“DIG UP MY BODY AS PROOF!”

Mario Bocca could speak with the dead. Or, at least, so he claimed. The Italian researchers who gathered around him on a night in 1950, in the small city of Camerino, Italy, wanted to verify, for themselves, if that were indeed true.

Sometimes, of course, the dead do not rest easy. Something draws them back, again and again, to the scene of their tragic, final act, the time when they, quite literally, “gave up the ghost.”

In this case, however, the ghost never gave up.

“My name is Rosa Spadoni. I was put into my casket alive! Please, so that others can be spared this terrible fate, please, DIG UP MY BODY AS PROOF.”

The medium, presumably through his “control,” vocalized the desire of the departed Rosa. Attendant was the intrigued doctor, Dr. Guiseppe Stoppolini, a distinguished professor of anatomy at Camerino University. Under his direction, it was a short order of work to demand the exhumation. The problem being: they could find no “Rosa Spadoni” in the town of Castel-Raimondo, where the spirit had purported to have died and been interred.

Further communications revealed, of course that she was buried under her married name of MENICHELLI, and had been so buried on September 4th, 1939, after apparently dying of an infection. She was 38.

It was grim work, exhuming the body. But, how much more macabre could the condition of the corpse have been, when the lid of the casket was finally opened?

Imagine the terror of being trapped in the dark, coming to consciousness, being unable to turn over, and putting your arms out to feel a hard, unyielding surface of solid wood. Screaming!–but there is NO ONE to hear your screams.

You writhe in terror, your mind cracking, knowing that you have been delivered into a trap from which there is NO escape–that you have quite literally been BURIED ALIVE. Perhaps you gnashed your teeth, bit through your tongue. The blackness was pervasive and all-encompassing. In the darkness and despair, you might have hallucinated the face of your own dear mother. Or Jesus. A saint, an angel, or Lucifer himself might come to greet you! It is hot, stifling, and the air is getting thinner and thinner…

Breathe in, breathe out…not many breaths left.
***
The condition of the body proved that, like Poe’s sister character in “House of Usher,” Rosa Spadoni Menichelli did, indeed, show signs of having been interred too soon. Her spine was arched in agony, her skeletal hand affixed to the lid of her coffin, as if in a hopeless attempt to push it open. She might have prayed for a miracle at this point, but, most probably, she just went mad until the oxygen ran out.

A general reform in burial practices across Italy and all of Europe are said to have followed in the wake of this strange, supernatural event. If so, we find no record of association, between one and the other.

So, did this prove the power of the medium, and survival after death? YOU DECIDE.

“Sweet Fanny Adams”

Every man has the devil inside of him, somewhere.

On the 24th of August, 1867, three little girls were walking on a country lane toward Flood Meadow, near Alton in England. They were Minnie Warner, aged 7, and Elizabeth Adams, aged eight, as wella s her eight year old sister Fanny.

They were soon accosted by a solicitor’s clerk named Frederick Baker, who offered each of the little girls a halfpence to accompany him. Both Minnie ans Elizabeth refused. Baker then grabbed Fanny Adams, abducting her to a desolate hopfield. The other girls ran away.

Baker savagely and viciously mutilated young Fanny Adams, beheading and dismembering her, taking out her eyes, and cutting out her entrails. These he scattered over a wide area. (The eyes were cast into a river, and later retrieved.)

A search party soon found Baker’s grisly handiwork. The man himself was quickly arrested, and confessed everything.

Conviced and sentenced to die, he was lead to the gallows on Christmas Eve, 1864.

He confessed to Fanny’s parents his deep remorse for what he had done in “an unguarded moment.”

It was not long after that a sick joke developed among British sailors, who did not like the tinned mutton they were offered as rations. They began to say their food contained pieces of “Sweet Fanny Adams,” as her body had been dispersed over such a wide area (in other words, some of it ended up at the canning factory, in the food.)

Hence, the term “Sweet Fanny Adams” came to be associated with the idea of having “nothing good,” or “nothing at all.”

In time, everyone forgot how the curious expression first came about.

 

New Interview! Undressing Underground Podcast w/ Rob M.

Keeping it real, homies.

(Probably my most candid, honest interview to date.)

Special thanks to Laura and especially Rob M. from Undressing Underground Podcast.

Undressing Underground Episode 6: Tom Baker

The Bad Magician

Envision a theater full of expectant, eager people. The place might be old, the musty funk of trapped air, mold, and the steady drip of water a counterpoint to the restless, anticipatory murmur of the shifty, restless audience.

On stage, a spotlight illuminates a perplexing scene.

