- It's just skin, Steven.
(playful music)
Some people like to put up artwork in their homes.
Others are into say sculptures,
but then there's another group all together that exists
that likes to collect things made of human flesh.
Seriously, it doesn't get any weirder than this.
Here are 10 Insane Things Made from Human Bodies.
Number one is a crash test dummy.
Many auto makers use crash test dummies to test
the safeties of their vehicles,
but what you probably didn't know is some of them
use real human bodies for these tests.
To make the outcome more realistic,
air is pumped into the corpses' lungs, and they're fastened
into a seat with the drivers hands attached to the wheel
usually through a bit of glue or some string.
After the vehicle is slammed into a wall,
a simulated obstacle, like a pole or highway media,
or even rolled down a hill, specialists are brought in
to determine where on the body damage was taken.
As it turns out, using the dead
is a much cheaper alternative to using
crash test dummies that we see in commercials.
Reports show that between 1970 and 1999,
over 300 bodies were used in crash testing
by Daimler-Benz alone, a German company,
with some corpses even being those of children.
Number two is clothing.
While it may seem bizarre and just really disgusting,
wearing another person's body parts as attire
is far from rare according to history.
It's been documented that some native tribes
took trophies from their victories
and added them to their own attire.
Aztec priests used to actually wear the flayed skin
of young men while dancing about the city,
in the hopes that the gods would grant them good harvest.
Research also shows that in 1794,
during the Reign of Terror in France,
political leader, Antoine Saint-Just
had a woman executed, flayed, and then
turned into a fashionable waistcoat.
In fact, it's been said that turning human skin
into clothing was pretty normal during the French Revolution
as the leather it becomes through
drying is a pretty decent quality.
Still very gross though.
Number three are kitchen utensils.
Many centuries ago, around 450 AD,
the city of Teotihuacan, which is now modern day Mexico,
was the sixth largest city on the planet.
With a population of over 150,000 people,
it became hard for every family to acquire tools,
especially cooking and eating utensils,
so they did what they had to do
and fashioned what they needed out of their fellow citizens.
Whenever someone passed away, their friends and neighbors
would get to quick work ripping off the fresh body's flesh
and breaking off bones to make tools and utensils.
This had to be done immediately
as once the person died, their body would start getting
cold and rigid from rigor mortis.
Flesh would become harder to tear
and the bones would become too brittle to use.
Yeah, don't fall into too deep of a sleep around these
people 'cause you might just wake up as a salad fork.
Number four are sculptures.
For centuries, artists have been using the dead
to make elaborate and wondrous pieces.
In the late 1700s, Ulnar Fragonard,
the director of a Venetian school in Paris,
made statues using corpses that
he dug up from a local graveyard.
Of course, his work was met with much controversy
but remains on display to anyone who wants to see it today.
I guess the penalty for grave robbing back then was waived
if it was done in order to make a wicked vase.
More recently, British sculptor and visual artist,
Marc Quinn, proved that it's what's inside the body
that's more beautiful than people realize.
In 1991, he revealed "Self," an art piece,
which at first glance, seems to be a bust of the sculptor's
own head, but in reality the frozen silicone head
is made with over 10 pints of Quinn's own blood, uck.
Number five is paint.
For some people, being cremated or buried isn't good enough.
They want to live on, and what
better way than through painting.
Between the 16th and 17th centuries,
painters were known to use a rich brown paint
in their work that was color-wise
somewhere between raw umber and burnt umber.
The color was called Mummy Brown,
and it got that name because it was,
well, you guessed it, made of mummies.
Mummy Brown was made up of pitch, myrrh,
and the ground up bodies of mummified corpses.
This paint was used by a number of artists
right up until the late 19th century
when it became well known for where the color came from.
Incredibly that didn't stop the paintings from selling,
and bodies continued to end up on canvases right up
until 1960 when the process was finally stopped.
But hey, if you'd rather not be mummified first,
you can always have your blood drained
and give it to Vincent Castiglia,
a 34 year old Brooklyn painter
who creates his work using human blood.
That's just creepy.
Number six is a classroom skeleton.
If you picture a college or university science class,
you can probably envision a human skeleton hanging
on a wheeling stand that's used for learning during classes,
but these are all just made of plastic or some resin, right?
(forced laugh) No.
As it turns out, you can actually will your dead body
to not only science but scientific display.
Companies such as Skulls Unlimited in Oklahoma City
will accept remains, clean them thoroughly,
and give them to the institution of your choice.
