The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts and Strange Stories

by Ventura, Varla

  BUT IN IDAHO . . .

  The state of Idaho has enacted a provision known as the “Ghost in the Attic” statute, which went into effect in 1998. It states that neither a home's seller nor the seller's broker is liable for not disclosing that a property may be haunted. Even if a house is the site of a known suicide or homicide, the seller need not disclose this fact unless the buyer specifically writes to the seller and inquires.

  WYMIN IN WYOMING

  In 1869, women were first granted the right to vote in the territory of Wyoming. The Nineteenth Amendment, which granted voting rights to all women in the United States, wasn't passed until 1920.

  DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ:

  “PLAINFIELD TEACHERS COLLEGE WINS AGAIN!”

  FROM THE NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE AND OTHER PAPERS, 1941

  The story: In 1941 the Herald Tribune, the New York Post, and a number of other New York papers began reporting the scores of a New Jersey football team called the Plainfield Teachers College Flying Figments as it battled teams like Harmony Teachers College and Appalachia Tech for a coveted invitation to the firstever Blackboard Bowl.

  The reaction: As the season progressed and the Figments remained undefeated, interest in the small college powerhouse grew—and so did the press coverage. Several papers ran feature articles on Johnny Chung, the team's “stellar Chinese halfback who has accounted for 69 of Plainfield's 117 points.”

  The truth: Plainfield, the Flying Figments, and its opponents were all invented by a handful of bored New York stockbrokers who were amazed that real teams from places like Slippery Rock got their scores into bigcity newspapers. Each Saturday, the brokers phoned in fake scores, then waited for them to appear in the Sunday papers. The hoax lasted nearly the entire season, until Time magazine got wind of it and decided to run a story.

  THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST

  A tourist visiting San Francisco in 1964 was involved in a minor cable car accident. As a result, she sued the city of San Francisco, claiming that the incident had turned her into a nymphomaniac. She won the case and received an award of $50,000.

  NO POPPIES PLEASE

  Opium was legal in the United States until 1942.

  RELAXATION TECHNIQUES

  CAN BE BAD FOR YOU

  Don't fall asleep in the bathtub in Detroit. You could be arrested, because sleeping in bathtubs is illegal in the city.

  THREE CHEERS

  You need at least three people to make a legal riot.

  LATE NIGHT PEANUTS

  Buying peanuts after sundown in Alabama is illegal.

  CEMETERY SPACE-SAVER

  It is against the law to bury an intact body in Japan. Ashes with body parts or bits of bone in them are fine.

  THE DEVIL IN THE COURTROOM

  Pennsylvanian law books record a 1971 case of a man suing Satan—for his own bad luck and downfall. The case was thrown out of court on the grounds that Satan did not live in the state of Pennsylvania.

  HIGH SEAS INLAND

  The U.S. Supreme Court classifies the Great Lakes for shipping as it does other large bodies of water: as high seas.

  CIVIL TAXATION

  United States income tax was originally enacted to raise money during the Civil War. Although the U.S. Supreme Court voted to remove the income tax after the war, Congress reinstated it in 1913.

  IS THAT A BOTTLE IN YOUR POCKET . . . ?

  In South Carolina hip pockets are illegal, as they provide convenient places to hide a pint bottle or flask.

  KENTUCKY COMMANDMENTS

  In Kentucky, several unusual laws still prevail:

  A state law mandates people bathe at least once a year.

  Anyone who throws eggs or tomatoes at a public speaker will be sentenced to a year in prison.

  Females in bathing suits are not allowed on any highway, unless they are escorted by two officers armed with a club. This law does not apply to females weighing less than ninety pounds or those exceeding two hundred pounds; nor does it apply to female horses.

  It is against the law to dye chicks, ducklings, or baby rabbits, unless offering six or more of them for sale and at the same time.

  WHISTLE WHILE YOU WADE

  In Vermont it is illegal to whistle underwater.

  LYING IN LAKE

  In Lake Charles, Louisiana, it is illegal to let a rain puddle remain in your front yard for more than twelve hours.

  THE CIA AND LSD

  NAZI HALLUCINOGENICS

  During World War II, Nazi scientists tested hallucinogenic drugs (such as mescaline) on inmates at the Dachau concentration camp. The Nazis were ostensibly trying to find a new “aviation medicine,” but what they were really looking for was the secret to mind control.

  After dosing inmates for years, the Nazi scientists concluded that mind control was impossible, even when strong doses of the hallucinogens had been given to their patients. But they did find that they could extract the most intimate of secrets from subjects under a drug's influence.

  THE CIA TAKES OVER THE TRIP, MAN

  After the war, U.S. military intelligence found out about the Nazi experiments and wondered if hallucinogenic drugs might be used for espionage. Could such drugs be sprayed over enemy armies to disable them? Could they be used to confuse or discredit leaders in hostile countries? The possibilities seemed endless, and in 1950, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) took over where the Nazis had left off.

