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Feb. 21, 2024 - ParaNaughtica
49:15
Episode 57. Strange Suicides

Coming back to you with a second edition of 'strange suicides'. You guys asked for it, here it is! Yes, I decided I'd track down vintage stories of apparent suicides that are strange in nature.At any rate. Buckle those slippers up, strap those velcro straps......we're in for a ride. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Time Text
*Dramatic music* *Dramatic music* *Dramatic music* *Dramatic music* *Dramatic music* This is a fresh, strange, going past, trouble, just keep a gun under the counter.
Puts are ready, wild, and the speed of nobody angry, people don't know what to do with it, no way.
You know, the air doesn't do the breeze.
You know, you've got to be beat.
I'm going to get up out of your chest.
You're going to get up right now, and go to the window.
Take your tail off the hill.
I'm a man of hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore.
You've got to say I'm a human being.
God damn it.
My life has value.
Is it going?
Is, uh, right.
I hope it's been an easy week for all of you and that great things have been happening in your lives because, well, we all love great things.
As for the show today, well, I decided that I would do the second installment of Strange Suicides.
And that's because the listeners seem to really like to hear about weird ways that people have killed themselves.
And well, let's be honest here, yeah?
Some are pretty interesting.
So, for today's episode, I decided to scour the old microfiche and only use vintage news stories from around the turn of the century.
Like I said, I had to use the microfiche because there are no surviving articles about these anywhere other than the microfiche.
And therefore, we can all thank the microfiche.
And the microfiche, for those who are unaware, is the godsend of historical significance.
And if you don't know what it is, the microfiche, please go to a library.
And if you don't know what that is, then shit, man.
You're hopeless.
Let's just admit that right here and right now.
If you don't know what a library is, you're fucked.
And with that said, I just want to say one more thing.
For the younger listeners, God damn it, Gen Zs.
Get your shit together.
You have a world to save.
Look around you.
It's no good.
And I really don't want to have to put all that weight on your shoulders.
Let's face it.
There are a lot of you to share that responsibility.
So I guess, for you, the Gen Zs, I will dedicate today's episode to the Gen Zs.
And their plight to save the world from the powerful elite cabal that just wants us dead and want us to be happy about it.
So here's to you, Gen Zs.
Now get out there and save the world.
Right after this episode, of course.
And then you can get out there and save the world.
Alright, one more thing before we begin here.
I do want to say that the stories in this episode are not listed in any particular order.
They're not listed as like a top 10. And ranking from, like, the most medal to the least medal or anything like that.
They're just listed as they came in to me through this old fax machine over here from various sources.
Yeah, she's a beauty.
She is a beauty and trustworthy.
Yeah, this good old trusted fax machine right over here.
And now, for the first story, I do want to note that this may or may not have been a cold-blooded murder, although officially it was listed as a suicide.
Because at first glance, it appears to be a suicide, but when you dig into it, you sort of start to lean toward a different direction.
But who knows?
It's anyone's guess at this point.
So, the first story came strictly from the Evening Bulletin in Maysville, Kentucky, back on July 28th, 1893.
And I need to give a shout-out to the listeners in Kentucky!
Kentucky listeners, I am sending shout-outs.
Shout-outs are being sent your way.
Okay, here we go.
W. H. Irving was without work, but found a job in Winthrop Beach, Massachusetts.
But despite the job, Irving still felt at a total loss.
He felt completely destitute and lost.
And on the night of July 28, 1893, being completely tired of life, he walked down to the lake shore with a large can filled with gunpowder.
Some call it black powder, but it's all the same.
W.H. Irving walked along the shore until he found a nice spot to sit down to give his finale.
At least, that is what the official narrative is.
Apparently, what he did was he took that powder and stuffed as much as he could into his mouth and throat.
Just stuffed it right in it all nice and tight like you'd do with a musket.
Probably only sat there for a very brief moment having one final thought on life until he decided it was time to leave this earth after heartache after heartache.
That is when he lit a match.
His face was instantly blown apart, mangled beyond recognition.
Bits and pieces flew every which way, splattering the beachside stones.
