Suicide forest

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In the United States, suicides throw themselves off the Golden Gate Bridge. In Australia, they jump from the Gap into Sydney Harbor. In Japan, they hang themselves in Aokigahara (青木ヶ原) forest at the base of Mount Fuji. Geologist Azusa Hayano has been traipsing the area for more than 30 years, seeing the evidence of despair and intervening to save lives. He took a film crew from Vice.com into the dense forest (photos on Oddity Central and Environmental Graffiti), which is associated with demons in Japanese mythology and widely believed to be haunted (watch 21-min. video or 10-min. version). One source attributes the haunting not only to the suicides, but to the earlier custom of abandoning the elderly - Ubasute, which some practiced in Aokigahara. In a tradition known historically for the ritual act of harakiri or seppuku, today's suicides are attributed to social isolation and increasingly to the economy. "I think it's impossible to die heroically by committing suicide," says Hayano.

Thanks, Robert!

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Previous posts about suicide:

Library jumpers

Child suicides

Evelyn McHale

The Sorrows of Young Werther

Whipple Bartlett

Suicide by animal

"Seven Pounds"

Shakespeare's Ophelia

Suicide by animal

This was reported today:
Suicide by crocodile
A 40-year-old South African
father of 3 had an argument with his partner and afterward waded into a crocodile-infested river near Kruger National Park. "The man has not been seen since the incident and his body has not been found. Our investigations have revealed that at around 7pm on April 7 he told a co-worker he wanted to walk into the river, which he knew to be infested with crocodiles. He was last seen heading towards the water and never turned up after that....If that is true then it was a particularly horrible and painful way to die," said police.

It reminded me of this report from January:
Suicide by bear
An escapee from a minimum-security prison near Kingman, Arizona, planned to enter Yellowstone National Park, overdose on heroin, and allow bears to eat him. He was experiencing panic while on the lam, but was recaptured before he could carry out his plan.

I googled and found this footage posted in 2007:
Suicide by lion
A Chinese man entered an African lion enclosure in a Beijing zoo and attempted to provoke the male into attacking and, presumably, killing him. Instead, the lions were killed so that he could be rescued.

And then I remembered this from 2 years ago:
Suicide by polar bear?
For unknown reasons, a 32-year-old German woman jumped into the polar bear habitat at the Berlin Zoo. Despite attempts by 6 zookeepers to distract the 4 bears, she was bitten several times before she could be hoisted to safety (the bear is pictured with her sweater after the attack).

Library jumpers

A 3rd person has committed suicide by jumping from a 100' landing inside Utah's Salt Lake City Library. The library (pictured) was designed by architect and urban designer Moshe Safdie and built to great acclaim in 2003 (see slideshow). The building houses 500,000 books in its 240,000 sq. ft. and offers reading galleries, a 300-seat auditorium, a ground-level plaza with shops and services, and a roof-top garden with a 360-degree view of the city and the outlying Wasatch Mountains. Reflecting during a lecture in 2006, Safdie said, "I was told that it would be impossible to keep people in town past five o' clock. We proved them wrong." With 9,000 visitors a day, the library is now the most visited site in Utah. But within the library's six-story interior is a pedestrian bridge leading to the bathrooms on the west side. That is the spot from which a middle-aged woman jumped to her death on Friday morning - the 3rd to choose the downtown public library to do so. Several people heard a woman screaming and then saw her lying on the ground inside the library. Her actions were also captured by a surveillance camera. Police lieutenant Bryce Johnson stated, "There was no question how it took place. It was an intentional suicide.” The library's executive director Beth Elder does not want to see any repeats and said, “We are saddened and extend our condolences to the family. The building design is very transparent. It has great advantages to how it can be used, but we will be exploring ways in which we can make it safe.”

Whipple Bartlett

I just received my e-newsletter from the Association for Gravestone Studies and it included the story behind the mysterious marker above, which I summarize for you here:

Located on private property in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, is a rather tall (5'), crudely carved marker. The stone - with its “S” in reverse - memorializes the puzzling actions of 28-year-old Whipple Bartlett. Bartlett was a miser by disposition and was finding it impossible to collect on loans he had made to Nathaniel Snow (about $25) and Asher Rice ($2 or $3). To make a point, he decided to take their lives and his own. He bought a load of seasoned wood in nearby New Braintree and had it delivered to a neighbor's pasture under the pretense that he was unable to store it elsewhere because his rental of a house had fallen through. He then packed up his belongings, hired a horse and wagon, and proceeded to a neighborhood tavern. On the way, he sold his ax and fishing spear to his brother, insisting that he receive payment on the spot. At the tavern, he fed the horse and himself, and insisted on the return of a watch he had loaned his sister, who resided at the establishment, and she obliged.

