Weirder – Listorati https://listorati.com Fascinating facts and lists, bizarre, wonderful, and fun Sun, 22 Sep 2024 19:11:42 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://listorati.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/listorati-512x512-1.png Weirder – Listorati https://listorati.com 32 32 215494684 10 Bizarre Burnings Weirder Than Spontaneous Combustion https://listorati.com/10-bizarre-burnings-weirder-than-spontaneous-combustion/ https://listorati.com/10-bizarre-burnings-weirder-than-spontaneous-combustion/#respond Sun, 22 Sep 2024 19:11:42 +0000 https://listorati.com/10-bizarre-burnings-weirder-than-spontaneous-combustion/

The phenomena called “spontaneous human combustion” (or SHC) is supposedly when a living body somehow ignites itself from the inside, resulting in death. Subatomic particles, ball lightning, and poltergeists have been blamed for SHC. Less sensational explanations include the wick effect or simply an overlooked external source of ignition.

Whatever the cause(s) of spontaneous human combustion, the cases lined up here prove it to be a hodgepodge of any weird thing that involved fire. How weird? Let’s look at some of the strangest reports ever recorded!

10 In And Out


Fire, apparently, can make its way out of a human body in a variety of ways, but vomiting and excreting fire have got to be the worse! A number of reports from the 1600s detailed people burping up flames after drinking brandy, known in Latin as “burning wine.” A Polish knight in the time of Queen Sforza drank two glasses of brandy, which doesn’t seem like much. But then, flames erupted from his mouth violently enough that he died from the results. In the mid-1600s, it was reported that three English noblemen were “drinking strong liquors” when flames erupted from the mouths of two of them, suffocating the poor men.[1]

Still, as scary as vomiting flames may sound, there may be a far worse way to expel fire from your body. It’s said that Joannes Eusebius Nierembergensis, an author in the early 1600s, not only reported several incidents of people barfing flames after drinking wine and brandy but that he also recorded one unfortunate incident in which “Fire came out from the privy Parts of a Woman.” Let that sink in.

9 Backache


Sometime before 1642 (when an account of this was published), a guy named Alexandrini Medici Megetij had one of the oddest medical problems ever reported. The book it was reported in was called Ignis Lambens by Ezekiel de Castro, and he was mostly writing about incidents describing people with glowing skin, which appears to have been a going thing at the time, when he stopped to make note of one incident in particular that was just weird.

Apparently, under unknown circumstances, Megetij had a flame project itself from the base of his spine. This was witnessed by two other men who, presumably, were in the right place at the right time.[2] We are not told more about the incident—whether Megetij was permanently hurt or killed by the experience, what the two men thought of the matter, where they were, or what they were doing—nothing. Yet around a century later, when author Paul Rolli wrote up the first essay that proposed the idea that human bodies could self-ignite, Rolli felt for sure that Megetij was an early example of his newly proposed idea.

8 Carpenters Burn Really Well


On Saturday, June 26, 1613, a carpenter named John Hitchell who lived in Christchurch in England had gone straight to bed after a hard day’s work, soon joined by his wife and child. Later that night, his mother-in-law (sleeping in a different bed in the same room) was awakened by what she assumed to be a sudden crack of lightning that had struck her on the cheek. She cried for help but got no response, so she walked over to the other bed to wake her daughter . . . and was in for a shock.

John and his child were both dead and apparently burning with a slow flame. Hitchell’s wife was horribly burned on the side facing the corpses of her husband and child, but she was still alive. Having been stirred from her very deep sleep by her mother, Hitchell’s wife (along with her mother) then dragged the still-burning John out of the house to the street, where he was abandoned by them when the heat coming from his body became too intense. Hitchell’s corpse lay in the street, still burning, for the next three days until it was fully reduced to just ashes and a few bits of bone.[3] Anyone care to guess how all of that happened?

7 The Soldier Retires

In Aberdeen, Scotland, in the year 1888, 65-year-old retired soldier Alexander Morrison was in a fine intoxicated state. He could still walk and talk and was most definitely in a good mood when he was last seen alive by a young couple he asked to shut the door of the stable he was sleeping in after him, which they did. The following morning, smoke was seen coming from a hole in the roof of the stable, and when this was investigated, a most horrifying, yet beautiful, thing was found. Alexander Morrison’s body had been almost entirely converted into just ash and bone yet still showed every detail of his body and features as if sculpted by a master artist.

