Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Teddy bears from beyond the grave

What do undead teddy bears look like?  UnDeadTeds, like Infocult, is unafraid of seeing the Gothic in the most unlikely places.

For example,

(thanks to Jon Breitenbucher)

Creepypasta migrates to urban legend

Snopes snags a nice bit of short-short creepy storytelling, noting people are passing it around as urban legend.  Yes, an untitled piece of creepypasta (2012) crept out of the fictive world and into the marginally less fictive sphere of must-be-true folklore.

The following is going around Facebook with the picture of a doctor and a nurse holding down a "mannequin woman."   It's obviously BS, but it would be cool to know the history of it

The tale begins like so:

In June of 1972, a woman appeared in Cedar Senai hospital in nothing but a white, blood-covered gown. Now this, in itself, should not be too surprising as people often have accidents nearby and come to the nearest hospital for medical attention. But there were two things that caused people who saw her to vomit and flee in terror.

The first being that she wasn’t exactly human. she resembled something close to a mannequin, but had the dexterity and fluidity of a normal human being. Her face, was as flawless as a mannequins, devoid of eyebrows and smeared in make-up.

She had a kitten clenched in between her teeth, her jaws clamped so unnaturally tightly around it to the point where no teeth could be seen, the blood was still squirting out over her gown and onto the floor. She then pulled it out of her mouth, tossed it aside and collapsed...

Infocult: monitoring the Gothic world as it invades yours, story by uncanny story.

False Positive launches second season

Fine horror Webcomic False Positive (previously) has started a second season, and it's excellent so far.

The short story Seance has just finished, offering a fun take on how contacting the dead can go very wrong.

Another day, another Canadian dismemberment

Canada's burgeoning body-chopping industry continued its work, as a human torso appeared in Ontario. "[N]o other body parts found," clarifies the National Post.

The brief story contains this extra Gothic detail:

Investigators... say she wore a black T-shirt with the words “Forget princess I want to be a vampire” on the front.

Is body segmentation and partial publication a new crime style in the Great White North?

(thanks to Randy McCall)

Murder by urn

Here's a poetic murder weapon: a hurled urn.

[P]olice Officer Jesse Perkins said he saw Perez throw the urn at Elias Cirilo, hitting Cirilo in the head. “I saw a cloud of powder come from the object and the male fall to the ground,” Perkins wrote in a report.

There's something... economical about killing with the dead.

Quite an intense scene it was, too:

Perez was shocked once each with Taser stun guns by Perkins and officer Jeremy Gray after refusing to be handcuffed, according to Gray’s report.

Tasers deliver a 50,000-volt shock, but Perez continued to struggle and threaten to kill his brother, Miguel Perez, according to the reports.

Joel Perez was eventually handcuffed and while being booked said he wished he had a machine gun, “so that he could take all those pieces of (expletive) out,” referring to the people in his home.

(link via Barbara Sawhill; photo by Kyle McDonald)

Giant spiders discovered in closed tombs

What a fine opening lede:

A CLUSTER of rare slug-eating spiders, believed to be 150 years old, has been found lurking in pitch-black Gothic tombs in Highgate Cemetery.

Lots of Gothic touches:

“They were everywhere,” said spider-finder Tony Canning, the London Wildlife Trust’s community outreach worker for Camden. “When you see them in real life, they are as big as anything you will see in this country. It doesn’t sound big but it is the body mass. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea.” The Highgate tombs had not been opened since the 1830s but were being refurbished by cemetery bosses.

(thanks to Tim Pendry)

Human skull found near Toronto

From Canada, home of severed body parts, comes another story of discovered dismemberment.

A passerby found the skull while walking near Vaughan city-owned Uplands Golf and Country Club

The location sounds nicely Gothic:

The area is overgrown with tall brown grass. Muddy, worn paths and hydro towers line the area closest to Highway 407. That the area is home to wildlife, including deer, makes the investigation all the more difficult for police.

Someone should make a Lego-style Canadian body parts toy set.

(thanks to Randy McCall; photo is not of the story's skull)

The sports star, the dead lover, and the hoax

[T]he death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world — and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.

-Poe, "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846)

A famous American sports star recently suffered the tragic loss of his true love... or not. Manti Te'o is, apparently, a famous football player, and adored one Lennay Kekua.  The latter suffered from extremely bad luck, then died.  But the story was a hoax, a daring tale, one that helped build up Te'o's reputation.

Others participated in keeping the story going, often unknowingly:

Lennay Kekua's death resonated across the college football landscape—especially at Notre Dame, where the community immediately embraced her as a fallen sister. Charity funds were started, and donations poured into foundations dedicated to leukemia research. More than $3,000 has been pledged in one IndieGogo campaign raising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

There are Gothic elements to this story, of course.  We led off with the famous Poe quote, which helps explain the narrative's appeal even to jaded audiences of 2013.  Slate writes, wonderingly,

Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o’s dead girlfriend is neither dead nor Manti Te’o’s girlfriend nor a corporeal being.

Then there is also the posthumous aspect, from the CNN lede:

Manti Te'o's deceased girlfriend tweeted late Wednesday night.

That is because there really is a Lennay Kekua, an actual person who never met the football star.  What a weird burden to be placed upon her.

The creepy digital media aspect is also quite clear.  Hoaxes have been part of the digital media world since it began.  The story occurred in that rich space between digital storytelling and online hoaxing.  As Deadspin notes,

Outside of a few Twitter and Instagram accounts, there's no online evidence that Lennay Kekua ever existed.

There are codes, some still unbroken (MSMK?).

As a final note, this story is an interesting one for the ancient American culture divide between geeks and jocks.  Will non-geek sports fans see this as a digital prank played on one of their own, opening up that divide?  Or has the sports world internalized digital technology so deeply that the issue won't surface?

 

People pursued by scary houses, a new twist

Zombie title: this is the term Reuters uses to describe an awful housing situation.

The way it works starts with an mortgage in arrears.  The bank issues a foreclosure, but for various reasons the defaulters legally remain owners of the house they fled.

[I]n 2010, the county sued Keller because the house, already picked clean by scavengers, was in a shambles, its hanging gutters and collapsed garage in violation of local housing code. Then the tax collector started sending Keller notices about mounting back taxes, sewer fees and bills for weed and waste removal. And last year, Chase's debt collector began pressing Keller to pay his mortgage, which had swollen, with penalties and fees, from $62,100.27 to $84,194.69.

The worst news came last January, when the Social Security Administration rejected Keller's application for disability benefits; the "asset" on Avondale Avenue rendered him ineligible. Keller's medical problems include advanced liver disease, hepatitis C and inactive tuberculosis. Without disability coverage, he can't get the liver transplant he needs to stay alive.

"I can't make it end," says Keller. "This house, I can't get out."

Yet another zombie aspect to this economic epoch!

(via Zunguzungu)

Punishing games for their evil ways

One American state lawmaker proposed a tax on violent computer games.  Well, not games portraying violence, necessarily.  It

would add a one percent excise tax on the sale of games rated T or above by the ESRB. That wide umbrella would include violence-free games like Guitar Hero and Ultimate Card Games that received a T rating for "suggestive lyrics" and "simulated gambling," respectively. But hey, at least Call of Duty would set someone back an additional 60¢ under the plan.

Revenues raised by this Missouri law (should it become so) would help pay for mental health treatment for those harmed by violent video games.  A complete loop.