The following night - April 4th, 1840 - Bartlett called at Mr. Rice's house to ask for the money due him. Rice was unable to pay, but managed to push Bartlett out the door when he pulled a pistol. Following the same scenario at Mr. Snow's house, Bartlett did get off a shot and fled when he saw the man fall and heard him groan. Bartlett drove the wagon to the woodpile he had prepared, and unhitched and covered the horse. He added all his previously packed worldly possessions to what would become his funeral pyre. He set the wood alight, positioned himself above it, and shot himself in the head. Bartlett succeeded in killing but not burning himself, as his body fell to the side of the pile rather than squarely on it. As a correspondent described in the Boston Mercantile Journal a week later, "In this situation he was found next day, with one hand burnt off and one side of his face burnt to a coal. It appears that he was to have destroyed himself and all his property, even to the last cent. And as his axe and spear would not burn, he sold them for money. In the ashes of the fire were found about 14 oz. of melted silver, and in his pockets 70 or 80 dollars in bills, and his two watches....Of course, I cannot detail to you all the circumstances of this strange affair, which has broken in upon our quiet town, like a thunder clap from a clear sky."

Bartlett's subsequent funeral was attended by his 2nd intended victim, who had survived when the bullet deflected off a metal button on his vest. Though Bartlett was known to love only money and was never seen to smile, his actions were not attributed to insanity or inebriation. His choice of the pasture of James Abbott to end his life may have been due to a rumored affair with Abbott's wife Azubah. It was she who, a year after her husband's death in 1864, compelled young returning Civil War veteran George Avery Tucker to carve and erect a memorial to Bartlett on the farm. There Azubah lived until her own death in 1871. The following year, her daughter sold the land, with this addition to the deed on file: “Always reserving the right for a stone monument to stand as now erected on the northeasterly part of said premises and marked — Bartlett Suicide 1840 no person is to remove said stone.” And although the farm has changed hands several times, no one has.

Halloween hangings

This post is not about the perennial stories this time of year about decorations that are too reminiscent of African American lynching victims. Rather, it is about the rare stories in which a Halloween decoration turns out to be the real thing:

FREDERICA, Delaware 2005 — Rush hour traffic passed by a body suspended from a tree about 15' from the ground, but none of the drivers reported it because it was thought to be a holiday decoration. When police were finally called to the scene 3 hours later, they found the remains of a 42-year-old woman who had hanged herself that morning or the night before.

MARINA DEL REY, California 2009 — Neighbors at an apartment building saw what they thought was a Halloween dummy slumped over the balcony. It was 4 days before anyone realized that it was the body of a 75-year-old man who had taken his own life by shooting himself in the head.

I authenticated these stories on Snopes.com, which also documents the unfortunate accidental demise of 2 teenagers (in 1990 and 2001) who were staging gallows scenes at Halloween events. But the most extraordinary story* occurred decades ago at a California funhouse, where "every day is Halloween":

LONG BEACH, California 1976 — When a crew member knocked off the arm of a prop at the Nu-Pike Amusement Park while filming an episode of "The Six Million Dollar Man", the break revealed a real bone inside. Famous Los Angeles coroner Thomas Noguchi determined that the "hanged man" at the funhouse was the authentic mummified body of train robber Elmer McCurdy, shot and killed by an Oklahoma posse in 1911!

*Told in detail in my book Modern Mummies.

Follow-ups

A generous helping of vegetables 9/23/10 Schools in Ohio and New York introduce carrot vending machines.

Killer squid 8/31/10 A truck hauling squid crashed in a California broccoli field.

Microhylids 8/28/10 Conservation International's search for lost amphibians has revealed another frog. An Australian lizard is evolving fromy laying eggs to giving live birth.

Audubon ate 'em 8/27/10 A rare copy of Birds of America, valued at $6 to $9 million, will be auctioned.

Frank Buck 8/16/10 A train kills a herd of elephants in India.

Ancient spirits 8/19/10 American researchers find that ancient beer was used as medicine.

Churchill's choppers 7/16/10 George Washington's dentures are on display in a traveling exhibit.

Fatal lightning 7/12/10 Earlier in the month, Hong Kong was hit by the record number of 13,000 lightning strikes in one hour. Meanwhile, rare fire tornadoes were observed in Brazil and Hawaii.

White elephants 6/29/10 Ceremony is held for a white elephant in Burma.

Swimming the English Channel 6/2/10 After successfully swimming the English Channel, quadruple amputee plans to swim the Strait of Gibraltar from Europe to Africa.

