Month: January 2016

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Elsa This Just In

Getting ahead in the human head rental business

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News broke on January 30, 2016 that a Grosse Point Park couple who run a biological supply company which rents of body parts for training purposes were charged with fraud. The charges filed claim that their business failed to disclose to the leasees of heads and other body parts that the specimens sometimes came from bodies with infectious diseases, such as HIV and Hepatitis B.

Our local online newspaper Mlive took the click-bait road with a headline that read “Michigan couple charged with renting out disease-infested human heads.” That headline has inspired nearly 5000 shares on social media so far.

It’s worth noting however that the couple involved, Arthur Rathburn and Elizabeth Rathburn, ran a completely legitimate medical business. International Biological Inc. is a legal business which supplies medical and dental training programs with human heads and other body parts. The couple legally procured donated human bodies, dismembered them, and provided them to medical and dental professionals for a rental fee. It does appear that the couple sometimes obtained disease-infected bodies at discounted prices. The issue was not that heads were rented, but that the company failed to notify the renters of such body parts that some were infected with diseases and that they made false statements about body parts in their possession.

As in all businesses, not being honest about the sources, condition or safety of one’s products– be they heads, cars, food, or children’s toys– is fraud. This business deserves the American standard assumption of “innocent until proven guilty” just as much as any other– even if their business is rental heads.

More details can be found here at Crain’s Detroit Business.

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Art Creepy Crafts Doktor Video

UNBOXING: Mummified Piglets

“You’ve got mail” doesn’t get much weirder than this!

In this clip, the Doktor is excited about unboxing some highly unusual porcine pretties. What is the deal with this package? Why does he want them? And what will he do with them?

Tune into this unboxing video to learn about the strange phenomena of mummified piglets, get the answers to these questions, and grow in your knowledge of our version of Midwest Weird.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #374: Cut to the end

(USA, 50’s)

This nightmare was a strange one, sort of anti-climactic and almost boring, after the bang-up start. It began with a cut and ended with… I don’t know what.

I was in a strange apartment with a bunch of friends– dream friends, not real ones — but we were all there together. I think we all lived there together.

In my dream, everyone was dying.

All of our throats were cut, and all of our blood had poured out on the floor. Everyone’s neck had a big gash in it.

We were all so sad. And we felt tired. After all my blood had drained out, I felt so so tired. I was sure I was going to lie down and die any minute.

But I didn’t.

That was the weird part: shouldn’t we all be dead already?

But we weren’t. We were dying, but slowly, or at least not right away. So it seemed like we might as well do the laundry… and clean up the apartment a bit… and talk to each other. We just kept going because it seemed like a good idea, that is, to keep moving and keep doing things, even when we didn’t know when it might all end.

After I woke up, I was haunted by that knowledge: we ARE all dying. We don’t know when. Do something already.

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Video

Our Review Policy

Here at the Dailynightmare, we review movies, books, performances, artworks, and events. We take a look at and evaluate jewelry, food products, clothing, crafts, art openings, and film festivals. We take our analysis further still and report on retreats, crowd funding campaigns, software and apps, weird date nights, and conventions.

You might wonder– are they just doing this for the perks? Can their good opinion be courted with gifts and freebies?

Fear not, Dear Reader! Watch this clip for a thorough understanding of our review policy!

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Nightmares

Nightmare #373 – Turning Teeth

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(North America, 20’s)

Recently, my dentist informed me that I have been grinding my teeth in my sleep. Her suggestion was to have a bite splint made that I could wear in the night to protect my teeth. In my family, I have always had the best teeth; no cavities, no stains, and I always get good comments from my dentist each visit. But now I was being told that by grinding my teeth, I am slowly causing serious irreplaceable damage that could open me up to cavities and bed news in the future. In an effort to be a compliant patient, I have been doing my diligence and wearing my mouth guard every night, even though it is slightly uncomfortable and I’m not used to it yet. The other night, while wearing this stupid plastic contraption I had the following dream.

I was out of town at a professional development conference with a group of women I had vague friendships with, but no one I could pick out really. One morning when I woke up in my hotel room I noticed that my teeth were hurting much more than normal, but I thought, “I slept with my mouth guard in, and isn’t that supposed to help?”

When I went to the washroom to look in the mirror and take out my mouth guard, I was horrified to discover that my mouth guard had been adjusted so tightly that in the night ALL of my teeth had been pressed inward! Every one of my teeth had been flipped nearly on its side as the roots pressed out of my gums and the tops of my molars touched against my tongue in the most unusual manner.

