Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Back from the dead, a man dies

The Mississippi man who was wrongly diagnosed as dead actually died.  

"They came and got him again around 4:15 a.m.," Williams' nephew, Eddie Hester, told CNN affiliate WAPT. "I think he's gone this time."

Or so it seems:

CNN learned about the death from Holmes County, Mississippi, coroner Dexter Howard. He was the same man who first declared Williams dead on February 26...
"Every case I do is a learning experience," said Howard.

(thanks to Todd Bryant)

Severed body parts progress in California

Los Angeles charged a man with murder and dismemberment. The alleged villain apparently strangled his victim, then cut up the body into useful parts.  It was disposing of those parts  behind the Hollywood sign that started the investigation, two years ago:

Two women discovered Medellin's head while walking dogs on a trail in Griffith Park on Jan. 17, 2012. One of the dogs, which was off its leash, had started to play with a plastic bag. When the dog shook the bag, the head fell out.

Since this is a severed head situation, Infocult was naturally on the case in 2012.

Anyone want to try a Thomas Pynchon style joke on the name "Medellin"?  You need to end up with a Scooby-Doo "meddling kids" punchline.

(thanks to Ed Webb chez Twitter)

One way to get a crown of thorns

Today in real-life medical horror, death by nailgun: 

A man attempted suicide by shooting seven nails into his head with a nail gun; five in the right temporal region and two in the left. He subsequently presented at the emergency department with complaints of headache.

(Nyah!)

...Radiological studies showed the presence of nails arranged like a 'martyr's crown'. The man died six days after the surgical removal of the nails.

Nail gun suicides and suicide attempts are actually not uncommon, at least in the literature indexed here.  Samples:

A 62-year-old man was admitted to our hospital after attempting to commit suicide with a pneumatic nail gun. Six nails were launched. Because the nail head acted as a brake, the launched nail could make a hole in the skull but could not entirely pass it...

The attempt consisted of self-asphyxiation with car exhaust fumes and shooting himself thrice with a three-inch nail gun. He sustained a penetrating nail injury to the floor of his mouth, effectively pinning his mouth closed, and penetrating injuries to the right ventricular free wall and at the junction of the right atrioventricular septum...

He had shot his head with 8 nails using a nail-gun in a suicide attempt...

after trying to kill himself by means of a pneumatic nail gun. The nail had gone right through the third lumbar vertebra...

Chest films on admission showed 5 nails penetrating the thorax and one of these nails had reached into pericardium...

(photo of crown of thorns starfish from Wikipedia)

CNN wants you to fear the deep Web

CNN, that fine purveyor of Gothic tales, now turns its attention to the Deep Web.  Which seems to be a cyberspatial zone of scary stuff, dominated by an enormous pirate squid:

The accompanying article is filled with scary stuff.

tens of trillions of pages -- an unfathomable number -- that most people have never seen. They include everything from boring statistics to human body parts for sale (illegally)...

Related story: Shodan, the scariest search engine on the Internet

Tor comes in for extra fearsome attention.

Then there's Tor, the darkest corner of the Internet...

[I]n the last decade, it's also become a hub for black markets that sell or distribute drugs (think Silk Road), stolen credit cards, illegal pornography, pirated media and more. You can even hire assassins...

[I]f you're really brave, download the Tor browser bundle. But surf responsibly...

CNN has made a multi-year practice of building up, then exploiting, all kinds of Gothic terror.

(thanks to Todd Bryant)

Creepy digital media stories about missing Malaysia Airlines flight

Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 has been missing three days, and fearsome digital media accounts have already appeared.  

So far these news stories describe people connected with passengers finding digital evidence of those passengers possibly being alive.

Mobile phones: the hardware suggests travelers' machines still working. "Relatives of passengers ... claimed that they were able to call cell phones of their loves ones".  Sometimes these calls yielded an audio sign of the other phone being active:

[O]ther relatives in the room said that when they dialed some passengers’ numbers, they seemed to get ringing tones on the other side even though the calls were not picked up.

 

GPS angle: if "passengers' mobile phones were ringing...  The connection should be used to get the Global Positioning System coordinates of the phones' locations, [several family members] said".

Flight crew members' phones also connected: "[Malaysia Airlines commercial director Hugh] Dunleavy said MAS was also trying the mobile phones of the crew members, and that they also rang. "

Social media: some passengers apparently show signs of connection. 

One of the most eerie rumors came after a few relatives said they were able to call the cellphones of their loved ones or find them on a Chinese instant messenger service called QQ that indicated that their phones were still somehow online.  

The Washington Post article concludes on a tiny, sad tale:

One man said he had convinced two policemen to come to his home Sunday night to witness the active QQ account on his desktop computer. But sometime Monday afternoon, when he wasn’t paying attention, it had suddenly switched off.

Like so many involved, he was now left with even more questions left unanswered. Did the phone’s battery run out? Had sea water damaged it? Was it just a random anomaly of some Internet server? Or was the plane hijacked and still out there somewhere?

These connections are not pleasant for the relatives, friends, and coworkers, despite the survival possibilities they present, because they are incomplete: "Frustratingly for those desperate for some news or sign, messages have gone unanswered and calls were not picked up."  Worse, police and the airline aren't helping:

The phantom calls triggered a new level of desperation and anger for some. They tried repeatedly Sunday and Monday to ask airline and police officials about the ringing calls and QQ accounts. However unlikely it was, many thought the phones might still be on, and that if authorities just tracked them down, their relatives might be found. But they were largely ignored.

Longtime Infocult readers will recognize these types of uncanny digital media stories, especially the mobile device and social media angles.

In Carcosa, Louisiana

There's some splendid Gothic in the first season of True Detective.  For example, this disturbing altar:

CNN finds a dead man returned to life

A dead man comes back life! shrieks CNN.  Yes, America's leading Gothic source has more real-life terror for us.

Tellingly, the story occupied CNN's front page for hours.

(thanks to Todd Bryant)