Joseph Oberhansley Murdered His Ex and Ate Her Organs
Joseph Oberhansley admitted to murdering his ex-girlfriend and eating portions of her body because he could read her thoughts.
Tag Archive for: cannibalism
Weekend Weird: Cannibal Boyfriend, Doomsday Eclipse, Trees That Don’t Touch, and More
Here’s the last roundup of weird news you’ll ever get before the total solar eclipse brings about the end of the world on Monday.
Good news everyone: Monday’s total solar eclipse may mark the end of the world! You didn’t expect it to come and go without some doomsayer predicting Armageddon, did you? According to certain Christian evangelist groups, this rare celestial event could be the beginning of the tribulation with a black sun rising over the United States on the morning of August 21. And I certainly hope so, because I’m tired of going to my stupid dead end job every day.
Here in Wisconsin, though, far from the path of totality, we will only see between 75-87% of the eclipse, depending on where you are in the state. And now it looks like we’re going to have thunderstorms on Monday, so we might not see it at all. Does that mean we will also be deprived of the end of the world? Is God sending a message that he likes Wisconsin? Because we have beer and deranged killers? Or are we just continually being punished?
Anyway, the news story I’m most fascinated by this week is the tale of two lovers in Key West whose quarrel over whether or not one of them was a cannibal ended in tragedy. It seems 24-year-old stripper Justin Calhoun suspected his 67-year-old boyfriend Mark Brann of being a cannibal, and decided to question him about it. imagine the conversation began with something like, “Hey, so, um…what are those fingers doing in your salad?”
But the situation quickly escalated, apparently leaving Calhoun with no choice but to stab Brann’s eyes out with a pen, shove a broken piece of wood down his throat to stifle his screams, and leave him for dead, running off naked into the streets with a backpack full of Brann’s money and prescription drugs.
And now for the rest of this week’s weird news and media:
The severed head of German serial killer Peter Kurten in Wisconsin
Map shows the best places to watch the eclipse with Sasquatch
Trees with “crown shyness” mysteriously avoid touching each other
Afraid of the dark? Why eclipses frightened ancient civilizations
Make America ghostly again: The demon cat of Washington D.C.
Fund the world’s weirdest vending machine
“I am Jack the Ripper” postcard hits the auction block
If you think an eclipse means doomsday, you’re not the first
‘Chicago Phantom’ makes an appearance at Lollapalooza
Our enduring preoccupation with premature burial
Woman ends up in morgue on ‘worst Tinder date ever’
Solar eclipse could bring lizard people, South Carolina emergency officials warn
The bizarre island religion that worships an American GI
Mystery surrounds strange object found in waters off Westerly
“Kentuckians for Coal” to protest the solar eclipse
The man who wore his wife
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Weekend Weird: Cannibal Week, Inside the Grave of H.H. Holmes, Missing Couple Found Mummified in Glacier, and More
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:
- Cheif Udre Udre was Fiji’s most prolific cannibal
- No one knows who Cannibal Tom really was
- Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History
- What does human flesh taste like?
- Alfred Packer, the first American cannibal
- Cannibal sect of Hindu monks
- The Russian granny who ate her victims
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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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
Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History
Explore the natural history of cannibalism in nature and throughout history in this fascinating and macabre new book by Bill Schutt.
Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History by Bill Schutt (Algonquin Books, 2017)
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In his new book, author Bill Schutt explores some of the most bizarre examples of cannibalism throughout nature and history, ranging from the infamous Donner Party to spiders who feed themselves to their young. Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History bites into topics like sexual cannibalism, kuru and Mad Cow Disease, cannibalism in the Bible, mummy powder for medicinal purposes, and the consumption of human placenta.
From the book description:
For centuries scientists have written off cannibalism as a bizarre phenomenon with little biological significance. Its presence in nature was dismissed as a desperate response to starvation or other life-threatening circumstances, and few spent time studying it. A taboo subject in our culture, the behavior was portrayed mostly through horror movies or tabloids sensationalizing the crimes of real-life flesh-eaters. But the true nature of cannibalism–the role it plays in evolution as well as human history–is even more intriguing (and more normal) than the misconceptions we’ve come to accept as fact.
Bringing together the latest cutting-edge science, Schutt answers questions such as why some amphibians consume their mother’s skin; why certain insects bite the heads off their partners after sex; why, up until the end of the twentieth century, Europeans regularly ate human body parts as medical curatives; and how cannibalism might be linked to the extinction of the Neanderthals. He takes us into the future as well, investigating whether, as climate change causes famine, disease, and overcrowding, we may see more outbreaks of cannibalism in many more species–including our own.
Cannibalism places a perfectly natural occurrence into a vital new context and invites us to explore why it both enthralls and repels us.
Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History is available right here.
Reverend Thomas Baker: Eaten by a Cannibal Tribe in Fiji on July 21, 1867
Reverend Thomas Baker was killed and eaten by a remote tribe of Fiji on July 21st, 1867.
