Eerie, funny, and sometimes intense, this museum explores Mexico's ever-present relationship with death.
Located in the city of Aguascalientes, the National Museum of Death opened to the public in the summer of 2007 as a permanent collection belonging to the University of Aguascalientes, after the institution inherited hundreds of death-related artifacts amassed over Octavio Bajonero Gil's lifetime, including some of his own artwork.
Seven years into its operation, however, the mission of the Museum was refined, as its collection expanded in the direction of depicting the historic role of death's iconography and the funereal arts within Mexican culture, both contemporary and ancient. Integral in this expansion were artifacts from the personal collection of one Daniel Mercurio López Casillas.
Throughout this process of the investigation, the Museum's curators conveyed the wide range of Mexican society's relationship towards death and Santa Muerte himself, ranging from the popular portrayal of a people who are always joking and laughing about mortality, to the nitty gritty — sometimes quite graphic — reality of death most corporeal. Paintings, sculptures, lithographs, and photos are used to illustrate points along the way, explaining the relationship of Mexico's culture with death via images rather than words.
Step by step, the Museum takes its visitors through a history of death, across the land now known as Mexico. Starting in the pre-hispanic epoch, the exhibits follow a timeline through the periods of Spanish Conquistadors' domination and decimation, to the reassertion of Mexican independence, up to the contemporary period, including the international community's appropriation of the sugar skull in pop culture.
What results is an experience described by a recent visitor as an "interesting surprise," particularly vibrant and multifaceted given what could easily have come off as gloomy, dismal subject matter.
Mayfield, Kentucky's cemetery contains a strangely sinister vision. Eighteen monuments – mostly human, although there is also a horse, two dogs, one deer, and a fox – gaze into the East, staring out across a field of nothing but the dead.
Commissioned by Colonel Henry G. Wooldridge and built over the course of seven years until Wooldridge's own death on May 30, 1899, the monument commemorates family members and other loved ones Wooldridge lost over the course of his lifetime. After more than a century of visitation by a public fascinated by the spectacle, the site has acquired an unofficial, completely disconcerting name: "The Strange Procession Which Never Moves."
Prompted by no one but his own aching heart, the man spent his last years pouring his fortune into immortalizing all that was irretrievably lost in stunning fashion. Unfortunately, this gesture was just as fundamentally lost on its earliest viewers, who mistook his monument as a literal money pit worthy of attempted plundering, rather than appreciating it for the gorgeously metaphoric treasure chest it simply is.
Populated with likenesses of those from Woolridge's past, including a childhood sweetheart or his great-niece (depending on the lore), all of his sisters, his horse named "Fop," plus his mother, brothers, as well as other creatures great and small who had been close to his heart. And while it may look like a small, very creepy private cemetery within the larger Maplewood Cemetery, Wooldridge is the only person actually entombed within the cordoned-off site.
Located on Calle Jiminez and Linares between Sagarnaga and Santa Cruz in, it's impossible to miss the Witches' Market of La Paz, Bolivia, which is found right in a lively tourist area. Dozens of vendors line the streets to sell a number of strange and fascinating products and the raw ingredients used in rituals to call on the spirits that populate the Aymara world.
Among the many items sold at the market are dried llama fetuses that are said to bring both prosperity and good luck, dried frogs used for Aymara rituals, soapstone figurines, aphrodisiac formulas, owl feathers, dried turtles and snakes, herbs, and folk remedies. Witch doctors in dark hats and dresses wander through the market offering fortune-telling services.
The dried llama fetuses are the most prominent product available at the market. These animals are fairly large and are used throughout the country, buried in the foundations of new buildings as an offering to the goddess Pachamama. It is believed that the buried llama fetuses keep construction workers safe, but these are only used by poor Bolivians. Wealthy Bolivians usually sacrifice a living llama to Pachamama.
The hillside below Daylight Pass, just beyond the ghost town of Rhyolite, is decorated by a congregation of menacing, hooded figures that strikingly resemble Death himself, huddling together against the desert's void.
Conceived in 1984 by the late Belgian-Polish sculptor Albert Szukalski, "The Last Supper" beckons visitors to the Goldwell Open Air Museum like a demonic vision born of heat stroke and Satanic enchantment. Inspired by what he found to be a striking resemblance between the Mojave Desert and the Holy Land's scenic vistas, the sculptor cast these twelve ghosts in an echo of Leonardo da Vinci's painting of Christ's Last Supper.
As always with both art and life, the Devil is in the details; Though arranged in a similar fashion, Szukalski's figures are like an Opposite Day version of the original fresco. Rather than appearing to act out the final, vivacious moments of life, each is nothing more than a stark white cloak draped over nothing. The human figures they should contain are missing entirely. Similarly, the table at over which the figures seem to hover was omitted.
The piece's reception was overwhelmingly positive, drawing crowds to this site in the middle of nowhere to see Szukalski's creation. "The Last Supper" became the Goldwell Open Air Museum's self-described "genesis piece," without which the diverse array of work concurrently displayed on its 15 acres would not have been possible. As the Goldwell Open Air Museum expanded, so too did Szukalski's contributions to the grounds (including “Ghost Rider” in 1984 and “Desert Flower” in 1989), even as other famed sculptors added their own works of varying styles to the landscape.