In whatever manner Morrison had caught fire, he had only managed to burn the floor under him and the ceiling directly above, which had created the hole through which the smoke was leaving. The hay in the hayloft was unburned, and although the joist and a bit of floor under his body was still there, a ring of flooring around his body had burned completely away. Luckily, he had been leaning against a stone wall, so the walls hadn’t caught fire.

Morrison’s face and mustache were still visible and recognizable by people who knew him in the cinder his head had become, and except for where wood from the ceiling had landed on him, details such as the wrinkles in his clothing were still visible in the ashy remains. Not everything was perfect; his hair was gone, the top of his skull could be seen, and his back had been burned and exposed down to his ribs. It seemed that this damage had been caused by the falling slates, so the figure would have been even more perfect had it been found earlier.[4]

A picture was taken, from which a lithograph was made and later printed in the British Medical Journal, which was a good thing because when an attempt was made to move the remains, the “body” just plain fell apart.

6 The Shop Owner’s Death


Some accounts of fire death appear to point to a truly scary occurrence. Take, for example, the death of Andrew Nolte in 1867, a case that caught the attention of the famous novelist Charles Dickens.

Nolte was the owner of a liquor store in Columbus, Indiana, US, and was known to be a drunkard . . . so much so that his wife had filed for divorce because of it, which only made him drink more. On the morning of February 15, drinking ceased to be a problem for him. Around 8:00 AM, people investigating smoke coming from Nolte’s shop found him lying dead on his back, his hands drawn up to his mouth as if to grab something. The front of his clothes were burning, and there were some scorches on his body under the clothing, but that’s not what killed him.

Nolte’s mouth had been incinerated horribly, his lips burned away and his tongue charred; his nostrils were burned also, as if Nolte had been blowing flames from them. There was no other evidence of fire in the room—just Nolte’s incinerated airway.[5]

5 An Evil Spark


The year was 1776, and it had been a busy day in the town of Filetto, Italy, for priest Don G. Maria Bertholi, and he was quite ready for bed when he arrived at his brother-in-law’s house that evening. He retired to his given room, put a handkerchief between his shoulders and shirt, and settled into his prayers as everyone else in the house settled down to sleep.

Then there was a loud noise from Bertholi’s room, followed by cries of pain and alarm from the priest. The members of the household ran to the room to discover Bertholi lying on the floor, surrounded by a strange, flickering blue flame that receded away as it was approached, until it just disappeared. Bertholi’s nightshirt and cap had been destroyed, leaving just the cuffs of the shirt; his hair was untouched by whatever had destroyed the cap. The family helped the priest to the bed and called a doctor as early as possible in the morning. What this doctor saw astounded him.

The skin on Bertholi’s right arm and side was hanging loose, mostly detached from the muscle underneath, and the priest’s right hand was already showing obvious signs of decomposition less than a day from the strange occurrence. The doctor removed the loose skin and amputated Bertholi’s hand, but by the next day, all the wounded areas were showing advanced signs of decomposition, and Bertholi was intensely feverish, vomiting, and delusional. By the fourth day, Bertholi had died, smelling of rot and with maggots pouring from his wounds.

The doctor tried to find out what had happened to Bertholi, but all the priest could offer was that he felt as if he’d been struck on the right arm at the same time that he saw a spark of fire attach itself to his shirt. All the doctor could guess was that, somehow, Bertholi had been struck by lightning while inside a house and praying, but how that leads to accelerated rotting is anyone’s guess.[6]

4 Raise Your Hands


It was a hot day in 1822, and 40-year-old Renateau was walking to his home in the village of Loignan, France, accompanied by a girl who was not his wife when it happened. Just a few hundred feet from his house, he felt a sharp pain in the index finger on his right hand. He looked at it, and it was on fire. Automatically, he pinched the index finger between his thumb and middle finger to stifle the flame, but then those digits lit up. Not surprisingly, Renateau started to panic around this time, and in his frenzied attempts to suffocate the flames, he managed only to burn two holes in his pants, set his pouch on fire, and, while trying to remove the pouch, set his left hand aflame.

At this, Renateau ran the remaining distance to his house and ordered his wife to get a bucket of water, into which he plunged both hands. When he pulled them out, they were still burning. Next, he submerged his hands in mud to try to stifle the infernal flames, but his hands continued to burn. By this time, Renateau had attracted a certain amount of attention, and one devout young lady suggested he should try holy water. She brought him a bowl of it . . . and, sure enough, the holy water finally doused the persistent flames on his hands.[7]

This all only begs the question: Why was he walking home with a girl who was not his wife, and exactly what was he doing with his hands before they caught fire?

