Spooky! Scary!

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Scary Christmas to y’all

Hope you missed me! So here’s little something for your Christmas spirit.

Gryla is originally mentioned as being a giantess in the 13th century compilation of Norse mythology, Prose Edda, but no specific connection to Christmas is mentioned until the 17th century. She is enormous and her appearance is repulsive.

The oldest poems about Gryla describe her as a parasitic beggar who walks around asking parents to give her their disobedient children. Her plans can be thwarted by giving her food or by chasing her away. Originally, she lives in a small cottage, but in later poems she appears to have been forced out of town and into a faraway cave.

Current-day Gryla has the ability to detect children who are misbehaving year-round. During Christmas time, she comes from the mountains to search nearby towns for her meal. She leaves her cave, hunts children, and carries them home in her giant sack. She devours children as her favorite snack. Her favorite dish is a stew of naughty kids for which she has an insatiable appetite. According to legend, there is never a shortage of food for Gryla.

According to folklore, Gryla has been married three times. Her third husband Leppaludi is said to be living with her in their cave in the Dimmuborgir lava fields, with the big black Yule Cat and their sons. Leppaludi is lazy and mostly stays at home in their cave. Gryla supposedly has dozens of children with her previous husbands, but they are rarely mentioned nowadays.

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Hi, in two weeks I’m going to Poveglia. I can’t find anything where the plague pits are. Can you tell me on what part of the Island this photo is made?

http://mentalfloss.com/article/24658/strange-geographies-happy-haunted-island-poveglia This might help you! 

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why dont the milk companies put missing people on milk cartons anymore?

Milk cartons stopped featuring missing children in the late 1980s, after prominent pediatricians like Benjamin Spock and T. Berry Brazelton worried that they frightened children unnecessarily. 

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While plenty of America's abandoned insane asylums offer spooky tours, overnight ghost hunts, and museums filled with the torturous relics of psychiatric history, there's one defunct mental hospital in Ohio that cranks the creepy-factor to 11. Sure, it has all the hallmarks of a great local haunt - rumors of spirits, beautiful decay, and even an adjoining cemetery, but it's what lies hidden on the top floor of the building that truly terrifies visitors: a human-shaped stain where an escaped patient lay dead for over a month.

More info: https://roadtrippers.com/stories/ohios-most-haunted-insane-asylum-has-a-permanent-corpse-shadow?lat=40.80972&lng=-96.67528&z=5

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Warm your self by the flames of your enemies burning in effigy with these life size human skull fireplace logs.

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Birds Watching

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This remarkable 18th-century wax anatomical model comes from the Javier Puerta Museum, and was recently on display as part of the “Arte y Carne” Exhibition this past May in Madrid. It’s similar to one I posted a few days ago, but this one depicts twins. Wax models like this were used for teaching anatomy to medical students at a time when few bodies were available for dissection. They very much represent the merging of science and art which characterized the Enlightenment.

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The statue, on display at Saint-Étienne church in the French city of Bar-le-Duc, is known as a "transi." Popular in western Europe during the Renaissance, the art form depicts a deceased person during the transition between life and death—the corporeal husk of a departed soul. It's a particularly impactful memento mori.From the late 14th century onward, some tombs were also adorned with recumbent transi sculptures. In contrast to the usual serene depictions of eternally sleeping saints, these "cadaver tombs' showed the effects of death in stark detail. The effigy of French doctor Guillaume de Harsigny is emaciated and noseless, while Belgian sculptor Jacques du Broeucq's 16th-century "l'homme à moutons" ("man eaten by worms") shows a decaying body riddled with the wriggling creatures.A Look at the Striking "Transi" Corpse Sculptures. 

Source: http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/09/24/transi_statues_and_cadaver_tombs_memento_mori_of_renaissance_europe.html?wpsrc=fol_tw 

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Carmo Convent & Archaeological Museum in Lisbon. This mummy belongs to a young girl found in Peru in the 16th century.

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21 Creepy Black And White Photos That Give 'Nightmare' A New Meaning

Thanks to these pictures, I'm not sleeping tonight.

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The amazing tunnels under NYC 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/sets/72157632775809340/with/8477003614/

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This image by Francois Boucher says it all. A fully dressed lady is relieving herself into an object called the bourdaloue or bourdalou, careful not to soil her skirts. Her maid, no doubt, stands nearby, waiting to receive the small chamber pot in order to empty it. The lady (or woman of ill repute) is in a public place – a theatre or tavern, perhaps – but certainly not a church. Wherever she is, the place has no public toilet. And so she must relieve herself standing up, taking care not to soil her skirt and petticoats.

Read more at https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/regency-hygiene-the-bourdaloue/

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A ‘mad genius’ grave-robber is to spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital after digging up the corpses of 29 children and turning them into dolls. Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2014/10/28/grave-robber-dug-up-29-girls-and-turned-them-into-human-dolls-4924735/#ixzz48jFc8pJ3  

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This is a list of reasons for admission to an insane asylum from 1894 to 1889.

"Menstrual derangement" is my other favorite.

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preserved human heart in a leaden case, discovered in the medieval crypt of a church in Cork, Ireland

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For over two centuries, the delicate art of dressing fleas in tiny costumes flourished in Guanajuato, Mexico. It is believed the craft had its beginnings in Mexican convents, and was later taken up by villagers to supply the general tourist trade during the early 1900s.  

More information available at: http://yeoldecuriosityshop.com/blogs/news/17777928-fashionista-fleas

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