Spooky stuff

A couple of weeks or so ago, I tripped over a show on Netflix called Dark Tourist and I want to talk about it.

The show, which currently only has one season, is all about David Farrier, a New Zealand journalist with a taste for the dark.

He and his crew travel all over the world to visit locations that can best be described as grim, gruesome, sad, twisted, mysterious and very dangerous. Mind you, this is not fiction, it's real life.

The first thing that struck me is that David has a lot of courage. I personally wouldn't want to go to most of these places. Some of them sure, but others? No way.

I'm trying to avoid spoilers here, so bear with me.

I guess no episode is bad, but some are a great deal stronger than others. The Europe and United States episodes were interesting but a bit weak, but only because they have to compete with the Japan, The Stans, and South East Asia episodes. The SE Asian was really hard to watch, at least for me.

They are all fascinating, well worth watching, and definitely informative but not for the squeamish. If that hasn't become clear by now, if you are of a more sensitive disposition or just feeling a bit delicate, do not watch this show.

It's not overly grisly, but there are a lot of hard to handle things involved.

I'm quickly going to mention another show I found on Netflix, there was only one season which is fine: 1000 ways to die.

This is essentially Darwin Awards on film. Each episode details several people who met their ends in silly and horrific ways, mostly because they are jerks and idiots. Be warned though, 1000 ways to die is really gory. The re-enactments are extremely well done. Also, they sort of spoil each episode before the intro, so it's worth skipping ahead.

That's that. The final episode of the summer. Next time I see you will be in September, so until then, relax and have a great week!

Next Floor

Here we are again. Monday morning, and it's time for some more Eccentric Spheres.
Today's entry is eccentric indeed, a short film - eleven minutes long and utterly amazing and bizarre. I'm keeoing it short today as I have rather a lot to do, so enjoy this delightfully odd thing and I shall see you again next week.
Until then, take it easy.

Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t60MMJH_1ds

Saucy Jack 3

Hello and welcome back to the third installment of our series about Jack the Ripper.

Last week we looked at some of the suspects, but due to space I left out a few. Today we look at them beginning with:

Lewis Carroll

Carroll was an Oxford don, and is most famous for writing Alice in Wonderland. So how can this guy possibly be the Ripper? Well, that is a good question. There is some evidence that he was sexually assaulted as a child, which will likely mess you up. Then there are his diaries that he wrote in purple ink, except on the nights the Ripper was at work. Those days he wrote in black ink. Why? No one knows.

Some psychologists who have analyzed his poem Jabberwocky, have found evidence of a psychotic nature in some of the made up words Carroll invented, and apparently if you deconstruct and reconstruct some of his works you can recreate parts of the letters Jack (allegedly) wrote. But, you can do that with any body of work written in the English language, even the Bible so that's no kind of evidence.

Does this mean Lewis was Jack? Very unlikely, if you ask me.

Next up is Walter Sickert.

Sickert was a painter, with a taste for the odd. Some of his paintings seem to depict the postmortem pictures of the Rippers victims, and similar scenes. Besides that, he was both influential and popular. In his time he painted many of the rich and powerful, including Winston Churchill.

Sickert was not a suspect in 1888 though, that came later when author Stephen Knight published his book Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution in 1976. Knight had spoken to Joseph Gorman who claimed to be Sickerts illegitimate son. According to Gorman, Sickert was forced to join in with the Ripper murders for reasons we'll get to. There is apparently no evidence that Sickert was Jack.

Alright, the last two men, Sir William Gull and Prince Albert Victor are on the list for the same reasons. This also ties in with the Sickert theory.

As the theory goes, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale and Queen Victoria's grandson had some slightly deviant tastes for a member of the Royal family. He liked to visit lowly prostitutes, including those at 19 Cleveland Street. That address was visited by many powerful men, as they served not only women, but also young boys. After the scandal broke, the prince was sent on a long tour of the Empire to make it impossible for him to be interviewed about the rumors of his involvement. Many witnesses were silenced or removed. A theory was put forward that he had contracted syphilis from a prostitute and sought revenge. Frankly the idea that an effeminate prince would roam around Whitechapel and brutally dismember women is ludicrous.

