worthwhile,” given their medical judgment. When a Dallas doctor examined cell slides of Ralls’s penis, he found that Ralls did not have penile cancer at all. Reconstructive surgery was out of the question, as not enough tissue remained.

The surgeons were never disciplined nor did they experience any license interruptions. Ralls decided to file a lawsuit against the doctors as well as the clinic. In the end, he settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. Regardless, no monetary resolution could never replace what was taken from Ralls.

9 Wrong Infant

In 2016, Jennifer Melton gave birth to a healthy baby boy named Nate, who was delivered at the University Medical Center in Lebanon, Tennessee, near Nashville. Following the delivery, Nate was taken to another room for what his mother believed to be a routine checkup. A short time later, a nurse entered Jennifer’s room and explained that Nate was accidentally mistaken for another child and had undergone an unnecessary operation. The doctor had performed a frenulectomy, in which the flap of skin under the tongue is clipped. Such procedures are often performed when the skin is too tight, which can cause feeding and speech problems down the road, a condition often referred to as “tongue-tie.”

The physician who performed the procedure admitted his error, claiming that he had mistakenly asked for the wrong child, and apologized to the family. The physician then went on to tell Jennifer how Nate “barely cried” during the procedure and that she should not worry. The Meltons stated that they intend to sue the hospital for unspecified damages once the infant is assigned a Social Security number. Nate’s future, in terms of complications resulting from the procedure, is uncertain.

8 Wrong Limb

In 1995, 52-year-old Willie King underwent surgery to amputate his diseased leg at the University Community Hospital in Tampa, Florida. As Dr. Ronaldo R. Sanchez was cutting through King’s tissue, the nurse in the operating room, who was reviewing King’s file, began to shake and cry. That was when Dr. Sanchez realized that he was amputating the wrong leg. Unfortunately, by that point, he determined that the damage had already been done and that “there was no turning back.”

Dr. Sanchez stated that the condition of King’s legs, which he determined were both diseased, as well as error by other hospital personnel led him to believe that he was amputating the correct limb. In addition, he said that by the time he had entered the operating room, the incorrect leg had already been sterilized and draped for surgery. Prior to this mishap, another of Dr. Sanchez’s patients claimed that the surgeon amputated her toe without permission during a procedure to remove diseased tissue from her foot.

In the end, Dr. Sanchez was fined $10,000 and had his medical license suspended for 140 days.

7 Four Years Of Pain

In 2007, 56-year-old Carol Critchfield underwent a standard hysterectomy and bladder-support surgery at the Simi Valley Hospital in California. Three days after the operation, Critchfield returned to the hospital complaining of intense abdominal pain. The physicians took an X-ray. Critchfield was told that the pain was due to severe constipation, determined that her condition wasn’t critical, and sent her home.

In 2008, while Critchfield was at work, she began to sweat, experienced blurry vision, and ultimately fainted. She was brought to the hospital, where she was told that she had a gastrointestinal issue of some sort and was informed not to eat any more spicy food. Once again, she was sent home. Her symptoms continued over the following years.

In 2011, she began to experience vaginal bleeding, which doctors concluded was from an ovarian cyst. She underwent surgery to remove her ovaries, at which point her surgeon discovered a large mass. It turned out that during her original operation in 2007, the surgeons had left a sponge inside of her abdomen, which ultimately became encased in scar tissue. This led to the removal of a large amount of Critchfield’s intestines after four long years of obstruction.

Critchfield went on to sue the Simi Valley Hospital as well as five physicians associated with it. She reached a settlement in 2014 for an undisclosed amount.

6 Wrong Kidney

In 2013, a 76-year-old man on dialysis underwent surgery to remove a failing kidney, only to find that the surgeon had removed the wrong one. The horrific and life-threatening error occurred in New York at Mount Sinai Medical Center, one of the most prestigious teaching hospitals in the United States. The hospital refused to release the names of both the surgeon involved and the patient. Hospital security prevented news reporters from filming outside of the hospital as well, perhaps to save face for their “prestigious” and “glorified” medical and academic institution.

Officials at Mount Sinai said that part of the reason for why the error occurred was due to the fact that the patient had “two bad kidneys.” Be that as it may, the surgeon involved was eventually fired, even though the patient who he’d operated on came to his defense. The patient underwent surgery once again to correct the error, replacing his failing kidney with the correct one.

