Tag Archive for: cannibalism

Interactive Cannibalism Exhibit Opens at San Diego’s Museum of Man

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Explore the history of cannibalism in this one-of-a-kind interactive exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Man. Who’s ready to eat?
Interactive cannibalism exhibit opens at the San Diego Museum of Man
Operation: Cannibal Edition

The Museum of Man in San Diego has launched a new interactive exhibit dedicated to a topic that tends to get us pretty excited here at Cult of Weird HQ: cannibalism. That’s right, consuming human flesh is no longer just humanity’s greatest taboo – it is now educational and wholesome fun for the whole family. Recommended for children ages 10 and up, of course, because gnawing on friends at recess is generally frowned upon.

Cannibals: Myth & Reality aims to humanize the taboo through stories and hands-on activities (no, not eating each other) designed to help you see history’s notorious cannibals in a different light:

  • Hear the emotional first-hand account of the Uruguayan rugby players who, trapped high in the Andes Mountains, resorted to cannibalism to survive.
  • Learn why European explorers falsely used the label of “cannibal” to enslave and control people around the world.
  • Step into the apothecary shop to find out how the human body has been used as medicine.
  • Play the “Donner Trail” video game based on the Donner Party: will you live or die?
  • While stranded at sea, decide who among you will be eaten so that the others may live. Maybe you’ll be the one who draws the short straw!
  • Finally, figure out if you already do things that make you a cannibal, too.

Read more about Cannibals: Myth & Reality here:
Interactive cannibalism exhibit comes to San Diego’s Museum of Man

Cannibalism facts from the Museum of Man Cannibals exhibit

Andes Cannibal Survivor Recounts Horrors in New Book

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Roberto Canessa, a survivor of the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes in 1972 and resorted to cannibalism to survive, recounts the horrors in a new book.
Survivors of the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes in 1972.
Survivors of the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes in 1972

In 1972 Uruguayan rugby team members Roberto Canessa, Nando Parrado, and 43 other passengers of Flight 571 crashed in the Andes mountains. 18 died immediately or in the following days as a result of their injuries. The 27 remaining survivors battled bitter cold temperatures, an avalanche, and other hardships while they waited 72 days for a rescue that never came.

Related: Opera tells the story of survival in the Andes

With very few supplies, surrounded by nothing but the plastic and aluminum of the wreckage and the mountain’s rock and ice, the survivors soon found themselves starving. They tried eating strips of the leather seats from the plane, but one thing soon became clear: They would need to eat the flesh of their dead friends in order to survive.

In his new book I Had to Survive, Canessa, who was then a second-year medical student, describes the bleak moment:

“I will never forget that first incision nine days after the crash. Four of us … with a razor-blade or shard of glass in his hand, carefully cutting the clothes off a body whose face we could not bear to look at.”

There were only 16 survivors left by the time Canessa and Parrado climbed out of the mountains and got help. Helicopters transported those remaining off the mountain. It was only a matter of days before newspapers began reporting that they had resorted to cannibalism, an act that seems to haunt them to this day.

Andes plane crash survivor Roberto Canessa
Andes plane crash survivor Roberto Canessa

Canessa’s new book, available March 1, centers around how this experience inspired him to become a pediatric cardiologist, believing that every time he has the chance to save a baby’s heart, he is giving back what was given to him when he was rescued.

Read it: I Had to Survive: How a Plane Crash in the Andes Inspired My Calling to Save Lives

Artifact from 1884 British Naval Cannibalism Case For Sale

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An artifact from the 1884 Mignonette shipwreck, the last case of cannibalism in British naval history, is up for auction.
Captain Dudley's sextant from the Mignonette shipwreck

The yacht Mignonette was en route to Australia from Southampton when it was shipwrecked in a storm on July 5, 1884. The crew were left stranded in a 13-foot lifeboat in the middle of the south Atlantic with a few tins of turnips and some navigational instruments.

The sextant, now up for auction, bears a pencil inscription inside the lid that details their plight:

We Thomas Dudley, Edwin Stevens, Edmund Brookes & Richard Parker, the crew of the yacht Mignonette which foundered on Saturday the 5th of July, have been in our little dinghy 15 days.

We have neither food or water and are greatly reduced. We suppose our latitude to be 25º south our longitude 28ºW.

May the Lord have mercy upon us, please forward this to Southampton

Custom of the Sea

In order to avoid seawater, the men began drinking their own urine. The turnips and a captured sea turtle managed to feed them for ten or twelve days, but soon after that they began discussing the possibility of cannibalism.

When 17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker, who had been drinking the salty water, lost consciousness, Dudley and Stephens figured he was probably dying. They decided they should kill him rather than let him die naturally so that his blood would be better preserved for drinking.

