[Music] many of you will have heard of a creepypasta that goes by the name of the alice killings based on a japanese urban legend the alice killings details a series of unsolved murders which took place from 1999 to 2005. each victim supposedly had a playing card placed next to their body with each card having the name alice written on it despite the creepypasta itself being so detailed a quick google search reveals that none of the murders actually took place there are no records of any of the victims nor are there any legitimate news articles which
mention the name of the supposed killer yet the fictitious urban legend might well be based on a very real murderer only the killing didn't take place in japan they took place in spain on february 5th of 2003 18 year old juan francisco ledesma was waiting for a bus at an isolated bus station on the outskirts of a place called barajas it's believed that he heard footsteps behind him but chose not to turn around this proved to be a fatal mistake as the man approaching him was carrying a pistol in his hand the stranger then placed
the barrel of the gun to the back of juan's head and told him to kneel it's possible that the stranger also announced that he was armed as it appeared that juan was so terrified that he opted not to resist and to comply with his attacker he may believe that what was occurring was nothing more than a routine robbery but the stranger intended to take nothing but his victim's life in an instant the stranger pulled the trigger sending a bullet tearing through juan's skull exiting his right eye and killing him instantly the stranger then did something
truly chilling he took out an ace of cups tarot card from his pocket and placed it near the dead man's body it became the man's calling card quite literally and there was a sick irony to the card being placed next to juan's body in tarot reading the ace of cups means joy and inner peace from friends and family but it also suggests that the killer found inner peace from taking the lives of others something which terrified the police officers who made this connection the ace of cups was also found next the body of juan carlos
martin estacio the next victim of the mysterious gunman who was killed with a shot to the back of the head and the same modus operandi was used on the gunman's next three victims with only slight variations on the tarot cards placed next to the bodies it seemed there would be no end to the shooter's killing spree as at the time the spanish police were wholly unequipped to deal with a serial murderer who seemed to have no apparent motive other than his enjoyment of killing but then inexplicably the killer simply handed himself into the police and
his name was alfredo gallan born on april 5th of 1978 in the spanish mining town of puerto llano alfredo gallan was said to be a shy introverted child at the age of 20 with very little in the way of career prospects alfredo enlisted in the spanish army as an officer in the parachute brigade he participated in two peacekeeping missions in a war torn bosnia and was commended for his service there yet after his unit returned to spain he began to display some rather serious behavioral problems following his arrest for car theft alfredo was sent to
a madrid psychiatric hospital where he was diagnosed with anxiety and neurosis he was prescribed a medication which was highly incompatible with alcohol but alfredo refused to give up drinking and the combination of the two had an extremely adverse effect on his mental health after being discharged from the military in 2003 alfredo began working at the barajas airport as a security guard but his rapidly deteriorating mental health resulted in him being fired following numerous clashes with his superiors what followed was a period of unemployment one which seemed to push alfredo over the edge of sanity and
into the realms of murderous bloodlust at his trial it was revealed that alfredo didn't exactly order his victims to kneel before he executed he asked them to i always asked them to and said please they told the prosecutor politeness is the most important thing in life he also told the court that he regretted not being able to kill anyone during his time in the military and the murders were a way for him to know what it felt like to take a life when he was asked if it brought him the peace and satisfaction that the
ace of cups suggested alfredo said no and that it only made him feel indifferent or in his words i felt nothing after a lengthy trial the then 26 year old murderer of the card as he had become known was sentenced to 142 years in prison for six charges of murder and three charges of attempted murder it marked the end of the killing spree of a man who can only be adequately described with one word evil and there is no doubt with alfredo in prison the world is a considerably better and more peaceful place given that
the alice killings was written after alfredo had gone to prison there's a chance that his actions inspired the infamous creepypasta but even if it didn't we can no longer say that there were never any murders with picture cards left at the crime scenes because although alfredo didn't write the word alice on the cards he certainly wrote his own little chapter of serial killer history [Music] we've all heard the urban legend about the poisoned halloween candy right well some of us might also have heard of how those rumors are based on the very real murder of
timothy o'brien at the hands of his own father ronald mcbride deliberately poisoned eight-year-old timothy with a cyanide laced pixie stick in order to claim life insurance money to pay off a hundred thousand dollar debt ronald also gave poison candy to his daughter and three other children in an attempt to make it look like they'd collected it while trick-or-treating but thankfully neither his daughter nor the other children ingested it he was eventually convicted of capital murder during june of 1975 and after being sentenced to death he was executed by lethal injection in march of 1984. but