“I can’t! I can’t go on! I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”

A large, pear-shaped man in a magician’s outfit is worrying over a card trick. He can’t remember how to perform it, for some reason, and it is his signature trick. His assistant, who has already performed in his place, has had no problem rememb ering HIS tricks. The bad magician is fat, disheveled; he has sandy brown hair and a moustache. He looks like a pathetic cinema idol gone to seed.

Upstage is a little shelf of books. Magic books. The perplexed magician goes over to them, begins to select one of the ancient volumes. A spotlight suddenly illuminates the Manager, who has his fists planted angrily on his hips. A stern, derisive look crosses his face.

He goes over to the Bad Magician, hovers over him like a perturbed schoolmaster.

The Bad Magician looks up with innocent eyes.

“Is this cheating?” The Manager, indeed, affirms that this is cheating. Whatever that means.

The Bad Magician pulls out his deck of cards, hands them to the assistant.

“Here, show me! Help me remember! ”

The Assistant answers, “The eight becomes a six, if you hold your fingers here. The six then becomes an eight…” Would the audience clearly see this?

Into the circle of spotlight rolls a large, pear-shaped woman in a wheelchair. She has long, greasy hair tied behind her in a loose ponytail. She has a sort of desperate, half-crying whine. This is the wife.

(We can surmise she was injured while performing, long ago, as the Bad Magician’s asisstant. It might have been during an act in which she was asked to crawl into a tight cabinet, or some other confining space. Maybe it was an act in which she was sawed in half?)

“You!’ she cries, accusingly. “I could have married anyone in the world! But, I married YOU.”

The audience shifts restlessly, murmuring in confusion. The ushers look bored, go outside to smoke. What could be the meaning of this weird, pointless drama? No one is certain. They’ve come here to see an illusionist, and, so far, they’ve seen a framework or build-up for an illusion, but not the actual thing itself.

The stage goes black. When the lights come back on, the scene has shifted. Now, we see a grandmother and grandchild standing in a disused room in a mortuary. In front of them, a dessicated corpse lies on a table projecting from the phoney wall. The grandmother has a drinking cup with her, pours some liquid down the throat of the cadaver.

“I can’t help but think,” she begins slowly, “that he’s in there, somewhere, trapped. Unable to speak, but conscious of everything we say and do.”

The grandchild pulls aside, turns tot he audience, puts his hand to the side of his mouth as if in a whisper, and says, “Why does she do this? It’s not as if she can offer him any comfort.”

The audience stirs, murmurs again; they are restless. After the curtain closes and the lights go dim, they file out in confusion. Was it avant garde? High art? A prank? No one is certain.

Surprisingly, reviews of “Horsefeathers the Magnificent” (the name of the show) are lukewarm to brightly positive. C’est la vie!

The Devil and the Widder Woman

The Widder Woman carried her sloshing oaken bucket out to the yard. It was time to slop the hogs, and there wasn’t anyone else around to do it.

She was surprised to see a slicked-up city feller standing in the dirt at the edge of the road. Before she knew it, he was approaching her with mincing little steps.

He was a dandy alright, but with a tough face. Nice calico coat; vest, string tie, and a silver watch hanging from a fob completed his attire. He had longish, unruly black hair and a thin, drooping moustache. His face was moon-round, pale, and his eyes were a lustrous black that seemed to shift, now and again, to red and green.

She looked down at his feet. Sure enough, she had guessed his identity correctly. The ankles ended in cloven hooves, trailing sulfurous smoke.

“So you’re the Devil,” she said. “We’ll, I must say you do cut an impressive figure. What can I do for you?”

The Devil smiled, a hideous expression that could chill the blood, but took off his hat as a gesture of respect and said, “Well, M’am, seein’ as I am here on important business, I’ll cut right to the chase.

I’ve been sent to offer you a bargain. Seems someone up there is watching you closely, wants to sort of test your mettle, if you take my meaning. Now, I understand your husband has passed on–”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Man worked his fingers to the bone. Lord, he worked himself to death. Dropped dead while plowing one day. Ticker just stopped.”

The Devil looked a might embarrassed at having to continue with his spiel, but said, “Yes, M’am, and I’m real sorry about your loss. But let me continue. I’ve been sent to offer you a bargain. Now, I understand that you’re having some trouble paying your mortgage on this property. Is that correct?”
The Widder Woman’s eyes narrowed to slits. But she remained friendly enough.

“Wy, yes. That is the case. I’m not sure the bank won’t foreclose on the property. Sell it at auction. Lord, I don’t know what I’ll do after that, me and my son Peter.”

The Devil whistled long and low. Nearby, a bird died in mid-air and dropped out of the sky.

“Whew,” said the Devil. “That surely does sound like a predicament. Now, I may have a solution for you.

