It opened in December 1930 and at the time was a cutting edge facility, doctors had cottages and dedicated staff to treat their mentally-ill patient. Patients were able to contribute to the facility by growing crops and gaining work skills. In 1939 this changed, the Manteno Madness struck. It was typhoid fever and the administrators were slow to respond. By the time it was contained it had sadly caused 49 patient deaths.
During the 1940’s and 1950’s the population swelled, it was designed for 3,600 patients and 760 staff but by 1953 they had 5,300 patients. The staff had been halved and the overcrowding continued, this and underfunding led to treatable diseases becoming lethal, it led to the premature death of thousands of patients.
Manteno became a testing ground for government scientists and psychiatrists in the 1950’s, the government used the patients for testing the effects of Malaria and uncontrolled STD’s. The area still contains ice-baths used for schizophrenics to break their fits. Marteno also became a TB facility with a very bad reputation.
In 1985 the facility was closed and converted into a veterans’ home. The state hospital cemetery, located nearby, has the remains of 4,000 patients who died at the hospital.
Consequently the place is rumoured to be haunted, and is located in Kankakee County around 90 minutes away from Chicago. The locals don’t seem to happy about people wandering around so be polite and respectful. The only cottage not used for business now is the Morgan Cottage. The Morgan Cottage is at the corner of Juniper Street and West Evergreen Street.
The cottage is said to be in a bad shape and it is best to go during the day, with company. It is out in the middle of the fields and so very quiet, good for investigations but do not go to the main hospital unless you want to encounter the security who will call the police.
It is a small limestone tunnel, located in the northwest corner of Niagra Fall, Ontario, Canada. Whilst cited as a railway tunnel it was built for drainage, it was for water to be removed from the farmlands. Farmers also used it to transport goods and animals safely underneath a busy road. The tunnel was also used in the Stephen King film, The Dead Zone (1983).
Local legends say it is haunted by a young girl; she escaped a burning farmhouse with her clothes ablaze, saying she died within its walls. Another variation also says an enraged father set her ablaze after loosing custody in a nasty divorce. More sinister ones say that a girl was raped and burnt to hide the evidence and all of them say that lighting a match in the tunnel will produce the sounds of dying screams.
Most likely this is an urban legend, what I could confirm is that there is a terrible smell from the flooding and natural decay. Near it is a natural sulphur spring that bubbles accounting for some more of the smells and probably the sounds. Most of the details don’t really lead me to think this is anything more than urban legend.
In St Augustine’s Florida was a protestant burial ground from 1821 to 1884. Prior to American occupation the Spanish city of St Augustine was mainly Catholic and the only cemetery, Tolomato Cemetery, was reserved for that religion only. A protestant burial ground was needed so the new one was opened.
It was opened just before an outbreak of yellow fever, which claimed a lot of lives. It has around 436 recorded burials for the period and though named the Huguenot Cemetery it does not likely have anyone of the sect buried there.
In 1882 Judge Stickney made a business trip to Washington D.C. and was not feeling too well. 5 days later he died, most likely from typhoid and a brain haemorrhage, his body was sent to St Augustine for burial, it amassed quite a crowd. He was then buried at the cemetery.
In 1903 his children then had his body exhumed to be reburied in D.C, George Wells was employed to carry out the task. He had quite the crowd around him as he opened the coffin lid. After 21 the judge was in excellent condition for a dead man. The crowd heard a noise, two drunks were singing and making a scene. They then sprang upon the dead man, Mr Wells managed to get order restored but in the fracas someone had stolen his gold teeth.
Rumour has it that Judge Stickney wanders the cemetery still trying to find either his teeth or the culprits.
Located in Zealand, Denmark there has been a building on the site for about 800 years. Today it is a hotel and restaurant facility. During the middle ages it went from a palace to a fortified castle and during the reformation it was passed to the crown. From 1536 to 1664 it was used as a prison, for the noble class and ecclesiastical powers then in 1694 Dragsholme Castle was rebuilt as its current baroque style. In 1932 the family line became extinct.
A famous ghost there is James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, he had married Anna Tronds, and then he said he was poor, once they settled, she would need to sell her possessions. Anna had a very unhappy time with him. In 1566 he married Jean Gordon but they divorced 7th May 1567. 8 days later he married Mary, Queen of Scots.
In February 1567 he was one of the people accused of murdering Lord Darnley, the queens consort. He was acquitted of this and then went on to marry Mary. Mary was no longer on the throne not long after this and with the change in politics he made an attempt to flee to Denmark hoping to get support so she could get back on the throne. He was caught off the coast of Norway and was remanded in prison. Here Anna sued him for abandonment and the return of her dowry.
Bothwell would have got released as he handed Anna his ship, but King Frederick heard of Lord Darnley’s murder and he was instead sent to the notorious Dragsholme Castle. The appalling conditions let to his eventual insanity, a pillar that he was chained to is still there, a grove in the floor shows where he spent the last ten years of his life and then ultimately died.
