In a small town, South of the city of Kazan, the sun
descends down toward the horizon, past the rows of trees.
The Chelysheva family prepares to make dinner.
It seems that tonight is the same as any other night.
But it’s the last night that 8 year old Maria
Chelysheva can expect to see her family alive again.
Maria Chelysheva watches her father descend into their
home’s root cellar to grab some potatoes for dinner.
He does not return, and Maria’s mother descends
after him to discover what’s taking so long.
Neither parent reemerged from the depths of the
house, so Maria’s brother went in after them.
He did not return, so finally Maria’s
grandmother trekked down into the darkness.
In the end, Maria was forced to sink down into the
gloom to find her entire family dead at the bottom.
What could have taken their lives, one by one,
down at the bottom of that root cellar?
What terrible, eldritch power was
waiting for them in the shadows?
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August 2014, Laishevo, a town in the Republic of
Tatarstan where the Russian Volga and the Kama rivers
meet, 8 year old girl Maria Chelysheva was sitting in her
family’s kitchen with her mother, father, brother, and
grandmother, while everyone pitched in to help with dinner.
Like many others in the area, they had a root cellar
attached to their home, so Maria’s father Mikhail, a
42 year old law professor at Kazan Federal University,
left his family to go grab some things from below.
Some time passed, but Mikhail hadn’t returned.
Confused why her husband was taking so much time down there,
Maria’s mother, Anastasia, age 38, went down looking for him.
More time passed, but neither Mikhail nor Anastasia returned.
Growing more confused, and concerned, Maria’s
18 year old brother Georgy descended down
into the root cellar to look for his parents.
Again, no one returned, and fearing the worst, Maria’s 68
year old grandmother Iraida called their neighbor to tell
them that something strange and suspicious was happening.
Worried about her family, her grandmother couldn’t wait for
help, and went down into the cellar too, never to return.
Now alone, Maria sat in her family’s
kitchen trying to figure out what to do.
Should she go down into the cellar too?
Maybe it was all a trick and her family
was just waiting down there to scare her.
The 8 year old, fearing the worst, bravely
ventured from the safety of her family’s kitchen.
When she came to the door to the
cellar, she saw that it was left open.
A putrid, dead smell emanated from within.
When Maria peered into the cellar, she saw something
that would shake grown men to their very core.
Sprawled across the floor of the cellar she found the
bodies of her father, mother, brother, and grandmother.
By the time the authorities arrived, it was too late, and
any chance that Maria’s family could be saved had passed.
She had gone from being the youngest in a
family of 5, to being the sole survivor.
It’s a tragic story.
but it also brings up questions.
What happened to the Chelysheva
family down in the root cellar?
Was there something sinister waiting down
there in the dark, dampness of the cold ground?
Something as simple and innocuous as potatoes are to blame!
Now I hear you asking, “Brew, how could potatoes cause such
a tragedy?”, but you’ll be surprised to know that this isn’t
the first or only time that potatoes have taken lives..
Glasgow, Scotland, 1918, 61 people from 18 separate
households fell ill after eating a bad batch of potatoes.
The day after, a five year old boy died by strangulation
of his bowel due to his retching and vomiting.
In 1925, a family of 7 were poisoned
by potatoes, killing two of them.
According to medical notes, they experienced
vomiting, exhaustion, and trouble breathing before
they lost consciousness, passing away shortly after.
In North Korea, 1952, facing starvation due
to rampant famine, whole villages of people
had no choice but to eat rotting potatoes.
According to the British Medical Journal,
382 people were affected in one area alone.
52 people ended up hospitalized, and some of the
most intense cases saw individuals dying of heart
failure within 24 hours of eating a rotting potato.
22 people ended up dying, and even those among
them with less severe symptoms, such as irregular
pulse, enlargement of the heart, and blueing lips,
died within 10 days of eating rotten potatoes.
And again, in 1979, at a South London boys school, 78 students
and a number of staff fell ill simultaneously without warning.
They complained of abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, and
for some severe cases, depression of the central nervous
system which controls your involuntary bodily processes,
like your heart beat, your breathing, and even your blinking.
CNS depression, in its most severe forms,
can cause memory loss, slowed heart rate,
and slowed breathing among other symptoms.
Some of the students fell into comas,
and had episodes of convulsive twitching.
Fortunately, five days after the outbreak,
all of the students recovered, although some
of them hallucinated for days after recovery.
After the students recovered, investigators
traced the source of the illness to a bag of
old potatoes leftover from the previous summer.
Either by ignorance or apathy, they were mistakenly
inserted into the school’s automatic peeling
machine, and then served to the staff and students.
Now there is a big difference between these
cases and the story of the Chelysheva family.