  In 1953, the CIA initiated a full-scale mind-control program called Operation MK-ULTRA. Its experiments studied the potential effects of hypnosis, electroshocks, extrasensory perception (ESP), lobotomy, and drugs. The operation is said to have lasted twenty years and cost $25 million.

  According to the book Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD, and the Sixties Rebellion by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shalin, “Nearly every drug that appeared on the black market during the 1960's—marijuana, cocaine, PCP, DMT, speed, and many others—had previously been scrutinized, tested, and in some cases refined by the CIA and army scientists. But . . . none received as much attention or was embraced with such enthusiasm as LSD-25 [lysergic acid diethylamide]. For a time, CIA personnel were completely infatuated with the hallucinogen. Those who first tested LSD in the early 1950s were convinced that it would revolutionize the cloak-and-dagger trade.”

  In order to find out if the drug was effective as a secret weapon, the CIA first had to test it—on people.

  THE SECRET LSD TESTS

  In 1973, the CIA destroyed most of its files on the MK-ULTRA project, but some files escaped destruction. From these files, Congress and the public learned, for the first time, that for years the CIA had been experimenting with drugs.

  To test LSD, the CIA had set up both secret operations and academic fronts. For instance, it established a “Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology,” at the Cornell University medical school, which dispensed “grants” to institutions in the U.S. and Canada to conduct experiments with LSD.

  The LSD project was actually administered by the CIA's technical services staff. A freewheeling atmosphere developed in which anyone was likely to be dosed without warning in the name of research. Before the program concluded, thousands of people had been involuntarily dosed.

  In a San Francisco operation code-named Midnight Climax, prostitutes brought men to bordellos that were actually CIA safe houses. They would spike the men's drinks once inside the bordellos, and when they were properly affected, CIA operatives would observe, photograph, and record the action that ensued.

  In another experiment, black inmates at the Lexington Narcotics Hospital were given LSD for seventy-five consecutive days in gradually decreasing doses.

  The U.S. Army was also involved in LSD experiments. Acid Dreams reports that in the 1950s “nearly fifteen hundred military personnel had served as human guinea pigs in LSD experiments conducted by the US Army Chemical Corps.” The army even made a film of troops trying to drill while tripping on acid.

  Eventually, the government had no choice but to a
dmit it had given LSD to about one thousand unsuspecting people from 1955 to 1958 and has paid millions of dollars to settle lawsuits that were filed when subjects given drugs became permanently incapacitated or committed suicide.

  For example, one lawsuit involved a civilian who, while working for the army in 1953, was slipped LSD at a CIA party. He then jumped to his death from a tenthstory window. His was originally ruled a suicide, but in 1975 the government finally revealed that he had been intentionally drugged the night he died. The CIA apologized, and Congress awarded his family $750,000.

  Another case described how a CIA-funded psychiatrist in Canada dosed patients with LSD and used other mind-control techniques, in an attempt to “reprogram” them. Nine of the patients later sued the CIA for damages. The case was settled out of court in 1988.

  THE OSWALD CONNECTION

  Was Lee Harvey Oswald one of those given LSD by the CIA? As a seventeen-year-old marine, Oswald was assigned to the U.S. naval air base in Atsugi, Japan, in 1957. It has been said that this base was one of two overseas stations where the CIA conducted LSD testing.

  10. PASSING STRANGE

  ABERRATIONS, FASCINATING PHOBIAS, AND ODD ANCIENT BELIEFS

  FACES ONLY A MOTHER COULD LOVE

  Krao was a “wild child” who lived in Europe in the 1880s. Sometimes known as “Darwin's missing link,” she sported a prognathic face (one where the lower jaw extends beyond the upper part of the face), and her head and face were covered with a thick mane of hair down to the neck. Krao was first put on exhibit in a freak show when she was just seven years old. She was known for throwing temper tantrums, during which she would writhe on the ground and attempt to pull the hair out of her face.

  Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy was an early 1900s freak-show performer who was said to have been captured in the forests of Russia, where he had been living off berries and small animals in imitation of his neighbors, the wolves. In reality he was just a very hairy boy, like his father, who was exhibited as a dog-faced man. Both father and son had thick, sandy-colored hair growing in tufts all over their faces. They were said to resemble terriers and had mastered a very convincing barking routine.

  The hirsute Krao and Jo-Jo may have suffered from a rare genetic disorder called congenital hypertrichosis. People afflicted with this condition, of which there are only about fifty documented cases since the Middle Ages, are covered head to toe with hair.

  MAXIMUM MASS

  Roman Emperor Maximus was the legendary king who was so large that he could wear his wife's bracelet as a wedding ring. He was said to be between eight and nine feet tall, and was a compulsive eater, binging on four pounds of flesh and six gallons of wine a day. He was as much muscle as he was fat, though, as he was known to be capable of knocking out the teeth of a horse with a single blow.

  “I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone.” —TALLULAH BANKHEAD

  CHOREOMANIA

  At various times in different countries, actual epidemics of dancing mania have occurred. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, these epidemics were especially common in western Germany. They would begin in an isolated community and in a short time would spread over a wide area. Soon whole communities across wide areas would be engaging in frenzied dancing.