3 A Carefully Handled Combustion


On January 5, 1835, a professor at the University of Nashville apparently had a very close encounter with some form of spontaneous human combustion. James Hamilton, professor of mathematics, was on a lunch break and walked home from the university to busy himself with some atmospheric measurements. He built a fire and then spent half an hour observing a barometer and thermometer on the other side of the room. After this, he headed outside, where he spent ten minutes in a chill wind observing a hygrometer. Then he felt a sudden pain in his left thigh.

At first, the pain felt as sharp as hair being pulled, but upon touching the spot, it quickly became more intense until he found himself crying out over it. Then it got stranger: A light flame, about the circumference of a dime, became visible on his clothing above the pain. Did he panic? No! Hamilton cupped both his hands over the flame tightly, not touching it but cutting off its supply of air as best he could, soon suffocating the flame and relieving the greater part of the pain. He pulled down his pants to look at the spot and found what looked like an 8-centimeter-long (3 in), 2.5-centimeter-wide (1 in) scrape that was extremely dry. His underwear was burned through exactly where it had been lying over the wound![8]

2 Motor Mystery


On November 20, 1960, a little girl playing by a creek near Pikeville, Kentucky, made a grisly discovery. Five men burned beyond recognition sat in a car. The car had gone off the road and stopped with the front in the creek. There had been no impact; the car had just rolled to a stop. There was no gas in the tank. Though the outside of the car looked undamaged, the interior of the vehicle was incinerated, and police initially suspected foul play for simple reasons: The men were all upright in their seats and showed no signs of having struggled to escape the fire. In addition, metal detectors suggested possible pellets or bullets in the chest areas of the men, and there was blood on the ground near the car.

But the autopsies showed that the metal had dripped from the ceiling of the vehicle as it started to melt and that the men had high levels of carbon monoxide in their bodies, meaning they were alive and breathing when the fire started. It was determined that it was the carbon monoxide that, ultimately, killed the men. For lack of a better theory, police decided that the fire had started at the front of the vehicle and moved back, but it was never stated how this odd fire started. Nor was it explained why five men in a burning vehicle would calmly drive a car off a road, nor where the blood on the ground came from, nor why the five men, alive and breathing, would calmly sit still as they burned to death.[9]

1 Spontaneous Animal Combustion?


It has been argued that if human bodies can just catch fire on their own, then animals should be lighting up, too . . . but there are only two known reports of possible spontaneous animal combustion, and they’re just plain weird. The first was reported in 1745 by Paul Rolli, the first person to propose the idea of human bodies self-igniting. According to Rolli, sometime around 163 BC, when Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus II and M. Juventius Thalna were both consuls in Rome, it was reported that “a flame came out of a bull’s mouth, without hurting the beast, by not finding any resistance to its way.” It’s a interesting report, but Rolli doesn’t say where he found it, so it’s hard to give it much credit.

The second known report is far more recent. According to Jenny Randles and Peter Hough, a soldier named Raymond Reed was with the 9th Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers during World War II and was stationed in Dorset, England. One night, Reed, another soldier, and an officer were patrolling along the coastline in the dark and were crossing an open field full of grazing sheep when a fire suddenly erupted about 91 meters (300 ft) away from them. They investigated, being careful as they approached, and found a burning sheep lying on its side, with blue flames pouring from its stomach! The sheep was not decomposing and, in fact, was “quite fresh looking.” Somewhat confused, Reed and the other men extinguished the flames with dirt. Then Reed waited 50 years before telling anyone what he had seen. Can you blame him?[10]

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

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Top 10 Spooky Tales Based On Weirder True Stories https://listorati.com/top-10-spooky-tales-based-on-weirder-true-stories/ https://listorati.com/top-10-spooky-tales-based-on-weirder-true-stories/#respond Thu, 18 Jan 2024 00:07:58 +0000 https://listorati.com/top-10-spooky-tales-based-on-weirder-true-stories/

Frightful stories of cryptids, aliens, and urban legends get retold every Halloween. Campfire versions embellish the truth for cheap scares. The following origins of 10 popular tropes prove that sometimes real life is even more bizarre.

