When you posted the part about the chest injuries it reminded me of the Dyatlov Pass incident that was posted in the Unsolved Mysteries thread:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_pass_accident
Wikipedia posted:
and both Dubunina and Zolotarev had major chest fractures. The force required to cause such damage would have been extremely high, with one expert comparing it to the force of a car crash.Notably, the bodies had no external wounds, as if they were crippled by a high level of pressure. One woman was found to be missing her tongue.[1]
After looking a little further, I found this picture - taken a day before the incident.
This may or may not be related to the Slender Man mythos:
Robert Wadlow, the tallest human being of all time was 8'11" when he died. The cause of death was listed as an infection from a blister on his ankle caused by a faulty brace, but his death certificate described the wound as ‘a puncture or bite mark of unknown origin’.
He was buried in a half-ton coffin that required 12 pallbearers to carry, which was interred within a vault of solid concrete. It was believed that Wadlow’s family were concerned for the sanctity of his body after his death, and went to these lengths of security to ensure it would never be disturbed or stolen.
It was rumoured that these extreme burial measures were really undertaken so that no one could see the mysterious changes that started to occur to Wadlow’s body after his demise; the inexplicable lengthening and splitting of the arms, the bizarre contortion of the facial features.
Perhaps the half-ton coffin and concrete vault were not to preserve the sanctity of the body, but to keep something from escaping.
I was looking on wikipedia to see if I could find more info on The Slender Man and wasn't surprised to draw a big goose egg. So while nosing around lists for unexplained or paranormal events for instances in the past that might have been misidentified I ran across this gem:
Perhaps the most famous sighting is reported to have taken place on October 11, 1966 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The entity was sighted by two boys, James Yanchitis and Marvin Munoz, as they were walking home along Fourth Street and New Jersey Street when they reached a corner parallel to the New Jersey Turnpike. The turnpike is elevated and there is an extremely steep incline going down from the busy street above which leads to Fourth Street. A very large, high wire fence runs along the edge of the other street below where the boys were walking, making it incredibly difficult to near impossible for anyone to want to climb up the incline to the turnpike above. There are bright street lights in that area, which gave the boys a good glimpse of what they called “the strangest guy we’ve ever seen.” Yanchitis noticed the strange entity first. “He was standing behind that fence”, he stated later to investigators. “I don’t know how he got there. He was the biggest man I ever saw.” “Jimmy nudged me”, Marvin Munoz reported to police, “and said, Who’s that guy standing behind you?’ I looked around and there he was… behind that fence. Just standing there. He pivoted around and looked right at us… then he grinned a big old grin.” There had been recent reported incidents of violence in the nearby neighborhood, such as a middle-resident being chased by a “tall man” down that same street and on the same night, so the boys fled quickly.
Well-known author, paranormal investigator, and journalist John A. Keel visited the two boys in Elizabeth, New Jersey, three days after the incident. Along with Keel came UFO lecturer James Moseley. Munoz and Yanchitis were interviewed by Keel separately in the home of Mr. George Smythe and both boys told the exact same story. “The man was over six feet tall, they agreed, and was dressed in a black business suit that seemed to absorb the street lights.” The boys also said “He had a very pale complexion, and little round eyes…real beady…set far apart.” The most frightening and bizarre aspect of the encounter is the fact that “They could not remember seeing any hair, ears, or nose on this figure.”
Looks like Mohamed was on to something.
This is interesting. Could it be that we’d been warned about this tall thin spectre, and we misunderstood/misinterpreted the warnings?
A few examples:
Nostradamus:
II 9:
Nine years the lean one will hold the realm in peace,
Then he will fall into a very bloody thirst:
Because of him a great people will die without faith and law
Killed by one far more good-natured.IV 25:
Beneath the holy earth of a soul the faint voice heard,
Human flame seen to shine as divine:
It will cause the earth to be stained with the blood of the monks,
And to destroy the holy temples for the impure ones.IV 26:
Lofty bodies endlessly visible to the eye,
Through these reasons they will come to obscure:
Body, forehead included, sense and head invisible,
Diminishing the sacred prayers.VIII 81:
The new empire in desolation
will be changed from the Northern Pole.
From Sicily will come such trouble that
it will bother the enterprise tributary to Philip.VIII 82:
Thin tall and dry, playing the good valet
in the end will have nothing but his dismissal;
sharp poison and letters in his collar,
he will be seized escaping into danger.XI 19:
Six hundred and five, six hundred and six and seven,
It will show us up to the year seventeen,
The anger, hatred and jealousy of the incendiary,
For a long enough time hidden under the olive tree,
The Crocodile has hidden on the land,
That which was dead will then be alive.XI 20:
He who several times has
Held the cage and then the woods,
He will return to the first state
His life safe shortly afterwards to depart,
Still not knowing how to know,
He will look for a subject in order to die.
The “Westward Expansion” of the U.S. during the 1800s was a time of great difficulty for many.
Seeking fortune or perhaps only adventure, families packed up their belongings in covered wagons and began the arduous journey westward.