  MOM, I FEEL SICK

  Scholionophobia is an extreme fear and hatred of school.

  DON'T JUMP!

  If you have a fear of falling from a height to your death, you have a mild version of bathophobia. This is not an uncommon fear, but the manic phobia manifests in a fear of not being able to control an impulse to jump from a high place.

  DOCTOR, I'M NOT WELL

  If you were really craving a drink during Prohibition, there was a clause in the Eighteenth Amendment that allowed for the use of alcohol for medicinal purposes. Medicines that contained alcohol were prescribed for any number of “illnesses.”

  SCARY HAIR

  Katharine Hepburn suffered from a phobia of dirty hair. When she was shooting films for Twentieth Century Fox, she would sniff the heads of the cast and crew to make sure their hair was squeaky clean.

  XENOGLOSSIA

  Xenoglossia is the act of spontaneously speaking in a strange or foreign language without having learned it or having been exposed to it, but with the added implication of extreme revulsion or distaste to this linguistic act. The ability to speak in a foreign tongue may be an evidence for reincarnation and may occur when a person is reliving a past life. The linguistic act sometimes can be as simple as a few words or phrases, or in some instances, an entire fluent conversation being carried out in a language the person is not even aware exists. In some of the most credible and compelling cases of xenoglossia recorded, the subject not only spoke in a foreign language, but also used an archaic version of it that had not been in regular usage for centuries, making it extremely unlikely that the ability was a fantasy or a hoax.

  DELUSIONS, MANIAS, AND PHOBIAS

  Erotographomania is the overwhelming drive to write love letters.

  Echolalia is the senseless repetition of words or sounds.

  Liticaphobia is the fear of lawsuits.

  Thanatomania is a neurotic obsession with attending funerals and reading obituaries.

  Cachinnation is senseless laughter, as found in manicdepression and certain types of schizophrenia.

  Thanatophobia is a morbid fear of death. If you experience a morbid fear of darkness, you are nyctophobic.

  Nosophobia is fear of illness.

  Mysophobia is the irrational fear of dirt and germs. Mysophobics usually spend an inordinate amount of time washing their hands, and many have trouble leaving the house.

  If you have an unreasonable fear of experiencing pain, you are algophobic.

  Theomania is a morbid fear of religious cults.

  If you believe you have been transformed into a wolf, you are suffering from the delusion of lycanthropy.

  Ophidiophobia is the fear of snakes and snakelike creatures.

  Ereuthophobia is the morbid fear of blushing.

  Alcoholomania is an irresistible craving for alcoholic drinks, while letheomania is a morbid craving for drugs.

  Eisoptrophobia is the excessive fear of mirrors.

  Taphephobia is a morbid fear of being buried alive.

  Anaphia is the loss of the sense of pressure.

  Cacophobia is the fear of ugliness. People with this phobia tend to avoid ugly people and asymmetrical objects.

  The impulse to disrobe in public is known as asecdysiasm.

  Aritmophobia is the fear of numbers. Sufferers of this condition often have trouble with their finances, reading simple traffic signs, and understanding pricing systems at stores.

  PERSONAL PARALYSIS

  Abasia is a loss of the power to walk when there are no structural or organic changes to account for the inability to move. Abasiac individuals are utterly convinced that they are not capable of movement and that if they attempt to walk something terrible is going to happen to them or to someone around them.

  BLESS ME, FATHER

  A person suffering from agonia experiences extreme grief due to delusions of having committed the original sin.

  FALL FROM GRACE

  Basophobia is the fear of standing up or attempting to walk, stemming mainly from of a fear that one will then fall.

  QUIVERING THUNDER

  The extreme dread of thunder is called brontophobia. For brontophobes, the boom and crash of thunder has a demonic quality. Often found in people suffering from a psychoneurosis, brontophobia can also be associated with a person, often a person in a position of authority, and the fearsome thunder is their expression of disapproval.

  CONSPIRACY OF BEARDS

  Pogonophobia is the fear of beards.

  TOO MUCH ECHO

  Cenophobia is primarily a morbid fear of empty rooms, but also encompasses a fear of large halls
, auditoriums, and edifices with high ceilings.

  MELON HEADS

  Many lifelong residents of Kirkland, Ohio, grew up listening to tales of melon heads, a strange race of local mutants. Local legend has it that these people, known for their oversized, bulbous craniums, are the result of a physician's bizarre experiments on children suffering from a debilitating disease called hydrocephalus. This condition causes large pockets of water to form in the brain, and Dr. Crow was hired by the U.S. government to investigate and care for children with the disorder. Instead, he performed twisted operations on his patients, injecting their brains with more water and exposing them to radiation. Many children died, and the remaining victims mutated into wild, vicious creatures. One day they attacked the doctor, ripped him to pieces, and ate him. Then they unleashed themselves on the woods around the crude hospital they had been imprisoned in. The story goes that the melon heads roam the woods in packs, terrorizing humans and animals alike.