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Watch a Claymation Mark Twain Take Tom, Huckleberry, and Becky to Meet Satan

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If going on adventures with Tom Sawyer was one of your childhood dreams, let this video crush your eight-year-old fantasies.

This 1985 claymation clip is part of an animated film called The Adventures of Mark Twain, directed by Will Vinton. The excerpt is an adaptation of The Mysterious Stranger, Mark Twain’s last unfinished novel that follows the chronicles of No. 44, or Satan. Characterized by its heavy social critique, the novel zeroes in on the hypocrisy of religion and the futility of human existence. Cheery!

The excerpt shows Twain take Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Becky Thatcher to meet a mysterious stranger who turns out to be Satan. Following the fallen angel, the three children enter a levitating land that seems to have broken off from a planet. At first, Satan seems friendly and calm, producing the children’s favorite fruit (Becky’s is, of course, the apple). But his mask constantly morphs and twitches, foreshadowing the lurking of something underneath.

As the story progresses, he invites them to create a land of living clay people. Though innocent and fun in the beginning, this quickly spirals into a horrific ending where Satan shows his true form and the audience is left to ponder anguishing philosophical questions. 

We won’t tell you what happens to the clay people. For that, you’ll have to watch the video. We will, however, leave you in this Halloween with a harrowing thought pronounced by Satan:

“Life itself is only a vision, a dream. Nothing exists save empty space. And you... and you are but a thought.”

Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.


This Map Shows The Future of Your Immortal Soul

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If you’re worrying about the state of your mortal soul, this handy graphic by François Georgin could help you.

Published in 1825 in Jean-Charles Pellerin’s print shop in France, 3 Roads to Eternity alludes to Matthew 7:13-14. The biblical passage describes the different roads a soul can take:

13 Enter at the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who are going through it, 14 because small is the gate and narrow is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

Framed by a large doorway, the wide path to hell is crowded with people from all walks of life. From mothers who bring their small children with them to perdition, to aristocrats, to peasants, to musicians. The damned are oblivious to their fiery fate and sport light-hearted smiles and joyous faces.

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To emphasize this point, Georgin provides us with an inscription underneath the path:

“Look, here is the large door, always open to every newcomer; each one enters without obstacle. Those who wish to become rich are hasty to enter. Thousands have already passed, hungry for honour and fortune: For sensual delight and ambition, there is no other road; singing, dancing, and music scort passengers through; young and old, poor and rich, all believe, as they follow this path, that they are heading to the bosom of Abraham.”

Once they have reached the threshold of hell, a demon drags them into the flames, where they are tortured until the end of time. 

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There are two other roads for a person to take, only one of which leads to eternal life. The middle one does not appear in Matthew’s description, but rather seems to be an invention of Georgin. This path stems from the path of the righteous.  We see a member of the French Royal Army standing in front of the two paths, clearly choosing which one to follow. In a Goldilocks and the Three Bears fashion, the middle doorway and its path are mid-sized. There are still quite a few people on it, but the number has decidedly shrunk. Allegedly, there are the people who have strived to follow the path of the Lord, but who have strayed from it.

Next to two of these unfortunate souls, is an allusion to the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25:1-13. In the parable, five wise and five foolish virgins set out to meet their grooms at night but the foolish ones are unprepared and must buy more oil for their lamps. When they return, the doors of the church have been shut and they are forsaken. Such is eternity, Matthew tells us, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.”

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And unprepared indeed are the people on the middle path. Unlike the utterly oblivious souls of the lower path, the faces of these pilgrims show that they become more and more aware of their mistakes as their hour approaches. Even before death takes them with its scythe, they realize their inevitable end and approach it with horror as they exclaim “We thought we had taken the righteous path but we have missed it.”

As for death, it is neither cynically joyous nor scary. If anything, it seems resigned. Its depiction seems to echo the description Georgin placed next to the downward spiral towards hell:

“So speaks the Lord: I take no pleasure in the death of a sinner, but I desire that he converts and lives.”

Of course, life and death don’t refer to the end of the mortal body, but to the soul. To live, according to Roman Catholic tradition, is to be in heaven with the Lord.

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And for this there is the last path. Its golden doorway to eternal life is adorned by a Crucified Christ. An inscription tells us:

“He who wishes to partake in the cross of Jesus Christ must carry his own with resignation: and since here the door narrows, many pass it on the side.

