The Dancing Plague of 1518

In 1518, a “dancing plague” struck Strasbourg, Alsace. Also known as the “dance epidemic”, this weird condition took over 400 people’s bodies and made them dance without rest. Some of these people even died of heart attacks, exhaustion or strokes. It all started in July of 1518 when one woman named Mrs. Troffea started dancing uncontrollably in the middle of Strasbourg. She was later joined by 34 people and soon after the plague spread to around 400 people. At one point it would kill around 15 people a day. Doctors and authorities realized this was not caused by supernatural causes and claimed this epidemic was due to “hot blood” but instead of treating the patients, doctors advised them to basically “dance it out” by building them a wooden stage. It is believed that the modern marathon runner would not be able to survive this type of intense workout. To this day scientists are not quite sure what caused this terrible epidemic, it might have been due to food poisoning caused by the toxic products of ergot fungi or it might have been a case of mass psychogenic illness.

The boy who vanished in the mountains, 1969

Dennis Lloyd Martin was a six-year-old boy who disappeared in the Smoky Mountains with his family on a yearly camping trip in June of 1969. The Martins met with family friends on the second day of their trip and made their way to Spence Field, a spot known for its good views. 

Dennis, his brother William, and 2 children from the family they met on the second day decided to run ahead of the adults and hide in the woods around Spence field to scare the adults when they arrived. The children had left the supervision of the adults for 5 minutes. The 2 kids from the family friends and William hid in one location, but Dennis hid nearby because the red shirt Dennis wore would have given away their location. Dennis was last seen running behind a tree along the forest boundary. 

At 16:30, when the adults arrived, the kids jumped out of their hiding spots. When the adults asked where Dennis was, no one knew. Dennis's father, Bill Martin, even ran 2 miles down the trail but could not find him.

After a search, the park rangers were called. Once they analysed the situation, the police, FBI, and the army even got involved with a search party of 1,400 people. Despite these great efforts that lasted for over 2 months, neither Dennis nor his remains have been found. There are several theories of how Dennis could have disappeared. Here are the main theories:

1. It is possible that a bear ambushed Dennis suddenly and dragged him away.

2. It is possible Dennis wandered off, and he died due to exposure. A thunderstorm occurred the night he went missing, and the FBI theorised that his body might have been washed into a ravine.

3. A family hiking in the same park heard an "enormous and sickening scream" from a child and saw an unkept stranger hurrying away from the scene and driving away in a white car. Many theorise that Dennis was kidnapped by a child predator living off the grid. However, this occurred 7 miles away and just after an hour (17:30) from where Dennis went missing. 

The image above shows Dennis and the location where he was last seen.

A Tiger Shot By A Poacher Found Where He Lived And Waited For Him To Come Home

Tigers are among the most fierce hunters in the animal kingdom. And it seems they may be able to consciously hold a grudge, too. 

In 1997 Russia, a poacher named Vladimir Markov shot an Amur tiger, also called a Siberian tiger. Markov then stole the tiger's kill and left him to die. 

However, the tiger didn't die. Instead, the large cat tracked Markov's scent to his cabin. Here, the animal waited somewhere between 12 and 48 hours until Markov returned home (also wrecking anything in the home that carried the man's scent). Upon his arrival, the tiger pounced on Markov and killed him. The tiger then ate the poacher. 

The attack

The violent attacks took place in a town in East Russia with the first victim, Vladimir Markov a 47-year-old poacher, being stalked and killed by the tiger when his headless and disemboweled body were found near his cabin.

Then a young former soldier Andrei Pochepnya’s blood-soaked clothing, his watch, crucifix, and a pair of abandoned boots were the only items remaining of him after he visited the forest for a hunting trip just days later.

Both victims had been stalked and devoured by the tiger, Canadian author John Vaillant has recounted in his book: The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival.

The alpha-male Siberian tiger, measuring over 9ft-long and weighing around 500lbs, had eaten both of the victims in the rampage.

Tiger’s vengeance

It was driven to kill because Vladimir Markov had mistakenly stolen parts of the tiger’s hunting prize – a boar.

This led the tiger on a revenge mission and Markov confronted the beast with a shotgun, only to enrage it further.

The ensuing confrontation led to him being killed by the predator. And days later Pochepnya, a young local, found himself the next target of the tiger.

Armed with a rusty bolt-action rifle, he stood no chance as the tiger swiftly overpowered Andrei, leaving behind only his blood-soaked clothing and boots.