At the time of its completion in 1984, Szukalski anticipated his Fiberglas ghosts would last a mere two years in the harsh desert climate. Yet, in what have some have interpreted as a divine appreciation for art, the piece remains as present and spooky as ever. Though three figures were destroyed (and since refurbished) by either mules or vandals, "Last Supper" was noticeably spared the devastation wrought by a 2007 windstorm that destroyed several of the museum's works, including Szukalski's own "Desert Flower." The ghosts in the desert continue to sit and wait for your arrival.
The town of Zugarramurdi on the Basque border in northern Spain may be small but during the 17th century Spanish Inquisition the rural settlement was the focus of one of the largest witch trials in history which ended in the deaths of countless innocents and it is the folk beliefs and lives of these victims that is remembered in the Zugarramurdi Witch Museum.
During the Spanish Inquisition, a wide variety of non-believers and accused heretics were punished and one of the centers of this persecution was the small town of Zugarramurdi which contains a large series of caves said to be home to all manner of witchcraft and sorcery. After identifying the area to be rife with supposed witches, the Inquisition rounded up the accused and tried them in nearby Logroño in the largest trial of its kind in history. In the end, over 7,000 individual cases were tried, mainly focusing on female accused, although a great deal of men and children were included as well.
Ever since the trials, Zugarramurdi has been associated with witchcraft and today the town embraces their pagan heritage with such sites as the witch museum. The museum, which is housed in the town's former hospital, was established in 2007 and features a number of displays illustrating both the reality and myth surrounding the local witches. There are "floating" dresses and cauldrons and goats heads on display, giving the proper due to the folk beliefs of the area and also the misconceptions of the witches. In contrast there are also displays exploring the role of the female herbalist which was most often associated with witchcraft. There is also a film explaining the process behind the 1610 trials.
The Zugarramurdi Witch Museum also takes part in the annual celebration of the summer solstice held in the nearby caves. The town seems to have taken back its identity not by distancing itself from its historic tragedy, but by embracing its legacy, warts and all.
With skulls carved above the doorway and winged skeletons etched into plaques outside, the exterior of St. Mary of Eulogies and the Dead suits its macabre name.
Once inside, visitors can make a small donation to the church and a nun will unlock the crypt for you. The nun will take you down a short flight of stairs and leave you alone, surrounded by skeletons. There are skeletons set in the wall, etched skulls stacked on shelves, bones piled by the altar and made into a cross. Even the chandeliers are made with human vertebrate. A scythe lurks near the altar.
The stretcher in the corner offers a clue to the story behind the crypt. The church was established in 1576 to provide a proper burial for abandoned corpses. While it used to include huge vaults where over 8000 bodies were buried, most of the vaults were destroyed during other construction in 1886. This chamber is all that remains.
Update August 1, 2016: Closed to visitors for renovations, didn't say for how long.
When you bring history into the equation, gory haunted attractions aren't just for Halloween, thus The London Dungeon is always ready to give visitors a blood-soaked tour through London's past.
This tourist attraction is by no means hidden, but its sidelong devotion to history amidst the animatronics, fake smoke, and theatre blood make it unique among its kitschy brethren.
Part of a small European chain of attractions that are each tailored to the local history of their city, the London Dungeon features dramatic and shocking recreations of such real life horrors as a mad King Henry VIII, Guy Fawkes' bombing plot, and of course a fully explorable series of Whitechapel alleys stalked by Jack the Ripper. Covering London's instances of plague, torture, and murder the attraction is clearly more invested in scares than facts. However none can say that the London Dungeon does not make the city's history seem much more interesting than any textbook would.
The area of Pescadero Point known as Ghost Tree derives its name from the white and gnarly local cypress trees in the area which call to mind ghosts or witches. Foresters predict that the few still living cypress trees will soon join their ghostly brethren due to a blight of beetles that will kill much of the cypress and pine in California over the next 20 years.
Legend tells of a particular spooky tree in the bunches that graces the coastline of swanky Pebble Beach. Supposedly the image of a "Lady in Lace" has often been spotted on dark foggy nights near the famed Ghost Tree, upsetting the motorists who are said to have seen her walking down the center of the 17 Mile Drive.
One theory, among believers, suggests that the ghostly figure is Dona Maria, who once owned much of what is now Pebble Beach. Perhaps the Lady in Lace is just surveying her vast property. However, as more sightings are made, others continue to speculate about the lady's identity. Some people who have seen the Lady in Lace think she is wearing a wedding dress. Her sadness leads people to speculate that she is a jilted bride moping for all eternity. (Another less ethereal explanation is that these are optical illusions created by fog and refracted light.)
More recently, a legendary surfer, drowned near the Ghost Tree while attempting to paddle into the massive waves. The infamous wave and the entire surfing area has now become known as Ghost Tree. When locals catch a good wave there, they often remark, "The Ghost Tree is with us today."
The Ghost Tree is often confused with possibly the most photographed tree in the world, the Lone Cypress, which is located a few paces down the road. Unfortunately, the Lone Cypress is mostly made of cement today. Pebble Beach has put up wooden markers to designate which is which and you get a guide book when you enter Pebble Beach that calls out all points of interest.
Earlier this morning, the police in Olathe, Kansas, posted the photo above to their Facebook page with very few details, only saying that a road in town was closed because this truck had gotten stuck in some power lines.
At first glance, the photo appears kind of impossible. How did the truck bed get so high? Why is it leaning slightly to its side?