Crafty bees 5/14/10 Dog that ate a beehive wins award. Honeybees are "morning people," and like a warm drink on a chilly morning. A swarm of bees traps a North Carolina deputy in his car for 3 hours. A Texas man is stung by 1,200 bees. A Massachusetts woman is stung 500 times by wasps. A Florida treetrimmer was stung by at least 500 Africanized bees.

Environmental disaster 4/30/10 The government denies a connection between the BP oil spill and a massive fish kill in Louisiana. A total of 3,634 dead birds have been collected from th Gulf.

Xenoglossia 4/17/10 A British grandmother developed Foreign Accent Syndrome. Another woman with a rare neurological disorder has been nicknamed the "Flamingo Lady."

Corpses in strange places 4/6/10 A French chef in the freezer. A British soldier at his wedding (in spirit). A Pennsylvanian at the mall. A Japanese mother in the closet. British babies in a wardrobe. A North Carolina woman in a hearse (for 9 days). A California doctor in her boyfriend's chimney. A burial at sea failed in Florida when the body surfaced. And human remains are found in a mass grave as a result of a ghost story.

Dwarfs on display 3/26/10 World's shortest man is now 27" Colombian.

Evelyn McHale 3/2/10 A comment on this post by a reader who has researched McHale adds details about her life: "Evelyn Francis McHale was born in Berkeley California Sept. 20, 1923. She was the sixth of seven children....Around 1930, they moved to Washington, D.C., where her father became an examiner for the Federal Land Bank. Also at this time her mother left, moving to an apartment in another part of Washington. The father retained custody of all seven children. Evelyn was 6....After high school, in 1943, Evelyn became a WAC and was stationed in Jefferson Missouri. Friends say that when she was discharged, she burned her uniform. At some point, she moved to New York City to work, living with her brother and sister in law. She met and became engaged to a young man named Barry Rhodes, a 24-year-old who was just out of the Air Force and attending Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. They were to be married at his brother's house in Troy, New York. A year before her death, Evelyn had been a bridesmaid at Barry's younger brother's wedding. After the wedding, she removed her bridesmaid gown, said, 'I never want to see this again,' and burned it. On the day she jumped, Barry said, she seemed happy and looking forward to the marriage as she boarded the train home. There was a security guard less than twelve feet from where she jumped. In her suicide note, she wrote, 'My fiance asked me to marry him in June, but I don't think I would make a good wife for anyone. He is much better off without me. Tell my father, I have too many of my mother's tendencies. I don't want anyone in or out of my family to see any part of me. Could you destroy my body by cremation? I beg of you and my family - don't have any service or remembrance for me.' She was cremated per her request." Here is a description of a tour of a secret observation deck above the 102nd floor.

Treasure trove 3/1/10 A Roman helmet has been found in England and a rare coin has been found in Israel.

Ironic deaths 2/4/10 A man in Nebraska pretended to be drowning - and succeeded. A South African poacher on an illegal fishing trip is killed and eaten by a great white shark. A Green Party candidate riding her bicycle was struck and killed by an SUV. A Minnesota man who founded a DWI Ride Home program was not wearing his seatbelt when he was killed in a crash. A North Carolina man listening for the sounds of a ghost train is struck and killed by a real train. A total of 18 people died in Italy picking wild mushrooms, but from falls not poisoning. A British teen is stabbed to death trying out a knife-proof vest.

Natural arch collapse 1/26/10 I'm glad I didn't blog about the rediscovered Ansel Adams negatives, because the story is almost certainly a hoax.

Gulp! 1/16/10 Doctors compare stories about unusual foreign bodies they have removed from their patients.

Scapegoats and sineaters 1/13/10 The grave of the last sin-eater in England has been restored.

Sinkholes 1/12/10 A family in New York was swimming when the water suddenly got sucked out of their pool.

Supper clubs and speakeasies 1/3/10 A Prohibition-era beer tunnel has been discovered in Ohio. Italian castle on the market has a dungeon.

Child heroes 12/23/09 California toddler saves her Dad. Canadian boy holds yard sale to buy a gravestone for Dad.

Nero's dining room 12/19/09 Greeks find Odysseus' palace, suggesting Homer's tale was factual. Archaeologists discover the oldest house in Britain.

Otis elevator, part 2 12/13/09 St. Louis's Gateway Arch - which I have been to the top of - is in need of repair.

Alligator urban legends 11/14/09 A flurry of alligator sightings, including swimming in the Chicago River, stuck in a Florida storm drain, under a car in Queens, on a New Jersey nature walk. A Massachusetts woman bags a 1,025lb. alligator in South Carolina.