10 Unsettling Premonitions That Came True

10 Neighbors Poison Halloween Candy


Ronald O’Bryan ruined everyone’s fun. Cautious parents inspect their children’s Halloween haul to make sure no nefarious prankster tainted it. They usually test this by courageously eating some portion of the candy themselves. Only one recorded child has died from poisoned Halloween candy. It was not done by a demented boogieman, but the child’s own father.

In 1974, eight-year-old Timothy O’Bryan went trick or treating. Timothy and his five friends approached an ominous house with its lights off. No one answered when they rang the doorbell. Instead, Ronald O’Bryan walked out shadows. He handed each kid a restapled 21-inch pixy stix coated in cyanide. Floundering in debt, Ronald killed his son to cash in on the life insurance policy. On June 3, 1975, a jury convicted Ronald of one charge of capital murder and four counts of attempted murder.

Following the unsolved Chicago Tylenol poisoning, the very real threat of child dying no longer seemed like quirky holiday superstition. Retellings turned the myth of deadly candy into the far more innocuous problem of needles in the chocolate. It only made sense that the type of sadistic monster willing feed trick-or-treaters razor blades is the same kind of person who hands out apples.[1]

9 Piranhas are Flesh Eating Monsters


Nature-loving Teddy Roosevelt unknowingly spread one of its most groundless myths. Piranhas’ reputation as pocket sized demons that devour meat in seconds is unjustified. The fish are omnivorous. Some species are strictly herbivores. They only eat animals bigger than insects or other fish when they are starved, like when President Roosevelt first saw them.

In 1913, Brazilian dignitaries were eager to impress the former President. Desperate to make an impressive spectacle, they closed off a section of the Amazon river. For days, the isolated Piranhas were denied food. In honor of Roosevelts arrival, the locals dropped a live cow into the swarm. Like the velociraptor frenzy in Jurassic Park, the school stripped apart the bovine. Chunks of barren bone were all that was left to float to the top. Recalling the event in his travelogue Through the Brazilian Wilderness, Roosevelt described the fish as the “embodiment of evil ferocity.” Schlocky b-grade movies like James Cameron’s Piranha II: The Spawning ingrained the misconception in popular culture.[2]

8 Celebrities get their Ribs Removed


On-stage antics are meant to be for shock. Theatric rocker Marilyn Manson’s legacy has been eclipsed by the rumor that he removed his ribs to suck his penis. The oft trot out line has no validity. This allegation was as false for the first person to have it applied to them. He unleashed horrors far more appalling than “The Beautiful People”

Rumors around celebrities removing their ribs is frequently targeted against women looking for unorthodox weight loss. That strain of story still gets retold with various stars like Cher, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, Racquel Welch, or Britanny Spears. The salacious wrinkle that someone would opt for the surgery for self-fallacio is attributed to Gabriele D’Annunzio. D’Annunzio trafficked in gossip. To bolster his fame, D’Annunzio spread scandalous tales that he cooked baby flesh, stitched a robe to expose his penis, and stole the Mona Lisa. Despite his controversial history, Italy still heralds D’Annunzio as one of their nation’s great poets. The world is more familiar with his other work, fascism.

The first modern fascist state was the city of Fiume. The enclave was seized by D’annunzio’s 2,000 strong militia. Italian forces tried to reclaim the small town for 15 months. Eventually, the navy compelled surrender. Benito Mussolini admired D’Annunzio’s resolve. After his rise to power, Mussolini modeled himself after D’annuzio. D’annuzio was wary of Il Duce’s legitimacy, but he did suggest an easy symbol to identify followers of the cause. Initially known as “The Roman Salute,” the Nazi’s adopted the hand gesture as the Seig Heil.[3]

7 The Jersey Devil


Two people birthed the Jersey Devil. Tradition holds that Mother Leeds conceived her thirteenth child in a pact with Satan. The deformed offspring sprouted wings, hooves, and a tail. The second culprit is nearly as unbelievable, Benjamin Franklin.

The Leeds family lack the same name recognition as their Founding Father rival. They still shaped history. Daniel Leeds’ Almanac was the earliest printing in the New Jersey colony. It’s anti-Quaker stance is among the first political attacks in American history. Quakers retaliated by calling Daniel Leeds, “Satan’s Harbinger.”