Digital StillCamera
By Bococo - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19439571
“Wiktionary – A reanimated corpse in Chinese legend, which moves around by hopping with its arms outstretched, and kills living creatures to absorb their life force.”
The “stiff corpse” is a vampiric monster from Chinese folklore, often attributed to having died a violent or unnatural death. They are more often depicted wearing the funerary robes of the Qing Dynasty. There are numerous articles about them recounting either similar details or going through slightly more in-depth looks, so I have decided that they are interesting enough for this blogger too.
How are they created?
It seems that whilst I popped a summary up top there are varying reasons or methods, so it seems that the most common are said to be a violent death, a sudden death, being struck by lightning or if an animal considered to be a black omen hopped over the dead body. There are also suggestions of a third party creating them, so I would assume some form of bad magic would be employed.
The18th Century scholar, Ji Xiaolan identified two types of Jiangshi and said that one of them is recently returned to life or those long buried but had not decomposed. Ji Xiaolan writes that violent death, suicide, spirit possession of a body, or an absorption of qi (life energy) may bring one back to life or if a funeral had taken place for them but the body for some reason was not buried.
How can you tell if you are in the presence of a Jiangshi?
They have pale skin, they hate the sun and only tend to appear at night, in some cases they might have green skin due to a fungus that grows on corpses.
They are said to be blind and detect the living from their breathing.
The body does not compose, the hair and nails continue to grow after death.
They can appear at first glance to look like a normal person, or they can be obviously rotting corpses.
The rumours of blood drinking may well be down to Western influence creeping in as they are said to feed on the life force (qi) of a person.
Being bitten by a Jiangshi will also lead to the inevitable turn of the victim into another one.
How can you defend against a Jiangshi?
Taoist Monks use various spells to work against them.
Writing a spell in chicken blood on yellow paper and putting it on the corpse’s forehead is said to stop one moving.
A Jiangshi is terrified of its own reflection.
They are afraid of mirrors. An 8-sided mirror is used, also know as a Feng Shui mirror. The Bagua is the sign of the eight triagrams and so a mirror with this used is thought to be very effective.
They are afraid of peach wood.
They are afraid of jujube seeds.
To banish on you can throw sticky rice at it, it will absorb the evil.
Where do they come from?
The origins appear to come from folklore and the practise of moving corpses/travelling corpses. This was(is?) known as Xiangxi ganshi because it seems it was most well used in the Xiangxi region. I’m going to put in some summary information and then give some other source information, but the gist is this:
In the post low-income families would not have been able to afford the cost of transporting a dead body from a place far away to their own region. They would in turn hire Taoist priests to transport the bodies home on their behest. The priests would move them at night and would ring bells to let the villagers know they were coming through. It was thought that the souls of those who died away from home would be homesick, so it was best to get them back and perform the correct funerary rites. The movement took place at night to avoid people coming into contact with the dead and the lower temperature was better for transporting the dead.
Depending on the source this seems to have happened in two ways:
On a bamboo stretcher where the body was laid out, where the canes would create a creaking nose and the body would jerk stiffly in time with the movements of the priests carrying them.
Liao Yiwu’s book The Corpse Walker has oral accounts and one of them is of how there would be a two man team to move the body. One man would have the body on his back and adorn a large robe to cover them both with a mourners masks on. The other would walk ahead with a lantern to warn the carrier of obstacles ahead.
Did they ever exist?
Well according to “Split Words and Interesting Poems”, Hu Yanhong and subsequent speculation maybe they were never really true? The practise of moving corpses is visited and describes an ancient story where soldiers and villagers watched two sorcerers of the ‘Chenjou Talisman’s’ who led a procession of shuffling corpses. The scene of this method of transportation was so unnerving that soldiers and civilians alike screamed and retreated. However, what if this was just a clever way of using people to hide contraband? The idea that they would do this and then use bits of decaying flesh from other soldiers would indeed make the sight and smell of the dead men walking rather unnerving to say the least!
What about the Jiangshi in the modern era?
Well the practise of corpse walking/travelling was not seen as a good thing in the modern China and it’s move to communism. At the end of the Chinese Civil War, 1949, many of those who were employed in the trade found their livelihoods (and lives) under threat. Attachment to the dead may well be seen as a bourgeois decadency for the weak and the poor.
In the 1980’s a move to make the Jiangshi a more comical creature appears to have moved through the cinema scene. In 1985, “Mr Zombie” directed by Liu Guanwei was released, it made 20 million HKD and ranked 7th in the charts that year.
A more modern film about them is Rigor Mortis, 2014, a Hong Kong horror movie but doesn’t hold the same sort of overall silly vibe of Mr Zombie or Mr Vampire.
What do you think about the story of Jiangshi? I found this very interesting indeed.
Myself as Chisune with my friend on the now defunct Sword of Legends online – Edgar is taking down the Jiangshi 🙂
Example of the mirror.
Sources – maayot.com
Wikipedia
Libowen.tripod/history/t-cadavar.htm
En.chinaculture.org
Historydefined.net
Liao Yiwu’s book The Corpse Walker (Amazon sells translated copies)
Investigations into the unknown and weird 