what about people giving out illegal drugs to trick-or-treaters on halloween night surely there's nothing more than a horrifying but very fictional story after all what kind of drug addict just gives away their prized narcotic to an unsuspecting child well they hate to break it to you friends but it's true on sunday october 29th 2017 a community trick-or-treating event was held in casino wisconsin the safety conscious event involved parents accompanying their children on a trick-or-treating session during daylight hours and was said to give parents peace of mind regarding their children's security and whereabouts yet it seems
one of the properties they visited the afternoon was occupied by someone with less than innocent intentions after accompanying his toddler to the event one father arrived back home and began sorting through the candy his child had been given it was then that he saw a small plastic baggie with a yellow powder inside of it police chief mark wachow later told the press that the father was going through the candy and he finds a really small clear plastic packet about the size of a quarter we thought it looked like pop rocks candy in that little baggie
but the crystalline powder tested positive for methamphetamine chief wachow said that he immediately alerted families to dispose of the candy collected from the event fearing there may be more crystal meth bags surreptitiously dropped in other trick-or-treaters buckets i think people were pretty upset he continued but that's what we want we want people to get upset and come forward and give us information we're already getting tips as you can imagine the incident terrified the local community and teachers at the local kishena primary school barred students from bringing any of their candy to class they released a
statement via their facebook page stating that the kps will be providing cookies popcorn and plenty of candy for our students to ensure it is safe for them chief wacow admitted that drugs had infested the kashena community for years with heroin and crystal methamphetamine being the main culprits yet halloween of 2017 marked the first time that any had made their way into halloween candy we're seeing such a big increase of people outside the reservation from milwaukee and the chicago area bringing lethal drugs in here he said we've been targeting them pretty good in kicking some people
off the reservation when we catch them but we've never seen anything like this before whoever handed out crystal meth to children that night has yet to be apprehended but despite the cushina police efforts to do so it's highly unlikely that the perpetrator will ever be properly identified after all the children and their parents visited hundreds of different homes that afternoon and frankly the meth could have been for many of them someone in the casino community wanted a child to ingest one of the most highly addictive and highly toxic narcotics known to man and although it's
not clear why they want that to happen their motives must be evil beyond all reasoning [Music] whenever the subject of urban legends arises there's a good chance that one particular tale will rear its ugly head as the story goes a pair of young friends pay a visit to a traveling carnival and decide to patronize its rather creepy looking haunted house at some point the children see a mock-up of a human corpse one that looks a little too real and on closer inspection they're horrified to discover that it's no mere model what they've been looking at
was an actual cadaver but as they run screaming from the attraction not a soul believes them the next day some police officers hear rumors of the corpse in the haunted house but when he arrives to investigate the circus is long gone along with the body in the haunted house it makes for a good campfire tale but never in a million years would someone believe such a far-fetched story however in reality the story is true there really was a human corpse being used as part of an attraction at a traveling carnival and the corpse belonged to
a man named elmer mccurdy elmer mccurdy was born in the state of maine on january 1st of 1880 he was the son of an unmarried 17 year old named sadie mccurdy while the identity of his father remains unknown rumor has it that elmer's father was actually his mother's cousin but in order to save sadie the embarrassment and shame of raising an inbred in illegitimate child her brother george and his wife helen adopted the younger elmer and raised him as their own and the truth of his birth became known to him a highly disturbed elmer became
incredibly resentful and was said to become unruly and rebellious by his teenage years he had become a heavy drinker a habit he continued until his dying day a few years later elmer departed maine and began drifting around the eastern united states he briefly gained employment as a lead miner and plumber but was unable to hold down a job due to his rampant alcoholism in 1907 lack of career prospects led elmer to join the united states army where he was trained as a machine gun operator as well as in the use of nitroglycerin for demolition purposes
following his discharge from the military elmer met up with an old army friend in kansas whereupon he engaged in a burglary spree he was arrested on november 19th of 1910 with a variety of what police called criminal paraphernalia including chisels hacksaws funnels for nitroglycerin gunpowder and money sacks yet he was later found not guilty after a judge deemed that the tools could well be intended for work purposes following his release elmer threw himself into the criminal lifestyle and began a career as a train and bank robber yet his career as an armed robber was short-lived
and barely a year into his illicit endeavors he committed what would be his final robbery on october 4th of 1911 elmer and two accomplices planned to rob a katy train near okessa oklahoma they had heard that the train contained four hundred thousand dollars in cash that was intended as royalty payment to the osage nation however in a twist of ineptitude mccurdy and the men mistakenly stopped a passenger train instead and made off with only forty six dollars two bottles of whiskey and the train conductor's watch a newspaper article later called it one of the smallest