They even have a number of skeletal options
for sale if you're already affiliated with the medical,
scientific, or educational community.
Just think, you could be hanging
in Professor Middleton's biology class.
Alternatively, if you want your skeleton to be given
to your favorite pub, your church,
or even given as a terrifying gift to a friend,
all of these are actually possible
if you know the right strings to pull.
Personally, I've already decided that when I die,
I'm going to donate my skeleton to Rob Dyke
for the "Seriously Strange" set
with the inscription, "Together forever."
Well, nothing like spending the afterlife
hanging up in a pub in front of a whole bunch
of drunken people surrounded by Guinness.
That actually kind of sounds nice.
Number seven is jewelry.
If you thought turning man-skin
into a leather-like clothing was weird,
(fake laugh)
well brace yourself because after the skin goes,
there's still more wearable parts left.
Human hair and teeth have been made into necklaces,
rings, and bracelets by a number of artists
looking to get a wow from those who see them.
Back in the Victorian era, you could actually
get rings and brooches made from the knotted or braided hair
of a recently deceased loved one,
and no one would even bat an eye.
Even today, a number of stores, most of which are online
can turn that loved one's hair, teeth, blood, muscles,
or even in rare cases, their organs
into something that you can wear.
Native American tribes were known to wear the bones
of their enemies, but some went as far as to have the tibia
of some that they defeated put into their face
as a septum piercing that they called the otsj.
Additionally, some people wanna remember
their lost loved ones by wearing vials
of their blood around their necks.
Yeah that's kind of a biohazard, no?
Number eight is a magician's prop.
All right, for my next trick, I'm gonna need a volunteer
from the cemetery.
Throughout history, people's love of magic
has mixed in with their secret love of the macabre.
This has led to many magicians using actual corpses
as their volunteers for a number of different illusions.
In 1818, illusionist Andrew Ure used electricity
to seemingly reanimate a corpse, a trick that he learned
from Luigi Galvani, who did the same thing decades earlier.
Of course, Galvani used a frog in his trick instead
of a person, but Ure really wanted to go
for shock value, no pun intended.
His tricks left a bad taste in his audience's mouth,
so the practice of using cadavers was put to an end.
That is, until Chris Angel came along
and reignited people's morbid interest.
In 2013 for his show, "Believe," Angel used the dead body
of Robert Michaels, which he seemed to bring back to life
in front of a room of skeptics and medical experts.
Number nine are musical instruments.
Just because your soul has left your body
doesn't mean that you're done making music.
Keep the good times rolling by having a loved one
turn you into a musical instrument and then hope
people aren't too nauseated by the idea to play it.
Using a human thigh bone, Tibetan Buddhist monks
created such an instrument called the kangling,
a word that literally means leg flute.
The bone is usually taken from a criminal
or someone who was killed in a violent way,
but really any femur will do.
Though you couldn't play an advanced tune,
such as "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on it, you could definitely
make an ominous and chilling sound, which is probably why
it's only really used in ceremonies such as when proving
fearlessness and summoning hungry demons to take in
their fill of sufferings of the person playing it.
Yeah, that all sounds fun.
Just your classic leg bone demon-summoning flute.
Bones have also been made into percussion instruments
that you can even fashion into some decent drumsticks.
And number 10 are books.
The practice of making books out of human skin goes back
centuries, and not only do such tomes exist already
from the past but some are just now being created.
Known as anthropodermic bibliopagy, the process of covering
books with a human being's flesh
is believed by many to capture the dead
individual's soul and bind it to the pages.
This has led to the theory that many
of these books are haunted or cursed.
One example is in the Bristol Record Office
in the United Kingdom.
There's a book that details the murder of a 17 year old
woman named, Eliza Balsam, who was killed by a stone
hurled at her by 18 year old John Horwood.
It was written by a doctor who
tried to save the girl's life.
Horwood was hanged for the murder,
and upon completion, the book was
covered in the teenager's skin.
Yeah, that's a logical thing to do.
I'm done now.
So those were 10 insane things made from human bodies,
but I want to know, what do you guys think of these?
Is it barbaric to make things out of people or is it okay?
Leave your comments below because I'm going to be looking
through them, and I'm going to pin the best one to the top.
But as always, thank you guys so much for coming by today.
Remember to come back tomorrow and every weekday
at exactly 3 PM eastern standard time
because I'll have a brand new video for you.
I'll see you then.