The pain in my mouth was unbearable, and the distortion of my teeth made me unable to speak in any coherent manner. I was scared to tell the women I was with what had happened, and so instead I tried to find ways to push my teeth back into their appropriate positions. I used my finger to feel along the inside rim of my mouth, and I began sobbing.

And as I contemplated what this would mean, that I now had the most corrupted teeth in my family, I got so anxious and upset that I woke myself up.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #372: Nightmare at the Mall

(Midwesterner, 50s)

By Kolkatan (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
By Kolkatan (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I am walking through an unfamiliar shopping mall. Very upscale, wondering why I am even here. This is not where I would ever shop. Glistening displays wherever one looks, immaculately dressed people carrying bags of goods. Expensive leather shoes clicking on beautifully shining floors.

Suddenly, the shoppers are scattering, like oil poured into a too hot pan. Moving from the center walkways toward the walls. Grabbing each other, running in huddled groups.

They have heard the announcement before I comprehend. A man’s voice, loud and booming, “There is a shooter in the mall. He has already shot a mom and her one-year-old daughter. Move to safety. Move to safety”.

How would they know so quickly that the child is one, I ask myself. What stupid things a person thinks of when faced with danger. And where is safety ?

I look up to see he is walking toward me. I say he because I assume it’s a man from size and stature. But I cannot see his face. It is covered as is the rest of his body. Layers and layers of clothes cover every inch of him.

He is holding a rifle strapped from shoulder to hip. He steps back into a stance, one black booted foot in front of the other, raises the gun and aims directly at me.

Boom!

The crowd is screaming in the distance, but the sound I hear the loudest is the bullet tearing into my skin, the crunch of my bones breaking. I know I am hit on my right side, as I fall face first, to the ground.

“Play dead, play dead” I tell myself, as I hear his footsteps coming closer. I feel his heavy boot kick my foot, looking for signs of life.

I am left alone lying there, breathing in air with the smallest of movements. The pain is searing through my right side with every tiny breath. When I finally lift my head, I am in the safety of my own bed, flannel pillowcase warming my cheek. I remind myself it was just a nightmare as I reach to touch my right hip. My side is painful. It is hurting. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a bullet hole.

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Video Weird-Thrill Date-Night

Fire Dancing at Theatre Bizarre 2015

Is there anything quite as magical as fire? That smell, the flare of color, the flash of heat?

Fire, fire, everywhere at Theatre Bizarre, that wonderful annual masquerade at the Masonic Theatre, Detroit Michigan. The Doktor captured just a few of the fire performances that seemed to pop up wherever we turned.

Categories
Nightmares

Nightmare #371 – Improving Memory

surgery-688380_640(Canada, 20’s) When I was younger I had a collection of operations to correct a birth defect and resulting life complications with my kidneys. One of the weird blessings about surgery is that once your IV is set up in pre-op, you are doped up on a collection of drugs that basically take away your consciousness of the situation around you. You are moved around, and somehow finagled to the operating table where they really put you under withanesthetic. Then, you wake up in recovery with a new scar and new pain meds, but with no memory of the past seven hours of your hospital stay.

In a recent dream, for some reason my memory was improving. I have been teased in the past for my inability to remember certain details of stories, or not realizing I am telling a story to a friend who was a part of the story itself. This dream was great in that sense, because I was remembering everything! I could tell you what color shirt my best friend had been wearing on the fourth day of high school; I could remember the recipe to my mother’s famous foods without needing to look things up; I was remembering everything and I loved it!

At least in the beginning.

As my memories began coming back, so did the memories I didn’t want, namely those of being in the hospital as a child. I began to remember being taken away from my parents in pre-op, wheeled down unfamiliar halls and taken in to stark white operating rooms, things I had previously been too drugged up for to comprehend. But that wasn’t it. These memories became increasingly upsetting as I began to remember times when I was actually no longer conscious, when I would have been sedated under heavy anesthetic. I started to ‘remember’ lying on the operating table under bright florescent lights, as the doctors began using a scaple to cut open my stomach. I ‘remembered’ watching them remove my kidney, how they talked about their vacation plans while I lay motionless with monitors hooked up to every part of me. I hated these memories. As more and more upsetting memories came flooding back to me about being in the hospital, I began experiencing the pain that those event would have caused. The scars on my stomach and side began burning, and I woke up with my heart racing. I looked around my room, felt across my stomach, realized I had only been dreaming, and was for the first time grateful for my inconsistent memory.