Many families never made it. Some succumbed to bacterial infections, or were victims of attacks by natives, or were robbed and killed by other, more unscrupulous travelers. It was common in those times for people to die from exposure to the elements, starvation, and any number of other causes.
Is this how The Slender Man replicates himself?
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=239
Very few details are known about the life of Adam Rainer, but in a way, he represents an extraordinary piece of medical history. He was born in Graz, Austria in 1899, and as he grew and matured, it became evident that his stature was significantly shorter than the average man. He was classified as a dwarf, standing only 3 feet 10.5 inches (1.18 m) in 1920, his 21st year.
But in his early twenties, Adam’s height suddenly began to increase at an astonishing rate, and without any signs of stopping. By his 32nd birthday, his unusually short stature of under four feet was increased to an unusually tall stature of just under 7 feet 2 inches (2.18 m). This incredible sustained rate of growth– about 3.6 inches per year– exhausted his body and left him bedridden.
It seems likely that the secretions from the poor chap’s pituitary gland– the gland responsible for the body’s growth hormones– went from a trickle to to a flood shortly after his 21st birthday. The malfunctioning organ caused his body to devote all of its resources to unchecked growth, leaving him weak and unable to stand.
He lived in this unfortunate condition until he died on March 4, 1950, aged 51. At the time of his death, he was measured at 7 feet 8 inches tall (2.34 m), twice the height he been at age 21. Adam was the only person in medical history to have been classified both as a dwarf and a giant.
For my thesis I have been given access to a pretty big photography archive. My subject is to do with riots, so I’ve been looking at thousands of these photos for the last few weeks. Here are a few that stuck out a little, I’ll leave you to judge for yourself:
Munich, 1976:
Jerusalem, 1982:
Ukraine, 1992:
The last one is perhaps the most interesting but unfortunately that’s the highest quality version available. Each of these instances were noted as having fog roll in unexpectedly during the course of the riot, which combined with tear gas being used by police, leaving many areas with virtually no visibility. In the Ukraine the fog only lasted for two hours, a north easterly wind causing it to clear rather suddenly. Several deaths and missing persons at each event were blamed on the police but few if any charges were filed.
I’ve been lurking this thread for weeks and I want to commend everyone for their detective work. I found an article recently about one of my favorite bands, but something about it bothers me. Here’s the article, unedited, with the pictures included:
Led Zeppelin. The biggest band in the world, or such was their moniker in the mid-to-late 1970s. Setting airplay records with their hit Stairway to Heaven, and breaking concert attendance and grossing records during their American tours of 1975 and 1977, no band could compete with the unstoppable whirlwind force that was Led Zeppelin. They created the modern day image of a rock star – a cocaine thin musician with long, scraggly hair, forcing groupies to bathe with octopi, embodying the essence of raw sexuality, financial excess, and supernatural mysticism.
In 1971, Led Zeppelin recorded their untitled fourth album at Headley Grange studios, a poorhouse converted into a studio that guitarist Jimmy Page had always insisted was haunted. The third track from the album was The Battle Of Evermore, the only track in their catalogue to feature a guest singer – in this case, folk singer Sandy Denny. Seven years later, Denny’s life was cut short by what doctors ruled as a brain hemorrhage. A month prior to her death, Denny would often collapse from severe headache and hallucinations, which were attributed to a fall down a flight of stairs she suffered in May of 1978.
This is the only readily available image of Denny with Led Zeppelin. The photographer is unknown.
In 1977, as Led Zeppelin embarked on their tour of the United States, Jimmy Page’s interest in the occult and addiction to heroin were at their peak. His playing was spotty at times, his weight had dropped considerably, and his focus was clearly elsewhere. His delving into the supernatural spirits made him lose sight of the goal of the band, with Zeppelin’s lights manager later remarking that singer Robert Plant would often have to snap Page out of his between-song trances, with Page not remembering how their own tunes went. Page also grew increasingly paranoid in an infamous incident prior to an interview with Cameron Crowe where he ripped a phone out of the wall because he felt that someone was spying on him. It was as if a force he tapped into was corrupting him.
The tour came to an abrupt end when Robert Plant’s son, Karac, died suddenly on June 24th, 1977.
It became apparent that the band was too big to be defeated. In spite of the aforementioned deaths associated with Zeppelin, the band just could not be taken down. Plant survived a horrific car crash in Greece in 1975, and Page managed to recover from his addiction to heroin despite weighing less than 100 pounds on the 1977 tour.
In 1979, however, the band was starting to become old news. Punk had swept the nation, and its contemporaries regarded Zeppelin as behind the times and out of date. In 1980, the band embarked on a short tour through Germany and its neighboring regions, with a much scaled down magnitude compared to their previous tours. The tour received very little press attention, and the band played much smaller venues than the stadiums they played three years earlier.
Drummer John Bonham died in September and was ruled to have asphyxiated on his own vomit. Bassist John Paul Jones remarked that he seemed to be drinking compulsively that day, as if to forget something.
Many remarked that Page’s interest in the occult was abnormal, but some would later argue it had caused the crash of the Led Zeppelin.