The Far Side

New THE FAR SIDE Comics Are Coming!

Something is stirring on Gary Larson’s official The Far Side website, which hasn’t been updated since 1999.

Gary Larson closed up shop on his long-running The Far Side comic in 1995, and the website hasn’t been updated since 1999.

Until now.

The newly redesigned site unveiled on September 13th (Friday the 13th) features new art by Gary Larson depicting some of the comic’s iconic characters being dethawed from an iceberg.

Text below the image reads “Uncommon, unreal, and (soon-to-be) unfrozen. A new online era of The Far Side is coming!”

It’s an exciting time to be alive.

Cult of Weird Fall Reading List

Morbid Must-Reads: 2019 Fall Reading List

Communing with the dead, the women who wrote monsters, eyeball-eating cats, and more weird books top this year’s morbid fall reading list.

The veil is thinning and nature is once again showing us how beautiful it is to die. That means it’s that time of year again when I dig up a new list of book recommendations to feed our insatiable need for the dark, weird, and disturbing this autumn.

This collection of morbid must-reads explores the dark side of life and lighter side of the afterlife, from Caitlin Doughty’s new masterpiece about kid’s death questions to LGBTQ+ tales of Gothic horror.

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? by Caitlin Doughty

Mortician Caitlin Doughty answers death questions from kids like why do corpses groan? What causes bodies to turn colors during decomposition? Why do hair and nails appear longer after death? And if you’re wondering about the book’s title, the answer is yes, yes it will.

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Séance

Seance by Shannon Taggart

Photographer Shannon Taggart explores the mysteries of spiritualism through her lens in this book full of truly haunting photographs. Séance includes a foreword by Dan Aykroyd, creator of Ghostbusters and fourth-generation spiritualist.

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Twelve Nights at Rotter House

Twelve Nights at Rotter House by JW Ocker

Writer Felix Allsey makes a living publishing travelogues of the country’s most haunted places. But while staying in the infamous Rotterdam Mansion for his next bestseller, Allsey’s nonfiction turns into all out horror.

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Abandoned Palaces

Abandoned Palaces: Great Houses, Mansions, Estates and Hotels Suspended in Time

From imperial residences and aristocratic estates to hotels and urban mansions, Abandoned Palaces tells the stories behind dilapidated structures all around the world.

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Exquisite Aberrations

Exquisite Abberations gothic horror anthology from Fundead Publications

The abandoned houses and shadowy cemeteries in this anthology of Gothic horror tales might seem familiar, but these stories are about the people who have been shunned and forgotten – trans, non-binary, and LGBTQ+ characters, people suffering from PTSD and other mental health conditions, and persons of color.

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Weird Wild West

Weird Wild West by Keven McQueen

Explore the stranger, darker side of the Old West, the ghost stories, unexplained deaths, bizarre murders, and peculiar burials that made the West weird.

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Monster, She Wrote

Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction

From Gothic ghost stories to psychological horror to science fiction, women have been primary architects of speculative literature of all sorts. And their own life stories are as intriguing as their fiction.

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Mostly Dead Things

Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett

Mostly Dead Things had me at “aggressively lewd art with the taxidermied animals.” I mean, what else do you need to know?

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Swamplandia!

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Strange theme parks, swamp lore, ghosts and more comprise this mysterious and disturbing coming of age story about a family running a gator-wrestling attraction the Everglades.

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The Ghastling: Book Nine

The Ghastling Book Nine Strange Creatures issue

The ninth installment of The Ghastling features chilling new tales of horror by contemporary authors. Don’t miss the “Strange Creatures” issue.

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Want more? Here are the fall reading lists from previous years:

2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013

Or you can find them all and more here: Cult of Weird Recommended Reading

Heart of Darkness dark art exhibition

September 2019 Newsletter: The Heart of Darkness

Cult of Weird will be bringing the historical weirdness to the Windigo Fest dark art exhibit in Manitowoc this year.

Windigo Fest, Wisconsin’s largest Halloween festival, is happening this October, and I have the honor of showing a selection of photos at the dark art exhibit. Curated by artist Matt Lombard, The Heart of Darkness will feature bizarre and disturbing works by local and international artists. The 3-day festival in the heart of downtown Manitowoc (a town you may recognize as the epicenter of the Steven Avery case from Netflix’s Making A Murderer) is billed as a “festival of folklore, freaks, and all things Halloween.” So I decided to bring some Cult of Weird-brand folklore and dark history.