Specifically, none of Maria’s
family actually ate any potatoes.
So what actually happened down in that cellar?
Potatoes, while delicious boiled, mashed, or stuck in a stew,
can become incredibly toxic if they’re improperly stored.
It’s because, believe it or not, Potatoes
are actually a variant of nightshade!
Members of the Solanaceae family of plants
include tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, peppers,
tobacco, goji berries, and even petunias!
But the family may be most known by its
most dangerous species, deadly nightshade.
If deadly nightshade sounds familiar to
some of you it’s probably because you’ve
heard it mentioned in movies and books.
It appears in Tim Burton’s, The Nightmare Before Christmas,
used as a poison to incapacitate mad scientist Dr. Finkelstein.
The plant is also used multiple times in Game
of Thrones as a sleeping aid, and as a poison to
execute one particular individual in season 7.
Nightshade plants are unique because they contain
small levels of a substance called an alkaloid.
Alkaloids are any type of base, as in the
opposite of acid, that contains nitrogen.
They can be used for a variety of things, for example,
the pain killer morphine, the malaria drug Quinine, and
the poison Strychnine, all use alkaloids in some form.
Now, the problem with nightshades is that the alkaloids
that they contain are, well, usually bad for us.
The problem for the Chelysheva family, and
our other cases comes down to an alkaloid
in nightshade plants called solanine.
Nightshade plants create solanine as an
insecticide to protect themselves during their
growth, which can wreak havoc in our own bodies.
Eating too much solanine can trigger all of the
symptoms mentioned earlier, including vomiting,
diarrhea, headaches, paralysis of the central nervous
system, and in really severe cases, coma and death.
A 200 pound person would need to eat around 20 pounds of fresh
potatoes to poison themselves, but if a potato has gone bad,
well, that can increase the levels of solanine up to 10 times.
So just 2 pounds of rotten potatoes
could have enough solanine to getcha.
And consider this, a large baked potato weighs around 1 pound.
Just some food for thought.
But what does solanine actually do inside your body?
The exact mechanisms of how solanine poisons us isn’t
entirely clear to even the most well educated of experts.
The main theory, however, is that solanine opens up PT
channels in cell membranes, lowering their “membrane
potential”, the negative or positive electrical charge
of the cell, which leads to a Calcium Ion build up
inside the cell triggering the mechanism for apoptosis.
Ok, now that’s a lot of really complicated
science words, but bear with me for a second.
What that means, in very basic terms, is that by
lowering the electrical charge of a cell, solanine
forces it to pull in too many positively charged
calcium ions, which turns on the cell’s “self-destruct
mechanism”, otherwise known as “apoptosis”.
So the more solanine you consume, the faster,
and more widespread the cellular damage can be.
But this still doesn’t explain what
actually happened down in that root cellar.
Since potatoes are root veggies, the part that we eat
is the root, not the leafy parts, exposure to light
will trigger their growth, which increases the level of
chlorophyll and solanine, turning the potato green and mean.
Many people store their potatoes in boxes at the
bottoms of their pantry, tucked away in bowls
in cupboards, or at the darkest corners of the
spookiest root cellars to keep them fresh longer.
Now, the problem with root cellars is ventilation.
If a potato rots, some of that solanine
will start leaking out in a gaseous form.
The longer rotten potatoes are left in a place with
stagnant air, the more solanine gas can build up inside.
So as Maria’s father entered the cellar, he likely
started breathing solanine gas, and he either
passed out from hypoxia, AKA a lack of oxygen, or
the solanine gas itself knocked him unconscious.
From then, he would have passed away from the effects
of the solanine, or again, simple oxygen deprivation.
Then, as each of her other family members entered the
cellar, they likely immediately went to help their
loved ones, inadvertently exposing themselves to more
and more of the solanine gas, taking their lives.
The only reason that Maria herself survived
is that her grandmother left the door
open, allowing fresh air into the cellar.
She was saved, but not before her
grandmother succumbed to the toxic fumes.
Maria now lives with her relatives, and her extended family
has asked for financial support to help give her a new life.
When it comes to your own safety, the best way to keep
yourself safe from solanine poisoning is to make sure that
any potatoes are kept in a cool, well-ventilated dark place.
Ideally, a dry environment as well.
You don’t need anything fancy, honestly, a dark cupboard
is all you’ll need to keep them as fresh as possible.
If you suspect that your tubers are going
bad, just cut into them to see if there is
any green discoloration or other visible rot.
If you find any, it’s best to just throw them away.
If you need help remembering, just think of this rhyme.
You can boil em’, mash em’, stick em’ in a
stew, but if they’re green, they’re not for you.
When potatoes are green, THEY’LL PUT YOU IN A COMA!
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