Circus animals on the lam 11/13/09 Zoo Atlanta was missing a rattlesnake. Between 280 and 400 endangered crocodiles have escaped from a reserve in Mexico. A honey badger escaped from the zoo in Prague. The escape of a gibbon at Miami's Jungle Island triggered the escape of a 500lb tiger. A llama was also on the loose in Florida. A camel had to be rescued from a sinkhole on his owner's Oregon property. A ram broke though a window and ran wild in a house in England. Drunk baboons have taken over the suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa, but a loose baboon in Missouri was apparently a hoax.

Humpback whales 11/10/09 A total of 73 pilot whales strand themselves on a New Zealand beach. A photographer has a close encounter with pilot whales.

Odd animals 11/4/09 A hairless chimpanzee.

Docking cow tails 10/27/09 After her trailer crashed in Michigan, Bella lived for a month in the woods. A wild cow was captured in a residential neighborhood of Arizona. World's smallest cow. Raising cows for Kobe beef. Glowing eyes may be a sign of mad cow disease.

Birds in fable and fact 10/22/09 British scientists observe that crows derive much of their most nutritious food by using sticks as tools.

Maldives 10/18/09 A hotel in Maldives offers an underwater bridal suite. Kiribati, which will be swamped by higher sea levels, closes off 150,000 sq. mi. of its territory to fishing to preserve it as a Marine Heritage Site.

Golf course oddities 10/14/09 A golf ball knocks out a kestrel in Sussex, U.K. A California golfer's ball sparks a 12-acre fire. A Massachusetts teenager dies mowing a golf course. A badly burned body with a severed foot was found near the 18th hole of a British golf course.

Snails 10/5/09 The sound of a snail eating gets a hospitalized woman through her darkest hour.

Gossamer 9/27/09 A deadly funnel web spider has been spotted in England.

Three clocks 9/20/09 The world's oldest working mechanical clock has been outfitted with an electric motor.

Pig butchering 9/1/09 A Florida animal control officer resigns after outrage about his slaughter and consumption of an adoptable pig.

Surviving rabies 8/18/09 Of the 3,500 Peruvians bitten by vampire bats recently, 20 have died of rabies. Bats are also terrorizing students at an Australian school. California woman attacked by 3 raccoons.

Leonardo's lion 8/17/09 A doctoral student in Canada has finally made a successful ornithopter!

Creative cremains 7/24/09 Cremation urns for trekkies. A U.K. company will press your ashes and the sound of your voice into a vinyl record. Artistic funeral urns.

X-raying fossils 7/5/10 An American team has determined that fossils of sponges 650myo may be the earliest animal life forms on earth.

Multi-purpose cemeteries 6/26/09 A pub is opening in a Rhode Island funeral home.

Birthing and hoarding bunnies 6/18/09 A Nevada man finds the body of his wife, who was missing for a month, in the clutter of their own home. New York officials rescue 80 cats from the home of an animal hoarder. A Georgia woman was living with 113 cats and 14 dogs in her house.

Vultures 5/4/09 A vulture strikes a medical helicopter in Arizona. Pilots in the U.K. warned to steer clear of stray vulture. A Native American tribe hopes to reintroduce the California condor. An Englishman can continue to take his pet owls for a walk. The fossilized bones of a bird with a wingspan of 17' have been found in Chile.

Rossetti's menagerie 5/1/09 An American millionaire leaves his fortune to Australia's Wombat Awareness Organization.

Bears in the news 4/24/09 A man in Canada fends off a polar bear with a punch in the nose, while a woman in Montana uses a zucchini. A bear in Nevada has reached legendary status. Three bears broke into a Colorado home. A Florida bear is freed from the jar on its head, while 3 others were killed by 2 vehicles in a single night.

Centenarians - and then some 3/26/09 Burma claims to have found the world's oldest woman, aged 118. The oldest person in Britain died at 111. A Kansas judge is still on the bench at 103. A 101-year-old Nebraskan is also still on the job. An Englishman lives to 100 doing what he wants to do. A Scottish woman doesn't do it for 106 years. A Florida woman is still patronizing tattoo artists at the age of 101. Pension fraud is behind some of the 230,000 missing Japanese elderly. A 99-year-old New Hampshire woman received a letter from beyond the grave. A mysterious New York heiress is still alive at 104. A Florida man who died at 98 left 398 descendants.

Iceman 3/16/09 "Oetzi" may have been deliberately buried. Meanwhile, the body of an American climber has melted out of a Canadian glacier after 21 years.