The tiger then stalked a nearby settlement, sparking panic and chaos. Russian authorities mounted a desperate hunt for the beast.

The lead investigator barely survived the tiger’s attack when a group of hunters encountered him – but his colleagues managed to bring down the creature by shooting it.

How Katherine Knight Slaughtered Her Boyfriend And Made Him Into Stew

Slaughterhouse worker Katherine Knight became the first woman in Australia to receive a life sentence without parole after she decapitated and cooked John Charles Thomas Price.

Most lovers’ quarrels end with an apology. But for Katherine Knight, murder and mutilation were the end result.

Not only did this Australian abattoir worker stab her lover with a butcher knife at least 37 times in February 2000, she then chopped him up, cooked him, and prepared to serve him to his own children.

Katherine Knight during her first marriage, before she butchered future partner John Charles Thomas Price.

Even before this grisly killing, the life of Katherine Mary Knight was marked by violence and sexual abuse that only hinted at the bloodshed to come.

Murder, Mutilation, And A Macabre Dinner Menu

On February 29, 2000, John Charles Thomas Price came home from work and followed his usual routine of checking in with the neighbors before going to bed at 11 p.m. Knight came home shortly after, made herself dinner, watched TV, showered, and then went upstairs. She woke Price, the two had sex, and he went back to bed.

Then, Katherine Knight took a butcher knife from next to her bed — where she had always kept them — and stabbed Price 37 times. According to evidence, he woke up during the attack but could not fight her off.

He succumbed to his wounds and Knight dragged his body downstairs, skinned him, and hung his body from a meat hook in the living room. Then, she decapitated him and cut up pieces of his body to cook in a dish with potato, pumpkin, beets, zucchini, cabbage, squash, and gravy.

She then made a dish for herself, though the half-discarded contents later found at the crime scene suggest that she couldn’t finish her meal.

She then lay down next to the headless, mutilated corpse of Price, took a large number of pills, and passed out.

Price’s coworkers heeded his warning the next morning and called the police after he didn’t show up for his shift. The police arrived to find Katherine Knight’s gruesome crime scene and immediately detained the comatose Knight. Once she woke up, she claimed to have no memory of the night before.

In the kitchen, police found Price’s head, boiling in a pot of vegetables on the stove. On the table, they found two full plates, each labeled with a name. In horror, the police realized that Knight had planned to serve John Price’s body parts to his children.

 IN SEARCH OF POWER: A Church Pastor Buries 5 Men Alive in Church Foundation

Bizarre, as three decomposed corpses were exhumed from a building site said to belong to one of the Protestants Churches springing up in a suburbs of Ugwuaji, Enugu South council area of Enugu state on Monday.

The bodies which were buried inside the foundation of the building of the supposed church under construction was totally covered with concrete.

It was gathered that construction of the building whose owner could not be immediately ascertained, commenced late December 2015 and was at the foundation level before the gory discovery.

Unconfirmed sources said one of the workers at the site, who heard about the burial of the deceased inside the foundation before it was concretized, alerted security operatives about the evil act.

Policemen were said to have after receiving the tip-off mobilized some labourers who dug the foundation open and discovered the corpses.

The discovery attracted several passersby and motorists plying the road to the scene.

They expressed shock at the discovery and called on security agents to do everything possible to fish out the perpetrators of the act, who they suspected could be ritualists.

Some residents of the neighbourhood alleged that the building believed to be a proposed place of worship, belonged to a ritualist who disguised to be a man of God.

The State Police spokesman, Mr Ebere Amaraizu, who confirmed the report said three corpses were recovered from the site following a tip-off.

According the PPRO, “On information, three decomposing bodies were discovered and full scale investigations have commenced with a view to unmasking circumstances surrounding the incident,”

Meanwhile, fear has gripped residents of Ugwuaji as security operatives were said to have swung into action to crackdown on the ritualist and his cohorts who killed and buried the deceased persons, who they said could be more than five.

THE STORY OF RASHEEM CARTER

Inside the horrifying story of Rasheem Carter.

Rasheem Carter was a Black man from Fayette, Mississippi, United States of America who went missing in 2022 after claiming to be targeted by white men in his community. He was later discovered dead in Taylorsville, Utah, with his head severed from his body.

As a welder by profession, Rasheem Carter lived in Fayette, Mississippi. However, at the time of his disappearance, he had taken on a short-term job as a contractor approximately 100 miles away in Taylorsville.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF RASHEEM CARTER

On 2 October 2022, the 25-year-old Black Mississippi resident went missing shortly after reporting that he was being chased by a group of white men in pickup trucks who were hurling racist abuse at him.