5 Neurosurgery

In 2013, 53-year-old Regina Turner was supposed to undergo an operation on the left side of her brain at St. Clare Health Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The operation entailed a craniotomy (surgical removal of part of the skull in order to access the brain), which the surgeon performed. Unfortunately, it was done to the wrong side of Turner’s head. Once the surgeon, Dr. Armond Levy realized his error, Turner was sutured up, and the correct operation was performed six days later, though the damage had already been done.

Turner was left with a severe speech impediment and required around-the-clock care. She filed a lawsuit against the hospital and Dr. Levy for negligence and carelessness. The following year, Turner settled out of court with the hospital for an undisclosed amount. In the end, Dr. Levy, who no longer works for SSM Health, faced no state disciplinary action for his costly error and continues to practice medicine.

4 Wrong Patient

On November 20, 1998, 66-year-old Adesta L. Hytha was scheduled for a lumpectomy, which entailed the removal of a small tumor and surrounding tissue from her left breast. The procedure was conducted at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, by acclaimed surgeon Dr. Charles E. Cox, head of the facility’s breast cancer program. Following the lumpectomy, Hytha awoke to discover that her left breast had been removed.

Hytha and her son, Stephen, were informed by Dr. Cox that during the procedure, he had discovered additional cancer and had no choice but to remove the breast in its entirety. However, that was not the case. In reality, Hytha was mistaken for another patient who was scheduled for a mastectomy. To make matters worse, Hytha wasn’t told the truth until 10 days after the fact. Dr. Cox adamantly denied misleading her, however.

Following an internal investigation, hospital officials claimed that the error was due to several factors, including staff members who’d brought the wrong patient into the operating room as well as the fact that Dr. Cox had failed to review the patient’s chart prior to the operation. Hytha chose not to sue the hospital and instead settled the matter for an undisclosed amount. The hospital offered to reconstruct Hytha’s breast. She declined.

3 Wrong Testicle

Benjamin Houghton, a retired Air Force veteran, had been diagnosed with metastatic testicular cancer in 1989. Following his diagnosis, Houghton opted out of the surgical removal of his testicle and instead underwent chemotherapy. His treatment proved to be successful. However, over the years, his left testicle became atrophied (due to cell death), causing it to waste away. This led to much pain as well as the chance of cancer cells returning in the future.

On June 16, 2006, Houghton decided to undergo elective surgery at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center in order to remove his useless and painful left testicle. To Houghton’s shock and disbelief, the surgeon removed the right (perfectly healthy) testicle.

Understandably, Houghton, 47, and his 39-year-old wife Monica filed a lawsuit against the VA, seeking $200,000 for future health care costs as well as an undisclosed amount in damages. Aside from the mental anguish of losing his manhood and sexual drive, Houghton potentially faces numerous health complications, such as depression, weight gain, fatigue, and osteoporosis due to the loss of testosterone that his healthy testicle would have provided.

2 Wrong Eye

In 2015, Fernando Jonathan Valdez, an infant child in Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, Mexico, was diagnosed with advanced congenital cancer of his left eye. Following the diagnosis, the one-year-old child underwent chemotherapy, to no avail. Valdez’s left eye had to be removed. After the operation, Valdez’s parents discovered that the surgeon had incorrectly removed the boy’s healthy right eye, leaving him permanently blind with the cancerous eye still intact in its socket.

The parents reported the incident to police, and an internal investigation into the Medical Unit of High Specialty Mexican Social Security Institute was launched. In addition, the parents hired an attorney, sued the hospital for medical negligence, and made a complaint to the National Commission of Human Rights and the Medical Arbitration Commission. The surgeon who performed the botched operation was suspended and placed under investigation. Regardless of the lawsuit’s outcome, the boy will never see again.

1 Wrong Organ

In October 2011, 32-year-old Maria De Jesus underwent an appendectomy at Queen’s Hospital, outside of London. At the time of her surgery, she was 21 weeks pregnant with her fourth child. The surgeon performing the operation, Dr. Yahya Al-Abed, was a trainee who was supposed to be supervised by Dr. Babatunde Coker. Unfortunately, Dr. Coker, who was busy eating lunch at the time, stated that he was unaware that the surgery was taking place. During the operation, De Jesus began to bleed “quite heavily,” and Dr. Al-Abed removed her ovary, believing it to be her appendix.

