Werewolves, demons, zombies, and ghouls are no big deal when you compare them side-by-side
with some of the real, living, and sometimes undead, people accused of being legitimate
monsters.
Giovanni Aldini is perhaps best known for the experiments he performed on the body of
a man named George Foster, a criminal who was hanged in 1803 for killing his wife and
son.
Aldini had hoped that applying electricity to the recently deceased criminal might help
him develop a method to resuscitate drowning victims.
It didn't work but it did inspire a pretty well-known horror icon.
Yup, we're talking good ol' Frankenstein's monster.
"It's alive!
It's alive!
IT’S ALIVE IT’S ALIVE"
Anyway, Foster had only been hanging for an hour when Aldini cut him down and got to work.
According to the Newgate Calendar, Foster's body twitched from the moment electricity
was applied.
"Slowly, the jaw begins to quiver, and the muscles of the face contort into a grotesque
grimace."
Then, his left eye opened, and his legs were "set in motion."
The official records state that someone died of fright not long after seeing what must've
been a truly ghastly sight, making Foster officially a murderer from beyond the grave.
In 1589, rumors had begun circulating in the town of Bedburg about a massive wolf-like
creature, seen prowling the countryside at night, killing livestock and people.
The villagers armed themselves and searched for the beast at night, eventually catching
it... sort of.
According to an account, they surrounded the creature one night only to find a farmer named
Peter Stumpp, who quickly confessed that he was the one terrorizing the countryside, killing
at least 15 people along the way.
He claimed that it had all started when he made a pact with the Devil at 12 years old.
In exchange for his soul, Satan gave him a belt that allowed him to turn into a bloodthirsty
wolf-man.
Stumpp was also accused of taking a demon mistress and eating his own son.
For his gruesome crimes, he was executed on Halloween by breaking on the wheel, then he
was beheaded and burned just in case.
Born in Bavaria in 1952, Anneliese Michel was part of a devoutly religious family, who
believed that she needed to pay penance for her mother's sins.
Her older sister was illegitimate, and when the 8-year-old girl died, the message was
a clear one for the religious family.
A even clearer sign came when Anneliese was 17 and she was diagnosed with epilepsy.
The seizures got worse and worse, and she began showing classic signs of demonic possession.
Religious imagery sent her into a panic, and conventional medicines and treatments were
no help.
During her exorcism, various voices gurgled out of her, claiming to be anyone from Hitler,
Nero of Rome, Judas, and Satan himself.
"And I am Lucifer, the devil in the flesh!"
Michel violently refused food and water, instead spending her hours screaming and beating herself
bloody.
Finally, she died of starvation and pneumonia on July 1, 1976, weighing only 68 pounds.
Decades later, her tragic legacy would inspire 2005's The Exorcism of Emily Rose, a movie
based on the incident.
Two days after checking himself into a hospital in Haiti in 1962, Clairvius Narcisse died.
Afterwards, his body was refrigerated for the 20 hours it took for his family to make
arrangements to have him buried in their plot.
Fast forward 18 years.
His sister, Angelina Narcisse, was in a local market when a man came up to her.
He introduced himself with a nickname she had called Clairvius, and said that he was,
in fact, her brother.
According to Clairvius, their brother had arranged for him to be drugged, abducted,
and sold into slave labor as an actual zombie.
Why?
To score a bigger chunk of their inheritance, of course.
"Duh-doy."
"Yeah, duh-doy."
A Harvard grad student who investigated the situation theorized that Narcisse was given
a potent mixture that contained things like nightshade, henbane, and various hallucinogens.
The resulting state was one very much like death, and when he was exhumed and revived,
the brain damage he'd suffered made Narcisse behave much like the mindless, snuffling zombies
we see on TV.
Jure Grando lived in mid-17th century Kringa, Croatia.
According to witnesses of the time, Grando spent 16 years after his death returning to
walk the night and to visit his widow… and to go door to door in his village, knocking.
Anyone who answered would die soon after.
It only took 16 freaking years for the mayor to finally assemble a group of nine men to
open Grando's grave.
What they allegedly found was a classic vampire: a corpse with a rosy complexion suffering
no decay whatsoever.
Apparently, their first attempt to kill him by staking him through the heart with a hawthorn
branch failed, so they decided to cut off his head.
The vampire started screaming, but the beheading worked, and Count Grando was no more.
Even today the town remembers him with a Vampire Bar, and a plaque dedicated to those nine
that put an end to the vampire's nightly exploits.
"I'm over being a vampire.
It's s---.
So don't believe the hype."