Coventry Spectre

On January 22, 1985, the Coventry Freeman organization were having a dinner event at St. Mary's Guildhall in Coventry, U.K. Everyone in the group had her or his head bowed in prayer when this photo was taken -- including a towering, mysterious figure standing top left.

The strange cowled spectre appears to be wearing clothing much like a monk's frock from another time. Lord Mayor Walter Brandish, who was present at the dinner, said there was no one at the event who was dressed like that, and he could not explain the presence of the interloper in the photo.

The guildhall served as the combined headquarters of the united guilds of the Holy Trinity, St. Mary, St. John the Baptist and St. Katherine.

Following the suppression of guilds in 1547, for a time it served as the city's armoury and (until 1822) its treasury, as well as the headquarters for administration for the city council until a new Council House was officially opened in 1920.


The Building has a vaulted undercroft which is currently a restaurant.
You can even rent the room for weddings or other things.






What is the truth?


There is not much information to find.


The picture does not look fake. But there are things that that could create this effect.
It could be an object, like a standing armor.
Or a shadow drop on someones face.


I was first wondering why someone takes a picture during a pray.
But that could have been a smart reason of the photographer. It must be difficult to make a photo in a room with not much light and everybody moving. So he made the photo when everybody was not moving... during the pray. So the photo will have enough light and will be sharp.



The mysterious figure can be everything, so it will always be a mistery.

Maggots In The Brain

This is the case of Mr. Shota Fujiwara, a japanese man from Gifu Prefecture.
He complains incessantly about a persistent headache.
Mr. Shota Fujiwara loves his sashimi and sushi very much to the extent of trying to get them as "alive and fresh" as can be.

He developes a severe headache for the past 3 years and has put it off as migraine and stress from work.



 It was only when he started losing his psycomotor skills that he seeks medical help.

A brain scan and x-ray reveals little however.
But upon closer inspection by a specialist on his scalp, the doctor noticed small movements beneath his skin.

It was then that the doctor did a local anaesthetic to his scalp and discovered the cause when tiny worms crawled out.

A major surgery was thus immediately called for and the extent of the infestation was horrific!

The worms on the head of Shota Fujiwara are actually the parasites that usually found on the body of raw fish.





Another case.

A man gets an ingrown hair on his head.
After some time, it gets infected and the man gets a boil.
Weeks are passing and the boil is still growing every day.

The hair and infection are eroding downwards to his skull.
People keep telling him to go to the hospital for checking his boil.
But he refuse to do so.

The infection reaches his skull.
Bone, once infected, presents little barrier to the spread of infection to contiguous bone and so it spreads within his skull.
The bone dies and begins to erode.

People are noticing a smell and keep telling him to see a doctor.
The smell is starting to attracts flies which begin to lay eggs in his festering wound and maggots take hold.

The infection breaches the inner layer of his skull and reaches the meninges.
Though their tensile strength is impressive the meninges are quite thin and the infection breaches them.

Your brain just isn't supposed to be on your outside and presents almost no barrier to anything when exposed. 
Now, infection and maggots set to work on his brain.

This makes him feel a little wobbly on his feet and he decides to see a doctor.
He walks in to the Stanford ER and doctors found several maggots in his brain.



What is the truth?

This is claimend to be true, but I can not say for shure it really happend.

On the medical matter, maggots can infest the human brain, evidently, and so can certain types of tapeworm larvae.
But these conditions are fairly rare, and the chance of resulting from ingrown hairs or sushi is close to impossible.

Tapeworms and roundworms and their eggs which abounds in all fishes fresh or saltwater can only be killed by thorough cooking and/or freezing the fish to between 4 degC - 0 degsC.
The eggs of these parasites can only be killed if it is cooked or frozen to the said temperatures for a week or more.

Think twice about that raw dish next time... or you might get a headache.

January Scary Picdump

Enjoy your monthly scary picdump with some scary gifs!

The Brown Lady

This portrait of "The Brown Lady" ghost is arguably the most famous and well-regarded ghost photograph ever taken.

The ghost is thought to be that of Lady Dorothy Townshend, wife of Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount of Raynham, residents of Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England in the early 1700s.
It was rumored that Dorothy, before her marriage to Charles, had been the mistress of Lord Wharton.
Charles suspected Dorothy of infidelity.