Three weeks later, De Jesus, still suffering from appendicitis, returned to the hospital in immense pain. After discovering what had occurred, she underwent surgery once again, only to die on the operating table. Her son was delivered stillborn. Her cause of death was officially recorded as multiple organ failure due to septicemia. In other words, her blood was infected due to the untreated appendicitis.

Both surgeons were found guilty of “serious misconduct.” However, a tribunal ultimately ruled that the doctors were considered not to be a “danger to the public,” and they have since been allowed to continue practicing medicine.

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

Finding a worm in your apple, a hole in your sock or a scratch on your car are never things a person wants to find. But when you think about it, things could be worse. A LOT worse! You’d much rather a little worm in your apple than any of the tragic, nauseating and offensive discoveries in this list any day of the week. Heck, you’d probably take half a worm! [WARNING: Disturbing content]

10 Horrifically Botched Executions

10 Burglar finds body

The last thing you want when you’re out burglarizing properties is to come across the horrific sight of the homeowner hanged to death. That’s exactly what a rather unlucky crook got when he was robbing a house in Hamilton, New Zealand. After realizing he’d just bumped into the hanged man in the dark, the burglar tore out of the house screaming “He’s dead! He’s dead!” and hot-footed it to his mother’s house a few doors down.

Apart from the obvious strange circumstance of the case, one has to beg the question—why would you rob a house a few doors away? Another strange twist was the uncharacteristic leniency the cops showed the would-be burglar. They let him off, believing that this macabre series of events would scare him straight. Let’s hope so!^[1]

9 Why you should ALWAYS check under the bed!

Whenever a child asks you to check under their bed for something scary, remember this true story and you will not hesitate to give in to their nightly whinging. Often cited as an urban legend, this gruesome story actually happened to a couple, indeed to many couples, from as far back as 1982. It is this first instance of ‘The Body under the Bed’ that we’ll be dealing with.

Three crooks in New Jersey thought they had a good scam going. They’d steal cars and sell them on. Simple. But two out of the terrible trio got suspicious regarding the third, one Gary Smith. All three rented a motel room in New Bergen, New Jersey and ordered some food. Daniel Deppner and Richard Kuklinski, (the infamous serial killer and mob hit-man known as the ‘Ice Man’) laced the unwitting Smith’s burger with cyanide. After a few chomps, Smith began to succumb to the poison and died. Deppner and Kuklinski stuffed the dead man’s corpse under the bed and left. It was found four days later by the fourth couple who’d rented the room. His body was bloated and discoloured after a few nights in-between the mattress and the frame in a heated room.^[2]

8 That’s not candy

The only thing that makes a frozen dessert better is the addition on sweet toppings. Pieces of candy, small cubes of cake or lashings of hot fudge sauce can turn your already yummy iced dairy treat into a full blown foodgasm. This case from 2005 is certainly not an appetizing one!

Clarence Stowers from Wilmington, North Carolina ordered a frozen custard from Kohl’s Frozen Custard in his home town. Stowers was tucking into his tasty treat when he began licking at something slightly more solid than the gooey iced custard he thought he’d ordered. What did he find? A finger. A human finger. Needless to say, the customer was horrified. The restaurant confirmed that it was the finger of an employee and not some random person’s severed digit that had somehow found its way into their custard, (as if that was Ok!) They also were able to confirm that this wasn’t the first time an employee had lost a finger at one of their outlets—making the serving of frozen dessert the modern equivalent of working with heavy machinery in foundries or textile mills during the industrial revolution. This quote from poor Mr. Stowers will really turn your stomach, almost as much as his was: ” I thought it was candy because they put candy in your ice cream … to make it a treat. OK, well, I’ll just put it in my mouth and get the ice cream off of it and see what it is”. Delightful.^[3]

7 Demons from the Dark Ages

We can be pretty sure that 8th century Ireland was a rather superstitious place. In fact, without the benefit of modern medical and scientific advances I’m sure pretty much anywhere will have been superstitious to the extreme back then. Burning people for witchcraft, mistaking comets for dragons tearing through the clouds and the belief that water from a random spring could heal that pesky bout of leprosy were pretty much fact of life for your average dark age peasant.