Here’s my wager: if you manage to make it through one night of sheer torment, keeping calm and keeping your baby boy sleeping soundly and fit as a fiddle, with me acting as devilish as I can and making every sort of ruckus you can think of, why, I’ll personally pay off your mortgage and give you money enough to live on for a year to boot. Then I’ll vanish in a puff of smoke, and you’ll never have to see me again.”

The Widder Woman considered a moment, and then said, “And if I can’t? If Peter jumps up out of bed in terror and runs around the room, or if I lose my nerve and grab him up and try to make a run for it–then what?”

The Devil smiled again. Somewhere, she fancied she could hear a dog howl mysteriously, as if in pain.

“Well, then, M’am, I hate to be so bold about it, but then, I claim your soul. His too. I mean, your boy. And you’ll be as stuck in the hot halls of Hades as Persephone in the old, old story. Anyway, sound like a deal you’d be interested in?”

The Widder Woman thought for a moment. Then, a huge smile crossed her cheeks, and she said, “Why not? Just as you say. Let’s shake on the deal.”

She put out her hand. The Devil put out his, which was skinny and hairy with immensely long black nails and hair on the palms, and she grasped it. It was ice cold, and she quickly withdrew her own.

That night, she sat by the window. Peter’s bed was on her right, the window on her left. Outside, the Devil whooped and howled, and hollered and screamed, and screeched and shouted and yelled all manner of obscene and vile imprecations against God and man and the Widder Woman and her son.

“You D—– hussy! I’ll have your soul! You wait and see, you wait and see! I never lose! I never lose! I always get ’em in the end! Always! Always! You’ll come with me, and you’ll burn. And burn! And burn!”

And he vomited forth fire and sulfur, and, to make matters even worse, he began to march around the barnyard with an old wash basin and a stick, beating out a loud tattoo and waking up clucking chickens and mooing cows and oinking pigs.

He ran through the barn, setting the animals free, and then ran up the side of the house, banging his fists against the walls and yelling, “I’ll get you! I’ll get you, you d—– fools! I always get ’em! Always! Always!”

And then he’d peep through the window quickly, just to see if the Widder Woman or her son were cowering in the corner. To his great disappointment, though, the Widder Woman continued to sit, just as still and calm as a log, and her son remained fast asleep under the covers.

Undeterred, the Devil rattled the windows, and stomped across the roof, and beat an old drum, and busted bottles, and let off fireworks and blew a trumpet…and then flew to the window to see if he was having any effect.

To his amazement, the Widder Woman yawned, looked as if she were about to fall asleep. The boy continued to snooze under the covers. The Devil was most certainly, by this point, wroth.

So he pulled out the big guns. He rattled the creaking floorboards, dragged heavy links of chain to and fro, flooded the taps with fresh blood, shot off a dozen rifles, sawed and hammered and even stopped to play “Camptown Races” on an old, beaten-up banjo.

He went back to the window. His eyes filled with red hot rage to see the Widder Woman fallen over asleep in her chair. And her son had, amazingly, slept through it all.

“Curses! Curses! How can this be! Foiled again! Foiled again! Oh, curse this awful day!”
Well, by that time, the sun had risen, and the night was done, and the Devil knew he was forced to keep his end of the bargain.

He scratched in the dirt like an old banty rooster as the Widder Woman carried her bucket out to claim her prize and slop the hogs.

“Well, ” she said, a sly smile curling her lips. “Hand it over Mr. Scratch! I beat you, fair and square!”

Suddenly the Devil lost his composure. He stomped like a child, gnashed his teeth, pulled his hair, kicked up dust and exclaimed, “Drats! Drats! Rats eat cats! Curses! Foiled again! Curses! Curses!”

However, he handed her over a huge sack of money, and then disappeared in a cloud of reeking smoke.

The Widder Woman put down her bucket, went back inside. She went upstairs to Peter’s room. She laid down the sack of money at the foot of the bed. She didn’t need to count it; she knew it was all there, and then some.

She went over to the side of Peter’s bed. A fly had alighted on his nose. She brushed it away. Then, she pulled the sheet up over his face.

He could truly rest in peace now.

The Reality Show

So Null and the rest of them were herded into a gymnasium, and for twenty bucks or whatever they were going up against a line of perverts for this new reality television show. The concept was so new and invigorating the director (Who looked as if he were on the verge of an apoplectic fit) came up to them and waved his arms, his face shining the bright, dire red of someone whose blood pumps much too hard through their veins and arteries, and said, “Now, c’mon gang. I need everyone to look alive. Look alive. C’mon, one, two, hike hike hike…You want to make it look good for the cameras. There’s a million idiots going to be watching this load of pig swizzle, so just remember on what side which your bread is buttered, if you take my meaning…”

And on and on. Not for the first time Null thought words were useless.