His bloodied and disfigured skull lay there on the dampened rocks, his life as body but a reminder of what a life once was.
There were a few things that the cops found rather odd about this scene.
They found that the man's body was very cold and very hard, typically how a body would be if left in the cooler temperatures for a number of hours.
And the examiner found that the blood Another thing that caught the police off guard was that the man was dressed very nicely.
To the police, he wasn't in clothes that generally would make a person appear destitute, even though W.H. Irving was said to have been basically crying to people about how much he was destitute, stating that he was good for nothing.
But the police seemed to focus on the clothes.
They'd find something that piqued their interest.
It was a notebook.
Inside the notebook, amongst other notes and scribbles, there was written one entry that caught the detective's eye.
My name is W.H. Irving of Charles Street, Winthrop Beach, Massachusetts.
In case of accident or serious illness, notify Ms. W.J. Irving at the above address.
Note to city authorities, do not send my body home as my wife has no money to bury it.
Don't bury me in a pauper's grave.
I have been tired of life for the last two years, but have lived for my baby's sake.
I can live no longer.
I have no work, and I'm out of money.
The world is but a stage, and the curtain has rung down upon one of its main scenes.
There were no witnesses to the man's death, of course, and there were no reported sounds heard from what would appear to have been a pretty loud explosion, but alas, there was just nothing.
And around where W.H. Irving's body was found, I think that instead of an extraordinary suicide,
we are confronted by a very mysterious case of murder.
Unfortunately, there were never any solid leads to convince the detectives that a murder was had.
and the death was officially labeled a suicide.
So this next story comes to us from The San Francisco Call, which was an old newspaper that Samuel Clemens actually wrote for between the years of 1863 and 1864, when the paper was named The Morning Call.
The San Francisco Call doesn't exist anymore, as it had changed hands numerous times through the years until the publication was purchased by the San Francisco Examiner.
And for those who don't know who Samuel Clemens was, he was who the world knows as Mark Twain, author of The Tragedy of Puddin' Head Wilson and The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and A Tramp Abroad, as well as his more famous works, such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Anyway. This story takes place in early March of 1899 on board the transport vessel Puebla during the Philippine-American War, which officially lasted from February 4, 1899 until July 2, 1902.
Puebla was traveling from Manila in the Philippines to the United States with a six-day layover in Nagasaki, Japan, and it was transporting a bunch of wounded and sickly soldiers Probably a bunch with syphilis and chlamydia, a little gonorrhea tossed in there.
But it was also transporting a couple of volunteer army officers, a couple of lieutenants, a Red Cross nurse, and a number of the ship's crew, including a surgeon.
One of the crew was 40-year-old seasoned chief steward, John McKenna.
John McKenna was a man who enjoyed tossing a few sheets to the wind, you know, getting befuddled, a bit crocked, you know.
Tossed up, getting a wee tight, stewed, if you will.
It's said that he liked getting all grogged up and juiced, even lit.
So in other words, he liked to get sloshed, or inebriated, as some would call it, or that scary one, under the influence.
Or drunk, is what I think most call it these days.
So he was all about being that guy.
You know the guy I'm talking about.
The guy that gets overly stoked about doing some regular everyday thing like going for a cruiser on the block on your bike or going down to the corner store just to look at the merch or whatever but just goes full alpha thinking that he's the funniest cunt on the planet when in reality he's being nothing but a total butt twat and everybody but him is fully aware of it.
You know the guy I'm talking about.
Anyway, the journey that the Pueblo was making typically took about one month to complete.
And you can only imagine the absolute drudgery that it must have been.
Not just the trip itself, but pretty much everything in life.
I mean, it's 1899.
Can you imagine all the fun happening aboard ships?
All that entertainment going on in the cruise ships?
Just all that hoop trundling going on?
Man. Anyway.
John McKenna.
Being chief steward, took it upon himself to go on quite a drinking binge starting in Manila.
He continued his binge all the way up to Nagasaki, Japan, where the ship would port for six days.
Obviously for him, those six days consisted of nothing but knocking back whiskey shot after whiskey shot and having some of the nastiest 1899 sex that could be had with the sex workers looking to make a few extra shillings.