A closer look reveals some clues—the bed appears to have been lifted up dump truck-style when the collision with the power lines occurred, while the lean might have been the result of the driver trying to accelerate through it, dragging the bed behind.
The police did not immediately respond to a request for comment about exactly what went down, but in a response to a Facebook commenter they confirmed that it wasn't a prank or a dare, just what appeared to be a simple accident. (Update: Olathe police confirmed in a Facebook message that it was, indeed, an accident.)
Still, we'll always have this photo, taken in the early dawn, which is both arresting and slightly unsettling, like an outtake from Stranger Things. Facebook commenters tried as best they could to spoil the moment.
"There has got to be a way to stop this idiocy," one commenter said, with outrage that's perhaps disproportionate to the problem at hand.
"I feel for this dude," another said, more empathetically. "I am almost positive this is not how he wanted to spend his Monday."
Happy Halloween! If you’re having trouble getting into the spooky spirit, there is a surefire way to fill yourself with that unique seasonal mix of dread and fun that you had before it was crushed by the joyless weight of adulthood: check out the credits sequences of the great horror and sci-fi anthologies of the 1990s.
While seasonal anthology shows like American Horror Story are becoming popular these days, episodic horror anthologies like The Twilight Zone, in which each installment is its own little self-contained story, have been successful for decades. But the 1990s was a high water mark for the genre. From Tales from The Crypt and Goosebumps, to lesser-known series like Monsters and Freddy’s Nightmares, horror anthology shows could be found all over the airwaves. And while they each trafficked in similar tales of macabre misfortune, supernatural horror, and black irony, and many even shared the concept of a wise-cracking host, the shows were differentiated by their spooky, distinctive intro sequences.
Unlike on shows with a recurring cast and central story or location, these anthologies had to provide viewers with a looser introduction to their program—something that communicated more of a tone and feel than any specifics pertaining to character or plot. Thanks to this need for a broader introductory segment, most intros to horror anthologies acted as impressionistic little horror movies unto themselves. Watching these intros invokes a specific feeling of fun fear. They’re like a straight shot of Halloween spirit.
Probably the most classic and memorable of these intros belongs to HBO’s Tales From The Crypt (1989-1996). The wordless introduction follows a long tracking shot through an evocative haunted house, gliding through a cobweb-strewn foyer, past a candle-lit desk, through a secret passage, and behind a bookcase. Eventually it leads the eye through the titular crypt, where the Cryptkeeper finally pops out to punctuate the journey. It’s not unlike being strapped into an on-rails haunted house attraction. The journey is made all the more creepy by a spooky Danny Elfman–penned theme, and random sound cues like screams, wolf howls, and lightning strikes. Without uttering a word, the intro tells its own vague story, and ushers you into a world of frights.
The anthology show Monsters (1988-1991) offered a similar trip through a haunted house, playing around with more banal imagery to create an uncanny effect. As the show opens, the camera pulls into what seems to be a quaint suburban house, but it turns out that this normal scene is not so normal after all—the family inside is revealed to be monsters! Even though they’re cyclopses and potato creatures, the family banters as they sit down to watch TV. Reality is turned a bit upside down, and you get the idea that you’re in for some strangeness.
Even shows that relied on a more established franchise had their own great intros. The horror collection Freddy’s Nightmares: A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Series (1988-1990) used its own well-known film series as a jumping off point, then established its own feeling of fright. Freddy’s Nightmares briefly recapped the story of the titular dream monster through a series of stills, then begins panning around a neon-lit boiler room set while images of screaming people were superimposed on screen. This was Tales From The Crypt with Freddy Krueger as the Cryptkeeper.
Where Tales from the Crypt and others took you on a haunted house ride, some other intros took a more impressionistic approach. In the more kiddie-focused shows of the time like Goosebumps (1995-1998) or Are You Afraid of The Dark (1990-2000), the audience is presented with a series of short clips and images that don’t so much tell their own story, but work to evoke a feeling of dread. There’s a banging shutter, or a full moon, or an attic with nothing other than a sinister-looking clown doll in it. The only thing really being communicated is a sense of fear.
While most anthology intros were largely wordless, at least one show used voiceover to great effect. The Outer Limits (1995-2002) was a revival of a 1960s series that is often best remembered for the eerie monologue that ushered in each episode, and the new series smartly just updated it. “There is nothing wrong with your television. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are now controlling the transmission,” begins the famous opening monologue. The voice tells you that you will now be taken to a place where anything is possible, presenting a loss of control and a feeling of dread. All the while, bizarre imagery takes over the screen underneath. A giant eye is opened, bodies fall endlessly through space, these frights are of a more sci-fi nature, but the effect is much the same.
With the popularity of shows like the modern sci-fi anthology Black Mirror, we may be seeing a return to the form for anthology horror. But now that our primary style of viewing is to binge watch, intros and credit sequences seem to be on their way out, getting shorter and much less elaborate. We may never again see such purely evocative slices of horror like we had in the 1990s. Of course we could also just be getting old. Which is the scariest part of all.
Stroll through the downtown of Salem, Massachusetts, and you'll quickly run into the city's most contentious piece of public art. Nine feet tall, made of polished bronze, and planted right in the middle of a central town green, the scandalous statue is all but impossible to avoid. Perched on a broomstick and backed by a crescent moon, it depicts Samantha Stephens, the nose-twitching heroine of the hit 1960s TV show Bewitched.