robberies in history and to drown his sorrows over the bungled job elmer resumed his heavy drinking he didn't believe for a second that such a measly hall would draw the ire of local law enforcement but he was wrong and in the early morning hours of october 7th a posse of three sheriffs tracked elmer to the hayshed that he was hiding in using bloodhounds in a newspaper interview published shortly afterward sheriff bob fenton recalled it began at just seven o'clock we were standing around waiting for him to come out when the first shot was fired at
me it missed but he kept shooting at all of us for about an hour we fired back every time we could in the end elmer was killed by a single gunshot wound to the chest and his body was taken to an undertaker in pawhuska oklahoma where he embalmed the body with an arsenic-based preservative typically used in embalming in that era to preserve a body for a long period when no next of kin were known he then shaved the face dressed the body in a suit and stored it in the back of the funeral home many
weeks passed and elmer's body remained unclaimed but the undertaker refused to bury or release the body until he was paid for his services it was then that the undertaker decided to exhibit elmer's dead body in order to recoup his losses he dressed the corpse in street clothes placed a rifle in the hands and stood it up in the corner of the funeral home charging just a nickel for the privilege the undertaker allowed visitors to see what he called the bandit who wouldn't give up as a result elmer's corpse became a popular attraction at the funeral
home so much so that it drew the attention of a pair of traveling carnival promoters then on october 6th of 1916 a man claiming to be elmer mccurdy's long-lost brother contacted the oklahoma sheriff seeking permission to take the body to san francisco for a proper burial the following day the man arrived at the undertaker's office with a series of forged legal documents forcing the undertaker to release the body into their custody in reality the men were not relatives of elmer's they were james and charles patterson owners of the great patterson carnival shows the pattersons then
shipped the body to kansas where it was featured in their carnival shows as the outlaw who would never be captured alive and then in 1922 james patterson sold his operation to a man named louis sunny sonny then featured elmer's corpse in his traveling museum of crime which featured wax replicas of famous outlaws such as jesse james in 1933 it was acquired by movie director dwayne esper to promote his exploitation film entitled narcotic the corpse was placed in the lobby of a movie theater with the caption dead dope fiend with esper claiming that he had personally
killed the man after he had robbed a drug store to support his habit by the time esper came into possession of elmer's body it had become so badly mummified that the skin had become hard and shrivelled which esper claimed was proof of his supposed drug abuse following the promotional run of narcotic elmer's corpse was stored in a los angeles warehouse and eventually made a brief appearance in the 1967 film she freak then the following year the owner of the warehouse sold the body along with a series of wax figures for ten thousand dollars to the
owner of the hollywood wax museum this is how a genuine human corpse started to become mistaken for fake and an amusing but disturbing twist it was returned to the museum following its rental by another waxwork exhibit who claimed the body was not lifelike enough to be an exhibit the hollywood wax museum then sold the corpse to the owner of the pike an amusement zone in long beach california and by 1976 elmer's corpse was hanging in the pike's laugh-in-the-dark fun house exhibition following its display at the long beach fun house december of 1976 saw the production
crew of the television show the six million dollar man used the exhibit for an episode entitled carnival of spies during the shoot a prop man moved what was thought to be a wax mannequin that was hanging from a set of gallows when the mannequin's arm broke off a human bone and muscle tissue were visible underneath the prop man was understandably horrified and immediately contacted the police who in turn transported elmer's mummified corpse to the los angeles coroner's office the next day a coroner conducted an autopsy and determined that the body was that of a human
male who had died of a gunshot wound to the chest by this point elmer's body was completely petrified covered in wax and had been covered with layers of phosphorus paint but there were enough distinguishing features on his body to confirm that it was indeed the long deceased elmer mccurdy a few days later the grim tale of mccurdy's postmortal journey was heard all over the united states out of a combination of respect and compassion several local funeral homes offered to buy mccurdy free of charge but officials decided to wait to see if any living relatives would
come forward to claim the body lacking any living relatives the chief medical examiner of the los angeles county was then convinced to transport the body back to oklahoma for burial and on april 22nd of 1977 elmer was finally put to rest at the summit view cemetery in guthrie oklahoma the funeral was attended by almost 300 people all of whom wished to pay their last respects to a man whose corpse had been so monstrously defiled to ensure that elmer's body would never again be moved from its final resting place two feet of concrete was poured over
the casket meaning nothing short of an excavation crew would be able to remove and exploit his corpse ever again learning of elmer's story makes for a pretty horrifying revelation especially when his tale is considered to be nothing more but urban legend a campfire tale to be shared among scare happy boy scouts but this is what separates urban legends from straight up fiction fictional stories are provably false and include made up names made up places and made up events whereas urban legends seem to consistently be based on a grain of truth no matter how small that