But this archaeological discovery in County Roscommon really paints a fearful picture of life in that period. During a routine survey of medieval churches, a gruesome set of burials were found in the grounds of an ancient church. Two male skeletons, one aged in his 40s the other in his 20s, were unearthed and found to be sporting some rather novel mouth-gear. They had large stones placed into their mouths. The professionals studying the skeletons could surmise that the stones had been wedged in rather violently as opposed to placed in due to the jaws being almost dislocated. But why would people have done this? Had the men committed a crime? Were they too talkative in life? The real explanation is far more disturbing—they were being prevented from returning as marauding zombies. The men were unearthed lying side by side which suggests they had been related or at least died in the same manner. The pictures of the skeletons are chilling, as if straight from a horror movie.^[4]
References:

6 An un-gentlemanly bug

It’s always exciting when a new species is found. With so many undiscovered wonders still to come to our attention, each new animal that can be studied edges us closer to a better understanding of how the world works. Plus, with so many animals becoming endangered and extinct, a newly catalogued animal goes a little way to give us some hope of one day living in harmony with the natural world around us.

However, this mini beast from Costa Rica would make even the most ardent PETA member wish it had remained un-discovered! The forcepfly is only around 20 mm long but when viewed under a microscope it looks like a creature that’d give Godzilla a pretty hard time! The curious genital pincers the males posses are longer than its abdomen and look meaner than a pit-bull at a Chihuahua convention. Scientists are still in the dark regarding the behavioural patterns of these micro monsters. Due to their svelte physiques and tiny size, they’re very adept at hiding in places humans cannot readily observe. However the supposition is that the giant pincers are used for fighting between male rivals and possible to secure a female forcepfly during mating. Charming!^[5]

10 Horrifying Stories Of People Who Were Buried Alive

5 A soldier’s tragedy

Many stories are so unbelievable that they enter the realms of urban legends just as easily as fabricated campfire tales and phoney email chain letters. This particular story has taken many forms for many years but one case from 1991 gives credence to the legend which either foretold the horrific tragedy that befell Sgt. Gregory Voelcker or stemmed from it. Voelcker was a sergeant in the US Air Force and was stationed at RAF Mildenhall air base in rural England. He lived with his wife and two children in a small cottage outside the village of Kirtling, around 60 northeast of London.

On returning from a temporary assignment in Greece, Sgt. Voelcker entered his home to find his wife and 2 young children had died. Autopsies showed that Lorraine Voelcker had died of a probable heart attack while the children, (aged 2 and 16-months old) had succumbed to dehydration a number of days after their mother’s death. The Air Force had routinely called upon a representative to give a phone call to the Voelcker family to check they were all right. Mrs. Voelcker mentioned that she and the children were going to visit a relative in the North of England. A few days later, when another call was made to the Voelcker household, there was no answer. The Air Force assumed that the mother and her kids were still up north. This sad tale has all the elements of a classic urban legend. It just goes to show that fact is often stranger than fiction.^[6]

4 Funhouse of Horrors

Remember the famous “You’re the one that I want” scene from the movie Grease? It shows Olivia Newton John and John Travolta dancing and singing in an old fairground funhouse ride. It all looked like so much fun! Most of us remember these types of attraction—like a mechanical assault course with in-built slides and ball pits. But I bet not many of us remember a funhouse ride with a real corpse as one of the attractions. What’s fun about that? Well the owners of the Nu-Pike amusement park in Long Beach thought it was fine, but they had no idea their ‘Hanging Man’ was actually a dead outlaw from the Old West!