But there is another angle. Some say that the prince fell in love with a lowly shop girl, who happened to have been a prostitute for a while and was still friendly with a bunch of them. The story continues with the idea that Albert Victor would have married her in a Catholic ceremony and indeed gotten her pregnant. This would have been an unimaginable scandal. Since the Catholic Church forbids divorce, a commoner would suddenly have been in line to the throne, a Catholic commoner no less. At the time there were some grumblings that the Monarchy should be abolished, so they were extra keen on not having scandals like that. If you wonder why a commoner would have been such a big deal, keep in mind that Victoria wasn't just Albert's grandmother, she was also the German Kaiser's and the Russian Tzar’s grandmother. The royal houses were very interconnected with no outside blood to talk about.

So, we have a secret Catholic wedding complete with heir, and they have to go. The theory states that the bride was gotten rid of, possibly in an asylum like Bedlam, but that leaves the witnesses, the brides old friends.

Enter Sir William Gull, royal physician. According to this theory, Sir William was tasked with removing he prostitutes for the good of the Empire, but that he went quite a bit too far, possibly due to some medical issue of the mind. He is known to have suffered at least one stroke.

The Sickert connection comes in the form of the fact that he had used many of the prostitutes as models and had known about the wedding, but as a well known artist, he was too public to kill, and instead was forced to join in to make him keep silent.

One of the biggest draws of the Albert Victor theory is the idea that the police knew who the killer was but for obvious reasons couldn't arrest him. This would explain why they never caught the killer on indeed released the information they had.

The wedding theory became popular due to the graphic novel From Hell, by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, which became a movie later on. The novel is amazing and the film is mediocre.

There we have it. There are of course many many more suspects, and I don't have nearly enough space to go through them all. Until next time, have a great week!

Saucy Jack 2

Welcome back to our look at the infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper.

Last week was a quick rundown of the murders and the area in which they were committed, Whitechapel. Today we look at some of the suspects.

One of the earliest suspects was a violent and aggressive butcher called John Pizer. Apparently, he confessed but it was quickly discovered that he was innocent with an alibi for two murders and that the confession had been coerced by the arresting officer Sergeant Thick. The reason he was suspect was the fact that a piece of a leather apron was found at Annie Chapman's crime scene. This lead to the public calling the murderer Leather Apron, until Jack the Ripper was coined.

Moving on to other suspects in no particular order, we have Joseph Barnett.

He was Mary Kelly's lover, a fish porter who lost his job. It seems that Mary took up prostitution to bring in some money after Joseph was laid off, and that he hated that. They broke up but were seen talking the night Mary died. Inspector Abberline interviewed Barnett and ruled him out as the Ripper.

Next we have Charles Lechmere, also known as Charles Cross. Some modern Ripperologists find it highly suspect that he used two names, but apparently it wasn't that odd back in those days. Cross was a driver for Pickfords meat company and was the man who found Polly Nichols and alerted the police. Some have suggested that instead of finding the body, he put it there, but a second person arrived moments later, and it would be almost impossible to clean up in time, so there is little to pin on Charles.

Unlike our previous suspects Frederick Deeming was a murderer. An already unhinged individual, he became a sailor and contracted syphilis from a prostitute in Whitechapel. He is alleged to have wanted to kill her if he could, and he, prompted by the illusion of his dead mother, killed two wives and four of his children. He does fit the bill in many ways, but there is some evidence that he was in South Africa taking part in a diamond scam at the time of the Ripper murders.

One of the most likely (but never proven) suspects was Aaron Kosminski, a Jewish barber and generally unhinged person. He was known to hate women and he had violent tendencies. At the time, there was a lot of speculation that the murderer could be Jewish, in part due to regular garden variety antisemitism, but also because of the famous graffiti found on Goulston Street on the night of the double murder. It read: The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing. The spelling of juwes has been the subject of much speculation, as it could be a typo, but it could also be a reference to freemasonry. Either way, Police Commissioner Charles Warren ordered it washed away immediately. Most likely, it was to prevent a wave of violence against the many Jews who lived in the area, but since he was a Mason, it became fodder for the conspiracy minded.

There are of course many more suspects, but these are some of the more average suspects. Next week we are looking at the more famous ones. Suspects like Lewis Carroll, Walter Sickert, Sir William Gull and Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, and Queen Victoria's grandson.

So tune in next week, and until then, stay safe and happy!