8 Real Photographs That Prove Hell Exists on Earth!
May 4, 2011 / 65332
By: Robert Brockway / A wise and sagely woman once posited that heaven is a place on a Earth. And if that’s true, then hell is just two exits down on the left. Oh, it exists, do not doubt it. It’s real, it’s right here and I have the goddamn pictures to prove it. Literally. These are images damned by God.
#8. His Coming Shall Be Foretold
“Welp, looks like we’ve angered the Hellephant again. Water? Ha ha ha! What the fuck, Steve?! Is this your first day? No. Bill, you break out the iron cruciforms. Gus, start stabbing the hoses into virgins. Carl, I’m so sorry — you’re on Batchild patrol.”
This is actually an undoctored picture of a fire at a chemical factory in the Netherlands. It took 150 firefighters to put out the flames, and while the plant burned completely to the ground, no injuries were recorded despite the toxic fumes. Though surrounding citizens were warned to stay inside to avoid possible respiratory infections and rampaging Balrogs. Read more …
The REAL Monsters of Halloween: Dracula and Vampires
October 27, 2010 / 33030
These enduring characters have a fascinating basis in real life
By Stephen Wagner.
THINK OF HALLOWEEN and your mind conjures images of ghosts, vampires, witches and monsters. Our modern versions of them have largely been crafted by popular literature and, more influentially, the movies. But like many fantastic characters of myth and lore, they have a basis in reality.
Sometimes the true stories of these creatures that haunt our imaginations are just as weird and amazing as their fictional incarnations:
DRACULA / VAMPIRES
Today’s vampire persona - the elegant blood-sucking creature of the night - comes primarily from Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, published in 1897. Stoker’s story, in turn, was based loosely on the real-life Vlad Dracula (1431-1476), a prince who actually did live in Transylvania in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. The name Dracula is derived from a Romanian word that means “devil” or dragon.” Obviously, Vlad Dracula was not a vampire, but Stoker undoubtedly used the historical figure as the basis of his vampire story because of Vlad’s bloodthirsty style of dealing with those who opposed him. A Brief History About the Dracul states: “Vlad’s brutal manner of terrorizing his enemies and the seemingly arbitrary manner in which he had people punished earned him the nickname ‘Tepes’ or ‘the Impaler,’ the common name by which he is known today. Stories of Vlad’s cruelties were circulating through Europe. His end came at the hand of an assassin at some point toward the end of December 1476 or early January 1477.”
The legend of the vampire predates Bram Stoker and even Vlad the Impaler. Vampires Thru the Ages traces them back to 1047 and a document referring to a Russian Prince as “Upir Lichy” or Wicked Vampire. A century later, Walter Map’s De Nagis Curialium includes accounts of vampire-like beings in England. Waves of vampire hysteria swept through Prussia and Hungary in the 1700s, fueled perhaps by disease, ignorance and maybe a psychotic serial killer or two.
The tradition of the vampire has been firmly established into our modern culture by Hollywood, television and the highly popular novels of Anne Rice and others.
The REAL Monsters of Halloween: Frankenstein
October 26, 2010 / 13947
THE FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER
Most people are aware that the story of Victor Frankenstein and the monster he created come from the novel Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, wife of the acclaimed poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. What many people do not know is that Victor Frankenstein was based on the real-life Johann Konrad Dippel (1673-1734), a kind of 18th century mad scientist who was born in 1673 in Germany at - believe it or not - Castle Frankenstein.
Educated as a physician, Dippel set up a laboratory at Castle Frankenstein near Darmstadt, Germany where he would be free to conduct his bizarre experiments. There’s no record of whether or not he had a hunchbacked assistant named Igor, but Dippel (who often went by the name Konrad Frankensteina) spent a lot of his time with his hobby of alchemy - a popular pursuit of the day. Alchemy is a kind pseudoscientific experimentation with the elements - crazy chemistry - whose ultimate challenge was to be able to turn lead into gold. Like Victor Frankenstein, Dippel was also fascinated by the possibility of immortality through scientific means. He really did use the parts of butchered animals and exhumed human corpses in his vain attempt to “engender life in the dead,” in his own words.
Unlike his literary and cinematic “decedents,” Dippel did not rig up the body parts to elaborate lightning-powered gizmos and spark generators. Rather he boiled everything - skin, muscle, bone, blood, hair and organs - in large vats. When the surrounding community got wind of what Dippel was up to, maybe they didn’t storm his castle with torches, shovels and rakes, but they did kick him out of town.