Daniel passed almanac responsibilities to his son, Titan. Under his pseudonym “Poor Richard,” Benjamin Franklin joked in his competing almanac that astrological calculations prophecized Titan’s imminent death. As the prediction passed in 1733, the very much not dead Leeds called Franklin, “a liar.” Franklin retorted that he was still right. Titan was just a ghost. By the time of Titan’s real 1738 death, anti-British sentiment turned the Leeds family into a symbol of ridicule. Their family crest was mocked as the Leeds Devil. A 20th century huckster trying to stir up business towards his store revitalized and embellished oral stories of the Leeds Devil into the name of the cryptozoological chimera that terrorizes the Garden state’s forests and, occasionally, the National Hockey League.[4]

6 Nazi UFO’s


Like any good melodrama, Baron Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s life starts with, “it was a dark and stormy night.” The hackney cliché first appeared in Bulwer-Lytton’s 1830 novel Paul Clifford. Other common phrases, like “The almighty dollar” or “The pen is mightier than the sword,” were coined within the pages of Bulwer-Lytton’s works. His life was as florid as his writing. In retribution for locking her in an insane asylum under false pretenses, his wife, Rosina Doyle Wheeler, sabotaged Bulwer-Lytton’s Parliamentary campaign. She leaked misinformation that he was having an illicit affair with future Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. No story better encapsulates his insane life than the far-reaching consequences of his 1871 potboiler The Coming Race.

The pulp novel was among the first science fiction texts to use the plot device of a traveler unearthing a mythical land. The main character discovered a secret undergound commune inhabited by a race of angels called Vril-ya powered by the fluid “vril”. A fan of the occult, Bulwer-Lytton’s fictional realm referenced common pseudoscientific ideas of the day. In 1947, researcher William Ley inspired real life quests to tap into Vril’s power. One such organization, the Vril Society, was allegedly founded when psychic Maria Orsic used her telepathic hair to communicate with aliens. Intergalactic beings equipped the Third Reich with superior technology in the waning days of the war. Shockingly, historians are not convinced the society existed.

The absurd idea of aliens working with the Nazi high command permeated pop culture. Tongue-in-cheek video games like Iron sky: Invasion, the Wolfenstein franchise, or the zombie levels of Call of Duty are based on the conspiracy theory. Along with all of their other wrongheaded views, some Neo-Nazis sects still maintain Vril is out there.[5]

10 Beloved Stories Based On Horrible True Events

5 Chemirocha

Jimmie Rodgers was a legend in life. Death made him a deity. As “The Father of Country Music,” generations of composers were inspired by Rodger’s pioneering yodel. A fraction of the artists shaped by Rodgers’ catalogue include Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams, Mudddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf. His influence stretched far beyond the American South, including, curiously, Kenya’s Great Rift Valley.

British missionaries brought the word of God and the yelps of Rodgers. To further spread their message, evangelists played gramophone copies of country records. The Kipsigis tribe were particularly fond of Jimmie Rodgers. Through bungled translation, the formative country singer’s name became “Chemirocha.” “Chemirocha” entered the lexicon for anything new or interesting.

In the 1950’s, ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey returned to the Kipsigis village to field record local songs. The phrase “Chemirocha” morphed into lore. Because of his unnaturally high-pitched voice, “Chemirocha” was described as a half-man and half-antelope faun. Either in myth or his music, Jimmie Rodgers achieved immortality.[6]

4 The Loch Ness Monster


Murmurs of some creature lurking within Scotland’s Loch Ness were told for centuries. The modern notion of an aquatic reptile comes from a single 1934 photograph published in The Daily Mail. Dubbed “The Surgeon’s Photo,” the grainy black and white visual of a long neck and humped figure breaking through the water became the standard depiction of the beast. Everyone involved has since admitted it was a hoax.

In 1933, the Inverness Courier printed the first sighting of the legendary animal. The Daily Mail wanted to get in on the craze. They stationed Marmaduke Wetherall to gather evidence. In December 1933, he discovered a set of footprints on the shoreline. Natural History Museum scientists examining the plaster copies determined they were made by a dried hippo’s foot from an umbrella stand. Mocked for being so gullible, Wetherall concocted his revenge.

Wetherall approached his stepson Christian Spurling to create a fake monster. Molding some clay on top of a toy submarine, Spurling photographed the replica as it drove around the lake. To lend some credibility, the duo employed noted surgeon Colonel Robert Wilson to hand the pictures to The Daily Mail. Marmaduke Wetherell embarrassed the British tabloid just as they embarrassed him.[7]

3 The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs

1979’s When a Stranger Calls begins with the classic twist of a panicked babysitter realizing that the killer’s call was coming inside the house. The tragic crime that inspired it was even more of a macabre irony. The phone cord she thought could save her, killed her.

