Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Eerie outbreak spaces

As COVID-19 works its way through the human race, what are the Gothic aspects?

One has become apparent quickly: the opening out of crowded public spaces.  The Atlantic has a good photo gallery, starting with Islam's Kaaba:

A papal assembly:

A classroom:

Sports:

 

(thanks to Michael Huntsberger)

Found: one human brain in the mail

Odd things come from Canada at times.  Case in point:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents found the brain packed in a glass mason jar in a Canada Post shipment during a random inspection on Valentine’s Day, CBP spokesman Kris Grogan said.

The brain was packaged with bubble wrap and what appeared to be paper towel, Grogan said, but without any supporting documentation.

The only description along with the package – which originated in Toronto and was headed for Kenosha, Wis. – was that it contained an “antique teaching specimen.”

Somehow this sounds like the next step after all of those body parts appeared in Canada.

(thanks to Randy McCall and Steven Kaye)

Starting the decade with medical horror

As 2020 begins we at Infocult continue our study of real-life Gothic horror.

To start, a horrific story from Romania, where a medical blunder killed a patient.

The patient, who had pancreatic cancer, died on Sunday after suffering burns to 40% of her body when surgeons used an electric scalpel despite her being treated with an alcohol-based disinfectant.

Contact with the flammable disinfectant caused combustion and the patient “ignited like a torch”, Emanuel Ungureanu, a Romanian politician, said on his Facebook page, citing medical staff at Floreasca urgent care hospital in Bucharest.

The more one thinks of this, the worse it gets.

And it was the opposite of procedure:

“The surgeons should have been aware that it is prohibited to use an alcohol-based disinfectant during surgical procedures performed with an electric scalpel,” the deputy minister, Horatiu Moldovan, said.

It's the 2020s: new decade, more terror.

(thanks to Tom Elliot)

One real-life death ship

A boat washed up on Japan's coast with a grim cargo.  But let Daily Beast give us the Gothic entrée to the story:

Ghost Ship Carrying Human Heads Washes Up on Japanese Beach

NHK provides some details:

Japanese authorities have found 7 bodies in the remains of a wooden boat that washed ashore on the coast of Sado Island in the Sea of Japan.

A police officer on patrol found the bow of the boat close to shore in the Sobama District of Sado City on Friday.

Coast Guard officers suspect the bow was part of a North Korean boat.

The Coast Guard and police found seven partially skeletonized bodies inside the vessel during a search on Saturday morning.

DB adds that "two decapitated heads [were also found] on the ship..."

As one Twitter user observes, "The backwash of North Korea's terror state produces some incredibly metal headlines, you have to give them that".

(thanks to Jesse "Not a Fisherman" Walker)

The blood business revs up

Here's an article about the booming America business of selling blood.

Key Gothic details:

• Donors turned into zombies
• Poor people being exploited
• Outlaws ("The U.S. supplies fully 70 percent of the world’s plasma, mainly because most other countries have banned the practice on ethical and medical grounds")

(thanks to saramin)

Revenge of a sinkhole victim

Two years ago a California sinkhole swallowed up a car, nearly drowning its driver in water and sewage.

Stephanie Scott, a makeup artist, suffered brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder after she escaped from the sinkhole by pulling herself from her flipped SUV, according to her lawyers. She received help from fire rescue workers as the crater filled with raw sewage in February 2017.

Now the survivor received damages from the city of Los Angeles.

(thanks to Ed Webb)

Insurance claim, Gothic style

The process of getting an insurance claim can be tricky, and sometimes rewarding, but not often is it Gothic.

Today's real-life Gothic comes from South Africa, where a family sought to prove a fact in a case.

Outraged family members say they were forced to drag in the corpse of their uncle, Sifiso Justice Mhlongo, after an insurance company demanded proof he was dead. The grieving family members filmed the ghastly scene, and the footage has gone viral.

One clip of said footage can be seen here.

According to the company's Twitter account, "We can confirm that the claim was paid.."

(thanks to Steven "I'm not dead!" Kaye)

Russian Gothic: a murder in history

Today's real-life Gothic story comes from Russia, where a - well, let's just go with the Washington Post headline:

Russia’s greatest Napoleonic reenactor was found drunk in a river with the severed arms of his lover in his backpack

To explain a bit:

The 63-year-old Sokolov is an assistant professor of history and one of Russia’s most prominent scholarly reenactors of the Napoleonic wars. The arms in the backpack are thought to be those of one of his students, 24-year-old Anastasia Yeshchenko, whose dismembered and decapitated body was found in Sokolov’s apartment just a few houses down from where he was hauled out of the water, drenched and intoxicated, police said.

And it's even more (melo)dramatic:

His plan, local news organizations reported, was to make his way to the Peter and Paul Fortress on Sunday, dressed as Napoleon Bonaparte, to romantically take his own life in front of gaping and undoubtedly awestruck tourists. 

Fellow students said Yeshchenko lived with Sokolov for some time but had recently moved out. Photos online show them dancing, she in an Empire dress with white gloves past her elbows, he in a glittering uniform decked with gold braid and a red sash, pulled tight around his evident paunch. He called her Isabelle, after one of the Bonapartes, and insisted she call him Sire.

The Gothic dimensions are evident:

Sokolov’s lawyer told the Tass news agency that he has confessed to the murder, a crime of St. Petersburgian passion that has parallels to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” — the use of an ax — and to the 1916 assassination of the “mad monk” Grigori Rasputin, with its denouement in the city’s dark interior waterways.

There might be a little bit of Edgar Allan Poe in there, too: Sokolov told investigators that he shot Yeshchenko in a fit of rage on Thursday, then entertained guests on Friday while her body lay in a room behind a closed door.

(thanks to Steven "Survived the Berezina" Kaye)

Ruins of the Cold War

The Gothic often lives in the ruins of power.

The Cold War's vast armaments are fine spawning grounds for horror tales.  A new book collects photos of Cold War ruins. CNN has a nice gallery.

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

Blood transfusions from young people are back

In 2018 one Silicon Valley startup offered a starkly Gothic service: blood from young people, intended to improve older folks' ailing bodies.

The firm, Ambrosia, reduced operations amid general dread, suspicion, and an FDA smackdown... and now the founder has launched a new business that offers pretty much the same thing.  It is delightfully named "Ivy Plasma."

(thanks to Todd "Teetotaler" Bryant)