Haunted clown motel

Creepy Clown Motel of Tonopah is For Sale, Nightmares Included

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The terror-inducing Clown Motel in Tonopah, Nevada can be yours.

Now is your chance to make your dreams come true: The famous Clown Motel of Tonopah, Nevada is for sale. And it comes complete with over 600 clown toys, figurines, life-size statues, paintings, and portraits.

“This is a historic mining town,” owner Bob Perchetti told Las Vegas Now. “What’s a Clown Motel doing in a historic mining town? That’s kind of strange.”

And what’s stranger is that all of those miners, including those killed in the disastrous Belmont Mine Fire in 1911, are buried in the Old Tonopah Cemetery right next door.

Perchetti opened the motel 22 years ago. His late business partner had a house full of clowns that he decided to move in, and thus a nightmare was born. But now Perchetti is ready to kick back, do some fishing, and go camping with his grandchildren while some lucky new owner takes over the motel’s legacy.

“Oh, I’m going to miss the clowns,” he said. “I’m going to come back. I’m going to come back and visit my clowns.”

He is hoping to get around $900,000 for the motel.

Old Tonopah Cemetery

Fiji cannibal cave

Weekend Weird: Cannibal Week, Inside the Grave of H.H. Holmes, Missing Couple Found Mummified in Glacier, and More

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This week’s weird news includes the state of Dali’s mustache in the grave, a missing couple found after 75 years, and the hidden eighth continent.

This week was supposed to be Cannibal Week here on Cult of Weird. It began last year when I realized the anniversaries of two interesting accounts of historical cannibalism occur in the same week: Tasmanian cannibal Alexander Pearce was executed on July 19, 1824, and, in one of the last known acts of cannibalism in Fiji, missionary Thomas Baker was eaten after insulting the chief…150 years ago today on July 21, 1867.

While I did celebrate Cannibal Week in my heart, I failed to sit down at a computer long enough to write any new posts here on the site. So let’s take a moment to enjoy some previously posted cannibalism:

And here’s the rest of this week’s weird news roundup:

Jeff Mudgett reveals what was found in the grave of H.H. Holmes

The Milwaukee Paranormal Conference is happening October 13-15

Salvador Dali was exhumed and his mustache found intact

Swiss couple missing since WWII found mummified in a glacier in the Alps

Help fund the world’s weirdest vending machine full of art and oddities

Journey to Zealandia, the hidden eighth continent

The bloody history of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin estate

New documentary explores the strange activity along Pennsylvania’s Chestnut Ridge

Oxygen treatments dramatically reduce drowned toddler’s brain damage

Every year fish rain down on this Honduras village

We may have cracked the mystery of Stonehenge

Interview with Brandon Hodge on the history of the planchette

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https://www.instagram.com/p/BWjE5GiFe3R/?tagged=cultofweird
Some cool and creepy cabinet cards by Corey Schjoth of Phantasmagoria Photography. Tag your oddities and adventures #cultofweird to be featured.

Shipwreck of the Lottie Cooper in Sheboygan, Wisconsin
Last week’s expedition into the wild weird yonder of Wisconsin brought me to this preserved shipwreck in Sheboygan. This is what remains of the Lottie Cooper, a large three-masted Great Lakes lumber schooner that sank during a Lake Michigan storm on April 9th, 1894. The ship capsized in the Sheboygan harbor waiting to be towed in. Five members of the crew were rescued, but one was lost while trying to float to safety on a stack of planks. The wreck was discovered in 1990 while dredging the harbor to build a new marina.

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Last week’s weird: Salem Witch Memorial, Burying the Bodies Exhibition, Earhart Photo Debunked

Salvador Dali's mustache found intact in the grave

Salvador Dali’s Mustache Found Intact in Grave

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When his remains were exhumed Thursday night, his mustache was found miraculously unchanged.

When Salvador Dali’s tomb was opened Thursday night to settle a paternity suit by Spanish Tarot card reader Pilar Abel Martinez, the New York Times reports that his “trademark mustache was found intact.” Lluís Peñuelas, the secretary general of the foundation that oversees Dalí’s estate, told reporters, “The mustache kept its classic 10-past-10 position.”