grain of truth might be so the next time someone dismisses the body in the haunted house as nothing but an urban legend remind them of elmer mccurdy and tell them that the truth is even more frightening than the fiction because it wasn't a haunted house where the man's long dead corpse hung from a set of gallows it was a fun house somewhere that no person's lifeless remains should ever be interred [Music] there is a certain urban legend which haunts medical schools all over the world one which details how a medical student prepares to work on
a cadaver during a gross anatomy laboratory only to discover that the one assigned to him for dissection is relative of his for many it is their worst fear and impersonal practice suddenly made deeply personal by the sudden appearance of a friend or loved one according to the legend the relative who turns up as a cold cadaver on the dissection table is most frequently a parent one who had recently disappeared or who hadn't been seen by the student for years because of a divorce it seems like another one of those truly nightmarish scenarios that are too
perfectly horrifying to be true but in actual fact there are documented cases of it actually occurring according to dr clarence e mcdonald jr during early 1982 a medical student at the university of alabama school of medicine attended a medical dissection class which featured nine different cadavers as the presiding professor removed the clean white sheets from each of the corpses the student witnessed something horrifying lying on one of the dissection tables cold as a stone was the student's great aunt the student informed the professor that one of her relatives was a subject of their class and
the proceedings were immediately suspended only to be resumed when the state anatomical board provided the university with a substitute cadaver ironically the student later claimed that she and her great aunt had once discussed the merits of donating one's body to medical science she just never expected it would be her that would be the one to dissect it considering the close proximity of the family members i suppose it was only a matter of time before a much-told urban legend finally became a reality but there are still many who say that such a thing is an impossibility
the numerous checks are performed to ensure that no medical student is faced with the prospect of butchering one of their deceased loved ones but even if such checks are in place they only had to fail once before such a morbid fabrication became a concrete reality for one unfortunate student [Music] many legends surround the life and death of infamous outlaw george big nose parrot some say he was a member of butch cassidy's wild bunch while others say he rode with frank and jesse james however old west historians generally agree that parrot was more of a run-of-the-mill
horse thief and highwaymen although his gang enjoyed a successful run of stagecoach and train robberies during the late 1870s the idea that he was part of a larger and more notorious outfit are little more than rumors there is a another supposed urban legend surrounding george parrott and a considerably more gruesome one at that some say that upon being captured and lynched by an angry mob of wyoming citizens george's skin and bones were fashioned in the collector's items then sold to the highest bidder given their outlandish nature many dismissed these rumors as completely false if he
didn't ride with the james gang there's no way something so hideous occurred following his death however it may equally surprise and appall you to discover that these reports were no mere rumors they're completely factual george became a highly wanted man in 1878 after he and his gang murdered two lawmen after a botched train robbery the officers traced the outlaws to their camp at a place called rattlesnake canyon but they were soon spotted by a gang lookout the robbers stamped out the campfire and hid in a bush then when the two lawmen walked into their camp
they were subjected to a fatal ambush one was immediately shot in the head while the other was shot in the back as he tried to flee upon learning of the ambush the local sheriff put out a ten thousand dollar bounty for the gang which was later doubled to twenty thousand dead or alive the following year george and his gang carried out a daring daylight robbery against a cash convoy containing a u.s army payroll comprising 15 soldiers and two officers as the convoy approached a shallow river crossing the gang donned mass and stationed themselves at a
turn in the trail they then proceeded to ambush and capture the lead element of soldiers then captured the rear element of the soldiers which was guarding the cash wagon depending on who you asked at the time the gang stole between fourteen thousand dollars and due to the audacious and scandalous nature of the raid the federal government threw everything they had at the effort to find and arrest the gang yet it wasn't the efforts of federal authorities that ended up with the men being brought to justice it was one of the gang's loose tongues that landed
them in trouble a member of the gang named dutch charlie got himself extremely drunk in montana's mile city and began mouthing off about the raid of the u.s army payroll wagon as well as the fact that he had participated in the murders of two wyoming lawmen dutch was completely unaware of the huge bounty on his head and when someone overheard him giving away information to identify himself they rushed to local law enforcement in an effort to claim some of the money all four members of the gang were arrested in one fell swoop and george parrot