Children of Sion, rejoice, you will be part of the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The people on the third path are shown carrying their crosses with tranquil smiles on their face. These saints are received with open arms by the Holy Trinity, and thus enter the Celestial Jerusalem, where angels await them.

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What makes the map interesting, besides its delightful graphics, is the historical context that surrounds it, as it was printed during the Bourbon Restoration, which took place from 1814 to 1830. At this time,  Louis XVI’s brothers, Louis XVIII and Charles X, restored the French monarchy after overthrowing Napoleon and the First Empire.

During the French Revolution (1789-1799) there were heavy efforts to dechristianize France. Churches were closed, and members of the clergy were killed, arrested, or turned out. Though under Napoleon, the Catholic Church gained some of its power back, it was during the Restoration period that it once again gained recognition as an institution of power.

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The illustration, then, comes at a time when Catholics were coming back from persecution, and probably felt righteous against the “infidels.” This would explain why Georgin decided to include a third path for those who had started out on the “path of  righteousness” but had been lost. It could have very possibly been a warning to those who had strayed of where they would inevitably end up.

More than a pious depiction of how to reach eternal life, this map might just be a very elaborate religious burn.

How the Hidden Sounds of Horror Movie Soundtracks Freak You Out

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You’re sitting in the movie theater; it’s pitch black except for the dim glow on-screen. Nothing scary has happened yet—but you see a person walking, alone. You feel an overwhelming sense of dread. A slow, growing hum murrs over footsteps, and you know the person isn’t safe. You, perhaps, feel you aren’t safe watching.

You wait for the inevitable conclusion, fixed on what you might see, listening for the cue that a killer or monster is ready to attack—though nothing on screen hints at this. The source for your anxiety is elusive, but it was carefully crafted through hidden audible elements that play on human emotions, causing your hairs to stand on end. This is the brilliance of what music does in a horror film.

The way composers make the most out of their musical tools to induce fear is both an art form and a science. Since horror movies rely on music, movie score composers carefully consider how to use familiar sounds in unusual ways;  this distortion of reality unsettles us even if what we’re hearing is, in many ways, obscured.

The sound itself could be created by an instrument that one would normally be able to identify, but is either processed, or performed in such a way as to hide the actual instrument,” says Harry Manfredini, whose music score for Friday the 13th was cemented in the thrasher film genre of the 1980s.

The sounds that do this to us aren’t always unusual; but their deep rumblings or high-pitched squeals signal danger almost (if not actually) instinctively. Distressed animal calls, women screaming and other nonlinear sounds, which are irregular noises with large wavelengths often found in nature, were used in The Shining and other movies to create an instinctual fear response, as recorded in the test subjects of a 2011 study at the University of California. Often these sounds are buried in the complex movie score or, sometimes, as subtle sound waves that give an adrenaline rush like a mini, internal roller coaster.

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Taking a sound out of one normal context and then placing it into a new, scarier one can do this. While some of these sounds are subtle, others stick out so much they become characters themselves. People who have seen Friday the 13th learned that a specific sound (a human vocal noise described as “ki ki ki ma ma ma” by Manfredini) means that the killer, Jason Voorhees, is lurking nearby with his machete, even if he isn’t shown on screen. Just knowing that Jason might be in the room with us heightens our senses, and even though the sound is vocal, it’s unlike one any that a person would normally make. When Jason’s sound is isolated, you hear breathiness in an echo; but the surrounding music and bloody visuals work together, bringing the noise to a functionally creepy place.

One unsettling and hidden “sound” that is given credit for freaking out an audience is infrasound—a low-frequency sound that cannot be heard, but literally unsettles human beings down to our bones. Infrasound, which exists at 19 Hz and below, can be felt, but human ears begin to hear sound at 20 Hz. Infrasound exists in nature, and is created by wind, earthquakes, avalanches, and used by elephants to communicate over long distances. At a high enough volume, it may be possible for humans to perceive sound as low as 12 Hz, but even common objects can emit infrasound, something some horror movie music composers use to their advantage.  

Filmmaker Gaspar Noe admitted in an interview that he intentionally used sound that registered at only 27 Hz, just above the 20 Hz limit for infrasound, in his 2002 film Irreversible. The movie is technically an avant-garde thriller, rather than classic horror—but the intense violence, raw camera angles and disturbing images and content have made it dip into the horror movie category. The characters embody the monster-side of human behavior and indulge; you’re bombarded with disturbing images of sexual violence, which understandably caused controversy, and the soundtrack intensifies this.