Although according to legal records she died and was buried in 1726, it was suspected that the funeral was a sham and that Charles had locked his wife away in a remote corner of the house until her death many years later.
Dorothy's ghost is said to haunt the oak staircase and other areas of Raynham Hall.
In the early 1800s, King George IV, while staying at Raynham, saw the figure of a woman in a brown dress standing beside his bed.

She was seen again standing in the hall in 1835 by Colonel Loftus, who was visiting for the Christmas holidays.
He saw her again a week later and described her as wearing a brown satin dress, her skin glowing with a pale luminescence.
It also seemed to him that her eyes had been gouged out.

The next sighting of the "Brown Lady" was made in 1836 by Captain Frederick Marryat, a friend of novelist Charles Dickens, and the author of a series of popular sea novels.
It is said that Marryat requested that he spend the night in the haunted room at Raynham Hall to prove his theory that the haunting was caused by local smugglers anxious to keep people away from the area.


Writing in 1917, Florence Marryat said of her father's experience:

…he took possession of the room in which the portrait of the apparition hung, and in which she had been often seen, and slept each night with a loaded revolver under his pillow.
For two days, however, he saw nothing, and the third was to be the limit of his stay.
On the third night, however, two young men (nephews of the baronet), knocked at his door as he was undressing to go to bed, and asked him to step over to their room (which was at the other end of the corridor), and give them his opinion on a new gun just arrived from London.
My father was in his shirt and trousers, but as the hour was late, and everybody had retired to rest except themselves, he prepared to accompany them as he was.
As they were leaving the room, he caught up his revolver, “in case you meet the Brown Lady,” he said, laughing.
When the inspection of the gun was over, the young men in the same spirit declared they would accompany my father back again, “in case you meet the Brown Lady,” they repeated, laughing also.
The three gentlemen therefore returned in company.

The corridor was long and dark, for the lights had been extinguished, but as they reached the middle of it, they saw the glimmer of a lamp coming towards them from the other end.
“One of the ladies going to visit the nurseries,” whispered the young Townshends to my father.
Now the bedroom doors in that corridor faced each other, and each room had a double door with a space between, as is the case in many old-fashioned houses.
My father, as I have said, was in shirt and trousers only, and his native modesty made him feel uncomfortable, so he slipped within one of the outer doors (his friends following his example), in order to conceal himself until the lady should have passed by.
I have heard him describe how he watched her approaching nearer and nearer, through the chink of the door, until, as she was close enough for him to distinguish the colors and style of her costume, he recognised the figure as the facsimile of the portrait of “The Brown Lady”.
He had his finger on the trigger of his revolver, and was about to demand it to stop and give the reason for its presence there, when the figure halted of its own accord before the door behind which he stood, and holding the lighted lamp she carried to her features, grinned in a malicious and diabolical manner at him.
This act so infuriated my father, who was anything but lamb-like in disposition, that he sprang into the corridor with a bound, and discharged the revolver right in her face.
The figure instantly disappeared - the figure at which for several minutes three men had been looking together – and the bullet passed through the outer door of the room on the opposite side of the corridor, and lodged in the panel of the inner one.
My father never attempted again to interfere with "The Brown Lady of Raynham”.



The photo

This famous photo was taken in September, 1936 by Captain Provand and Indre Shira, two photographers who were assigned to photograph Raynham Hall for Country Life magazine.

This is what happened, according to Shira:
"Captain Provand took one photograph while I flashed the light.
He was focusing for another exposure; I was standing by his side just behind the camera with the flashlight pistol in my hand, looking directly up the staircase.

All at once I detected an ethereal veiled form coming slowly down the stairs. Rather excitedly, I called out sharply: 'Quick, quick, there's something.'
I pressed the trigger of the flashlight pistol.

After the flash and on closing the shutter, Captain Provand removed the focusing cloth from his head and turning to me said: 'What's all the excitement about?'"

Upon developing the film, the image of The Brown Lady ghost was seen for the first time.
It was published in the December 1936 issue of Country Life.


What is the truth?

Experts called in by Country Life stated that the photograph and its negative did not appear to have been interfered with!

Since then, however, some critics have claimed that Shira faked the image by painting grease or a similar substance on the lens in the shape of a figure, or by himself deliberately moving down the stairs during an exposure.
Others claim that the image is an accidental double exposure or that light somehow got into the camera.

After this last sighting in 1936, the Brown Lady has not been seen since.
However some claim that the Brown Lady is still present.