was returned to wyoming to face justice following his trial on april 2nd of 1881 george was sentenced to hang for his crimes but attempted to escape from the rollins town jail after managing to break free of the shackles george then hid in a washroom until the jailer walked inside then using his own detached shackles as a makeshift weapon george struck the jailer over the head and fractured his skull however the jailer not only maintained consciousness but he managed to put up one heck of a fight and called out to his wife for assistance grabbing a
pistol the jailer's wife managed to talk parrot back into his cell under pain of death it's believed she told him that hanging would be a quicker death than getting gut shot and that the husband and wife jailer team would ensure he died a slow and painful death unless he complies news of the escape attempt spread through the town and the incensed citizenry began making their way to the jail enraged at the near mortal wounding of one of their own while the jailer lay in a nearby hospital recovering from his grievous wounds masked men with pistols
burst into the jail and dragged parrot from his cell but these men were no rescue party they were a lynch mob and in front of more than 200 of the townsfolk they strung george parrot up from a telegraph pole and watched as he strangled to death following george's grim demise two doctors named thomas maggie and john eugene osborne took possession of his body claiming they wished to study the outlaws brain for clues so to his criminality the top section of parrot's skull was crudely sawn off and the cap was presented to maggie's 16-year-old medical assistant
lillian heath heath became the first female doctor in wyoming and is said to have used the cap as an ashtray a pen holder and a doorstop the doctors also removed the skin from george's thighs and chest before sending it to a tannery in denver colorado where it was made into a pair of shoes and a medical bag these were then kept by john osborne who wore the shoes to his inaugural ball after being elected as the first democratic governor of the state of wyoming parrot's dismembered body was then stored in a whiskey barrel filled with
assault solution for about a year while the mad doctors continued their gruesome experiments on him only a year after his death he was buried in the yard behind dr mcgee's office during the years that followed the desecration of george's body was slowly forgotten until may 11th of 1950 when construction workers unearthed the whiskey barrel filled with bones while working on the rollins national bank inside the barrel was a skull with the top sawn off as well as the shoes said to have been made from george's thigh flesh the then octogenarian dr lillian heath was then
contacted and in her shame she had her human skull ashtray sent to rollins for a proper burial some found the idea that it was part of george's skull to be a rather dubious claim but it was found to fit the skull in the barrel perfectly and dna testing later confirmed the remains were those of george parrott these days the shoes made from george's skin are on permanent display at the carbon county museum in rollins together with the lower section of the outlaw skull the shackles he escaped from during the time in the rollins jail as
well as the skull ashtray are on show at the union pacific museum in omaha nebraska but the medicine bag made from his skin has never been found the claim that a democrat politician wore the shoes to his inaugural ball is just one of the reasons that george's story has taken on the status of an urban legend few people wish to believe that a man of such high status did something so utterly savage as to where a garment made from human remains it's clear that he regretted the move which is why he had them stored in
the whiskey barrel before burying but the fact remains that actually happened so next time someone tells you that human skin shoes or skull ashtrays are nothing but an urban legend tell them to visit the carbon county museum in rollins wyoming so they can see the evidence with their own two eyes [Music] around the year 2003 there were a number of reported sightings of something very strange and very frightening wandering the woods near the town of malls in western switzerland people spoke of a tall figure dressed in a dark boiler suit complete with combat boots and
a long flowing camouflage cape but most unsettling of all the figures seem to be wearing a world war one era gas mask the kind with a long trunk-like tube leading away from the mouthpiece by the time the figure was given the nickname of the ghost of malls or leiloyan many had dismissed the sightings as mere hearsay a kind of suburban legend manufactured by skittish hikers and bored teenagers but as the years went on it seemed that there were far more credibility to the sightings than people first thought and what had once been nothing but an
urban legend grew more and more tangible by the day those who cited leiloyan often describe being overcome with a sense of paralyzing dread or fear with some even claiming it was an otherworldly entity that emanated some kind of supernatural force the rumors of such a being seeped so deep into maul's collective consciousness that some were too afraid to go outside at night while many were too afraid to venture into the forest at all children would come running home to the parents screaming in fright claiming they had spotted leiloyan staring at them through the trees britain's
daily mail quoted one swiss farmer as saying that families simply won't go into the forest anymore no one here finds the story funny maul's police force soon began regular patrols of the forest searching for the ghostly figure in order to question him and discover his intentions one municipal officer released a public statement which read the situation is delicate because we basically have nothing against this person but since he arouses these fears we are going to hold a meeting to see if we can find a way of locating him and discouraging him from behaving as he