Can you imagine?
Seriously though, just imagine how disgusting the sex work on the streets must have been back in the day.
With like, you know, not a lot of hygienic knowledge and just swamp ass and tuna salad everywhere.
Man, oof.
Because think about it, man.
Toilet paper, in its most basic modern form, wasn't even invented until the 1870s.
So people would literally just use bits of material like newspaper or the kids' homework or even...
Get this, corn cobs.
That's not even a joke.
That is real life.
At any rate, John McKenna was shit-faced drunk 24-7.
In just a few days out to sea from the port of Nagasaki, he would begin to show symptoms of delirium tremens, or, as some may refer to it, the DTs.
The symptoms generally present themselves within three days of alcohol withdrawal and typically go away after a few more days.
Typically, the physical effects often include shaking, or tremors, and shivering as if having a fever, and they might sweat rather profusely like a dude crowning.
You know what I mean?
Roughly shaped turtle heads, you know?
Get my drift?
Sometimes, the person's body temperature can be very elevated which results in seizures, and death is often just lingering at the horizon.
Definitely not a fun time.
The delirium tremens usually happen to people who drink a lot for at least one month.
Back in the day, mortality was fairly high, up to an astonishing 40%.
Nearly half of people with the DTs would freaking die.
But today, with current treatment interventions, the death rate is anywhere between 1% and 4%.
Anyway. John McKenna must have been causing quite a ruckus because the captain of the ship, Captain H.C. Thomas, ordered that McKenna be restrained in his room and attended to by the ship's surgeon,
George H. Strobridge.
A day or two later, John's symptoms must have faded considerably because at some point, he asked George to close the curtains in his cabin and give him some time alone to rest peacefully.
George obliged and after a few hours, George decided to check on John and once he got close enough to the door of the cabin, he noticed that there was blood seeping from the room beneath the door.
The surgeon immediately opened the door and to his shock, he discovered John standing off to the side, ruthlessly stabbing himself in the neck with a corkscrew.
Yes, a corkscrew.
George rushed over and began to struggle with John as he tried to wrestle the corkscrew from his tight grip.
Eventually, he was able to get the corkscrew out of John's hand, but that didn't stop John from ripping and tearing at his neck wounds with his fingers, causing extensive damage.
Blood was splattered all over the cabin.
Eventually, John would be subdued.
But unfortunately, he would die from his wounds the following day, on February 20th, 1899.
An autopsy would be performed, and it was found that John had punctured his windpipe and larynx up to seven times with the corkscrew.
And once the corkscrew was wrestled from his hands, John put his fingers into the holes he made and was ripping and tearing at the wounds.
Unreal. And two days later, he would be thrown overboard as was custom.
you you
So that's wild.
That is wild.
That's a wild one.
That's pretty fucking intense.
So, moving on.
This next one comes to us from, now bear with me listeners, I might get this name wrong, the Wanganoo, from the Wanganwee Herald?
This next one comes to us from the Wanganui Herald.
A New Zealand newspaper started in 1865 and lasted until 1986 after being replaced with another publication of the same name.
And that means that I need to give my sweet, sweet Kiwi listeners some shout-outs as well.
So here's your shout-out.
Shout out to New Zealand.
You guys are balling it hard over there.
Just straight killing it.
I love it.
You guys are awesome.
I don't know about the government.
I don't know about Jacinda Ardern, but you guys, the people, awesome.
You guys are awesome.
I love you guys.
Fuck yeah.
So, the article is dated the 23rd of November, 1909.
There was this theater, the Theater Monse, and it had been showing the play Papa La Virtue for three solid weeks, never getting old.
People were going to see it twice a day, every day.
It was crazy.
The play was made up of three acts, and in the third and final act, there were two gorgeous and perfectly obedient, turn-of-the-century, tamed lionesses.
These two lionesses were named Victoria and Cleo, two wonderfully calm and non-threatening giant cats with sharp teeth and razor-like claws, nothing to be alarmed of.
After the show concluded for the night, people were mingling around, talking to each other about the fantastic show, and were watching the theater stagehands break down the sets.
