Zombie Transformation

Get hit by lightning seven times; kill yourself at age 71 by gunshot

Roy Sullivan got into the Guinness Book of World Records as having been struck by lightning seven times - and survived them all! This was seven separate incidents, mind you, over a period of years from 1942 to 1977. He also claimed an eighth strike which happened to him as a child, but never bothered to record it.

Perhaps bothered too much by the way God seemed to have it in for him, he committed suicide by gunshot at age 71. His experience, however, form an important contribution to the specialized medical field of Keraunopathy - the study of the effects of lightning strikes on the human body.

Girl never ages, 16-year-old trapped in nine-month-old body

Geneticists and doctors are flipping over studying her genetic makeup, looking for the possible "Methusalah" gene that led to this kid's unique case. But before we rush to catch what she's got in order to slow down the ravages of time, consider that Brooke Greenberg has the mental capacity of a nine-months to one-year old. Sixteen years in diapers doesn't sound all that fun now, does it?

The French postman who built his own rock castle

What you're looking at was all built by one man, a humble civil servant with no architectural training working only with his hands and carrying each stone home himself.

Ferdinand Cheval was a postman in Hauterives, France, a tiny community with a population all of 1500. In 1875, Cheval was making his postal rounds when he tripped over a stone (ready your psychedelic jokes) and became inspired to collect stones and build his own palace, which he called "the Palace Ideal."

He then proceeded to spend the next 33 years doing just that. Solo, without help, mixing his own mortar, carrying stones to the site with a wheelbarrow, and working by lamplight at night so as not to interfere with his day job.

Make no mistake - while Cheval had no training in art, his palace is a breath-taking structure of intricate detail mixing styles of architecture from Hinduism and Christendom. Having competed the work to his satisfaction in 1912, he sought to be buried there, but discovered that French law wouldn't allow this request. He then proceeded to build his own mausoleum in exactly the same fashion at the local cemetery, taking another eight years to finish it.

Having completed this final project, his most obstinate excellency retired to his palace for exactly one year, to be honored and recognized by such international artistic talents as Andre Breton and Pablo Picasso. Many came to visit and interview him. Then, he died in 1924, and was buried at his mausoleum. Because a man can't just sit around!

The palace is today a national landmark of France and a tourist destination. Find out more here.

Vincent - An animated short that was Tim Burton's first professional work

Tim Burton himself idolized Vincent Price as a child, so this wonderful short animation is the realization of his own dream. Having the real-life Vincent Price do the voice-work was just that extra thrill.

If you're a resident of Colma, California, you're probably dead

Colma, California, is a city with a bit of a macabre history. It was explicitly founded in 1924 as a necropolis - a city of the dead. Graves outnumber living people by as much as 1000 to 1 - and growing!

In 1900, nearby San Francisco passed a city ordinance forbidding the laying of any further cemeteries within the city limits. California being a pretty populated state, that left the question of just what to do with the dead - and so Colma because the great graveyard of San Francisco.

It's a peaceful, if somber, place to live. Just miles and miles of gravestones, crypts, plots, memorial parks, and florists, with about 330 households composed of the living, including those raising families. But the town of Colma hasn't let its largest industry dampen its spirits; in 2007 they put together an independent film called Colma: the Musical which was a smash hit on the indie film circuit.

What do you want me to do with the rest of Charlie Brown's body?

"Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown" - from the guy who later brought you all of The Simpsons. This exists. It even exists so hard that it gets its own Wiki page. Painful, wasn't it? Watch it again.

The Anomaly of Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome

 

"Bangungot" is a word from the Tagalog language meaning "to rise and moan", but that belies the true terror of this word: it refers to a syndrome in which people mysteriously die in their sleep, with no previous indication that there was anything wrong with them. The name comes from the tendency of victims to cry out and thrash in their sleep before expiring.

Before you stay up all night in terror: It only appears to affect people of southeast Asia, including Thai, Hmong, and Filipinos, and then only young males of median age 33.

Medical research is beginning an inquest into this syndrome, but so far everyone's baffled. While the syndrome is well-known among these ethnic groups, it is shrouded in urban legends and old-wives' cures, said to be caused by everything from eating a heavy meal before bedtime to being visited by a vengeful female spirit, with a folk remedy of pinching the big toe of a sleeper as a preventative cure. It's even been culturally compared to the urban legends of UFO abductions in the US, and the old-world concept of a "night terror" or sleep paralysis, so eloquently depicted in Johann Heinrich Fussli's painting The Nightmare, shown above.

Of course, the idea that a scary dream that can actually kill you also is at the root of another pop cultural icon, the Nightmare on Elm Street series with the character of Freddy Kruger being a nocturnal assassin.

However, one possible clue to the syndrome's cause is that this tends to affect only refugees from those countries; people already undergoing a large amount of stress, who might naturally be subject to spontaneous cardiac arrests and related events.

Dollars And Death At A Funeral Convention

Here's something you don't see every day: A funeral director's convention! Fun, fun post about the sights, sounds, and experiences of the death industry. Some highlights:

"Funeral directors are notoriously heavy drinkers. There will definitely be some hook-ups." Yeah, we totally should all go hang out with these party animals.

"The rate of cremation has skyrocketed as Americans back away from the idea that Jesus will be resurrecting them straight from the grave." You're kidding? That's why we've always buried our dead? Because you're literally expecting to get pulled right out of the ground whenever Harold Camping finally gets one right?

"Distressingly, higher rates of cancer have been found among embalmers who have to breathe in this stuff every day." Crud, working around dead people really does make you die sooner!

"We’re not here to beautify anyone. We’re here to identify them." Do these guys always have to be this grim?

"Makeup, meant for corpses, was being applied by airbrush to a (still-living) elderly woman." Ballsiest granny ever.