On March 18, 1950, 13-years-old Janett Christman babysat Ed and Anne Romack’s 3-year-old son, Gregory. Worried about her safety, Ed lent Janett a shotgun if anyone suspicious stopped by. It was never used. Around 10:35 p.m., the local Sheriff’s Department received a frantic phone call. In between disjointed breathes, the dispatcher barely made out a plea for help. The phone was cut dead. Within three hours, Christman was too. She had been bludgeoned, raped, and strangled with the wires from an electric iron and the telephone. Thankfully, Gregory was unharmed.

Jurisdictional squabbles hampered the investigation. The Romacks lived 100-yards over the city limits. Competing agencies feuded over withheld evidence. This divide allowed the prime suspect Robert Mueller to evade justice. Mueller had a lecherous reputation in the community for young virgins. His occasional babysitter, Mueller lusted after Janett in particular. The stationary shotgun suggests Christman knew the culprit. The night of the murder, Mueller excused himself for two hours to allegedly meet his doctor. Mueller’s doctor says he never showed up. Most damning, Mueller phoned the Romacks the morning after the murder. Obviously out of compassion, he asked if they needed any assistance cleaning the blood. This call came before the press reported the murder. Taken to barn outside city limits, police interrogated Mueller. Denied a proper setting, the questions were inadmissible. Mueller died in 2006 never charged with any crime. Officially, the case remains unsolved.[8]

2 Grey Aliens Probe Butts

There are two possibilities. Believers contend that on September 9, 1961, husband and wife Barney and Betty Hill were abducted by a flying saucer somewhere along New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Aliens shoved a needle through Betty’s navel and a metallic capsule inside Barney’s rectum. Skeptics maintain it was all made up. Neither view justifies why so many people have shared this delusion.

Logic explains away most of the supposed details. Sleep-deprived, the Hills drove five hours nonstop in the middle of the night. In this foggy state, an observatory tower light weaving along the wooded road could be confused for a craft. The visual of grey skinned aliens with an enlarged forehead closely resemble the costume design of a beast in an episode the Outer Limits aired two weeks before Barney shared his account. The intrusive surgery resembles accounts of accidental awareness Barney might have experienced if anesthesia wore off in a recent tonsillectomy. Physical evidence like Betty’s ripped dress, Barney’s scuffed shoes, or circular dents on the car are harder to rationalize, unless this whole story was created by an unscrupulous doctor.

The Hills were reluctant to publish their account. They only came forward at the recommendation of their psychiatrist, Dr. Benjamin Simon, in 1964. Under hypnosis, the Hills were susceptible for the opportunistic doctor to plant false memories. The couple did not initially seek out the counseling over concerns about a three-year-old hazy recollection. They faced tangible problems. Barney’s doctor warned he needed to treat stress-induced high blood pressure and ulcers. His first psychiatrist concluded Barney’s anxiety stemmed from being a black man married to a white woman. Active in the civil rights movement, the stigma of the interracial marriage caused the two mental unrest. Shortly before their sighting, the waitress at the diner they visited to was disgusted by the couple’s race. Black and white together make grey.[9]

1 Elvis Faked His Death

Jimmy Ellis wanted to be a star. Every record with his name on it flopped. Critics always complained he sounded too much like Elvis Presley. After 15 years of scrounging by, Ellis abandoned music. He settled on just being himself. Then, Elvis died.

Mercury Records Vice President Shelby Singleton is one of music’s great conmen. His first shameless scam was buying Sun Records’ back catalog, the Memphis studio that launched the King of Rock and Roll’s career. In 1972, Singleton released Ellis singing 1950’s standards under the implication this was the lost first Elvis’ recordings.

By Elvis’ 1977 death, Singleton hatched a more fantastical con. Loosely inspired by Elvis’ biography, Gail Brewer-Giorgio’s unpublished novel Orion: The Living Superstar of Song tells of a Southerner who lucked into becoming the world’s most popular singer. After squandering his fame on drugs and vice, Orion faked his death to find peace.