Dudley said a prayer, and then pushed his penknife into Parker’s jugular.

Of the grisly scene that followed, Dudley later said:

“I can assure you I shall never forget the sight of my two unfortunate companions over that ghastly meal we all was like mad wolfs who should get the most and for men fathers of children to commit such a deed we could not have our right reason.”

They were rescued four days later on July 29.

The men readily described their desperate act of survival, believing they were protected by an ancient custom of the sea. It was a common practice for shipwrecked survivors to draw lots to determine who would be eaten. Rather than go home to see their families, the sailors were detained and charged with murder.

Brooks was acquitted, but Dudley and Stephens were convicted and sentenced to death. Due to public outcry, however, their sentences were commuted to six months imprisonment.

The sextant up for auction in November at the London-based Charles Miller Ltd. is said to be the only remaining artifact from the event. When Dudley was released, he took it with him when he moved to Australia. There it remained until it was bought from an antique shop in 1973.

Captain Dudley's sextant from the Mignonette shipwreck

Inscription inside the sextant from the Mignonette sextant

Alfred Packer: Legend of the First American Cannibal

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New book explores the legend of Alfred Packer, who survived the winter of 1874 by eating his companions on a doomed excursion through the Colorado mountains.
Man-eater Alfred Packer, the first American cannibal
Man-eater Alfred Packer, the first American cannibal.

True crime author Harold Schechter’s new book Man-Eater: The Life and Legend of an American Cannibal separates fact from folklore in the life of Alfred Packer.

Packer and five companions became stranded in the Colorado mountains during the harsh winter of 1874. Packer emerged alone after two months. He claimed the men had killed each other, and that he then turned to cannibalism, surviving on their flesh to escape the mountain.

When suspicions of foul play arose, Packer admitted to killing only one member of the party, because that man intended to kill and eat him first. Then Packer disappeared. He was apprehended nine years later, tried, and eventually found guilty of five counts of manslaughter. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

But no one knows if he was telling the truth or not, though recent forensic evidence seems to support his claims.

The description for Man-Eater:

In the winter of 1873, a small band of prospectors lost their way in the frozen wilderness of the Colorado Rockies. Months later, when the snow finally melted, only one of them emerged. His name was Alfred G. Packer, though he would soon become infamous throughout the country under a different name: “the Man-Eater.”

After the butchered remains of his five traveling companions were discovered in a secluded valley by the Gunnison River, Packer vanished for nine years, becoming the West’s most wanted man. What followed was a saga of evasion and retribution as the trial of the century worked to extricate fact from myth and Polly Pry, a once-famed pioneering journalist, took on the cause of Packer. Man-Eater is the definitive story of a legendary crime—a gripping tale of unspeakable suffering, the desperate struggle for survival, and the fight to uncover the truth.

Buy it: Man-Eater: The Life and Legend of an American Cannibal

Alfred Packer cannibalism memorial in Colorado
Memorial to Packer’s victims at Cannibal Plateau near Lake City, Colorado. Source: Wikipedia Commons

Granny Ripper May Have Eaten Her Victims

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Russian Granny Ripper who admitted to killing and dismembering at least 11 people may also have eaten her victims.
Russian Granny Ripper is a serial killer and a cannibal

Details are still emerging in the case of a 68-year-old Russian woman caught disposing of human remains on a security camera, and they keep getting weirder. Tamara Samsonova, who has been dubbed Grannyball Lecter by the press, was arrested recently after drugging her 79-year-old friend Valentina Ulanova and cutting her up with a hacksaw while she was still alive.

The motive?

An argument over dirty tea cups, apparently.

Samsonova was seen on camera carrying body parts and a head in a cooking pot out of her home. Ulanova’s decapitated body was later found in a nearby pond. The head still hasn’t been found, and Samsonova isn’t telling anyone where it is.

Diaries found in her home alongside books on astronomy and the occult provide details of as many as 21 possible murders in 20 years, and reveal that the Granny Ripper may have eaten parts of her victims.

Police say she really likes lungs.

Though Samsonova seemed notably confused and disoriented in court, even blaming the murders on a neighbor at one point, she claims her actions were deliberate, that she wanted to be known as a serial killer. She told the judge she has been preparing to be caught for years.

Grannyball Lecter caught on camera disposing of body parts
Grannyball Lecter caught on camera disposing of body parts.

Authorities are comparing the diary confessions with unsolved cases of body parts around St. Petersburg. They also suspect Samsonova may have killed her husband, who disappeared in 2005.

The Granny Ripper will be featured in the Horrors of St. Petersburg museum.