I’ll be showing three photos from different locations with unusual stories Cult readers will be familiar with because I’ve been visiting, researching, and writing about these fascinating stories for years. But for many who call Wisconsin home, these histories are completely unknown but for fragments passed around in local legends.

See the photos and read the stories at Windigo Fest – October 4-6th, 2019. There’s more than just grotesque art, too. Stick around for macabre fun with sideshow performances, live music, Halloween parade, the actor who played Gage in the original Pet Cemetery, the killer car from Christine, hearses, vendors, and more.

Windigo Fest dark art exhibition in Manitowoc, Wisconsin
The Heart of Darkness dark art exhibition

The week before Windigo Fest I’ll be in California standing up in my best friend’s wedding, which will be equally bizarre. Elusive, hairy, and strange, we’ve long suspected him to be an actual yeti. I guess we’ll know for sure when the wedding photos turn out blurry.

It’s been 20 years since my last visit to Los Angeles, so I’ve got my list of cemeteries, murder houses, and other morbid destinations at hand if there’s time. I’m sure he’ll understand when I’m late for the ceremony because I had to make a stop at the Museum of Death.

Weird News

A selection of the strangest and most fascinating headlines in science, history, archaeology, travel, and more from last month:

HEADLINE OF THE MONTH: Don’t Lick Sexy Pavement Lichen

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The crypt of Wisconsin's little-known incorrupt priest Father Ambrose Oschwald, who was removed from his position in a church in Germany's Black Forest for "mystical and heretical works." He and some of his congregation, which have been referred to as a "Catholic mystic cult," left the country for America in search of religious freedom and arrived in Wisconsin in 1854. There, Oschwald and his followers claimed a white heifer lead them to the sacred ground where they would make their new home – a small rural community known today as St. Nazianz. The night of Oschwald's death in 1873, people throughout the town reported ghostly knocking on the walls of their homes. Since his death, Oschwald's body has been viewed three times, once more than 50 years since he passed. Each time it was noted that, like the incorrupt saints of Europe, his remains bore little sign of decomposition and had no smell. Today, some believe certain hardships the community has endured in the years since Oschwald's passing are the result of a curse Oschwald placed on the town while on his death bed. A now abandoned Catholic school and Salvatorian seminary on the grounds near Oschwald's crypt is believed to be haunted by past students and teachers alike who have had strange experiences in the building. This was my first visit here since 2012 and my @cultofweird article about the town's peculiar history. Finding Oschwald's crypt open was like Christmas morning. #cultofweird #oddities #paranormal #occult #wisconsin #weirdwisconsin #stnazianz #jfkprep #haunted #hauntedplaces #cemetery #cemeterylovers #crypt #wisconsinhistory #onlyinwisconsin #travelwisconsin #explore #exploremore #cemeterylife #wisconsinlore

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Share your oddities and weird adventures by tagging your photos #cultofweird

September Observances

September 7Sputnikfest
September 20 – Storm Area 51
September 21 – Storm Loch Ness
September 21Hearse Fest
September 29 – National Ghost Hunting Day
September 30 – International Blasphemy Day

Send questions, photos of your favorite oddities, or share share your strange or unexplained experiences to be included in the next newsletter. Use the contact form or email info@cultofweird.com

WTFact

Windigo Fest Halloween festival in Manitowoc, Wisconsin

When the inaugural Windigo Fest was announced in 2017, an alarmed Manitowoc-based Christian group petitioned the city council to ban the event, saying it would welcome Satan into the community. To support their claims, they noted the dates the festival would be happening that year – October 6th and 7th – added up to the number thirteen. If that wasn’t enough, the Halloween parade was sure to summon the devil by going backwards down 8th street.

If Satan was going to be there, I knew I had to get involved in Windigo Fest somehow.

Previous Newsletter: Mary Nohl’s Witch House

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Stuff You Should Know podcast Ed Gein episode

Ed Gein’s Real Life Horrors on Stuff You Should Know Podcast

The story of deranged Wisconsin murderer and grave robber Ed Gein is featured in the latest episode of the Stuff You Should Know podcast.

The most recent episode of the Stuff You Should Know podcast recounts the grisly details of Ed Gein – his traumatic childhood, his extracurricular activities with human remains, how he claimed to tear his mother’s head from her body when he opened her grave.

Did you know filmmaker Werner Herzog once visited Plainfield Cemetery with a clandestine plan to verify Gein’s account by exhuming Augusta’s corpse under the cover of dark?

Also, Cult of Weird gets a nice little shout out for the story of Ed Gein’s cauldron. Thanks guys!

Listen to the episode right here.