In 1911, Elmer McCurdy robbed a train of $43 and a couple of jugs of whiskey. He was hunted down by a posse of lawmen and shot to death. After he was embalmed, no next of kin turned up to claim the remains for burial so the undertaker decided to charge punters to see the famed “Bandit who would not give up” and stood him in a corner of the funeral parlour. After a tour of museums and funfairs around the USA that lasted over 50 years, the bandit was hung up in the funhouse at Long Beach where he remained for four years. It was only when a crew member who was filming an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man tried to move the ‘prop’ did he discover that this was a REAL dead guy. How? He yanked poor McCurdy’s arm off and saw that a human bone was inside! The unlucky bandit has since been buried in Summit View Cemetery, Oklahoma under two tonnes of cement to prevent him from ever starring in another funfair sideshow again!^[7]

3 London’s forgotten lady

This heart-wrenching story of how everyone who knew Joyce Carol Vincent seemingly forgot she existed strikes a chord with anyone who lives alone in a big city. When officials from the North London Housing Association went to a bedsit in Wood Green, they discovered the skeletonised body of a 38-year-old female tenant who had been dead for 3 years. Her television was still turned on and a pile of unopened Christmas presents were sitting in the corner of her living room.

In life, Vincent was a pretty, popular woman who had a great job, an eclectic group of friends and met a host of famous people such as Nelson Mandela, Gil Scott Heron and she once had dinner with Stevie Wonder. One day, she left a highly paid job at a large multinational corporation and became increasingly reclusive. She seems to have just allowed herself to drift apart from all who knew her, severed ties with the outside world and consequently nobody noticed when she died. It has been suggested that Vincent had been in numerous abusive relationships and had also suffered a troubled home life as a child—this can go some way to explaining her fragile mental state and why she’d seek isolation. However, just how this woman who’d touched many people’s lives could simply fade away and remain undiscovered for years, is a damning indictment of the modern world’s indifference, (even the local government, financial and utility companies let her slide for years!). Vincent’s story was the subject of the touching 2011 drama-documentary Dreams of a Life.^[8]

2 Corpse in the canopy

“Walker stumble across a bone in the woods” is an all-too-common prelude to the uncovering of some grizzly series of long-forgotten murders that can finally be put to bed. Not so in this bizarre case from Germany. Sebastian Gunther and Stephanie Bauer were enjoying a stroll in the woods near Bruckberg, Lower Bavaria when they stumbled across a human bone poking out of the undergrowth. When officers arrived at the scene, they couldn’t find the rest of the body…until they looked up. The body of Paul Ludwig was sitting on a branch 40 feet up in a fir tree.

When Ludwig decided to take his own life because he was suffering from cancer, he left a note for his family that read: “Don’t look for me, you won’t find me”. And they didn’t, for 29 years! Ludwig had climbed the tree, (even though he had two artificial hips!) tied himself to the bough, tied a rifle to his body and shot himself. Police assumed that the ropes had tightened around his limbs as the tree grew causing them to sever the limb bones and lead to the long-awaited discovery.^[9]

1 A most politically incorrect building

There are few symbols more emotive than the swastika. Although originally a Hindu sign of ‘peace’, most people will only associate the symbol with the Nazis. The brutal regime usurped the swastika and it has since become synonymous with evil and oppression. After the fall of Hitler’s army, the swastika has been used by far-right groups and, during the 70’s, as a symbol of anarchy worn for shock value by English punks.

Thanks to Google Earth, this most hated of symbols is visible from the air—in the architectural design of a Californian building owned by the U.S. Navy! After widespread public outrage and inquiries made by the Anti-defamation League, the Navy decided to explore the option of re-shaping the offensive structure. But the proposed cost, variously between $625,000 and $40 million (!), proved too high. The building still stands today and, although not intended to be offensive, one cannot help but feel shocked when seeing a giant stone swastika staring back at them from US soil. That such horrifying discovery can be left alone is worrying…but nobody seems to be in a rush to knock down South Wales’ ‘Hitler House; either!^[10]

10 Horrifically Botched Circumcisions

About The Author: CJ Phillips is an actor and writer from Swansea, South Wales. He is a little obsessed with lists.

There is a monster hiding in your house. Many, actually. They’re watching you, waiting. They’re in your refrigerator, your oven, and your kitchen cabinets, because it seems one of the most dangerous things you handle each day is your food. The ways in which your diet can come back to haunt you range far beyond heart disease and diabetes. Human history is rife with horrific episodes brought about by nothing more than this most basic necessity. One look at these ferocious foodstuffs, and you’ll never turn your back on your local supermarket again.

