This Bizarre Gravestone Is Located In Avenues Cemetery In Salt Lake City. The Epitaph Reads “VICTIM

The Bleeding House on Fountain Drive

One day in Sept of 1987, Atlanta Georgia resident, Minnie Winston awoke to find dark red splotches of blood in several rooms (on both the walls and floor) of her house. There was blood on the bathroom’s lower walls, the kitchen, living room, bedroom, hallways, and basement. Blood was also found in a crawlspace and under a television set.

The police came, collected samples of the blood and sent them to the state crime lab. It was concluded that the blood samples belonged to a human but the police had no idea where it came from. It didn’t belong to either Minnie or her husband. There was no evidence of a break-in or wrong doing. The couple had never witnessed anything like this before and were terrified. Given the amount of blood they found, it appeared to have been placed, or dripped, on the spot from a very lively source. In other words, someone inside their home had been bleeding profusely. To this day, there has been no explanation of how the blood got there and who it belonged to. The source of the blood was never found.

NY Times Article

Additional Source (since NY Times has a paywall now)

In 1974, the mummy of pharaoh Ramesses II was issued a valid Egyptian passport (nearly three millennia after his death) so that he could fly to Paris. (Source)

Pedro López aka “Monster of the Andes”

Pedro Alonso López, more commonly known as the Monster of Andes, was born 8th October the seventh of thirteen child of Benilda López De Casteneda in Colombia 1948. He commonly caught his mum committing acts of prostitution and this would lead his mother finding him fondling his younger sister’s breast in ‘57 when he was eight. As a result he was kicked out of the house. The supposedly a polite boy who wanted to be a teacher (according to his mother), ran away to Bogotá, Colombia. He then said he had been kidnapped and raped. He was later taken in, aged 12, by a US immigrant family and enrolled in a school for orphans. He ran away again after two years either with a teacher or because he was being molested by a teacher.

He was a serial killer and child rapist who murdered a minimum of 110 young girls from the year 1969 to 1980 but claims to have murdered over 300 across Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. The monster of Andes claimed that during his imprisonment for car theft, he was brutally gang raped and then, still incarcerated he hunted down and killed the most brutal of his rapists. When he was released he moved to Peru and started murdering young girls. He claimed that by ‘78 he had killed over 100 girls before he was caught and captured by an indigenous tribe. They were about to execute him, before a missionary from the US persuaded them to hand him over to the state police, after which he was quickly released.

López claimed he returned to Colombia and the moved to Ecuador, during which, he claimed he had killed about three girls a week. He stated: “I like the girls in Ecuador; they are more gentle and trusting. More innocent.”

The nonce was arrested when an attempted kidnapping failed and he was trapped by market traders. The Associated Press (AP) reported his arrest to been in march 1980 and that he had boasted about killing anywhere from 200 to 369 young girls. According to CNN, López “Was arrested in 1980 but was freed by the government in Ecuador at the end of [1998]”. During an interview from his prison cell, the pedophile described himself as “the man of the century” (obviously disregarding his rapes and murders of young girls) and said he was being released for “good behaviour”. An A&E biographical documentary reported that he was released from an Ecuadorian prison on 31/8/199, then rearrested as an illegal immigrant and tossed him to the Colombian authorities, who pinned a 20-year-old murder on him. He was declared insane and held in the psychiatric wing of everyone’s favourite Bogotá hospital. In 1998, he was declared sane and released on a $50 bail, subject to conditions. He later absconded. The earlier documentary says that Interpol released an advisory for his rearrest by Colombian authorities over a fresh murder in 2002, he is currently wanted and whereabouts are unknown.

Aside from uncited local accounts, López’s crimes first received international attention from an interview with Ron Laytner, a longtime freelance photojournalist in his Ambato prison cell in 1992. According to Laytner’s story, López got his nickname Monster of the Andes in ‘80, when he purposely led the police to the graves of 53 girls between the ages 9 to 12 in Ecuador.

Throughout the 18th and 19th century, grave-robbing was quite prevalent. Due to this, many cemeteries were protected with cemetery guns. The one above is from the Museum of Mourning Art. The gun sits on a turret, allowing it to move freely. It would be set up with a tripwire, meaning that when the unsuspecting grave robber got close to the grave that he intended to rob, he would trigger the weapon, killing him.

Were there ever any Western depictions of the himantopodes? They became popular in the Middle East but I've never seen any European art of them...

i've never heard of them before and i don't remember seeing anything like that, but i'll keep an eye out for them. i'm not an expert though. maybe some professional art historians/medievalists etc know more?

for context (from the wikipedia article on iranian folklore): "Himantopodes (davālpā): an evil creature that uses its flexible, leather-like legs as tentacles to grip and capture human beings. The captives will be enslaved and forced to carry the creature until they die of fatigue."

Here's a more in-depth lexicon entry

Woman says she was kidnapped by gnomes and goblins for nearly a week

Speaking to a Nicaraguan TV station Canal 10, the woman, named as Jasmina, said that as a kid, she had been playing outside her family home in Monte Oscuro, west Nicaragua, when she was approached by gnomes.

Jasmina insists that they convinced her to go with them to a hillside cave where she was holed up by her captors for five days and six nights.

She said: "They appeared one day when I was playing and they took me away."

cdn.jwplayer.com

Mysterious 'evil goblins' capture woman and keep her in a cave for five days and six nights

Mysterious 'evil goblins' capture woman and keep her in a cave for five days and six nights

De Loys’ Ape This creature was killed on the Venezuela/Columbia border in 1917 by Francois De Loys and his party.  This creature appears to be a very man-like ape.  It has never been identified as a known species.  De Loys group was attack by these creatures and they shot and killed one of them.  The creature was about 5 ft tall and had a very human like appearance and movements.  The size and shape of the creatures forehead show that it isn’t even closely related to known primates of South America.    Could this creature be the missing link between man and ape ?  Is this creature or one of it’s relatives responsible for the bigfoot/yeti sightings ?

Neighbor's motion camera caught this. She couldn't think of a natural explanation. She cried for four hours and waited outside her house for husband to return.

dining room of rotenburg cannibal armin meiwes

The Cape Intruder

June 06, 2022

Cape Elizabeth is a small town in Maine, US, with a population of around 9,535 in 2020. Cape Elizabeth was known to be a desirable place to live, however, in 2005, the residents became terrified of an unidentified man who watched them as they slept. 

In 2005, what was described as a young man began to sneak into people’s homes in the area, watching them sleep. The strange part was that this man would never break or steal anything from the homes, he didn’t attack or touch anyone, just simply watched them sleep. 

Victims of the man who was dubbed “The Cape Intruder” or “Cape Trespasser” claimed they would wake up to find him standing over their beds, but he would flee the scene before they could catch him or even get a great look at him. 

A police sketch of the man came out, and many believed he was in his 20′s. The police received several calls from various people claiming they believed to know who the Cape Intruder was. Two of the people who called in actually named the same man, but after a while the incidents stopped. One police officer said that everyone who called in seems to think the sketch looks like someone they know or have seen around. 

While the Cape Intruder was active, a neighbourhood watch group would set up on Mitchell Road, where multiple houses had been targeted by the strange man. 

The Cape Intruder was never caught, and the incidents stopped suddenly. The case remains unsolved.