The time was right around 11pm.
The stage manager of the theater was passing by the cage where the lionesses were kept, which was just off to the side from the stage, but still in view of the audience.
As he strolled by...
The man took a quick glance toward the cage and saw a woman right next to the wide-spaced bars which barely separated her from these two extra tame lionesses that were just so cute and cuddly.
But remember, this is 19th century tame, which consisted of cruel animal abuse as a means to train the poor creatures.
It still happens today, everywhere.
And fuck, man.
A video of two veterinarians...
I just saw this recently.
A video of two veterinarians beating a helpless dog just came across my Twitter feed a few days ago.
I mean, they were just literally punching this dog in the face and in the body.
Just like little bitches, man.
But I do assume...
I hope...
I hope that they were caught for it and lost their jobs.
I mean, but still, that does not mean shit.
Gets me heated.
Anyway. Right as the stage manager glanced over to the cage, this young woman extended her right arm through the bars and straight toward beautiful Victoria's flattering jawline with those glistening white teeth.
The lioness must have been pretty hungry, either that or pissed off, or a mixture of both, because she didn't hesitate to do what she did next, which was to be expected.
Victoria, the lioness, clamped right onto that arm and started chomping and viciously yanking as animals with a certain agenda will do.
But for whatever reason, into the man's bewilderment, the woman seemed to willingly extend herself further into the cage, trying to get through the space between the bars.
The man said that as he ran over to try to pull the woman to safety, The woman was trying to reposition herself so that the lioness could get a better grip onto her arm and upper body.
Which it did.
As the man started screaming for help and the lionesses were getting their snack on, an actor took action and started to hit the giant felines with a large metal bar.
This did not work and only angered the two lionesses even further.
And by this point, the audience were wide-eyed and in shock at the entire scene.
This wasn't the show that they came to see, but it was a show nonetheless, and an unforgettable one.
It also prompted an impromptu melee of sudden chaos that erupted all at once.
The stage curtain was dropped, and an emergency was suddenly in full swing.
As the chaos continued, the lionesses...
had been able to pull the young woman into the cage just enough to eat most of her upper body, and by the time that the stagehands were able to get the large cats to back off, it was much too late.
Both the actor and the manager would say that they were positive, absolutely positive, that the woman did not want to be saved from what would have been and what was a certain And violent death by the powerful, absolutely drop-dead gorgeous jaws of those animals.
Both men were certain that she was intentionally trying to be eaten alive.
So what about safety precautions?
Well, the manager would add that there were a bunch of precautions put in place to prevent something exactly like that from happening.
Those precautions consisted of the stage being on a raised platform made of three entire steps.
Obviously, it would have been impossible for anyone to ascend those three steps unless they were trained professional stair climbers, which are very difficult to come by, especially in those days.
He also added that the woman must have been whipping the lions
Because she apparently held a whip in her hand, and that definitely could not have been placed there after the fact to control the narrative and be cleared from any responsibility, but that's just speculation.
In its conclusion, and as a result of the tragic death, the play, Papa La Virtue, was removed from the boards, and the janitor and the actors were left without work.
So here it is in remembrance to the janitor and the actors who were left without work.
Alright, so at this juncture, why don't we take a quick little jaunt on over to Baltimore, Maryland, known for many things such as being the birthplace of the Star Spangled Banner and where it's actually illegal to throw bales of hay out of a second story window.
Fun fact.
And first of all, shout-outs to our lovely listeners in Baltimore, and in all of Maryland to be exact.
So shout-out to you guys and gals up there.
You are all exquisitely sumptuous, just dazzling and ravishing.
I just want to grab you all, nom-nom-nom-nom-nom-nom, just nibble you all up like those lionesses on that poor old woman.
On April 26th, 1887.
It was reported in the Daily Evening Bulletin, again out of Maysville, Kentucky, that the wife of a dentist had been suffering for about five months from bouts of insomnia and aberrations of the mind, meaning that she was going off the deep end.
It wasn't looking good.
At the end of her suffering, The woman was said to have drank an indeterminable amount of mercuric chloride, which is a highly toxic and corrosive supplement used in all sorts of things such as preserving wood and embalming people.