10 Bread

During the 1800s, England’s population was growing faster than ever before. In fact, by 1850, London had become the largest city in history. But this sudden, enormous growth led to serious shortages of day-to-day items, and profiteering manufacturers were quick to respond . . . by packing their products with whatever they could find lying around their garage.

Plaster of Paris and even chalk were used to stretch out actual ingredients, but the worst was the use of toxic alum.^[1] Safer versions of alum are used for things like pickling, but the dangerous variety—used in modern-day washing detergents—was used heavily in bread. Not only did it allow for more loaves per batch, but it also gave them a more attractive white color. The thing is, alum prevents actual food from being absorbed by the intestines. In the end, this practice led to an epidemic of severe malnutrition, diarrhea, and even the deaths of many children, as starving citizens were unable to digest what meager scraps they could find.

9 Corn

The early 20th century saw the American South gripped by a nightmarish new disease. Sickening skin lesions and madness were the calling cards of the mysterious malady, which took over 100,000 lives between 1906 and 1940. Worse yet, no one could figure out where this “pellagra” even came from.

That is, until Dr. Joseph Goldberger came along. The Pennsylvania physician joined the Public Health Service in 1899 and had spent the last few decades traveling the country solving medical mysteries. It occurred to him that the disease only struck the especially poor, who survived on a diet composed almost entirely of nice, cheap corn.

His dietary findings didn’t go down well with Southern doctors, though, who were convinced the illness was caused by a germ. So Dr. Goldberger proved it wasn’t contagious by swallowing the scabs from an infected patient’s sores as well as infected urine and feces.^[2] He didn’t catch the dreaded disease, and his work helped to unmask pellagra as a simple niacin deficiency.

8 Wine

A symbol of class and refinement for millennia, wine would seem like one of the least harmful things on the planet (unless you count the occasional drunken fistfight). But just try telling that to English nobleman George Plantagenet.

The duke of Clarence and brother of King Edward IV, Plantagenet found himself involved in a Game of Thrones–style medieval power struggle in the late 1400s. Constantly at odds with his brother, he began scheming to remove him from the throne. However, before his rebellion could even start, King Edward beat him to the punch. Plantagenet was secretly imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed on February 18, 1478.

Despite beheading being the traditional fate of traitors, Edward instead had a final insult planned for his sibling. He ordered Plantagenet drowned in a barrel of his favorite drink, malmsey wine.^[3] After his uniquely ironic execution, some believe his body was left in the barrel when it was sent off to be buried.

7 Chocolate

In the early 20th century, the world stumbled upon a miracle. By simply adding a small amount of a newly documented element, any humdrum object could be made the stuff of fairy tales. Clock faces and cosmetics were dressed up with the miraculous glowing material. Candy manufacturers even began adding it to their chocolate for its supposedly invigorating qualities. Too bad it was radioactive.

Radium-infused chocolate was only one dangerous product that people were woefully eager to cram in their mouths. Wines and water were also packed with radiation before the dangers started to make themselves known. A 1925 article in The New York Times heralded the end of the radium age with the announcement of a nightmarish new disease: radium necrosis. It was basically radiation poisoning of the jaw caused by ingesting radium. Victims found the flesh and bone of their lower faces dying and falling away or developing grotesque tumors.^[4] Death followed shortly after.

6 Fish

For some, eating raw fish may be a terrifying prospect in its own right, but a certain Japanese delicacy gives sushi-phobes another reason to fear. Blowfish, or fugu, is prepared with extreme care by master sushi chefs. The law demands it. The government regulates the process carefully because a single mistake could end the life of a customer.

The organs of the blowfish are filled with a substance called tetrodotoxin.^[5] Should any taint the meat, this unbelievably nightmarish poison begins with a subtle numbing of the unlucky customer’s mouth. Soon, however, the numbness evolves into full-blown paralysis, which slowly migrates down the body. The victim is left completely unable to move but fully aware. Death finally comes when the paralysis reaches the lungs, and the still-conscious diner slowly suffocates. Luckily, due to the strict laws concerning its preparation, only 23 people have been killed by fugu in the last 16 years. Still, not many takers.

5 Nutmeg

During the 1600s, a terrible war was waged between the English and the Dutch. It was a brutal and bloody conflict that lasted for years. It was over something we like to sprinkle on eggnog.