The statue went up in the spring of 2005, sponsored by cable station TV Land and approved by the city government. Some residents, thinking of another of the city's scandals, were peeved. "We're right near the courthouse where people were tried for witchcraft," resident Jean Harrison told NPR. "Having a kitschy statue just seems to trivialize what these people went through."
Stanley Usovicz, the mayor at the time, was insistent. "This city has long recognized the true tragedy of 1692," he replied. "But I think we also have to recognize that there is a popular culture, and that we are a part of that popular culture."
In 1692, 185 people were accused of witchcraft in Salem. Over the course of nine paranoid months, 19 of them were executed. On a rainy October Friday in 2016, Salem is filled, once again, with supposed witches—this time in the form of tourists, their pointed hats catching on their umbrellas. They file in and out of witch-themed tchotchke shops, get their cards read by local psychics, and grab cones at the local ice cream parlor, the Dairy Witch. Somehow, between the 17th century and now, Salem and its fans conjured up a new meaning for a historic tragedy, transforming it into an infinite set of tourism opportunities. How did this city bewitch itself? And what does it mean for those of us who find ourselves there?
If you take a long view of history, Salem's witch trials were far from unique. Between the 13th and 18th centuries, tens of thousands of accused witches were killed in Europe, and hundreds more in the American colonies. For some reason, though, everyone has always wanted to learn about theirs in particular. "Witch tourism [in Salem] goes back to almost the second the bodies were taken down," says J.W. Ocker, author of A Season With the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts. "For some reason, this one stuck with everybody."
As Ocker details in his book, Salem has had plenty of opportunities to shake this association. In the centuries following the trials, it was a Revolutionary War ground, a bustling maritime port, and a manufacturing hub, full of tanneries and steam cotton factories. It's the birthplace of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the National Guard, and Monopoly. But even as the city's purposes shifted, the witches stuck around. In 1891, a jeweler named Daniel Lews began crafting intricate witch-themed silver spoons, selling thousands and sparking a nationwide decorative-spoon trend. Even at the House of Seven Gables, which you'd think would spend its time hawking Hawthorne, "they would hand-paint witches on glassware and sell them," says Ocker. "It's always been there to some degree."
By the beginning of the 20th century, some of these identities were fading. The economy was changing, and there was less need for American-made leather and cotton. Boston and New York were suddenly overshadowing Salem's relatively small port. Witch enthusiasm, however, had not dimmed. "Manufacturing died there, like it did in so many American cities," says Ocker. "They had nothing to fall back on but witch tourism."
As you pull into Salem, one thing is immediately clear: The city has really leaned into this new branding. The Salem High School mascot is a witch, with huge green eyes and warts to match. Another flies over the masthead of the local newspaper. City police wear patches that say "The Witch City, Massachusetts," complete with a big-hatted specimen. This past March, they were accused of Freudian slippage when they asked the community to "Please remove cats from school lots." (They meant "cars.")
In October, even more witches fly over the city, emblazoned on banners for "Haunted Happenings," a monthlong festival that transforms the downtown into a spooky smorgasbord. As I walk through, facepaint artists are turning tourists into vampires, and a side street has been taken over by something called the "Electric Ghost Electronica Festival." A small carnival is closed due to weather, and the Ferris wheel drips rain on passers-by. A brochure reveals all the things I missed earlier in the month: regular evening seances, visits from various horror movies stars, and the opening day "Zombie Walk," which culminates in a game of undead kickball.
Haunted Happenings, which is the city's biggest purveyor of creepiness, took off in response to something legitimately scary. In September of 1982, a still-unknown criminal took bottles of Tylenol off of shelves in drugstores around Chicago, filled them with cyanide capsules, and replaced them, killing seven people. The murders reverberated across the country. Frightened parents angled to keep their kids inside on Halloween, and many communities banned trick-or-treating all together. When Susannah Stuart, then the head of the Salem Witch Museum, proposed replacing the traditional DIY festivities with a weekend-long official bash, the city quickly got on board.
People outside of Salem were enthused, too—the first Haunted Happenings attracted around 50,000 tourists, effectively doubling the city's population for the weekend. Its success paved the way for more and more Happenings. "It began as a way to help kids have a safe Halloween," says Kate Fox, "but it quickly became apparent to the people in charge that it was also a way to extend the tourism season past Labor Day." Fox is the executive director of Destination Salem, the tourism bureau that pulls together the many organizations, companies, and individuals that make the various Happenings possible. Cozy in her downtown office, she's wearing a black jacket and an orange scarf, which she puts on to look festive for the TV broadcasts.
At this point, Haunted Happenings has hundreds of contributors. They come from many different sectors of the community, and they take on the witch thing from all angles. There are the historians, who host lectures, town tours, and educational plays. There are the freakout fans and pop culture aficionados, who contribute costume contests and scary movie screenings. There are the actual Wiccans, who flocked to Salem after influential pagan priestess Laurie Cabot moved there in 1970. They throw a monthlong "Psychic Fair and Witchcraft Expo" in the mall, along with a number of glamorous witch parties. "They all have to coexist on parallel planes," says Fox.