In front of him was a little net or something, like a badminton net. Standing back a few paces across the gym, past the yellow line, were the perverts and other pinheads, all chomping at the bit to get the show on the road. Null found that not even the money was sufficient to compensate him for the humiliation he had agreed to endure.

“…But you signed a contract, didn’t you, Nully old bean? And so you’re going to stand right here, and take whatever you’re handed–for the money. All correct?”

He knew, even as he spoke the words to himself, that it was.
On the other side of the net, which was stretched in a line, pole to pole, a blond young man with spiky short hair stood salivating. His eyes were great, bloodshot orbs–obviously driven by cocaine addiction. Or maybe amyl nitrate poppers.

He was, at least, dressed fashionably.

It was the pop of a starter pistol that sent the line of pervs all racing forward, drool dripping down their flabby chins as they reached over the badminton net, manhandling their prey with thick, quivering, tuberous fingers of pale porcine pigishness. Null felt a pair of hard talons clamp onto the sides of his skull as if he were about to undergo a form of obscure, primitive surgery.

Above him, lips spilling droplets of saliva onto his bald pate, an individual that might have escaped from a madhouse, or might have been some mutant human-mosquito hybrid, suddenly fastened his lips on the crown of his very scalp. He could feel the sick, slick sluggishness fo the moist tongue as it lolled atop his freezing skull, feel the teeth suck in skin until, hickey-like, a scar was sure to form there; a tell-tale sign of the utter humiliation of this obscure yet undeniably sensationalistic fetishistic rite.

Null suddenly lost control of his feeble sense of restraint. Lashing out violently with his little ham hock fists he began to savagely beat the weird, head sucking fetish character in the center of his face–most likely fracturing the delicate plate of his face maybe sending fragments of skull back into his brain. Death. Death. Death.

Null gasped as the character plummeted to the cement floor. The individual reposed there, arms held stiffly, unnaturally at the sides, face going a waxen, ashen grey; then becoming white. The face seemed to suddenly have a waxen sheen, a pallor of the embalmed cadaver.

Null felt terror grip his spine.

He must be dead. I’ll be arrested for murder, he thought. His mind flooded with images of being abused in prison by enormous, hulking, mediocre neanderthals with massive erections and smelly armpits. He began to gesture in terror at the man lying (perhaps in state) on the floor; all the while trying to maintain a look of complete innocence, as if to say, “I’ve just discovered this fellow lying down on the job, har har. Say, doesn’t the old boy look as if he’s a little under the weather? Why I’d almost say he looks positively…dead. Perhaps someone should check his vital signs?”

Alas, after the bumping and grinding and twisting and fingering and slurping and all other manner of lewd, shameful and unseemly thing had petered out, the crowd simply milled about in exhausted confusion, having little, bored conversations, completely ignoring him.

It was then that Null noticed the fried chicken dinner plates scattered all about the floor–seemingly extra crispy, barbecued, with comfortable little mounds of mashed potatoes, or stick-like wedges of fries and sides of corn. But, upon closer inspection, Null realized these were simply wax imitations.

“They’re simply wax imitations,” he said to himself. He had no appetite at any rate; he fancied he would get plenty of free food in state prison.

The director and another man suddenly loomed, like two giants blotting out the sun, over the unfortunate Null. The director rubbed his excited little hands together, exclaimed, “Wonderful, my boy! Wonderful! We got that all on camera! Oh, he’s not really dead. Matter of fact, the real actor is backstage having a brandy. That’s just a wax dummy we switched on you when you weren’t paying attention.”

He paused came up close to Null, grabbed him around the shoulders. Behind him, the fat figure in the white suit with the glasses and goatee continues to stare fixedly. Null makes it is another wax replica.

“Not wax,” says the director, whispering it in his ear as if the man behind him was actually listening. He points backward with a fat, calloused thumb. “Crionic suspension. Yeah. He’s been frozen since 1976. Founded this whole fried chicken empire with the proceeds from his Social Security check. Yeah. Any, we take him out every couple of years, get some pictures. Gives him a sort of mythic status with the public. They can’t seem to figure out that he’s dead! Hell, he’d be like a hundred and twenty-two if he were alive today. Fortunately, we have him wored up with electrical impulses if we need his mouth or arms to move. Here, watch–”

And the director pulled out what looked like a remote control switchboard, and twisted a knob. The fat man in the white suit suddenly opened his mouth, which Null could see was attached to the upper jaw like a ventriloquist dummy’s mouth.

The eyes opened wide.

Null shouted, felt faint. The earth spun out from beneath him–

(And the evening and the morning were the first day.)

…Alerted by the Smell!

A man that worked at a law firm died suddenly. He supposedly sat at his desk an entire YEAR before being discovered by co-workers. They were only alerted by the SMELL! (No other information have I about this particular anecdote or urban legend.)