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Brazil took its turn at the real-life Gothic this week, as a court sentenced three people for eating another person, plus killing some others.
The group allegedly lured their victims to their house by saying they were looking for a nanny.
The trio admitted in court to killing and eating their victim as part of a purification ritual. But they denied allegations that they consumed and sold the flesh in "empada" pastries.
Infocult noted this story back in 2012, when police arrested the trio for making would-be nanny pastries.
The BBC account concludes on an ominous note:
At the time of their arrest, the trio claimed to be part of a group that supported "the purification of the world and the reduction of its population"
Do we know anything else about that group?
Readers may find other Brazilian Gothic tasters here.
(link thanks to Todd "Gourmand" Bryant; photo by veganfeast)
So there you have it folks. Death verbs. "He was buried." Enigmatic dates. Mysterious serpents. Next time you're at Chipotle, forget the secret menu...
The Chipotle restaurant chain uses Mayan art as decoration, but not always accurately. Infocult notes the following Gothic aspects.
First, a terrifying mix of insects, booze, and body horror:
[one glyph] looks like Acan, the god of alcohol, who is associated with swarms of bees, since bees are attracted to xtabentún (an alcohol made from fermented honey and tree bark). And by "associated with bees" I mean "he literally vomits swarms of bees." I'm pretty sure that bit is before he ritually decapitates himself. ("Chipotle: so good, you'll vomit bees and decapitate yourself!")
Like so:
Second, shrunken head art. Yes:
Perhaps my favorite find was this:
... which looks a lot like God A, one of the Maya Death Gods...
Slate's caption reads ""Shrunken Head," according to Mayatek."
One more Taylor Jones observation belongs in Infocult's worldview:
This would not make Chipotle the first major American chain restaurant to decorate with death iconography from another cultu...
(thanks to Jason K.)
A British man apparently committed a very practical murder:
A man killed his 25-stone father and then ''carefully'' dismembered his body and ''neatly packaged'' the body parts in plastic storage boxes which he used as a television stand, a court has heard.
More details:
Nathan Robinson used a Stanley knife, hacksaw and saw to cut up the body of William Spiller at the flat they shared in Stedman Road, Bournemouth, Dorset...
''Mr Spiller's head had been removed, cut off, and was found within another box within a filing cabinet in the bedroom"...
''Mr Spiller was a large man - 6ft 5in, he weighed in excess of 25 stone in weight - hence I say when his body was cut up and dismembered, it would have taken time and effort. Armed with a Stanley knife, small hacksaw and a saw, it would have been a messy business.''
How was the alleged act discovered? Both cinematically and pragmatically:
[Nigel Lickley QC, prosecuting] said a neighbour who lived below the pair noticed in the afternoon of that day that a ''pink liquid'' was dripping through the ceiling of his bathroom.
The prosecutor said this was diluted blood as Robinson cleaned up the crime scene with a steam cleaner which he went out to buy after killing his father.
Britain: home of the Gothic, and where the Gothic is sometimes right at home.
(thanks to Jesse "Home Repair" Walker; awesome photo by whologwhy)
The best single image encapsulating 2014 is all its mad, paranoid glory:
An Israeli designer has created some concept jewely. The “Energy Addicts” line uses human blood to power small, ornamental devices.
“I wanted to provoke the thought about how far will we go to in order to ‘feed’ our addiction in the world of declining resources,” she said in an interview with Cosmopolitan.
There are three Addicts so far, named "The Blinker, The E-pulse Conductor and The Blood Bridge." Like so:
A fascinating combination of fear and desire. Gothic, in other words.
(thanks to saramin)
Chinese Gothic: police arrested a group who disinterred corpses for use in "ghost marriage" rituals.
The suspects exhumed a woman’s body from a village grave in Shandong province in March and sold it to a middleman for 18,000 yuan (HK$22,760), Shandong Radio and Television reported...
There have been other, recent examples:
In 2009, a grieving father from Shaanxi paid a team of grave robbers 33,000 yuan to find a suitable bride for his son, who had recently died in a car crash. They were later arrested for exhuming the remains of a teenage girl who had killed herself not long after failing her college entrance exam.
And in 2011, a Shaanxi man murdered a pregnant woman in order to sell her body to a family pursuing a ritual ghost marriage for 22,000 yuan. He was later sentenced to death.
There is a market economy to this:
The lead suspect, identified by the surname Wang, said the fresher the bodies, the more they were worth.
“Years-old carcasses are not worth a damn, while the ones that have just died, like this one, are valuable,” Wang said in a clip aired in the news broadcast...
And a disturbing gender aspect as well:
The custom of ghost marriages requires a woman’s body be buried alongside a newly deceased bachelor so that he won’t be alone in the afterlife. It may date back to the 17th century BC and is mostly practised today in rural areas of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei and Guangdong provinces.
It's like a cross between the ancient habit of burying servants with dead rulers and widow self-immolation.
(thanks to Cori for the link; IMDB for the poster)
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