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You can’t hear it, but it makes you shake,” Noe told SalonIn a good theater with a subwoofer, you may be more scared by the sound than by what’s happening on the screen.” In Irreversible, deep rumblings and a swaying, otherworldly grinding sound increases in volume, causing the viewer to feel dread just before extremely disturbing imagery begins. The 2002 movie Paranormal Activity was also rumored to use infrasound, though even if the deep rumblings in the film are above the 20 Hz threshold, they seemed to to a good job of unsettling audiences anyway.

Steve Goodman, in Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear, says that while the ways sound in media cause these responses in human perception are under-theorized, it likely has its place, especially with a source-less vibration like infrasound. “Abstract sensations cause anxiety due to the very absence of an object or cause,” he writes. “Without either, the imagination produces one, which can be more frightening than the reality.”

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Sometimes using altered noises from everyday objects to get an infrasound-like effect can even save on production costs. Christian Stella, who mixed the score of the 2012 zombie film The Battery on a low budget, revealed on Reddit that he “ended up using recordings of power transformers, air conditioners, etc, that I modulated to make deeper.” Another part of the production team layered music on top of this to create the full movie score.

To manipulate the audience, Manfredini’s process begins with viewing a complete or at least near-complete film. To help the visual narrative along, he remembers the actions, objects or colors that reappear and creates audial themes around the visuals. Later, he overlays tones, rhythms and stand-out sounds to evoke something we’ve seen, sometimes using sounds as cues, to drive home the otherworldly narrative we find ourselves in while we clutch our seats. In a sense, he’s fooling the audience into believing that what we’re seeing is logical to the story we’re immersed in, and that we drew that conclusion first. 

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When he sees a scene where he thinks a special effect sound would work best, he works with the sound effects artist; then, he balances the effect sound with his score. “If his sound is a low sound, I might go high, and vice versa. Visually if I see something very large the logical choice would be a low sound, and if it is small, a high one,” Manfredini says. This is a departure from the horror movies of the 1940s and ‘50s, which relied on orchestral scores to fill in the silence. Horror movies today are more atmospheric, making the movie seem more plausible and causing a more direct sense of danger.

When we watch horror movies, we’re not meant to be simple spectators; we become passive participants. While immersed, we become convinced on some level that we’re there with the characters, walking around a dark corner or opening a door to a place we are definitely not meant to be. We might be safe in our living room while the monster approaches in the shadows, but the movie makes us believe otherwise. It’s just a trick of the ear, though, obviously. Hopefully.

The Real Electric Frankenstein Experiments of the 1800s

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On November 4, 1818, Scottish chemist Andrew Ure stood next to the lifeless corpse of an executed murderer, the man hanging by his neck at the gallows only minutes before. He was performing an anatomical research demonstration for a theater filled with curious students, anatomists, and doctors at the University of Glasgow. But this was no ordinary cadaver dissection. Ure held two metallic rods charged by a 270-plate voltaic battery to various nerves and watched in delight as the body convulsed, writhed, and shuddered in a grotesque dance of death.

“When the one rod was applied to the slight incision in the tip of the forefinger,” Ure later described to the Glasgow Literary Society, “the fist being previously clenched, that finger extended instantly; and from the convulsive agitation of the arm, he seemed to point to the different spectators, some of whom thought he had come to life.”

Ure is one of many scientists during the late 18th and 19th centuries who conducted crude experiments with galvanism—the stimulation of muscles with pulses of electrical current. The bright sparks and loud explosions made for stunning effects that lured in both scientists and artists, with this era of reanimation serving as inspiration for Mary Shelley’s literary masterpiece, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. While most scientists were using galvanism to search for clues about life, Ure wanted to see if it could actually bring someone back from the dead.

“This was a time when people were trying to understand the origin of life, when religion was losing some of its hold,” says Juliet Burba, chief curator of the exhibit “Mary and Her Monster” at the Bakken Museum in Minnesota, which will open October 29. “There was a lot of interest in the question: What is the essence that animates life? Could it be electricity?”

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In 1780, Italian anatomy professor Luigi Galvani discovered that he could make the muscles of a dead frog twitch and jerk with sparks of electricity. Others quickly began to experiment by applying electricity to other animals that quickly grew morbid. Galvani’s nephew, physicist Giovanni Aldini, obtained the body of an ox, proceeding to cut off the head and use electricity to twist its tongue. He sent such high levels of voltage through the diaphragm of the ox that it resulted in “a very strong action on the rectum, which even produced an expulsion of the feces,” Aldini wrote.    