And it sounds like it's the same substance used for sherm sticks.
And sherm sticks, for those who don't know, are cigarettes or joints or whatever dipped in embalming fluid or PCP or both.
And the effects of SHRM sticks may consist of bouts of psychosis, agitation, and dysphoria, hallucinations, blurred vision, euphoria, and suicidal impulses.
Violence against others is also reported.
But of course, by drinking it, the woman would have suffered some of the most unbearable pains in her mouth, her throat, and stomach as the chemical tore her insides apart, causing internal bleeding.
As she was suffering and waiting for her end to come, She apparently thought that she wasn't going to die because after a while, maybe like 20 minutes or so of complete agony, she took hold of her husband's straight razor for shaving and slit her own throat from ear to ear.
The woman, bleeding profusely now, stumbled around for a while wondering why she wasn't dying.
But as she was contemplating this entire situation, the solution would come to her.
She decided to jump from the second floor window of the house.
Unfortunately for her, there was one of those angled cellar doors directly below the window, and she hit that, which would actually cushion her fall quite a bit, but she also broke through the cellar door and fell down into the cellar where she laid motionless on the cold,
damp ground.
And she was still alive.
She would lay there through the entire night and would eventually be found that following day by her husband.
But by that time, she was finally deceased.
And that's just a horrible, horrible set of circumstances.
Poor woman.
But alright, this brings us to our next story.
The fifth story.
Erie, Pennsylvania.
The date, December 1st, 1892.
Ralph Kane and his wife had four children.
And it appears that Ralph also had a bit of a problem with violence against his wife, which caused his wife to file a complaint against him for domestic abuse, and he was arrested, and the next day the police released him from custody.
His wife was fearful of him and took the four children and herself to a neighbor's house to sort of hide out and get away from him.
But Ralph was privy to where she was hiding and stopped by the neighbor's house, wanting to talk to her.
She didn't want to talk, but Ralph was a man with a way with words and got her to agree to come outside to talk to him.
As she apprehensively made her way out of the door, Ralph unloaded a revolver into her body, leaving her on the ground mortally wounded.
As for Ralph, he had a plan.
He ran off to the railroad station where he knew that they were railway cars parked on his deep grave.
What Ralph did was he released one of these railway cars and as it rolled downhill, he ran next to it as it gained speed.
And at the most opportune time, Ralph dove himself onto the rails and underneath the massive steel wheels.
*crickets*
The article states that his skull was cut in half.
and his body mangled as is expected after being run over by a train.
*Musique*
Alright, so this next one comes to us from Central Record out of Lancaster, Kentucky.
The date is May 18th, 1899.
A woman named Belle Coleman.
Bell had been an inmate at this hospital for a number of years and was said to have attempted suicide earlier in her life by shooting herself in the chest,
presumably with a small caliber handgun.
On May 17, 1899, Bella was able to sneak past the asylum's attendants who were supposed to be keeping a close eye on her, and she was able to get into the bathroom.
Her intention was to get to the hot water heater, which back in the day was essentially a giant pot or kettle, and they didn't have any safety precautions.
Bella turned the hot water faucet on and positioned herself right below it, placing her open mouth directly below the scalding water.
She would go on to drink as much as she could as the hot water burned her face and chest and insides.
Her flesh began to blister as third degree burns covered her entire face and much of her upper body.
The attendants were finally alerted to the situation and were able to pull her away from the scalding water that was pouring everywhere.
Her entire face and chest area were literally melted.
The skin was falling from her body in chunks.
There was no chance of recovery and Belle Coleman would die.
And so this next one comes to us from The Times out of Richmond, Virginia.
And shout out to Virginia, birthplace of the nation, on November 21st, 1901.
Just a few moments past midnight, an unknown man had entered one of the Schoenberg's mills in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The man was not employed at the mill, nor did anyone know who this man was.
The witnesses said that he appeared to be about 35 years old.
He was white, was of medium height, he had a sandy mustache, and wore some black laced shoes.
Those black laced shoes, man.
The man seemed to have a purpose, an intent, as he walked past the workers with a hollow stare.