Over the years and under this pressure, Haunted Happenings has stretched and stretched, like a thief on a medieval rack. When Fox started at Destination Salem, in 1998, it was about two weeks long. Now it lasts the entire month. On October weekends, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority runs extra trains to and from Salem. In some ways, Haunted Happenings seems like a textbook example of holiday creep—the same phenomenon that decks malls in Christmas ivy before school has started, and sends pumpkin spice wafting through the July air. "September definitely begins to feel October-ish," says Fox. "People in Salem see Halloween stuff out in August and say, 'Not yet!'"
But the city isn't entirely to blame—they're just the irresistible flame, holding steady for all of us confused moths. "People come in off the train from all over, come up to the visitor's desk, and say 'What should I do?'" says Fox. "And you have to say, 'Well, why are you here?'" And they say, 'It's October. I just felt like I should come to Salem.'"
A lot of people who aren't quite sure why they're in Salem eventually find themselves at 310 ½ Essex Street. Tucked between the Historic Salem headquarters and an ordinary residence, the so-called "Witch House" is the only building still standing that actually played a role in the 1692 trials. On Friday, an attendant ushered damp participants down the paved path and into the black clapboard building, where they paid $8.25 to see choice bits of history arrayed to tell a particular story.
The Witch House was once home to Judge Jonathan Corwin, a merchant and politician who held great standing within the community. After being appointed to a sort of witchcraft investigation committee, Corwin heard testimony from three different accused women, potentially in that very house. This came across almost immediately—as you walk into the Witch House kitchen, the first thing you see is a long trestle table, covered end to end with photocopied testimonials from the trials. In later rooms, everyday 17th century objects, like spinning wheels and rope beds, intermingle with spookier artifacts.
Some of these are intimately related to the trials—there's a "poppet" doll similar to those found in the home of witch hunt victim Bridget Bishop, and used as evidence in her conviction. Others—like a display themed around corpse medicine, and a vial of "Winthrop's Black Powder" made from smushed toads—seem to be there simply because they're creepy. Even with all the horrors of the 17th century arrayed before us, though, the trials stand out, and two young guests peer at a plaque with more printed testimony and ask the question on everyone's minds: How did this happen?
Elizabeth Peterson, the museum's director, offers up thoughtful, nuanced answers about mass panic and historical context. "I wish we could just say it was ergot," she says, referring to a theory that a hallucinogenic fungus caused it all.
People have long had questions about the Witch House, and there has almost always been someone to answer them, for a price. After later generations of the Corwin family let go of the building, in 1856, it was purchased by an entrepreneur named George Farrington. Farrington turned much of the house into an apothecary, with boarding rooms on the second floor. Along with his medicines and tinctures, he marketed the house's history, selling his wares in bottles emblazoned with a small witch on a broomstick and charging patrons extra to take a peek at what had been Corwin's kitchen. He also made postcards and stereoscopic inserts, establishing what he had begun calling the "Old Witch House" as a spot worth seeing. People began coming to Salem just to visit it.
The building went through many incarnations—soda fountain, umbrella repair shop—but the shifting proprietors "always charged five cents to see the judge's staircase and fireplace," says Peterson. In that way, they kept its reputation as a historic tourist site alive. In 1944, the building was threatened by widening roads, and the city of Salem bought it in order to save it, transforming it into a museum and officially naming it the Witch House.
As a community leader and historical expert, Peterson is often called upon to vet the appropriateness of the world's many attempts to dramatize her city. When she weighed in on the WGN show Salem, in which actual supernatural witches live alongside Salem's accused innocents, she argued that the show could do little harm, because it's so obviously fantastical.
The Witch House is, in many ways, Salem's most truly historic site. But its name is also a bit fantastical, in that it housed zero witches. Peterson and other concerned parties have been lobbying to change it to the less zingy but more accurate "Corwin House." "We've tried to rename it for years, through the tenures of three mayors," she says. "They've disapproved every time." The brand is just too strong.
As the day grays into black, my companions and I explore more of the city's themed offerings. We hit up the Witch Museum and the nearby (and confusingly similar) Witch History Museum, both of which present the story of the trials as a series of lit-up wax tableaus. We tour the cauldron-heavy sets of WitchPix, in which, for $34.99, you and your friends can dress up in long furs and pointy hats and be photographed posing around a cauldron. We opt for a cheaper option—sticking our heads into plywood cutouts that offer up scenes of happy, dancing witches.
This strange brew of voyeurism and role-playing serves to separate the two meanings of "witch" that Salem has on offer. It's sobering to watch people (even wax people) get ostracized, tried and executed for crimes they couldn't possibly have committed. It's fun and wacky to pretend to be a glamorous lady with a pointy hat and actual magic powers. Before we depart, we find ourselves in HausWitch: a high-ceilinged, softly lit retail space that offers tarot decks, "Witch City" tote bags, and affordable spell kits for your home.
HausWitch is capitalizing on another burgeoning trend—that of the chic, modern-day Tumblr witch, steeped in feminism and self-care. Its couches are covered with moon-shaped pillows, and its tables are strewn with incense bundles. Advertisements for in-store yoga hang alongside silkscreened "Womyn" posters and plump succulents. My impulse is to consider it the nadir of Salem's commercialization: tourists coming to Witch City and leaving with a bunch of $12 magic rocks.
But even as I take snarky notes, something undeniable slowly occurs to me: it feels good to be there. Teenage girls are bustling in and out, tasting herbal tinctures and giggling and waving around bundles of sage. As I smell candle after candle and watch my friends pose with various geodes, the tension of the day's contradictory narratives starts to dissipate. I think of something Kate Fox said, back in the tourism board office: "Having this penetration into someone's psyche is a heavy burden for the community." The heaviness goes both ways, and it's nice to spend a little time with some crystals.