People outside of science were also fascinated by electricity. They would attend shows where bull heads and pigs were electrified, and watch public dissections at research institutions such as the Company of Surgeons in England, which later became the Royal College of Surgeons.

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When scientists tired of testing animals, they turned to corpses, particularly corpses of murderers. In 1751, England passed the Murder Act, which allowed the bodies of executed murderers to be used for experimentation. “The reasons the Murder Act came about were twofold: there weren’t enough bodies for anatomists, and it was seen as a further punishment for the murderer,” says Burba. “It was considered additional punishment to have your body dissected.”

Lying on Ure’s table was the muscular, athletic corpse of 35-year-old coal miner, Matthew Clydesdale. On August 1818, Clydesdale drunkenly murdered an 80-year-old miner with a coal pick and was sentenced to be hung at the gallows. His body remained suspended and limp for nearly an hour, while a thief who had been executed next to Clydesdale at the same time convulsed violently for several moments after death. The blood was drained from the body for half an hour before the experiments began.

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Andrew Ure, who had little to no known experience with electricity, was a mere assistant to James Jeffray, an anatomy professor at the University of Glasgow. He had studied medicine at Glasgow University and served briefly as an army surgeon, but was otherwise known for teaching chemistry. “Not much is known about Ure, but he was sort of a minor figure in the history of science,” says Alex Boese, author of Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments. One of Ure’s main accomplishments was this single bizarre galvanic experiment, he says.  

Others, such as Aldini, conducted similar experiments, but scholars write that Ure was convinced that electricity could restore life back into the dead. “While Aldini contented himself with the role of spasmodic puppeteer, Ure’s ambitions were well nigh Frankesteinian,” wrote Ulf Houe in Studies in Romanticism.

Ure charged the battery with dilute nitric and sulphuric acids five minutes before the police delivered the body to the University of Glasgow’s anatomical theater. Incisions were made at the neck, hip, and heels, exposing different nerves that were jolted with the metallic rods. When Ure sent charges through Clydesdale’s diaphragm and saw his chest heave and fall, he wrote that “the success of it was truly wonderful.”

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Ure’s descriptions of the experiment are vivid. He poetically noted how the convulsive movements resembled “a violent shuddering from cold” and how the fingers “moved nimbly, like those of a violin performer.” Other passages, like this one about stimulating muscles in Clydesdale’s forehead and brow, are more macabre:

“Every muscle in his countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action; rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smiles, united their hideous expression in the murderer’s face, surpassing far the wildest representations of a Fuseli or a Kean,” wrote Ure, comparing the result to the visage of tragic actor, Edmund Kean, and the fantastical works of romantic painter Henry Fuseli. He continued: “At this period several of the spectators were forced to leave the apartment from terror or sickness, and one gentleman fainted.”

The whole experiment lasted about an hour. “Both Jeffray and Ure were quite deliberately intent on the restoration of life,” wrote F.L.M. Pattinson in the Scottish Medical Journal. But the reasons for the lack of success were thought to have little to do with the method: Ure concluded that if death was not caused by bodily injury there was a probability that life could have been restored. But, if the experiment succeeded it wouldn’t have been celebrated since he would be reviving a murderer, he wrote.

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Mary Shelley was aware of the types of scientific experiments researchers were toying with at the time. “Science was something that the public paid attention to,” says Burba. “There was a lot of crossover, so there were poets who knew a lot about science and scientists who wrote poetry.”

Two years before Ure conducted the experiment, Mary Shelley came up with the story of Frankenstein, and published the novel in 1818, the same year as Ure’s experiment. By sheer coincidence, Victor Frankenstein also brought the monster to life “on a dreary night of November.” However, unlike Ure, the scene of the creature’s resurrection is brief and vague, with no mention of the word “electricity.” Shelley wrote that Frankenstein “collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.”

Some historians have hypothesized that Shelley was inspired by other medical procedures being studied at the time, including blood transfusion and organ transplants. It isn’t until later in her introduction of the 1831 edition of the book that Shelley mentions galvanism: “Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated; galvanism had given token of such things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth.”

