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Toddlerpedes

on Beinart is best known for his insectoid doll-part assemblages which he affectionately refers to as his "Toddlerpedes". He also creates large intricate drawings with strange recurring themes such as birth, death, deformity, hybridised beasts and human oddities.

La Isla de la Munecas : Island of the Dolls

Now, Xochimilco is interesting, because it has a lot of canals which used to be part of a lake called – you guessed it – Lake Xochimilco. Located next to these canals are small islands called chinampas, also called “floating gardens.” On these chinampas grow crops and flowers. It is said that Julian lived in isolation on one of these “islands”, and one day he heard the cries of three young girls. One girl was drowning. Although he tried to save her, she died.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Julian kept hearing her cries, even after she was gone. Convinced that it was her spirit that was bothering him, he tried to appease her spirit by using talismans – in this case, dolls.

He hung a doll on a tree outside his home. Then he hung up a few more. Before long, there were dolls hanging all over the place. People came by and donated dolls, or they traded them for his vegetables.

The Body Under Your Bed

There’s always that moment of dread when you stick one foot out from under your covers; as you envisage a Paranormal Activity style death being dragged down the stairs. You have an instinctive worry with what’s under your bed from a young age, even though nothing has ever been under there. If that’s the case, you’re one of the lucky ones.

Dead bodies have popped up in hotel beds all over America: Florida, California, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, NJ… it seems there isn’t a state that’s gone without a corpse not checking out. One particularly disturbing case was in 2003, when a guest noticed a foul smell in his room at the Capri Motel, Kansas City, and complained to staff. After three nights of opening windows and no doubt gallons of Febreze, the stench would not leave, causing the poor guest to vomit in the room.

Emails From The Grave

Jack Froese died of a heart arrhythmia in June 2011 at the age of 32. Tragic, but nothing unusual about the story… yet. In November the same year, Jack’s friends each received an email from his account, signed with his name. His friends and family are adamant no one knew his passwords or could have hacked his account.

The Strange Case Of Elisa Lam

A recent, and pretty frightening mystery. In February 2013, a 21-year-old student named Elisa Lam was found floating in a water supply tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. She had previously been reported missing. Her body was discovered by a maintenance worker after guests had complained that the water “tasted funny”; a grim thought indeed. However, there were no signs of visible trauma on the body and drug tests came back clear; ruling the death as accidental drowning.

What makes this case so eerily disturbing is the surveillance tap police put online, possibly showing some of Lam’s final moments. Is her behaviour erratic that of a schizophrenic? She did have a history of bipolar disorder. Maybe someone outside the elevator?

Then there’s the fact access to the roof was barricaded completely, protected by an alarm. The water tank lids are so heavy to access that workers had to cut them open to remove her body; so how then, exactly, did Lam get in the tank and replace the lid behind her?

Calls From The Dead

On September 12, 2008, two trains collided in the Chatsworth district of Los Angeles, killing 25 people in the crash. One of the passengers onboard was Charles E. Peck, who was travelling from Salt Lake City for a job interview in L.A. His hopes were high on landing the job as his fiancée, Andrea Katz, lived in California and he planned to marry her if he was hired.

During the next eleven hours, Peck’s mobile phone sent numerous calls to his fiancée, son, brother, stepmother and sister. Overall, his loved ones received a total of 35 calls, however each time they answered they only heard static. When they called back, the calls went straight to voicemail. They family could only be optimistic and assume Charles was alive in the wreckage and calling for help.

When the search team finally traced Peck’s phone signal and discovered his body in a lead passenger car, where most major injuries and deaths occurred, they reported that Charles had died on impact, and that he couldn’t have possibly made the calls.

The Dyatlov Pass Incident

n 1959, a group of experienced Russian hikers went missing on a skiing trip. When their camp was discovered, their tents were found torn open from the inside, and they were wearing very little clothing (in Russia, in winter). It gets weirder. The bodies were stained orange with massive internal injuries from a force that a doctor studying the incident compared to that of a car crash. There were no signs of struggle, despite victims with fractured skulls, broken ribs, and one woman missing her tongue, eyes and other parts of her face.