Carter texted his mother the day before his disappearance on October 1st, saying he was having problems with his coworkers and was afraid for his life. Rasheem Carter wrote about having issues with the owner of the company where he was working and expressed that the owner should be held responsible if anything happened to him.

Rasheem Carter and his mother

According to reports, Rasheem Carter had confided in his mother about his fear of a particular individual and told her that he was being targeted by a group of white men in three trucks. His mother urged him to go directly to a police station for help, as she believed that they would serve and protect him as they were obligated to do.

Rasheem Carter's mother, who lived two hours away in Fayette, was on the phone with her son as he sought assistance at the Taylorsville police station. She heard him explain to the officers that he was being followed and needed a ride back to his hotel in Laurel, which was around 20 miles away.

However, she heard an officer deny his request, stating that Laurel was outside of their jurisdiction. She also overheard someone say that he couldn't stay at the station any longer and had to leave.

RASHEEM CARTER IS FOUND

On November 2nd, exactly one month after Rasheem Carter was last seen alive, his skeletal remains were discovered in a wooded area south of Taylorsville. According to Rasheem’s family's attorney, an autopsy report revealed that Carter's head had been severed from his body, with his spinal cord discovered in a separate area from his head.

Rasheem Carter's head severed from his body.

According to the autopsy report, the medical examiner was unable to determine the cause and manner of Rasheem Carter's death due to the condition of the remains at the time of the autopsy. The report also highlighted that the state of the remains made it difficult to determine the timing of the injuries and that animal activity on the remains further complicated the investigation.

The family's attorney emphasized during a press conference that despite the lack of clear findings from the autopsy, it was evident that Carter did not die a natural death.

Rasheem Carter's mother with his severed body.

According to recent updates, additional remains believed to be those of Rasheem Carter have been discovered in another area where he went missing. During a press conference, the family's attorney stated that this discovery further supports the belief that Carter's death was the result of a malicious and evil act.

He also suggested that multiple individuals may have been involved, citing eyewitness accounts of a group of individuals chasing Carter in three trucks before his disappearance.

Smith County Sheriff Joel Houston has maintained that there was no foul play involved in Rasheem Carter's death, citing earlier evidence that did not indicate any wrongdoing. Houston also stated that the department is still waiting for the results of search warrants to officially confirm that no foul play was involved in Carter's death.

Rasheem Carter's family demands justice for his death

According to the medical examiner's report, the cause and manner of Rasheem Carter's death remain undetermined. However, there is an ongoing investigation into his disappearance and murder, with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation providing assistance to the case.

The Man with the Elusive Veins
(Romell Broom, Who Survived His First Exēcution, Dies of COVID-19 on Ohio Death Row)

Between the rapes, the kidnappings and the aggravated murder charge, the case against Romell Broom was so big that he offered to plead guilty in exchange for a possible life sentence. Prosecutors weren’t having it. The case went to trial, and he was sentenced to deãth in 1985. In September 2009, he went in to receive lethal injection (these long delays, and decades of appeals, are typical in American deãth penalty cases). Only problem was, the executioners couldn’t find his vein. 

The way lethal injection usually works is, executioners stick a couple IVs in you so they can pump in a selection of drugs. These drugs paralyze you and kill you. Interestingly, too, they might even block the pain and knock you out, but no one’s really bothered to check whether that second half is true. With Broom, they spent two hours trying to find a suitable blood vessel, but this search was in vain, or rather not in vein.

They stuck him 18 different times without finding anything suitable. They hit bone. He started crying, at which point we imagine everyone pointed at him and started laughing. 

Afterward, with his exēcution being rescheduled, Broom filed a new appeal, saying that executing him again would count as double jeopardy. Courts turned this down, saying no, that’s not what double jeopardy means. His lawyer also now argued that executing him again would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. To which the court more or less said, well, it might be if the exact same painful fruitless routine happens again, but we can’t count on that. If we allowed for that possibility, maybe every single exēcution would be cruel and unusual punishment, and how could that ever be true. 

Issues similar to Broom’s surrounded a handful of other U.S. exēcutions, but in most cases, the inmate did end up being exēcuted. Not Broom. Though Broom’s next exēcution was scheduled for 2022, he died from COVID before that. Within the first year of the pandemic, COVID k!lled at least 17 deãth-row inmates. That was actually more than the total number of deãth-row inmates executed during that same time period.