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It’s unclear whether Frankenstein further encouraged Ure or others to dapple in galvanic experimentation, or if Shelley was particularly struck by any one experiment. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and these galvanic experiments happened in tandem, Burba explains, pointing out that the language in the novel reflects that of scientists of that era. “Both of these things were happening within a cultural milieu where there was great interest in electricity as well as the effects of electricity on bodies—whether electricity might be the ‘spark of being’ that animates life.”  

No actual scientific knowledge or data came from Ure’s experiment, yet he still enthusiastically lectured about his experience. He wrote up the results in a pamphlet, which was seen as “publicity of the crudest kind,” W.V. Farrar wrote in Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. “This rather ‘Gothick’ experiment, reported in such appropriate literary style, no doubt made Ure’s name better known.”

These animated and horrifying displays eventually went out of style as sectors of the public began to view them as evil and “satanic in nature.” Electricity's first rudimentary experiments on the body did make way for resuscitation technologies such as defibrillation, but the focus is now on saving lives, not reanimating a long-dead corpse.

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“Traditionally, we overlook horrors in the name of science,” says Boese. “We have codes of what’s acceptable behavior in normal everyday life, but people put on a lab coat and there are totally different codes of conduct that seem to apply. These scientists in the early 18th century were gentleman, upstanding members of society, yet they’re doing these things that seem totally sociopathic and bizarre.”

Some of their experiments on non-human animals have stood the test of time, however. Students in biology classes still conduct Galvani’s famous frog muscle experiment today.

The Most Halloween Police Photo of 2016

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Earlier this morning, the police in Olathe, Kansas, posted the photo above to their Facebook page with very few details, only saying that a road in town was closed because this truck had gotten stuck in some power lines. 

At first glance, the photo appears kind of impossible. How did the truck bed get so high? Why is it leaning slightly to its side? 

A closer look reveals some clues—the bed appears to have been lifted up dump truck-style when the collision with the power lines occurred, while the lean might have been the result of the driver trying to accelerate through it, dragging the bed behind. 

The police did not immediately respond to a request for comment about exactly what went down, but in a response to a Facebook commenter they confirmed that it wasn't a prank or a dare, just what appeared to be a simple accident. (Update: Olathe police confirmed in a Facebook message that it was, indeed, an accident.)

Still, we'll always have this photo, taken in the early dawn, which is both arresting and slightly unsettling, like an outtake from Stranger Things. Facebook commenters tried as best they could to spoil the moment. 

"There has got to be a way to stop this idiocy," one commenter said, with outrage that's perhaps disproportionate to the problem at hand. 

"I feel for this dude," another said, more empathetically. "I am almost positive this is not how he wanted to spend his Monday."

But what if it was?

Jumpstart Your Halloween With These '90s Horror TV Intros

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Happy Halloween! If you’re having trouble getting into the spooky spirit, there is a surefire way to fill yourself with that unique seasonal mix of dread and fun that you had before it was crushed by the joyless weight of adulthood: check out the credits sequences of the great horror and sci-fi anthologies of the 1990s.

While seasonal anthology shows like American Horror Story are becoming popular these days, episodic horror anthologies like The Twilight Zone, in which each installment is its own little self-contained story, have been successful for decades. But the 1990s was a high water mark for the genre. From Tales from The Crypt and Goosebumps, to lesser-known series like Monsters and Freddy’s Nightmares, horror anthology shows could be found all over the airwaves. And while they each trafficked in similar tales of macabre misfortune, supernatural horror, and black irony, and many even shared the concept of a wise-cracking host, the shows were differentiated by their spooky, distinctive intro sequences.

Unlike on shows with a recurring cast and central story or location, these anthologies had to provide viewers with a looser introduction to their program—something that communicated more of a tone and feel than any specifics pertaining to character or plot. Thanks to this need for a broader introductory segment, most intros to horror anthologies acted as impressionistic little horror movies unto themselves. Watching these intros invokes a specific feeling of fun fear. They’re like a straight shot of Halloween spirit.

Probably the most classic and memorable of these intros belongs to HBO’s Tales From The Crypt (1989-1996). The wordless introduction follows a long tracking shot through an evocative haunted house, gliding through a cobweb-strewn foyer, past a candle-lit desk, through a secret passage, and behind a bookcase. Eventually it leads the eye through the titular crypt, where the Cryptkeeper finally pops out to punctuate the journey. It’s not unlike being strapped into an on-rails haunted house attraction. The journey is made all the more creepy by a spooky Danny Elfman–penned theme, and random sound cues like screams, wolf howls, and lightning strikes. Without uttering a word, the intro tells its own vague story, and ushers you into a world of frights.