Designer legs 3/15/09 Vintage prostheses, including the Victorian hand (pictured above). An Oklahoma man and a New Jersey woman receive double hand transplants. A Florida student's hand was yanked off by a horse. An Australian teenager loses his leg after being deliberately run down by the cab driver he stiffed. A Swedish man saves his father's life by cutting off his arm to free him from forest machinery. A Scottish teenager is getting accustomed to his high-tech prosthetic arm. Amputees gather in Texas for an annual hunting event. American soldiers are accused of taking fingers as trophies. A California woman's severed fingertip regenerates. CNN offers advice on what to do if body parts fall off.

Spider prey 3/7/09 Deadly funnel web spider found in Britain.

Crop circles 3/1/09 Why people are drawn to them.

White Bengal tiger 2/29/09 The MGM Grand in Las Vegas is under scrutiny after a lion attacked its trainer.

Footprints 2/28/09 A California scientist finds that ancient humans used stone tools even earlier than thought. Evidence from Spain suggests that early humans practiced cannibalism regularly.

Snake handlers 2/21/09 Photos from a West Virginia church. Polish newlyweds find 7' python in their toilet and an elderly Polish woman finds a 6' anaconda in hers. Wisconsin woman kills rattlesnake on her porch with an ice chopper. Guam is dealing with its brown tree snake problem by dropping poisoned mice from the sky.

Killer chimpanzees 2/17/09 The Connecticut woman who owned the chimp that ripped up and nearly killed Charla Nash died back in May. A New York woman was attacked by a monkey in July while staying at a bed and breakfast. Meanwhile, a new monkey species is discovered in the Amazon.

Disturbingly young parents 2/14/09 An 11-year-old rape victim gives birth in Mexico.

Polydactyly 2/3/09 Thanks to Chase for this link to photos of the Ernest Hemingway Home, including one of the many polydactyl cats.

Speaking of taxidermy 2/1/09 Exotic animal mounts in Maine are looking for a good home.

Corpse flower 1/30/09 One of the rarest flowers in the world blooms for the 1st time in 200 years.

Animal accidents 1/16/09 University of Virginia researcher is studying bird vomit. British workers stripe a road right over a dead hedgehog.

More mammoths 1/6/09 British researchers confirm that mammoths were not hunted to extinction.

Rats! 12/20/08 Hundreds of frozen rats were stolen in Pennsylvania.

Alive! 9/25/08 Survivors of the 1972 Andes plane crash lend their support to the miners trapped in Chile.

Australian angel

The Gap is a picturesque rocky outcrop in Sydney Harbor that also happens to be the most frequently chosen location for Australians to commit suicide, with an average of 30 jumpers a year - and 15 times that number who decide not to make that 90M leap. Meet a man the media is calling an angel: Don Ritchie (pictured) has gently dissuaded some 160 potential suicides over the past 50 years. Ritchie, 82, is a former life insurance salesman who lives right across the street from the landmark and scans the ocean view while reading his newspaper. When he sees a likely jumper, Ritchie quietly engages them in conversation. Some accept his invitation to follow him home for something to eat or drink. Others slip out of his grasp, sometimes literally. He describes an experience with a young man who, as it turns out, grew up next door to Ritchie and played with his grandchildren: ‘‘I went over and I tried to talk to him, asking him questions about where he was from. He wouldn’t talk much, just kept looking straight ahead. I was talking to him for about half an hour…thinking I was making headway. I said ‘why don’t you come over for a cup of tea, or a beer, if you’d like one?’ He said ‘no’ and stepped straight off the side…his hat blew up and I caught it in my hand.’" The ones he saves return with thank you gifts or remember him with Christmas cards.

Although he was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2006 for his interventions, and he and his wife have been named 2010's Citizens of the Year by the town council, he shuns the limelight for fear it will attract more would-be suicides to Gap Park. He is glad for cell phones, which other visitors use to alert authorities, since his fence-climbing days are over. Ritchie doesn't try to counsel the people he meets, he just lends a friendly ear. He has heard from many survivors that a smile goes a long way. When he was interviewed, he was reading the Dalai Lama's The Art of Happiness. Every now and then, he would glance up to scan the horizon for anyone who might need him. He'll keep doing so, he says, for as long as he's here. Asked about when he's not, he chuckles softly and says, "I imagine somebody else will come along and do what I've been doing." Still, the council has succeeded in having security cameras installed and has lobbied the government for additional security measures.

Child suicides

For years now, schoolyard and on-line bullying has been discussed in the media, particularly when it drives victims to suicide. But it is not the only reason that children kill themselves - and at increasingly young ages.