He walked straight to where a furnace was and stood at the edge for a moment.
He then got into a hoisting cage that was filled with ore, coke, and whatever else was being put to the furnace to burn, and he rode the hoist up about a hundred feet, or thirty meters, which was its maximum height, and stopped.
And as was its usual procedure, an alarm went off to let everyone know that it was about to pour its contents into the blazing furnace below.
And right when it was about to empty itself, the man literally dove right into the fiery depths from 30 meters.
The witnesses were absolutely shocked, of course, and instinctively went into action.
He tried to save the man, even though there was no way the man could have survived.
Within three minutes, the man's body, or what was left of it, would be pulled from the furnace.
Everyone said that his body resembled half-cooked meat.
you you
But alright.
Let's put our roller skates on and head back to San Francisco.
The year is 1891, and the day is September 8th.
41-year-old F.L. Carroll checked into the Prescott House, which was your typical boarding house of the times.
But he didn't check in as F.L. Carroll.
He checked in as William F. DeYoung, which must have been pretty convenient back in the day when you could just use any name you wanted whenever it suited you.
Man, good times.
F.L. Carroll, or William, also said he was from Fresno, California, but the man was actually originally from Holland, Netherlands, and had been living near Fresno and working on a fruit farm.
And I gotta say, Holland, fuck I love you.
I want to return so bad, and if there are any Holland listeners looking for a roommate and who would want an American housemate, please email me at paranautica at gmail dot com.
Anyway. F.L. Carroll's close friends said that he seemed to not be his usual self as of late.
He was pretty depressed, actually, and had been going around telling his friends that he wasn't interested in being alive anymore.
But he also said he wanted to make a media sensation.
And his friends had no idea what that meant, and they were clueless as how to help him.
So F.L. Carroll.
Where William DeYoung checked into his room at the Prescott house and he closed his door.
Very soon afterward, a huge explosion locked the building and it definitely came from William DeYoung's room.
Everyone was in a panic and running around trying to figure out what had just happened.
And once they converged on the scene, they were horrified to find body parts strewn all over the heavily damaged room.
The windows were also blown out and one of Carroll's arms was discovered lying in the street.
Once the news got out about this man who exploded himself in a room, F.L. Carroll's close friends realized that they could not locate him and would quickly put two and two together.
Carroll also left a suicide note that was addressed to the coroner.
It basically said that he killed himself because he felt that his life was not worth it.
We're living.
Which is hella sad.
Hella sad.
And as it turned out, F.L. Carroll had used a stick of dynamite to blow himself up.
And fun facture about dynamite, it wasn't until 1970 that the feds finally made it illegal to possess without a permit.
They just ruined all the fun, like most things.
I mean, you used to be able to go down to the hardware store or farm supply store, the corner store, and get yourself a box of Dynamite, man.
For hella cheap, too.
Pretty crazy.
Okay, now let's head off over to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which has some of the best, some of the best Osso Bucco dude.
Pork shank, maple collard greens, creamy parmesan, rosemary polenta with braised pancetta.
Man, you guys have it going on.
So shout out to my Pennsylvania listeners and that Osso Bucco.
On point.
Anyway. Now, this story comes to us from the Daily News and Herald, out of good ol' Savannah, Georgia, on April 10th, 1868.
Have I given a shout-out to Georgia yet?
I don't think so, so shout-out to all my juicy, juicy peaches over there.
Keep it juicy.
Keep it juicy and plump.
Thomas Hanlon was a daring trapeze artiste who worked for the world-famous Hanlon Brothers Trapeze Act.
That was started in the early 1840s of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, which was a massive success.
These guys were the rock stars of their day.
No joke.
So Thomas Hanlon was actually one of the more celebrated brothers, but during one of their acts in Cincinnati, Ohio...
He made a pivotal mistake in the midst of a routine and fell about 50 feet or struck his head on the floor.
He survived, but he had a massive head injury.
And immediately after that, and immediately after that, Thomas seemed to have gone partially insane.
He certainly suffered a concussion, which was severe enough that it caused massive swelling in his brain, with a little bit of that brain bleed to go along with it.