HausWitch is also notable for its newness. It's more of a piece with other parts of Salem's culture—the burgeoning restaurant scene, the growing Peabody Essex Museum, which is now the ninth largest art museum in the country. The current draw of witches dovetails with the historic one, setting Salem apart for positive reasons. "It's a mutual, symbiotic relationship," says Ocker. "If it weren't for the fact that everyone wanted to come to Salem on Halloween and party, the town would be forgotten."
The late Kevin White, longtime mayor of Boston, is best known for steering the city through tumultuous times. During his twelve-year tenure, White oversaw fraught school desegregation efforts, refurbished downtown Boston, and worked to decentralize the city government.
Apparently, though, he also threw super chill Halloween parties. These pictures, from a Mayor's Office Halloween Party in 1980, were shot at Daisy Buchanan's—a Back Bay standby until it, too, shuttered a couple of years ago. In them, mustachioed cowboys string up balloons, businessmen chat up adult babies, and even the bartender throws on a fake-nose-and-glasses set. Who says public servants can't have fun?
By this time next week, the 2016 presidential election will be over, for better or worse, and regardless of the outcome it will no doubt go down in the history books as one of the most stressful and foul displays of American politicking in action. But it won't be without company. The footprints of political lies, scandals, and corruption can be found all over this fine nation, if you know where to look. Here are six places in the Atlas that serve as a reminder that power corrupts.
It's impossible to talk about political corruption in the United States without talking about New York City's infamous Tammany Hall, the ruthlessly efficient Democratic Party political machine that largely controlled New York elections from the 1830s up to the 1960s.
Located in lower Manhattan, Tammany Hall was the headquarters known variously as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, and finally, the Tammany Society. In addition to rigging elections and bribing police, under the notoriously crooked William "Boss" Tweed, the Tammany machine was also largely responsible for the rise of immigrants, especially Irish immigrants, in New York politics during the 19th century.
As the 1970s rolled around American politics was a far cry from squeaky clean, and in fact found itself in one of the biggest political scandals in American history, this one running all the way up to the White House.
This quotidian underground parking garage bore no special significance until 2005, when reporter Bob Woodward revealed that it was the location of secret meetings he had with Watergate source “Deep Throat.” The men met in parking space D32, which sits beneath the Oakhill Office Building in Rosslyn, Virginia. The location was ideal for such covert conversations with easy ingress and egress through stairs that led to the street from the subterranean garage. These late-night chats under a cloak of darkness were part of the investigation Woodward and fellow reporter Carl Bernstein launched into the 1972 break-in at Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel and the subsequent coverup by the Nixon administration.
Another parking lot, another political scandal. In this particular parking lot, Chicago mayor Eugene Sawyer was inaugurated under very sketchy circumstances in 1987.
When the current mayor at the time, Harold Washington, died suddenly, a tumultuous scuffle immediately began within city council to fill his seat. With opinions split between two aldermen, Sawyer and Timothy Evans, debates became heated and shady dealings were thick on the ground. Then, in the early morning hours of December 2nd, using back alley channels including, allegedly, promises for six-figure retirement plans Sawyer's supporters were able to secure the vote, just before dawn in the parking lot of a closed restaurant.
Sawyer’s secret and shady inauguration was met with angry protests from minorities and progressives with many people accusing him of selling out to white politicians. However ionically, and to his credit, Mayor Sawyer passed an Ethics Ordinance to prevent corruption while in office.
In the Prohibition Era, while the rest of the country was forced to go dry, underneath downtown Los Angeles the party never stopped.
Despite laws forbidding alcohol, 11 miles of service tunnels became passageways to basement speakeasies with innocuous fronts above ground. Patrons were able to move about under the city, boozing it up without a care in the world, while the Mayor's office ran the supply of hootch.
Aside from the service tunnels, there are also abandoned subway and equestrian tunnels from the days before personal vehicles began clogging up LA's city streets. There are stories of these tunnels being used by police to transport prisoners, bank security to move large sums of cash safely, and both coroners and mobsters to store bodies.
Inspired by the Teapot Dome Scandal of the Harding administration, Jack Ainsworth built the Teapot Dome Service Station in 1922 along Old Highway 12 in Zillah, Washington. The building, from which petroleum products were sold, humorously reminds passerby of the scandal involving erstwhile Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, leasing Navy petroleum reserves to private oil companies without a competitive bid process. Fall eventually went to prison for taking bribes, though nobody joined him for paying a bribe.
While not in the United States, Arturo "El Negro" Durazo Moreno, the notoriously corrupt Chief of Police in sprawling Mexico City from 1976 to 1982, deserves an honorable mention on this tour of civic malfeasance. During his tenure he developed a reputation for egomaniacal behavior and crookedness that would follow him to the grave.
From petitioning to become a five-star general despite never serving in the military, to enjoying the kickbacks of an illegal cocaine smuggling ring, El Negro managed to convert Mexico City's police into a racketeering empire the likes of which had never been seen before. All that extra cash had to be funneled somewhere, so El Negro established a couple of lavish mansions and this Greek-styled seaside playhouse along the cliffs. Today it is possible to tour the Parthenon in its former glory, where patios look out on to empty pools, and murals of Bacchanalia still adorn the walls of a crooked cop's erstwhile dream home.