In January 1999, a girl named Marie was being bullied at her school in Manchester, U.K. Upset at being made to go to bed early for the start of a new term, she hanged herself with her jumprope. She had lost her father 2 years earlier and psychiatrists speculate that not only was she too young to fully articulate her distress about the bullying, she was too young to fully comprehend the finality of death and may have wanted to join him. She had just celebrated her 8th birthday the week before.

In April 2009, a boy named Gabriel ended his short and troubled life by hanging himself in the shower of his Florida foster home. He had told therapists that he had been sexually abused by a peer, had no friends, and had been taught to lie by his mother before he was removed from her custody. He was "a bad person," he said, and had in turn molested other kids, although some of the blame for his behavior is placed on the psychotropic drugs he was prescribed. He had been sent to his room after a tantrum by his babysitter - the 19-year-old son of his foster parents - who found his body in the bathroom. He was 7.

In December 2009, a girl named Samantha was chastized and sent to her room by her mother. She had not been bullied, abused, or traumatized. While her mother and 3 siblings were in another part of the house, she climbed into an old empty crib, attached a belt to the railing, and hanged herself. When the medical examiner ruled her death a suicide, she received the dubious distinction of being the youngest suicide in the state of Oregon. She was 6 years old.

There is some question whether kids of such a young age can form the intent to kill themselves, and many likely suicidal deaths are deemed accidental or undetermined. An 11-year-old child named Abdullah claims to have known exactly what he was doing when he strapped on a suicide vest in Afghanistan. Interviewed after his arrest as the youngest terrorist - before he could carry out his mission - the boy said he knew he'd be in pieces, but made a distinction between suicide and sacrifice. Abdullah's case is about a different kind of abuse - that of indoctrination. More typical are cases in which threats to commit suicide are not taken seriously. Both Gabriel and Samantha said they were going to kill themselves when they were sent to their rooms. With kids doing everything at younger and younger ages, we must remember to add suicide to the list.

Evelyn McHale

I saw the photograph above (1st image, taken in 1947) for the first time yesterday. Because of it, Evelyn McHale achieved a small amount of fame - but only posthumously. Despite the calm expression on her face, the 20-year-old had just taken her own life. She is shown on the crushed roof of the limousine on which she landed after jumping from the Empire State Building (2nd image, taken in 1954). “He is much better off without me ... I wouldn't make a good wife for anybody,” she wrote, then thought better of it, but took the suicide note with her anyway. It was found in her purse on the 86th-floor observation deck (3rd image, taken in 1955) after she leapt, preceded by her white scarf.

Following its publication in Life Magazine, the photo - taken by student Robert Wiles just 4 minutes after her death - continues to spark: from a print by Andy Warhol in 1963 to an essay by Max Page in 2006, a short story by Jason Stout in 2008, a song by Parenthetical Girls in 2010... "[I]t's clear that I'm not the only one who's been moved by this photo over the years," writes another blogger. "I wonder what Evelyn would think if she knew that people born 35 years after her death would be touched by the image of her final sad, defiant act." Defined by her death, Evelyn McHale left little in the public record about her life. According to her obituary, her fiance was an ex-GI attending college who she had visited the day before, her profession was as a bookkeeper for an engraving company, and her body was identified by her sister with whom she lived on Long Island.

When I was thinking of subjects for my master's thesis, I considered examining what 3 literary suicides were communicating by their method. English writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) filled her pockets with stones and walked into the river; American photographer Diane Arbus (1923-1971) sedated herself, slashed her wrists, and curled up in the bathtub; and American author Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) put her head in the oven. When I mentioned the idea to the brilliant and inspiring man who agreed to be my thesis advisor, Michael Macovski, he immediately replied, "Ah, the body as suicide note."

More white tigers

I blogged about white tigers 2 months ago and looked in on the status of American entertainer Roy Horn after his 2003 attack. I have since found these gorgeous photographs, so here they are with a weird news round-up. This photo was taken 2 days ago and shows 3-year-old Khane at the Belgrade Zoo eating his meal of chicken. Earlier this month, it was reported that the white tigers at the Chongqing Wild Animal Park in China are chickens, scared of the live fowl given to them as food to encourage them to hunt. The white tigers at the Singapore Zoo fatally mauled a worker who jumped into the moat in their enclosure in an apparent suicide attempt in front of zoo visitors.

This 2007 photo shows 6-year-old Odin, who lives at the Six Flags Discovery Kingdom Zoo in Vallejo, California, and like all tigers loves to swim. At the Liberec Zoo in the Czech Republic earlier this month, 2 lions snuck into the enclosure of a 17-year-old white tiger named Isabella and killed her.