The swelling eventually subsided, but he wouldn't get any proper medical attention.
Sometime later, Thomas was staying at a hotel, and on April 9th, he told the owner of the hotel that he really needed to leave for New York.
He gave no explanation as to why he needed to go, other than that, quote, all the people that were staying there were laughing at him.
This confused the owner because he had no idea what this guy was talking about.
Nobody was laughing at him.
Nobody was even standing around or anything.
Thomas had with him three young boys.
I'm not sure if they were also part of the Trapeze Act or what, but...
And I'm not sure if they were part of the Trapeze Act or what exactly they were doing there, but they were with him at this hotel.
And at two in the morning, the three young boys were found by the police at the New York train depot crying for Thomas.
They couldn't find him and they were scared shitless.
The police began to search for the man and would find him an hour later at a place called the Market House.
And it was here that they would arrest him.
For public drunkenness.
And now, this next part was odd to me.
I knew things were different back then, but I didn't know that the goddamn mayor went around town being the town doctor.
That's right.
And so the mayor would go see Thomas and do a checkup on him and found that Thomas was in fact insane.
So this is the mayor acting as a doctor, giving the diagnosis that Thomas is insane.
He quickly...
He quickly resolved the issue and had Thomas sent back to his hotel room with the three boys and just out of his hands.
He didn't want to deal with it.
The following morning, after he had feasted upon some breakfast, Thomas took the three boys and walked to a nearby riverbank.
Concerned onlookers felt that he was trying to kill the boys and was intending on killing himself, which would turn out to be accurate.
And I can't help but picture this guy.
So, you know, it's like some episode of like Three Stooges or something.
Like he's tossing in one boy and the other two are trying to get away, scrambling around.
So he has to stop trying to kill one of the boys.
So he has to stop trying to kill the one boy in the water.
And he has to run out, try to get those other two boys.
Then he would toss them into the river.
Trying to get all three of them in at once.
The boys keep getting out of the river.
So he's now scrambling around, trying to catch the boys again.
Just a total shit shit, right?
I'm sorry.
*crying*
So, the police would arrive on the scene and try to arrest Thomas, who would put up a bit of a tussle, and the cops didn't like that at all, so they roughed him up and were eventually able to get the upper hand on him, and they arrested him.
He was then promptly brought to a secure jail cell, where he calmed down for a short period of time.
But once inside his cell, Thomas became agitated again.
He then asked for a knife, but gave no reason for needing it.
And because of a lack of a reason for needing such an instrument, his request was denied by the jailer.
And it makes me think, like, if he had a legitimate reason for the knife, like maybe whittle a whistle from some chunk of wood he had in there, then maybe they would have given it to him?
I don't know.
Maybe. But the jailer, a Mr. Simmons, later brought Thomas his steaming hot dinner on a pewter plate, which Thomas instantly grabbed and broke into two pieces.
With one of the pieces, he attempted to slice his own throat, but it was painfully ineffective.
The jailer, shocked, and now having concerns that Thomas would try to hang himself from a hook in the ceiling, would move Thomas to a different cell with another man in hopes that the company would help Thomas.
This happened to not be the best of ideas because Thomas proceeded to beat the other man senseless about the head.
Again, Thomas was moved to another cell which was absent of a bed or any other structure.
What was in it, though, were some heating pipes laid along the floor with one big-ass brass nut or bolt jetting from the floor that was presumably holding those pipes in place.
Within only moments of being in there, Thomas formed a plan, a foolproof plan based not only on his surroundings but his expertise in gymnastics.
His plan was to spring into the air as high as he could and then pretty much dive his skull right onto that huge ass brass nut or bolt.
So without another moment to spare, he leapt into action and sprung about five feet in the air and came down just as he'd planned.
But once would not be enough.
And he knew that and he was prepared for that.
He knew that it would probably take five or six leaps before he wouldn't be able to move again.
Soon, though, guards would hear all the commotion and go to check on him.
They'd be shocked to find that the entire floor was covered in blood and there was blood splattered on the wall and saw that parts of his scalp were just hanging off in flaps, mostly on his forehead and his face.