Voting booths aren’t spaces that voters give much thought: you’re in, you vote, you’re out. That’s how it’s meant to be. They are designed for quick exits; one 19th century law stipulated an eight-minute limit for booth use, if all were occupied. But their unobtrusive nature is a relic of a major controversy in American democracy. When the U.S. made the controversial switch to a secret ballot, we needed a place to cast them.
Back in the 19th century, election day in America worked differently than it does now—there was even more drama, if you can believe that in 2016. There were no official ballots; political parties would print their own “party tickets.” Some states had standardized printing rules, but in some places voters could write down the names of whoever they wanted to vote for a hand that piece of paper in. Kentucky voted by voice almost to the end of the 1800s.
When parties printed up their tickets, each ballot listed the party’s candidates for all the seats at stake. Most voters accepted the pre-selected slate, rather than the candidates that most impressed them. There were measures one could take against an undesirable candidate, though, like physically cutting his name out of the party ticket.
Polling places might be set up in private homes or “sodhouse saloons”—usually there was some separation between the election officials and the crowd of voters, but there was no privacy for voters. Partisans would corral people to the polls to cast their party tickets and keep other parties’ voters away from the polls—using fists, knives, guns...or any other effective means. Voting could mean risking your life: in the mid-1800s, 89 people died trying to get to the polls.
By the 1880s, ballot reformers were looking for a new way to run elections, one that would wrench some control away from parties and limit vote buying and other fraudulent practices. They found it in Australia.
Since the 1850s, Australian states had been pioneering a different method of electing leaders—they let people vote in secret. This system used official ballots and provided space for people to vote without anyone knowing who they had chosen. With no way of verifying who a voter had actually cast his ballot for, parties had less power to coerce or bribe people to choose their slate. After the close and contentious election of 1884, when Grover Cleveland won New York—then allocated the most electoral votes of any state—by just over 1,000 votes, American states started seeing the appeal. In 1888, Massachusetts was the first state to adopt the “Australian ballot” system, but it was followed quickly by Indiana, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Minnesota, Washington, New York, and other states across the country.
Under these new systems, states had to provide votes with voting booths and figure out what those should look like. One county in Ohio, for instance, considered buying pre-made iron booths, before settling on cheaper wooden stalls. Often, the ballot reform laws specified in detail what voting booths should look like. New York’s law required at least one voting booth, three feet square, with wall six feet high, for every 50 voters in a district. The booths had to have four sides, with the front working as a door, and a shelf “at a convenient height for writing” that was to be stocked with “pens, ink, blotting paper, and pencils.”
Over the next century, states tweaked the design of their voting booths little by little. Sometimes, the changes were meant to accommodate new technologies. In New York, with its giant lever machines, for instance, booths were expansive, and usually built against the wall. As electronic voting system were developed, machine manufacturers started designed bespoke booths to fit their particular machines.
Some of the changes in booth design were just meant to make set-up easier and simpler. By the middle of the 20th century, it was more common for booths to be fronted by curtains than heavy wooden doors. By the 1980s, freestanding, metal stations had come into vogue. Each state developed its own quirky requirements. “New Hampshire had an archaic state law that the booths’ curtains had to extend down to the ankle,” says Hollister Bundy, who works at Inclusion Solutions, a company that sells election booth. Most states were happy to have shorter curtains, reaching down about the height of a person’s thigh, so for many years there was one curtain for New Hampshire voting booths and one curtain for any other state that wanted it. (The state has since changed the law.)
Today, one of the primary concerns for the designers of voting booths is making sure there are accessible options that meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Help America Vote Act, passed after the election controversy of 2000. Other than that, there’s no centralized requirement for voting booth design: each state has its own rules, and often it’s up to county clerks and other election officials to make sure voters have a place to vote—in private.
Given Britain's maritime history one would expect that the most popular wreck dive site in British waters would be a victim of either of the two World Wars or even an earlier wreck. However the accolade of most dived wreck today—providing you accept a deliberately sunk vessel as a wreck—is held by a very modest 52-foot tugboat, sunk in freshwater about as far from the sea as you can get in the UK.
The boat was built as a steam-powered tug in 1910, converted to diesel in 1957 and stripped of its engine and anything to cause either pollution or a hazard to divers, before being sunk with great ceremony in 2000 in 20-meters (65 feet) of water. The sunken vessel is in a flooded granite quarry in Leicestershire, Stoney Cove, home of the UK National Diving Centre, probably the body of water where more people qualify as scuba divers than any other place in the UK.
The site is regularly used to train police divers and even US Air Force. It is also used by the Historic Diving Society so you may occasionally see someone using the old fashioned hard hat diving suit.
The site has numerous other underwater attractions both deliberately placed there and originating as remnants of the quarrying industry (helicopter, bus, armoured personnel carrier and several other boats). One evening per week it is open for night dives. Although the fish and other wildlife are not as colourful as one would find in the sea they can be very spectacular in their own right. The site is particularly good for the native British crayfish and for some very large pike.
The St Olave Hart Street church is London in miniature—history as a kind of layer cake, boom piled on bust, war piled on plague. It is one of London's hidden treasures and well worth a visit.