Dressed in bedazzled jumpsuits, jet black hair, and a rhinestone mask, Singleton marketed Ellis as Orion. Local publications, not too worried about their accuracy, ran that Orion actually was Elvis reincarnated. Singleton fostered such theories by coyly rerecording old Jerry Lee Lewis albums as duets with Orion. 11 Orion albums were released between 1978 and 1982, including nine charting country singles.

Despite his burgeoning success, Ellis hated his fabricated identity. He grew convinced he was Vernon Presley’s illegitimate child. Sharing the same biological father might explain Ellis’ uncanny similarities. On New Year’s Eve 1983, Ellis tore off the Orion mask. He renounced his alter ego to manage a pawn shop in Alabama. In 1998, he was killed in a botched. He was 53.[10]

Top 10 True Stories More Interesting Than The Myths They Inspired

About The Author: If you thought this article was unbelievably bad, you can email Nate at [email protected]. If you thought it was scary good, you can follow him on Twitter @nateyungman.

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Top 10 Weirder and Kinkier Things Bats Do Than Sucking Blood https://listorati.com/top-10-weirder-and-kinkier-things-bats-do-than-sucking-blood/ https://listorati.com/top-10-weirder-and-kinkier-things-bats-do-than-sucking-blood/#respond Thu, 22 Jun 2023 13:36:24 +0000 https://listorati.com/top-10-weirder-and-kinkier-things-bats-do-than-sucking-blood/

Most people see bats as dreadful, vampire-like creatures from hell, synonymous with darkness and the bloody horror stories we’ve grown up with. This immediate association of fear and dread most probably stems from the tales of the bloodthirsty Count Dracula and even from Batman, when Bruce Wayne tells Alfred, “Bats frighten me. It’s time my enemies share my dread.”

Interestingly, this “dread” of bats is most common in Western and European countries. In places like China and Japan, bats are symbols of happiness and good fortune. In ancient Egypt, bats were believed to have powers that could cure poor eyesight, toothache, fever, baldness, and even prevent the entry of demons into houses. Just goes to show the power that media has in shaping our outlook on life and even our deepest fears.

But I digress. Regardless of what YOU may think of bats, today we will be exploring some of their habits that may be scarier, kinkier, weirder, and downright creepier than you’ve ever heard of before. So much so that they might make you take to your heels even faster than Dracula coming for your blood.

Related: 10 Amazing Things You Didn’t Know Bats Could Do

10 No Pee-Free Zone Here

Urine showers, anyone? Certain species of bats have been known to anoint themselves with their own urine. Yeah, that’s right. Bats use their own urine to scent themselves. This behavior, known as “urine-wash,” partly explains the thick cloud of foul-smelling air that surrounds bat colonies and definitely explains the smell of individual bats.

So next time you need to get a lost bat out of your attic, think twice about using your bare hands to take it out. Some gloves would be handy, or maybe just leave it there so it can think long and hard about its personal hygiene choices.[1]

9 Get to the (Penis) Point

At least 14 bat species have barbed penises or penile spines, with some barbs reaching 1 centimeter (0.4 inches) in length. Yikes! The hoary bat has penis barbs that are 6.6% of its body length. That’s the same as a 183-centimeter-tall (6-foot) man having 12-centimeter-long (4.7-inch) barbs on his penis. Yikes again!

Scientists speculate that the barbs could be used to hold the two bats together (often while mating in mid-air) for optimal reproduction. Another possible reason for the spines could be to clear out the leftover sperm in the female from another male bat. This ensures a maximum chance of reproduction being successful. The reason a male bat would have to clear out another bat’s sperm is because female bats can hold sperm inside them and wait for an optimal time for fertilization based on the environmental conditions.[2]

8 Lending a Helping…Hand

Bats are known to be very sexually active, and they have been known to masturbate several times a day. Not only do they take care of themselves, but they help their friends out too. Mutual masturbation is common between male as well as female bats.

Conservationists, who rehabilitate bats, have had a few pretty hairy encounters of them being hormone-fueled pleasure addicts (and pretty disgusting ones at that). My favorite story is about one bat keeper who didn’t realize that a bat had just ejaculated all over its own face. It then proceeded to sneeze on the bat keeper, transferring a healthy amount of the fluids right onto the keeper. Stay away, kids.[3]

7 It’s the Summer of Love…All the Time

By now, I think it’s pretty clear that bats are very enthusiastic about sex. Besides the copious amounts of sex that goes on between male and female bats, it’s common practice for bats to play for the other team whenever possible. Groups of male bats have been caught in the act, as well as groups of female bats rubbing their lady parts on each other.