The anthology show Monsters (1988-1991) offered a similar trip through a haunted house, playing around with more banal imagery to create an uncanny effect. As the show opens, the camera pulls into what seems to be a quaint suburban house, but it turns out that this normal scene is not so normal after all—the family inside is revealed to be monsters! Even though they’re cyclopses and potato creatures, the family banters as they sit down to watch TV. Reality is turned a bit upside down, and you get the idea that you’re in for some strangeness.

Even shows that relied on a more established franchise had their own great intros. The horror collection Freddy’s Nightmares: A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Series (1988-1990) used its own well-known film series as a jumping off point, then established its own feeling of fright. Freddy’s Nightmares briefly recapped the story of the titular dream monster through a series of stills, then begins panning around a neon-lit boiler room set while images of screaming people were superimposed on screen. This was Tales From The Crypt with Freddy Krueger as the Cryptkeeper.

Where Tales from the Crypt and others took you on a haunted house ride, some other intros took a more impressionistic approach. In the more kiddie-focused shows of the time like Goosebumps (1995-1998) or Are You Afraid of The Dark (1990-2000), the audience is presented with a series of short clips and images that don’t so much tell their own story, but work to evoke a feeling of dread. There’s a banging shutter, or a full moon, or an attic with nothing other than a sinister-looking clown doll in it. The only thing really being communicated is a sense of fear.

While most anthology intros were largely wordless, at least one show used voiceover to great effect. The Outer Limits (1995-2002) was a revival of a 1960s series that is often best remembered for the eerie monologue that ushered in each episode, and the new series smartly just updated it. “There is nothing wrong with your television. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are now controlling the transmission,” begins the famous opening monologue. The voice tells you that you will now be taken to a place where anything is possible, presenting a loss of control and a feeling of dread. All the while, bizarre imagery takes over the screen underneath. A giant eye is opened, bodies fall endlessly through space, these frights are of a more sci-fi nature, but the effect is much the same.

With the popularity of shows like the modern sci-fi anthology Black Mirror, we may be seeing a return to the form for anthology horror. But now that our primary style of viewing is to binge watch, intros and credit sequences seem to be on their way out, getting shorter and much less elaborate. We may never again see such purely evocative slices of horror like we had in the 1990s. Of course we could also just be getting old. Which is the scariest part of all.   

Salem and the Rise of Witch Kitsch

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Stroll through the downtown of Salem, Massachusetts, and you'll quickly run into the city's most contentious piece of public art. Nine feet tall, made of polished bronze, and planted right in the middle of a central town green, the scandalous statue is all but impossible to avoid. Perched on a broomstick and backed by a crescent moon, it depicts Samantha Stephens, the nose-twitching heroine of the hit 1960s TV show Bewitched.

The statue went up in the spring of 2005, sponsored by cable station TV Land and approved by the city government. Some residents, thinking of another of the city's scandals, were peeved. "We're right near the courthouse where people were tried for witchcraft," resident Jean Harrison told NPR. "Having a kitschy statue just seems to trivialize what these people went through."

Stanley Usovicz, the mayor at the time, was insistent. "This city has long recognized the true tragedy of 1692," he replied. "But I think we also have to recognize that there is a popular culture, and that we are a part of that popular culture."

In 1692, 185 people were accused of witchcraft in Salem. Over the course of nine paranoid months, 19 of them were executed. On a rainy October Friday in 2016, Salem is filled, once again, with supposed witches—this time in the form of tourists, their pointed hats catching on their umbrellas. They file in and out of witch-themed tchotchke shops, get their cards read by local psychics, and grab cones at the local ice cream parlor, the Dairy Witch. Somehow, between the 17th century and now, Salem and its fans conjured up a new meaning for a historic tragedy, transforming it into an infinite set of tourism opportunities. How did this city bewitch itself? And what does it mean for those of us who find ourselves there?


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If you take a long view of history, Salem's witch trials were far from unique. Between the 13th and 18th centuries, tens of thousands of accused witches were killed in Europe, and hundreds more in the American colonies. For some reason, though, everyone has always wanted to learn about theirs in particular. "Witch tourism [in Salem] goes back to almost the second the bodies were taken down," says J.W. Ocker, author of A Season With the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts. "For some reason, this one stuck with everybody."