This is one of the 6 white tigers born at the Buenos Aires Zoo in Argentina in 2006. A pair of white tiger cubs born at the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa, Florida, made their public debut in 2008. Two white tiger cubs - Mitra and Shiva - born at The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (TIGERS) in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in 2008 have surrogate parents since being removed from their aggressive mother: the zookeeper and a chimpanzee. A golden retriever adopted and nursed 3 white tiger cubs in 2008 when they were abandoned by their mother at the Safari Zoological Park in Caney, Kansas. A white tiger was born in a litter of 4 this month in the wild - at the Tiger Canyons Sanctuary near Phillipolis, South Africa. Also this month, a white tiger was one of 4 cubs born in the Lucknow Zoo in Uttar Pradesh, India.

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This beautiful white tiger is unidentified and appears to be roaming free, but is probably in a game reserve. A film was made about an individual in Flat Rock, Indiana, who was attempting to breed a white tiger. There are only about 210 white tigers in the world.

Four films

This 1975 documentary follows Jacqueline Kennedy's relatives Edith Bouvier Beale (1895-1977) and her daughter "Little Edie" (1917-2002), who were eccentric and co-dependent hoarders. It is one of the few films that my friend Chris walked out on, imagining the stench of so many cats in their decaying mansion in East Hampton, New York. My Mom and I watched this on dvd a few years ago, and watched the 2009 TV movie of the same title recently. We enjoyed both films immensely and thought Drew Barrymore did a remarkable job portraying "Little Edie."
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I had seen this documentary and heard the director speak at the 2006 Silverdocs Festival. The movie captured all the emotion surrounding the suicide jumpers who leap from the Golden Gate Bridge - the number one spot from which to do so. They filmed almost every daylight hour for a year, and from several angles, and were criticized for it, but they did intervene if they spotted a likely jumper. The film brought attention to the fact that the bridge has no barricades to prevent jumping, and I just saw in the weird news that a permanent net is finally being installed.
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We saw this 2009 film at the theater yesterday. We both enjoyed it and neither of us found any fault with it. The biographical bits rounded out my picture of Julia Child (1912-2004) and a truer image - not Dan Ackroyd's spoof, which is featured in the film - appears in my mind's eye when I think of her. She was cremated, by the way, and her ashes were scattered, but not in her beloved Paris.
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We watched this 2007 dark comedy the other night and I enjoyed it, even though I see that it rates only 33% on the tomatometer. The basic plot line is the inheritance of a funeral home and the antics involved to make it profitable again. One review states that any episode of Six Feet Under had "more sharp, mordant wit and freewheeling derangement" than this film, but I quite liked it - it made me both laugh and wince.

Ars moriendi

Renowned British symphony conductor Sir Edward Downes (1924-2009) and his wife Lady Joan ended their lives on July 10th at Dignitas, a Swiss clinic specializing in assisted suicide. Devoted to each other but in deteriorating health, he was nearly blind - conducting entirely from memory and unable to work on new scores - and she had terminal cancer. Their friends said that euthanasia was, for them, a natural finale. A statement by their son and daughter read, "It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our parents....They died peacefully and under circumstances of their own choosing....They both lived life to the full and considered themselves to be extremely lucky to have lived such rewarding lives both professionally and personally." The mutual death of the Downes would be considered a good death, appropriate to their circumstances as nonreligious, having lived long and rewarding lives, and struggling with serious health problems. Others may have chosen the more passive route of hospice care, which also has the goal of providing comfort and support to the dying. The concept of making a good death arose in the Middle Ages, when a body of Christian literature - Ars Moriendi [Art of Dying] - offered instruction to the faithful in making their peace with God as the angels and demons struggled over their souls. The theme was illustrated (see above) by artists such as the unknown German engraver Master E.S. (c. 1420-c. 1468) and Dutch painter Hieronymous Bosch (c. 1453-1516).

Lemmings maligned

This interesting little skull was in the weird news yesterday. It is the 10,000-year-old skull of a lemming and led scientists to believe they had germinated the oldest viable seeds ever found, but carbon-dating of the remaining seeds from its burrow has debunked the idea - the seeds are a mere 50 years old and must have fallen into the ice tunnels when they were exposed during mining. Knowing that lemmings have a mistaken reputation for throwing themselves en masse off of cliffs, I decided to debunk that notion also. As it turns out, that is not the only misconception these solitary and subniveal creatures have been subject to. In the 16th c., it was theorized that lemmings generated spontaneously, falling from they sky in stormy weather. Natural historian Ole Worm* (1588-1655) was the first to dissect a lemming and correct the idea of their origin, but still believed that they were carried by the wind. It wasn't until the 18th c. that Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) showed that lemmings breed naturally. Like other rodents, they have a high reproductive rate, and when population levels get too great they migrate in large groups. When they reach a body of water, they are moved by this biological urge to jump in and swim, sometimes dying of exhaustion in the process. They may also be pushed off a cliff as the group behind them surges forward. But the idea that they willfully throw themselves to their deaths is a myth - popularized by none other than a 1955 comic based on a National Geographic photo and a 1958 Disney film - and now a metaphor.