does despite his horrifying appearance those that encountered leiloyan never described him as being aggressive or dangerous most sightings involved him simply walking through the trees and sometimes even on well-traveled footpaths as if he had nothing to hide rarely did leiloyan ever acknowledge those who cited him even if a glance or two was exchanged occasionally he would simply stare at those who cited him but on one occasion when a woman spotted him while picking flowers in the meadow her presence seemed to startle ley lyon who then bounded back into the safety of the trees the woman
a resident of malls by the name of marianne de clue said although the man seemed harmless the encounter was still very unsettling quote it was a rainy sunday he had a cap a dark cloak and his gas mask she said what could possibly be going through his head i don't know but it was unforgettable and unpleasant i hope i don't run into him again despite the compelling witness statements from those that claimed to have cited leiloyan there was never any physical or photographic evidence of such an entity the fact that some even claimed that the
man left no footprints behind was even more incredulous and this seemed to further cement the idea that leiloyan was nothing more than a fiction yet in 2013 a swiss hiker happened to be walking through the woods with his young son when he happened to spot the ominous figure walking down a forest path this time he didn't have to rely on the belief of others for his story's legitimacy he had a camera with him and as leiloyan walked away from him back turned the man took a quick picture of the figure to prove what he had
seen the man offered to share the photograph with swiss media outlets and when contacted by one particular publication he had this to say of the encounter i came across him near the marshes i approached about 10 meters away he had a military cape boots and an army gas mask an antique type i believe it measured more than 1.9 meters he stared at me and turned his back on me and went away quietly he or she by the way was not aggressive but if i had been alone i would have apprehended him to tell him that
it scares children except that i was with mine who was scared and i had to reassure so i stayed cautious and just took a picture with my phone when he left you never know maybe he's crazy the photograph would go on to be published in the swiss french news provider les matan and generated a huge amount of interest especially from those who had once dismissed the sightings of leiloyan as a mere urban legend from then on leiloyan who had been nothing more than just an obscure local phenomenon was thrust into the international limelight what followed
were legions of intrigued tourists ghost hunters and journalists all wishing for their own encounter with leilon some were armed with camera other with actual weaponry and their presence turned the normally sleepy raw area into a veritable circus of curiosity yet around the same time sightings of leiloyon seem to drop off altogether one might expect such a saturation of forest walkers to at least dredge up a handful of encounters yet leiloyan seemed to have disappeared entirely some suggested that he had been killed after a run-in with a group of more fearful or aggressive hunters while some
reiterated that he had never existed to begin with and the photograph of him was nothing more than elaborate fake but one day as a hiker was walking down one of the many forest paths outside of malls he found something that laid the issue to rest once and for all the hiker found a neatly folded boiler suit and camouflage cape laying in the dirt at the edge of the trail and sitting on top of them was a world war one era gas mask but that's not all the hiker found they also found a handwritten note one
which was entitled the death certificate and testament of the ghost of mauls the note explained that by publishing the photograph the laymatan was to blame for the death of someone the author described as a very harmless being they went on to say that the hunt for leiloyan had made it too risky for him to continue his wanders through the forest which were described as a real therapy of happiness for some reason the nothing refers to the works of author and philosopher leopold van zakar mazak a utopian thinker who espoused socialist and humanist ideals since the
letter was worded in a similar manner to that of a note that someone who would be taking their own life would leave some began to speculate that the laloyan had taken his own life although upon reading it it's quite clear that the author was referring to the symbolic death of la luyan and not necessarily the death of the person behind the gas mask despite the chain of compelling physical evidence coupled with the numerous sightings the truth behind la loyan remains obscure to this day there are some who insist that the whole thing was a complete
fabrication while others have more outlandish theories detailing how laloyan was some sort of interdimensional interloper the most likely explanation seems to be that the man was little more than an eccentric hiker one who gained a bizarre gratification by dressing in his post-apocalyptic pseudo-military costume yet the fact remains that nobody really knows for certain and as time goes on we are less and less likely to get any legitimate concrete answers [Music] down in arkansas's claiborne county there are those that talk of who the locals call the dog boy the dog boy is said to be a
half-human half-canine hybrid the product of a beastial affair between man and his proverbial best friend the dog boy lived in the woods outside of little rock hunting birds and rabbits or any other kind of flesh that he could feast on it was this huge weird looking dog thing with long brown hair creepy eyes and great big arms and hands one resident told the river valley ozark newspaper in 2007 actually saw him this one time he walked right out in front of me and glared at me then ran off into the woods these days most believe