Humble nutmeg found itself at the center of this bizarre international conflict because it had become something of a status symbol.^[6] Nobles of the era would stockpile spices like gold, and the trendiest new addition to any spice cabinet was nutmeg. The seeds were prized for their exotic flavor, their supposed aphrodisiac properties, and the belief that they could actually cure the Black Death. Unfortunately, though, they could only be found on a single Indonesian island chain, the Bandas. The quest to monopolize the nutmeg industry led Dutch and English forces to commit horrors ranging from torture to mass slaughter, upon both enemy combatants and the innocent residents of the islands.

Luckily, the bloodshed finally ended in 1667, when England signed a treaty handing over control of their only remaining Banda island. They didn’t get much in return, just the Dutch-controlled island of Manhattan.

4 Water

Throughout history, typhoid fever has claimed countless lives. Minor epidemics were fairly common until recently, but in 1903, the city of Ithaca, New York, faced a sudden and unusually aggressive outbreak of the dreadful disease.^[7] Construction had recently begun on the Six Mile Creek Dam, and the shady owners had neglected to include a filtration system of any kind. Conditions were rough for the builders as well; the entire crew was forced to share a single outhouse, leading many to simply use the creek. However, the final nail in the coffin was that a few of the builders had recently moved from an area of Italy notorious for typhoid outbreaks.

The results were as obvious as they were devastating. Ithaca residents began experiencing crippling stomach pain and dangerously high fevers. The sickness had spread far and wide before anyone figured out their drinking water was to blame. People could only watch as friends and family began to succumb. In the end, 82 people, including 29 college students, were killed.

3 Grain

Medieval England just couldn’t catch a break. As if constant war and the Black Plague weren’t enough, folks had a more obscure reason to lock themselves in their mud cottages: English sweating sickness.

With outbreaks occurring mainly during the summers of the 15th and 16th centuries, this strange illness came on fast and killed faster. Within 24 hours of infection, the victim would sweat profusely, experience shortness of breath and heart palpitations, and finally drop dead. Despite much documentation in everything from official records to fiction (Shakespeare even mentioned it in his play Measure for Measure), no one really knew where it came from.

Researchers now believe the hantavirus was to blame.^[8] The symptoms are eerily similar, and just like the Black Death, it is transmitted by rodents. Medieval England had no shortage of rats; the vermin were notorious for chowing down on stores of grains like wheat and oats. While eating, the incontinent beasts would leave their urine behind, contaminating the food. Unlucky peasants would then sit down for dinner, and an epidemic would be born.

2 Cheese

Listeria monocytogenes is a particularly nasty bacterium. In humans, it causes an unpredictable condition called listeriosis, which can be as minor as a touch of the flu or infect the nervous system, causing convulsions and death. It also really seems to like cheese.

Products containing unpasteurized milk are prime targets for Listeria. In 1985, California’s Jalisco Products produced a batch of cheese without following pasteurization procedures. The result was one of the largest listeriosis outbreaks in history.^[9] Southern California was devastated by the deadly neurological disease, which hit pregnant women and newborn babies the hardest. The death toll topped out at a terrifying 62 when all was said and done, including many stillbirths.

And this wasn’t an isolated incident. Listeriosis outbreaks linked to cheese are insanely common, even now. Maybe order a side of antibiotics the next time you hit the pizza joint.

1 Rye

In the Middle Ages, Europe was subjected to what can only be described as a full-on living nightmare. A strange plague, known as St. Anthony’s fire, began to spread. Victims suffered extreme burning sensations in their hands and feet, the feeling of insects crawling beneath their skin, and horrifying hallucinations. The infection sometimes even caused the flesh of the hands and feet to die, requiring amputation.

It wasn’t until much later that botanists were able to crack this “holy fire.” The fungus Claviceps purpurea infects many grain plants, but it seems especially fond of rye.^[10] Small black growths called ergots grow alongside the grains on tainted plants and were often mistakenly ground up with them in medieval mills. Bread made from the flour would then infect humans, leading to the hellish symptoms.

Despite the horrors, the study of ergot has led to many advances in medical science, like cures for migraine headaches and psychological disorders. It has also led to advances in psychedelic science by giving the world LSD.