While the records of this small city church only stretch back to the 13th century, legend has it that it was built on the site of the Battle of London Bridge as far back as 1014. If you descend into the crypt, a well can be found where, it is thought, King Olaf II of Norway (Later St Olaf) rallied his troops around to assist Ethelred the Unready in driving the Vikings out of London with the cry, "Forward Crossmen!"
As London became a centre of trade in the 15th and 16th centuries, the church flourished. Many merchants chose to be buried here, and their brightly coloured memorials are a highlight of any visit. As the church was next to the home of Queen Elizabeth I's spymaster, Francis Walsingham, many of her spies are said to have worshipped here and at least two are buried in the church.
Other luminaries buried at the church include William and Peter Turner, pioneering father and son botanists and herbalists, who did much to outline the medicinal properties of plants found in the English countryside.
St Olave's most significant historical links are with Samuel Pepys, perhaps the English language's finest diarist. Indeed, he described it in his diary as "our own church." He worked in the Navy Office nearby and would enter into a pew for Admiralty officials. Today, where the old doorway stood is a 19th century memorial to the man. Across the church, directly in line of sight to where Pepys sat is the memorial to Elizabeth, his wife. He had the memorial placed there, so he would always be able to gaze upon her.
The church survived the Great Fire, thanks to quick thinking by William Penn (father of the Founding Father), who tore down local houses to create firebreaks. The church wasn't so lucky during the Blitz and was gutted, but extensive restoration has brought the church back to its pre-war state.
In St Olave's lovely, enclosed churchyard is buried Mary Ramsay who died in 1665, the woman popularly believed to be responsible for bringing the Bubonic Plague to London. Also buried in the churchyard is the person upon whom the 'Mother Goose' of children's stories is based.
On Seething Lane, the churchyard can be entered through a rather macabre gateway, crowned with skulls and the morbid Latin phrase, 'Christus Vivere Mors mihi lucrum' — 'Christ lives, Death is my reward'. This was erected in 1658, shortly before the plague would ravage London again, and almost seems a sort of warning.
Charles Dickens was a great fan of this gateway, and called it (and the church) St Ghastly Grim. He is known to have caught a hansom cab here on rainy, foggy nights and gaze at the skulls.
Glasgow Central Station was the winner of 2015 Scottish Design Award for refurbishment of a listed building. It was built by Sir William Arol and opened by the Caledonian Railway in 1879. It has been rebuilt and refurbished many times but still retains its renowned architectural features, one of the most famous of which is a large glass walled bridge over Argyle Street.
In the 19th century, when Scottish highlanders displaced by the second phase of the highland clearances arrived in Glasgow, they would find shelter under the bridge until finding accommodation. The bridge later became a gathering point for Gaelic speaking people from the highlands long after arriving in Glasgow, usually at weekends, and became known locally as Hielanmans Umbrella (Highlandman's Umbrella) partly because of the very wet climate in western Scotland.
The station is fronted by the Central Hotel on Gordon Street and it was to here that the first long distance television pictures were transmitted in the UK (438 miles over a telephone wire) by John Logie Baird in 1927 (a month after a 225-mile transmission in the U.S.).
Currently guided tours of the station are available where visitors can visit many parts of the station not open to casual visitors including the subterranean vaults, the boiler house and the roof.
This adorable black swallowtail caterpillar may look harmless curled up around a piece of bark, but if you sneak up on the critter, it will unleash a surprisingly putrid counterattack.
Hidden in the caterpillar's head are two large, bright orange antenna or forked gland, called osmeterium. When agitated or in danger, the snake tongue-like gland shoots out towards the threat and emits a foul, spoiled cheese smell.
On the account NatureBrainz, two teachers in New Jersey posted this video of the black swallowtail caterpillar's violent defense mechanism, poking the creature's soft fluorescent green body. You can see the finger in the video immediately jump away in shock when the caterpillar's body retracts and springs the forked gland forward.
There does not seem to be any pain if you are attacked by the insect, however people have reported that the chemical odor released is so strong that it can take several washes to rid of the stink.
Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.
The Gangaramaya Vihara Temple is an unusual mix of a Buddhist temple and a museum, home to not only a vintage Rolls Royce but an enormous amount of materials of dubious religious relevance, including gold, sapphires, sandalwood, ivory and porcelain.
There is also a lot of specifically religious material, including a massive sacred tree in the centre of the complex. Nearby is the temple's most sacred relic, said to be a lock of the Buddha's hair donated from a temple in Bengal.
The main religious event held here is the Nevam Perahara procession held on the poya day (full moon) every February. Hundreds of monks take part in the procession in which sacred relics are carried in a casket on the back of a highly decorated elephant.
The site of the two lighthouse towers at Sandy Hook, originally built to help ships navigate the entrance to the New York Harbor, have played an outsized role in history.
In 1893 the first official reading of the Pledge of Allegiance occurred here around the 135-foot Liberty Pole. It is also where Guglielmo Marconi set up his wireless telegraph in 1899. Then in 1935, it was the place where the Army tested its Mystery Ray—what is now known as radar.
It is also here that a mystery cannon was unearthed, believed to be of Dutch origin. Some speculate it may have come from a pirate ship; others think that it was a signal cannon used by the British when they occupied Sandy Hook during the Revolutionary War.
Some unknown bodies have also been discovered here. In 1850 a skeleton was found sitting at a table in a hidden room under the keeper's house. In the mid-1900's the corpses of four men and one woman were discovered buried at the base of the lighthouse.