The REAL Monsters Of Halloween: The Mummy
October 26, 2010 / 6760
THE MUMMY
The prevalent image of The Mummy as a monster also comes from the movies, most significantly the 1932 film, The Mummy, again starring Boris Karloff. From the Internet Movie Database is this synopsis of the film by Jeremy Lunt: “In 1921 a field expedition in Egypt discovers the mummy of ancient Egyptian prince Im-Ho-Tep, who was condemned and buried alive for sacrilege. Also found in the tomb is the Scroll of Thoth, which can bring the dead back to life.” The mummy then limps around terrorizing and strangling people.
The film was most probably inspired by the sensational Egyptian finds made in the early 1920s. Since the 1800s, European archaeologists had been fascinated by ancient Egypt. They were aware that the Pharaohs had been mummified and buried with incredible treasures and artifacts to provide them with a comfortable way of life in the land of the dead. Many old tombs had been discovered, but in each case they had been long-ago plundered by grave robbers.
One young upstart English archaeologist named Howard Carter believed that at least one tomb of an Egyptian king lay untouched somewhere beneath the blistering sands of Egypt - the tomb of King Tutankhamen. Carter searched for years without success. But then on November 4, 1922, Tutankhamen’s tomb was found, and it contained all of the gold and alabaster treasures they had long sought. But along with the discovery, some believe, came a curse.
The REAL Monsters of Halloween: The Werewolf
October 26, 2010 / 16552
THE WEREWOLF
The lore and tradition of the werewolf are ancient and complex. A werewolf is a human shapeshifter who, traditionally under a full moon, turns into a wolf. From the popular Wolfman movies of the ’50s to the more special-effects laden films like An American Werewolf in London, the werewolf has been a standard character in horror culture and Halloween costumes. But the werewolf legend goes back thousands of years.
“In European folklore,” says the Encyclopedia Britannica, “a man who turns into a wolf at night and devours animals, people or corpses, but returns to human form by day. Some werewolves change shape at will; others, in whom the condition is hereditary or acquired by having been bitten by a werewolf, change shape involuntarily, under the influence of a full moon. If he is wounded in wolf form, the wounds will show in his human form and may lead to his detection. Belief in werewolves is found throughout the world. The psychiatric condition in which a person believes he is a wolf is called lycanthropy.”
How does one become a werewolf? According to “Werewolf Facts,” you can become infected if you:
* Eat the brain of a werewolf.
* Drink from a place where werewolves have drank from.
* Wear or smell the plant wolfbane.
* Are bitten by a Werewolf.
* Were born on Christmas Eve.
The REAL Monsters of Halloween: Witches
October 26, 2010 / 15024
WITCHES
What would Halloween be without witches? Witches and witchcraft date back to at least ancient Greek and Roman times. Even then there was a distinction made between “white” witchcraft (benevolent) and “black” witchcraft (evil), the former of which was tolerated by the government of ancient Rome.
With the spread of Christianity in the 4th century, witchcraft was more and more associated with devil worship, an association it never truly had. But because witchcraft - or Wicca - was practiced by pagans who worshiped pagan deities, the Church demonized the religion and those who followed it. The association stuck and resulted in hundreds of thousands of innocent men and women being tortured and killed as witches over hundreds of years, including during the well-known witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts.
The association with evil created the Halloween caricature of the witch as an ugly, wart-studded hag with an evil, toothless grin.
How To Explain Hauntings
October 12, 2010 / 4084
Anthony North: I’ve written on many aspects of ghosts and related phenomena, but if the subject is to make any sense, we also need to address the ’system’ by which a haunting could occur.
In other words, place all the suggested elements into a graded theory. Such a system addresses many skeptical objections to hauntings -namely, by providing an overall theory, the repeatability of experiences can be shown. I also hope to show how an initial skeptical process can build to something greater. Vital to a haunting is culture.: Whether this is historic culture such as an old building, or family culture -i.e. expression of a problem -all ghosts express themselves within a cultural form understandable to the experiencer.
Ghosts can often express information not known to the experiencer. However, this is not necessarily correct. Cryptomnesia -the ability to recall ‘forgotten’ information -can often be applied in such cases. The person reads, views or hears vast quantities of information unbeknown to the conscious mind. Read more …