Narcís Bardalet, the man who embalmed Dali in 1989, called it a miracle, saying, “Salvador Dali is forever.”

It seems only fitting that when the remains of a man known for his surrealist work are exhumed, the biggest concern is the state of peculiar facial hair.

Long live Dali’s mustache.

Hair, teeth, and fingernail samples were removed, as well as two long bones which will be returned to the crypt after the DNA analysis is complete.

Exhuming serial killer H.H. Holmes

H.H. Holmes Skeleton Found in Concrete with Brain Intact

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What was found inside the grave of H.H. Holmes? Researcher Jeff Mudgett reveals the details of the exhumation.

Back in May news broke that the body of H.H. Holmes would be exhumed for a DNA test. Jeff Mudgett, the great-great-grandson of America’s first serial killer, is hoping to determine whether the rumors that Holmes escaped the gallows in 1896 are true or not. He believes Holmes may have been Jack the Ripper, which is the basis of the History channel series American Ripper, and is hoping to find supporting evidence.

So what exactly did they find when they dug Holmes out of his unmarked grave in Philadelphia’s Holy Cross Cemetery?

The dig, lead by archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania, first uncovered an empty pine box, Mudgett told NBC. Then, a few feet deeper, they hit concrete.

Holmes feared that grave robbers would steal his body after burial, so he requested to be entombed in cement. The teamed cracked open the concrete sarcophagus and found a man’s skeleton inside.

“Chills went up and down my spine,” Mudgett said. “To see that skeleton and that skull with the brain still inside, which is a phenomenon that scientists still have not explained…scared the heck out of me.”

Anthropologists are still testing the remains at UPenn. If there is any substantial clues to be gleaned from the bones, it will likely be featured in a future episode of American Ripper.

Update: DNA proves Holmes didn’t escape the gallows

Salem witch memorial

Weekend Weird: Salem Witch Memorial, Burying the Bodies Exhibition, Earhart Photo Debunked, and More

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A memorial to those killed during the Salem witch trial hangings will be dedicated on July 19th, the 325th anniversary.

This past week in weird news was particularly interesting as the latest Amelia Earhart photo controversy reached a crescendo with Monday night’s History channel documentary…followed by a blogger immediately debunking it Tuesday morning. With all the compelling evidence presented in the documentary, it was disappointing to discover the photo that allegedly shows Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan on a dock in the Marshal Islands after they vanished, was printed in a book dated two years earlier.

Or was it?

My friend Allison Jornlin of the See You on the Other Side podcast just interviewed researcher Dick Spink, who appeared on “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence,” with some interesting revelations about the book in which the photo was printed and other evidence. Was the dock built later than 1935? Watch the interview right here.

And now here’s the rest of the weird news from the week:

Prague mayor wants to bury the Bodies exhibition

5,000-year-old “House of the dead” discovered between Stonehenge and Avebury

The grave history of Galveston’s cemeteries

15 of the world’s weirdest museums

The story behind the plane at the Don Q Inn

How eclipse anxiety helped lay the foundation for modern astronomy

New evidence in support of the Planet 9 hypothesis

Golden Dawn leaders count tragic cost of magically protecting Donald Trump

Memorial to the Salem Witch Trial hangings to be dedicated on the 325th anniversary

Jesus Christ has been reincarnated in Brazil

Vatican outlaws gluten-free bread for Holy Communion

Were the Ziegfeld girls cursed? Listen to The showgirl, the Curse, and the Playboy

The Self-Mummifying Ascetics of Japan

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This week’s featured WEIRD BOOK

The Radium Girls book
The true story of the Radium Girls, women who worked in radium dial factories in the early 20th century. These “shining girls” hand-painted glow-in-the-dark clock faces, unwittingly poisoning themselves while their bosses, aware of radium’s deadly effects, kept their distance.
Buy now on Amazon

Jacob Hovius cabinet of bones
Cabinet of bones assembled by Jacob Hovius, 1773, part of the collection at the Vrolik Museum in Amsterdam

Find some weird news or media? Send it in!