This often occurs when the members of the opposite sex are not available for mating, such as when they are hibernating, foraging, or hunting. But this same-sex behavior is also common when members of the opposite sex are around and available. Not only is this behavior common, but often it is very rough among males and inflicts harm on one of the bats involved (you can use your imagination here).[4]

What I do know now is that if STDs existed in bat societies, I’m pretty sure they’d have all of them.

6 The House of Guano

Bats live in squalor. They have an extremely fast metabolism and have to constantly eat to keep their energy levels high. But a fast metabolism also means a quick digestive system. So this means bats frequently have to pee and poo, no matter when, where, or who it’s on. Bats excrete some type of solid or fluid roughly every 20 minutes.

So be careful when going caving since the floor of bat colonies are full of excrement called guano. Guano is great for the natural environment as a fertilizer but not so great for our noses or hygiene. A large amount of guano is also the perfect breeding ground for disease and the creatures that carry them, such as flies, cockroaches, rats, and the bats themselves.[5]

5 Rap Sheet: Spreading Disease

Bats can be disease carriers. They carry diseases such as ABLV (Australian Bat Lyssavirus), which causes a fatal rabies-like disease in humans. (Although people are hardly ever directly infected from bats). They also carry the Hendra virus, which they transfer to horses and, in turn, to us. Histoplasmosis, a rare lung infection, can be picked up from the droppings in bat caves.

Like bats, rats are also notable disease carriers. But these two animals aren’t the only culprits out there—they just tend to have a bad rep earned through horrific historical plagues and epidemics. However, humans are more likely to catch something from livestock, including pigs, chickens, cattle, goats, sheep, and camels.[6]

I don’t know about you, but dying of a fatal disease kinda scares me more than Dracula at this point.

4 For a Good Time…

Fruit bats seem to enjoy using their long tongues for other things besides licking fruit. They are one of the few animals known to engage in oral sex, and nobody knows exactly why they do it. Scientists say that it could be to help with stimulation, lubrication, or maybe they just enjoy it (can’t really blame them, can you).

This behavior does not only happen between male and female bats. Many male bats have been caught in this act with other males, as well as female bats with other female bats. I’m starting to think that bats are just sex-crazy and a bit too kinky for their own good. I just keep thinking about #9 above. Um, spiky barbs! Ouch![7]

3 It’s a Smelly Life

Bats are very smelly creatures and use their smell as a means of communication. They have glands on their necks, which they use to scent themselves, as well as the things around them. Mother bats may use scenting to identify their young in a crowded area, while others may do it to recognize each other or find mates.

The smell is not very noticeable unless you have a bat in very close proximity to you or if it has been trapped/kept in an enclosed space. That is, unless you stumble into a huge colony with thousands of bats where you may just pass out from the stench and wake up lying in a bed of bat poo and fluids. I’d honestly rather just leave them in peace.[8]

2 And Now for the Blood

What is a bat list without mentioning the infamous vampire bat? Do not fear, readers. I won’t bore you with the usual facts about vampire bats that you already learned about in preschool. What I will say is that vampire bats hardly ever use humans as a source of blood. They usually use cows, chickens, or sheep as hosts. Some even pretend to be baby chicks and snuggle up to the mother hen, proceeding to drink some of her blood. But the creepiest thing about vampire bats is that they tend to return to the same host they drank from the previous night.

So if you do get bitten by a vampire bat one night, then it will most likely come and visit you again the following night. It’s like having your very own little furry best friend that comes to visit you every night (and also drinks a teaspoon of your blood). But we can gloss over that part, right?)[9]

1 But It’s Not All Sex and Disease

Now for some information that doesn’t paint bats as the bad guys. Bats are vital to many ecosystems as well as our crop industry. Bats keep fruit and crop-eating pests under control, saving farmers billions of dollars in pesticides and destroyed crops. So really, bats are good for the economy too. Who would’ve thought!

Bats are also pollinators and seed dispersers. Since they are so abundant throughout the world and there are so many different kinds of bats, they are responsible for a major part of reforestation in badly affected areas, like those devastated by wildfires and other natural disasters.

So as much as you may want to stay away from touching and watching bats go about their *cough* interesting *cough* lives, they deserve to be respected and admired from afar. They deserve our protection, too, so that they can continue adding value to our lives…while obviously enjoying theirs.[10]

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