the stories of the dog boy to be pure legend yet little do they know he is based on a very real person the dog boys stories seem to center around a place known as the garrett house a stately residence constructed in the town of quitman during the 1890s in the early 50s the property came into the ownership of floyd and elene bettis a couple in their mid-30s who for many years have been trying unsuccessfully to have children rumor has it that in the time before eileen first fell pregnant the couple stopped going to church and
strange lights could be seen emanating from the garrett house after nightfall this may well be playful exaggeration but what we know for certain is that in 1954 the betisa's first son was born a boy they named gerald even before he learned to walk and talk the townsfolk observed that gerald was a difficult child his parents were good people but gerald was brat vicious and cruel one local historian said this historian also claimed that gerald developed some very unusual and very disturbing habits early on in life including collecting dead cats and dogs it's this not a
furry pharaoh appearance that led to him being nicknamed dog boy he would catch stray animals and torture them we would hear them how stated quitman native mary nell hollibert another resident nelda kennedy backed up hollibert's claims i'd almost forgotten about these cats and dogs he had but he even added on to the house so he could keep more of them inside they said as a result of their son's malicious behavior gerald's parents became extremely fearful of him and as the boy grew older he wielded a terrifying amount of control over them by the time he
was a teenager locals say gerald towered over his elderly parents at a gargantuan six foot four while weighing in at close to 300 pounds he kept his parents virtually imprisoned in the upstairs part of that house mary halliburt said it feed them but only when he decided it was time for them to eat there are multiple reports of gerald violently assaulting his elderly father and one such article pulled from the arkansas democrat gazette archives states that gerald actually threw his father from an upstairs window at one point during his teens the article goes on to
state that floyd bettis only survived because he hung onto a window ledge until local law enforcement showed up to rescue him nelda kennedy was reported to have said i was afraid of gerald if you had ever seen his eyes i seemed to glow at night one time he came over and got onto us because we had trimmed a magnolia tree that overlapped into his backyard and when they started cleaning that house up one of his uncles came to my house to borrow a gun because he was afraid that gerald would get riled up according to
the haber spring sun times floyd bettis went on to pass away at home in 1981 after a short illness saw his health deteriorate rapidly yet there are some who insist that floyd was murdered by his own son and that he was pushed down the staircase and died from a broken neck in the early 80s gerald's mother aline bettis took a nasty fall and suffered a broken hip this required a trip to the hospital the same hospital where mary halibird was employed as a nurse she would later claim to have witnessed gerald's horrific treatment of his
mother stating that he was slapping her around and telling her i'm going to have you arrested if you tell anyone what i did alibird filed a complaint with the local police and not long after this incident aleene was placed into adult protective services and removed from gerald's company permanently some time later gerald built a sun room on the back of the house and started a cottage industry selling marijuana to local youths once local law enforcement caught wind of this they arrested him and gerald was sent to prison after being convicted of distributing illegal substances the
arkansas democrat gazette archives confirmed that a 34 year old gerald floyd bettis died in prison during may of 1988 with the cause of death listed as a drug overdose but it seems gerald would never truly die as his terrible story birthed a brand new one the chilling legend of the dog boy when aileen bettis passed away in 1995 mary halliburt's niece inherited the house hollybird has cared for aleene during her twilight years and her kind treatment had led to her family being written into the dying woman's will shortly after aleene's death there was an estate
sale at the house with numerous possessions and antiques being sold for discount prices to cover the cost of elene's funeral but as you can imagine this required digging through the mess that gerald had left behind in order to sort the valuables from the trash hollybird's niece reba carter claims that in the process of cleaning the house up they found numerous stashes of small animal bones all over and if this is true it proves once and for all the arkansas dog boy was responsible for murdering hundreds of small defenseless animals over the years so while the
legend of the half human dog boy might be completely fictitious the stories arose from a very real and very frightening evil [Music] for years now there have been a number of rumors in urban legends concerning some very shady medical practices by the u.s federal government some of the most vocal proponents of such theories suggest that the government is in the business of procuring aborted fetuses which are then shipped to various research facilities for experimentation such terrifying theories sound like the stuff of grim dark science fiction and those who suggest they might be true are often
censored or mercilessly ridiculed but horrifyingly there was a time in u.s history where deceased children were indeed used for experimentation and the name given to these experiments was project sunshine according to a 1994 article from the washington post federal researchers conducted radiation tests on stillborn babies in chicago during the 1950s and these experiments were just one small facet of a wider program of human experimentation during the cold war project sunshine was a large scale study conducted by the newly formed atomic energy commission to determine the long-term effects of nuclear fallout on humans and was conducted
