Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

The old body mistaken for a mannikin gag

Workers in a Florida city disposed of a mannikin.  Well, what they thought was one:

[T]wo workers hired to clean out a house believed the body of a man who hanged himself in the garage was a mannequin used for a prank. One of the men took the body to a dump, where county workers became suspicious and called deputies.

Here's a more fleshed-out version:

The house was in disarray, Nienhuis said, similar to an episode of Hoarders. Dead rodents filled the house and the workers believed that was the source of a foul smell, he said.

While cleaning, the men saw what they both believed was a mannequin hanging from the ceiling in the garage.

"Both individuals as well as the property owners believed the lifelike mannequin was a distasteful Halloween-like hoax left by the former renters," sheriff's officials said in a news release.

The men cut the body down, placed it in a pickup along with other refuse, and hauled everything to the West Hernando garbage transfer station.

There, county employees became suspicious. Shortly before noon Thursday, they called the Sheriff's Office and reported that a body had possibly been disposed in a Dumpster.

Deputies arrived and confirmed their suspicions.

Since this is Florida, it's even worse than it seems.  Because it's happened before.

This type of mistake is not unprecedented. In St. Petersburg this spring, a security guard at a downtown apartment complex trashed the body of a 96-year-old woman who had jumped from her 16th-floor unit. The guard believed the body was a mannequin used as an April Fools' Day prank.

(all praise to the wife of Infocult!)

Human dolls from the dead

"You abandoned your girls in the cold - and I brought them home and warmed them up"

A Russian court ruled that a historian was unfit to stand trial.  His crime?  Digging up corpses, then turning them into dolls.

Anatoly Moskvin, 46, from Nizhny Novgorod in central Russia, scoured over 700 graveyards for bodies of three to 12-year-olds for his macabre collection. He dressed the corpses even making one look like a teddy bear. There were at least 26 found in his home.

More details:

He dressed the dead children in stockings, girls' clothing and knee length boots to make them look like dolls, even applying lipstick and make-up to their faces, and putting music boxes inside their rib cages.  

There's a mad science detail:

Moskvin kept Olga in his home for nine long years and told authorities that he was waiting for science to come far enough to make his dolls "live again."

And a digital technology angle:

Moskvin made a video which was found by police in which he filmed the bodies, zooming in on their faces. He can be heard saying: "These dolls are made of mummified human remains."

We at Infocult have been examining the creepy doll menace for years.  We just wish they'd stop staring at us.

(thanks to Thomas Burkdall)

A Halloween decapitation in Long Island

Neighbors in a Long Island town found a body in the street, but considered it a Halloween thing. 

[One] said she had been in her room Tuesday night when she heard a helicopter overhead, went outside and saw the body -- separated from the head.

"We thought it was a Halloween prank at first..."

What actually occurred was a matricide and suicide.

A woman whose decapitated body was found on a Farmingdale street Tuesday evening was killed inside her home by her son, who then killed himself by stepping in front of an oncoming Long Island Rail Road train, Nassau County police said.

It is the season of fear and illusion.

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

The trouble with cannibalism in Pakistan

The difficult part about eating people in Pakistan is that... the legal ramifications don't cut the mustard.

The brothers were promptly arrested, and they confessed to unearthing and eating a total of five corpses from the cemetery.

But because Pakistan lacked a stringent cannibalism law, they could only be charged with disturbing a grave site. They were sentenced to two years in prison and released in 2013, despite angry protests from villagers.

The legislature is on the case:

One bill in the National Assembly clarifies that anyone who exhumes a corpse with “intent to cook, eat, sell or to use for magic purposes” will face a mandatory jail sentence of between 10 years and life behind bars. A second bill would make eating human flesh punishable by at least seven years in jail.

Read the whole thing, especially for the story of the culinarily curious brothers.

(thanks to Steven Burnett for the link; photo by Logan Ingalls)

Evil clowns appear in France

Spooky clowns have started surfacing in France, but they aren't merely creepy.  Confirming most people's nightmares, these pitres are also violent.

Fourteen teenagers dressed as clowns and carrying pistols, knives and baseball bats were arrested outside a school in Agde, southern France, on Saturday...

In Montpellier, a 35-year-old man was beaten with a metal rod on Saturday night by a man dressed as a clown who tried to rob him with two accomplices.

Clown crime has inspired anti-clown vigilantes:

Police in Bordeaux stopped a dozen youths who were carrying sticks and metal rods and said they were hunting clowns. One was a 12-year-old boy armed with a dagger.

In eastern France, five people were arrested in Mulhouse last week after setting out to catch scary clowns.

No comment from the Joker.

Note the role of the internet in this story:

[T]he trend, fuelled by Facebook and other social media, is spreading...

The impostors have told police they are inspired by viral videos from the US.

Cyberfear meets clown phobia.  When will we accept increased internet controls to keep us safe from the clown menace?

Perhaps the most poignant passage from that Guardian article is this:

Philippe Herreman..., who runs a team of eight clowns in northern France called the Clowns of Hope, said he hoped the evil clowns would soon disappear.

(thanks to Chris Worden for the link; photo by Chris Rice)

Desiderata for this season of horror

What are the best works of horror produced during the past five years?  Consider this a seasonal query, as we approach splendid Halloween, Infocult's apogee of the year.

Let us restrict our nominations to longer works, including: novels and short story collections; movies; computer games.

Currently on Infocult's dark radar:

• Livia Llewellyn, Engines of Desire.   A fine, very sexual, intense short story collection so far.
• Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs.  A dark steampunk horror game (PC).  Deeply melancholy, mostly focused on an extraordinary underground facility.
• Berberian Sound Studio.  A loving tribute to Italian giallo, with an emphasis on audio production.

Also under consideration: nominees and winners of the Bram Stoker Award.

What else has the past half-decade unleashed upon our trembling world? 

(lovely photo by Steven Depolo)

CNN finds zombies in Chinese finance

CNN applies the zombie meme to China.  Specifically, it's a question of undead financing.

Economists surveyed by CNNMoney often cite concerns over runaway credit growth, but many now single out corporate debt as a major threat to China's economy.

"The risk is that the high debt burden will eventually result in unproductive zombie banks and zombie firms, which are a drag on the economy," said Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics.

(thanks to Todd Bryant)

Creepy clowns invade Florida

The creepy clown craze has hit Florida,

Surveillance videos in the Springfield area show clowns caught on people's porches and sidewalks. In one video, the clown clearly knew he was being recorded.

The clown on a porch grabs a pumpkin, tears it apart, then stares at the camera before disappearing into the darkness.

Two nice examples here:

One observer remarks "That's a dangerous thing to do in a gun-happy stand your ground state."

(via the excellent Florida Man on Twitter)

Coffeebot reveals the posthuman world

A robot makes coffee in this video.  Note its fluid movements, the head-thing motions, and its utter assurance of replacing humanity forever:

Tokyo Desu observes:

despite it being obvious the manufacturer has taken efforts to make the robot look more human and less assembly line machinery, they still gave him clamps instead of fingers and a weird clamp-mounted spotlight – the better to hunt down human flesh bags who refuse to tip their robot barista.

(via Ed "Old School Human Animal" Webb)

Haunted surveillance

Here's a look at surveillance after today's golden age, when spy machines are ruins:

Future of CCTV, when we are all gone and beyond its power to make data ghost of us all. #LossLit

(thanks to Jesse Walker)