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*Don't you just love that name?!

The Sorrows of Young Werther

With the publication of his semi-autobiographical novel The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774, German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) set in motion a phenomenon called "Werther-Fieber" ("Werther Fever"). The plot of the epistolary story focuses on the narrator's unrequited love for a woman named Charlotte, who is already engaged to an older man named Albert. Werther determines that one member of this triangle must die and decides it must be himself. He convinces Albert, under pretense, to lend him two of his pistols, which Charlotte sends. Werther then uses it to shoot himself in the head, dying 12 hours later. Neither Albert nor Charlotte attend his funeral. After the publication of the book, from which Goethe later distanced himself, young men who identified with Werther began to dress like and emulate him - even to the point of copycat suicide. Groups of related suicides are now referred to as "suicide clusters," a term I first learned in cryptozoologist Loren Coleman's 1987 book of the same name. After Goethe's own death of unspecified causes, his personal secretary Johann Peter Eckermann (1792-1854) recorded in Conversations with Goethe the following passage about his corpse:

The morning after Goethe's death, a deep desire seized me to look once again upon his earthly garment. His faithful servant, Frederick, opened for me the chamber in which he was laid out. Stretched upon his back, he reposed as if asleep; profound peace and security reigned in the features of his sublimely noble countenance. The mighty brow seemed yet to harbour thoughts. I wished for a lock of his hair; but reverence prevented me from cutting it off. The body lay naked, only wrapped in a white sheet; large pieces of ice had been placed near it, to keep it fresh as long as possible. Frederick drew aside the sheet, and I was astonished at the divine magnificence of the limbs. The breast was powerful, broad, and arched; the arms and thighs were elegant, and of the most perfect shape; nowhere, on the whole body, was there a trace of either fat or of leanness and decay. A perfect man lay in great beauty before me; and the rapture the sight caused me made me forget for a moment that the immortal spirit had left such an abode. I laid my hand on his heart - there was a deep silence - and I turned away to give free vent to my suppressed tears.

Goethe took more pride in his studies in natural science - especially his Theory of Colours - than in his writings. His most famous work Faust was only published in its entirety after his death.

Tree tales

An 18-year-old German hiker found a bone on the forest floor recently. This led to the discovery and recovery of a skeleton 11 meters up in a tree. In 1980, a 69-year-old retiree climbed the spruce, tied himself to it, and shot himself to death. There he remained for 29 years until his remains were found and identified by DNA and an artificial hip. Because the story did not have an associated photo, I have included this image of the "bicycle tree," located in Vashon Island, Washington.

Disturbing decapitations

If you are squeamish, you may want to skip this post...

I was stunned when I heard the news that 22-year-old graduate student Xin Yang was decapitated with an 8" kitchen knife by a fellow Chinese doctoral student in a campus cafe at Virginia Tech two days ago. This after another horrific crime this summer in Canada that you may not have heard about: On July 31st, Tim McLean--also 22 years old--was heading home to Winnipeg when a 40-year-old Chinese immigrant from Alberta suddenly began stabbing him more than 40 times in the chest with a large hunting knife. The other passengers ran screaming off the bus as the attacker cut off the victim's head and held it up. Yang was acquainted with her attacker, though his actions were unprovoked; McLean's killing was random. I am not familiar with Chinese cultural attitudes toward decapitation, but China has a long history of execution by beheading, as the images on this site [caution] show.

I also remembered at least one instance of suicide by decapitation recently, and found three. In August 2008, British businessman Gerald Mellin, age 54, angry at his wife for leaving him, tied one end of a rope to a tree and the other end around his neck, then drove into traffic in his Aston Martin. The month before, another Englishman David Phyall, 58, had removed his own head with a chainsaw because he was distraught at being evicted from his flat; the result is here [caution]. And in April, 41-year-old Michigan man Steve Gregory Walther cut off his head with a chainsaw in his ex-wife's driveway after attempting unsuccessfully to reconcile with her. His suicide was not immediately achieved, but he died in the hospital [caution].

I have identified the victims in these crimes, and the suicides, but it is my general policy not to name killers on this blog. I think giving them name- and face-recognition in the media is the sort of fame (or infamy) that potential murderers crave when they carry out a massacre and that avoiding this attention would help in small part to reduce this incentive.