in the aftermath of the post-world war ii nuclear tests that took place in the deserts of nevada according to the documents released by the department of energy scientists cremated more than 40 newly deceased infants and measured the amounts of radioactivity in the remains the documents also state that it's unlikely that the parents were notified of this or even if permission was obtained for the use of their children in the experiments the release of the long classified documents detailing the chicago bay project caused widespread outrage during the clinton administration and raised some serious questions regarding the
ethical standards of cold war research projects energy secretary hazel r o'leary was so appalled by the radiation experiments that she lodged a formal complaint with president clinton who in turn appointed an inter-agency committee to determine whether the victims should be compensated although a handful of project sunshine's research results were published in the mid-1950s most of the files were contained in secret government documents that were only declassified in 1994 it was discovered that the project was led by a man by the name of willard libby a university of chicago scientist and senior atomic energy commission official
who had since passed away according to steve golson a department of energy radiation specialist scientists gathered data on the babies to determine how much fallout humans could bear and that the experiment was quote unquote also useful in deciding what the health effects were of the nuclear weapons tests being conducted at the time the declassified documents stated that researchers used babies because they provided the best measure of the amount of radiation in the body that was due to nuclear fallout rather than from other sources such as ingesting irradiated food according to the documents all the babies
used were stillborn in the early to mid 50s and none of them died as a result of radiation treatments steve golson acknowledged that some key aspects of the study remain unknown or were deliberately obscured with one such detail being the method used to obtain what we're chillingly referred to as samples other information excluded from the documents includes how much the parents of the deceased infants knew about the experiments and what happened to the remains after the tests were completed shockingly once the news of project sunshine had broken a retired los alamos researcher defended the tests
in a widely publicized interview there was probably no other way for science to obtain this kind of information at the time don patterson said the use of rats or other animals would not obtain the same results this was a case of children who were no longer beneficial to the population being able to provide information that was enormously important for the rest of the world's children aside from the stillborn babies project sunshine researchers measured the levels of radioactive particles left in cheese milk and animal bones as a result of the nevadan nuclear tests and discovered that
the residual effect of the fallout did not present a threat to human health yet as horrifying as the experiments may be project sunshine was not the only extremely unethical experiment performed during the early phases of the cold war in 1950 the us navy conducted operation sea spray a simulated biological attack over the city of san francisco using the bacteria seratia marcescens although the bacteria was considered harmless at the time numerous citizens contracted a pneumonia-like illness and at least one person died as a result in 1981 when the relevant documents were declassified and made public the
family of the person who tragically lost their life sued the government for gross negligence but shockingly a federal judge ruled in favor of the government and the family were denied compensation in 1952 a member of the sloan-kennering institute injected live cancer cells into prisoners of the ohio state penitentiary over 300 healthy females were injected with the cells without being properly informed of the potential health effects even though doctors knew very well that the introduction of such cells might cause cancer in those experimented on then in may of 1955 us military scientists conducted what was known
as operation big buzz which involved air dropping over 300 000 mosquitoes over parts of the u.s state of georgia the goal of the experiment was to determine if enough mosquitoes could survive being deployed from the air in order to feed on the humans below if the experiment was successful it would prove that such mosquitoes could be deliberately infected with a variety of deadly diseases which they would then pass on to the people who they fed from without the supporting data it would be difficult to believe such experiments actually took place especially with the strenuous denials
of the then presiding governments but as time passes and the documentation of such experiments continues to be released we're given an insight into just how little the federal government once valued the lives of its citizens it's enough to make you wonder what else will be revealed over the next hundred years or so and just how many of us are being experimented on right now without our knowledge or our consent hey friends the [ __ ] that was too hey friends thanks for listening click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations i release
new videos every monday wednesday and friday at 7 pm eastern standard time if you got a story be sure to submit them to my subreddit r let's read official and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video and if you want to support me even more grab early access to all future narrations and bonus content over on patreon or click that big join button to hear about the extra perks offered for channel members and check out the let's read podcast where you can hear all of these stories and big compilations and save huge
on data located anywhere you listen to podcasts links in the description below thanks so much friends and remember pennsylvania and north carolina are the best states in the world
