Fearing the Walking Dead: Zombies and Draugr There is something horrifyingly fascinating about accounts of the dead who stubbornly refuse to lie down quietly, but continue to walk as they did in life. They may be called revenants, or vampires, draugr, ghouls, or the Undead. They scare us.
Corpse Contracts: People who Sold Their Own Dead Bodies It is a sinister fact that, before the passage of the various Anatomy Acts, the doctors of the past paid for stolen corpses for their dissecting rooms. What is less well-known is that various individuals in what might be termed the “pre-corpse stage” might sell their own bodies to the anatomists.
Tombstone Madness: A 19th-century occupational disease The life of a graveyard guard was a thankless one. He had to walk the grounds of a cemetery in the dark and in all weathers, ever vigilant for the dreaded body snatchers. More than one watchman was murdered by these ghouls or exchanged gunfire among the tombstones. It was no wonder that, in the 1880s, a new occupational disease emerged.
Bring Me the Head of Charles Julius Guiteau When Charles Julius Guiteau was hung for the assassination of President James A. Garfield, it was just the beginning of a macabre, post-mortem career for his head–or rather his deboned face embalmed and preserved in a vat of alcohol….
