Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

When murder becomes mass murder

A German nurse is serving life in prison for two murder.  This month that pair ballooned into nearly 100, as a court filed a new set of charges.

Niels Högel was very industrious, it seems.  He also had a particular reason or method in his crimes:

During his trial, Hoegel had said he intentionally brought about cardiac crises in about 90 patients in Delmenhorst because he enjoyed the feeling of being able to resuscitate them.

What a constellation of fears: medical horror; the dread of being betrayed by people in whom one places trust; the power of (mad) science.

The end of The Hairy Hand

La Mano Peluda ("The Hairy Hand") was a popular Mexican horror story radio program.  It started in 1995, and ran until shutdown this year.  The format sounds a bit like old Art Bell, with call in speakers telling weird stories.

As The Economist describes it,

AS MIDNIGHT neared, five nights a week Mexicans with a taste for the macabre would switch on their radios to hear the latest spooky story, called in by their fellow listeners. There was the tale of the bloodied boots, which kept reappearing in a family’s basement, driving the wife to seek psychiatric treatment. Once, the station that carried the show, XEDF-FM, mysteriously went off the air during a devil-worshipper’s phone-in. Most famous of all was the story told by Josué Velázquez, who said he had suffocated his grandmother to keep his end of a bargain with the devil (doctors said she had died of natural causes).

Here's the last show.

The most Infocult headline of 2018

The most Infocult-ish headline of 2018 comes from GNC.  An article about the latest security threat bears this awesome title:

 

Guarding against the possible Spectre in every machine

 

 

Well done!

The doom of tech giants, imagined

What would it look like it technology giants decayed and were abandoned, like old industrial brands?  A Romanian artist imagined a future of stained, ruined logos, like this:

The project is called "Social Decay".

(thanks to Steven Kaye)

 

Another home torture dungeon, this time in California

Here at Infocult we track real-world Gothic tales, among other things.  Not just true crime, but accounts from the news that read like horror stories.

For example, there are these stories about adults keeping children in horrible, close confinement, including doses of torture.   The Fritzl case, for example, saw an Austrian man imprisoning, raping, and impregnating one of his children.

Today another such story appears, this time in California.  One county's police department published a description of events under the chilling title "Torture/Child Endangerment Investigation in Perris".

It begins with an escape, and it's telling the police use that word:

Early Sunday morning on January 14, 2018, a 17-year old juvenile escaped from her residence situated in the 100 Block of Muir Woods Road, Perris and managed to call 911 from a cellular device she found inside the house. The teenager claimed her 12 brothers and sisters were being held captive inside the residence by her parents and further claimed some of her siblings were bound with chains and padlocks.

The Riverside County Sheriff's Department - Perris Station continues:

Further investigation revealed several children shackled to their beds with chains and padlocks in dark and foul-smelling surroundings, but the parents were unable to immediately provide a logical reason why their children were restrained in that manner. Deputies located what they believed to be 12 children inside the house, but were shocked to discover that 7 of them were actually adults, ranging in age from 18 to 29. The victims appeared to be malnourished and very dirty. Perris Station Detectives were dispatched to the residence for further investigation. 

The BBC investigated and found that classic detail of American horror: everything seemed happy and fine.

More details will likely surface.

Spontaneous combustion in London

A 70-year-old man spontaneously burst into flames while walking through north London.

Emergency services were called to reports of a “man ablaze” near his home in Haringey on 17 September.

Horrified members of the public tried to put the fire out and alerted police but the flames were not extinguished until firefighters arrived on the scene.

The cause remains a mystery, and so far another example of spontaneous combustion: "The London Fire Brigade investigated the cause of the fire but found no evidence of an “accelerant” that would have spread the flames."

(thanks to Ed Webb)

World Health Organization proclaims "gaming disorder"

The World Health Organization (WHO) has officially deemed excessive computer gaming to be a disorder, according to the BBC.

Its 11th International Classification of Diseases (ICD) will include the condition "gaming disorder".

The draft document describes it as a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour so severe that it takes "precedence over other life interests".

The BBC article does a good job of avoiding internet panic by listing some problems with the WHO statement: misdiagnoses, and the DSM not agreeing.

(via MetaFilter)