The guards were pretty horrified at this situation, but knew that they had to get Thomas under control.
As they were attempting to do just that, Thomas, with his trapeze skills and acrobatic finesse, was able to cut one of the guards in the eyeball and broke the nose of another, successfully driving them out of the cell.
But as all of this was going on, Thomas would become slow in his approach.
And begin to lose consciousness due to blood loss.
But this was a perfect moment for the guards and a doctor to rush in on him, hold him down, and shove a rag drenched with chloroform into his face to put him out for a little nappy poo.
And once he was out cold, they strapped him tightly to a bed in a pretty horrible condition in order to try to give him what medical help they could.
But it was of no use.
Thomas Hanlon, from the world-famous Hanlon Brothers Trapeze Act, had bled to death and had given the world his final act.
Man. Man, man, man.
And now we have come to our final story.
This story was located in the Jasper Weekly Courier out of Jasper, Indiana and dated April 2nd, 1875.
Quick shout out to my Indiana listeners.
Delicious sugar cream pie, my bros, and those pork sandwiches are something out of this world, but dude, the corn is off the chart.
Just saying.
So the scene of this last story takes place inside of an otherwise perfectly peaceful and quiet machine shop located at number 163 Bank Street.
Amen. James McCullough.
Worked as a plumber by trade and had been working in the American Fire Escapes works, which was connected to the machine shop.
He walked into the machine shop, which was steam-powered, and he asked to speak with the foreman on duty, a man named John Frisbee.
He asked John Frisbee if he could sharpen some of his lead scrapers that he carried with him, and John said, Hell yeah, bro.
Go do your thing.
Now, this steam-powered machine shop was full of all this giant machinery that consisted of a lot of these massive cogs.
Not pogs.
Not those super awesome small cardboard circles that we spent countless hours, day and night, flipping endlessly with metal slammers as our wide eyes glistened with joy and our toothy smiles stretched from lobe to lobe.
Not those things.
I'm talking about...
You know, those giant metal wheels with huge teeth that interconnect with other teeth on other cogs.
Kind of like a zipper that is circular and rotates.
So, James would walk off to sharpen his lead scrapers.
To sharpen his lead scrapers.
Cough, cough.
And was out of sight of everyone else who were all busy doing their jobs.
About 20 minutes after James had entered the shop and went off to sharpen his tools, all of a sudden, all of the machinery immediately stopped working.
The whole shop shut down.
Everybody stepped back and wondered what the hell was going on.
At that point, the lead engineer guy, Frederick Randolph, started to investigate the cause and began walking around the main engine looking for signs of the problem.
He had gone over all the valves, checked out all the stopcocks, and did all that stuff he was trained to do.
But he couldn't find the problem.
And while scratching his head, he decided to check out the huge cogwheel over there that he hadn't looked at yet.
And as he approached, it only took mere moments for him to realize that there was a squished and mangled human being all up within those cogs' teeth.
And what made him completely sure, just confirmed his suspicion that this was indeed a human being torn to pieces, was when he noticed the man's completely severed head lying on the floor next to the wheel.
Now this next part is from the original article, and I thought I should include it here, so I will read it verbatim.
Quote, A most sickening sight was now brought to view.
With the exception of the head and the legs, from the knee joint down, there was nothing recognizable.
Pieces of flesh and bones varying in size, but none of them larger than a man's hand.
Intestines and masses of blood were scattered in a confused manner about the floor, the machinery, and surrounding fence.
It was found impossible to collect the pieces by hand, and the aid of brooms and shovels had to be invoked, the whole conglomerate mass being thrown into a box and
End quote.
And 14 inches wide.
And still to this day, nobody knows why the man decided to do it.
And it had to have been a horrible way to go.
My God.
Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, that is going to be it for this week's episode.
I hope you enjoyed.
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And email me at paranautica at gmail dot com.
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I freaking hate it.
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I'll look into Patreon.
I don't know.
Everyone likes to do that, so maybe I'll look into that.
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I'm super stoked and grateful for all of my dedicated listeners.
You guys freaking rock.
So until next time, stay safe, be kind, look out for one another, keep up the good fight.
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