As Ocker details in his book, Salem has had plenty of opportunities to shake this association. In the centuries following the trials, it was a Revolutionary War ground, a bustling maritime port, and a manufacturing hub, full of tanneries and steam cotton factories. It's the birthplace of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the National Guard, and Monopoly. But even as the city's purposes shifted, the witches stuck around. In 1891, a jeweler named Daniel Lews began crafting intricate witch-themed silver spoons, selling thousands and sparking a nationwide decorative-spoon trend. Even at the House of Seven Gables, which you'd think would spend its time hawking Hawthorne, "they would hand-paint witches on glassware and sell them," says Ocker. "It's always been there to some degree."

By the beginning of the 20th century, some of these identities were fading. The economy was changing, and there was less need for American-made leather and cotton. Boston and New York were suddenly overshadowing Salem's relatively small port. Witch enthusiasm, however, had not dimmed. "Manufacturing died there, like it did in so many American cities," says Ocker. "They had nothing to fall back on but witch tourism."


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As you pull into Salem, one thing is immediately clear: The city has really leaned into this new branding. The Salem High School mascot is a witch, with huge green eyes and warts to match. Another flies over the masthead of the local newspaper. City police wear patches that say "The Witch City, Massachusetts," complete with a big-hatted specimen. This past March, they were accused of Freudian slippage when they asked the community to "Please remove cats from school lots." (They meant "cars.")

In October, even more witches fly over the city, emblazoned on banners for "Haunted Happenings," a monthlong festival that transforms the downtown into a spooky smorgasbord. As I walk through, facepaint artists are turning tourists into vampires, and a side street has been taken over by something called the "Electric Ghost Electronica Festival." A small carnival is closed due to weather, and the Ferris wheel drips rain on passers-by. A brochure reveals all the things I missed earlier in the month: regular evening seances, visits from various horror movies stars, and the opening day "Zombie Walk," which culminates in a game of undead kickball.

Haunted Happenings, which is the city's biggest purveyor of creepiness, took off in response to something legitimately scary. In September of 1982, a still-unknown criminal took bottles of Tylenol off of shelves in drugstores around Chicago, filled them with cyanide capsules, and replaced them, killing seven people. The murders reverberated across the country. Frightened parents angled to keep their kids inside on Halloween, and many communities banned trick-or-treating all together. When Susannah Stuart, then the head of the Salem Witch Museum, proposed replacing the traditional DIY festivities with a weekend-long official bash, the city quickly got on board. 

People outside of Salem were enthused, too—the first Haunted Happenings attracted around 50,000 tourists, effectively doubling the city's population for the weekend. Its success paved the way for more and more Happenings. "It began as a way to help kids have a safe Halloween," says Kate Fox, "but it quickly became apparent to the people in charge that it was also a way to extend the tourism season past Labor Day." Fox is the executive director of Destination Salem, the tourism bureau that pulls together the many organizations, companies, and individuals that make the various Happenings possible. Cozy in her downtown office, she's wearing a black jacket and an orange scarf, which she puts on to look festive for the TV broadcasts.

At this point, Haunted Happenings has hundreds of contributors. They come from many different sectors of the community, and they take on the witch thing from all angles. There are the historians, who host lectures, town tours, and educational plays. There are the freakout fans and pop culture aficionados, who contribute costume contests and scary movie screenings. There are the actual Wiccans, who flocked to Salem after influential pagan priestess Laurie Cabot moved there in 1970. They throw a monthlong "Psychic Fair and Witchcraft Expo" in the mall, along with a number of glamorous witch parties. "They all have to coexist on parallel planes," says Fox.

Over the years and under this pressure, Haunted Happenings has stretched and stretched, like a thief on a medieval rack. When Fox started at Destination Salem, in 1998, it was about two weeks long. Now it lasts the entire month. On October weekends, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority runs extra trains to and from Salem. In some ways, Haunted Happenings seems like a textbook example of holiday creep—the same phenomenon that decks malls in Christmas ivy before school has started, and sends pumpkin spice wafting through the July air. "September definitely begins to feel October-ish," says Fox. "People in Salem see Halloween stuff out in August and say, 'Not yet!'"

But the city isn't entirely to blame—they're just the irresistible flame, holding steady for all of us confused moths. "People come in off the train from all over, come up to the visitor's desk, and say 'What should I do?'" says Fox. "And you have to say, 'Well, why are you here?'" And they say, 'It's October. I just felt like I should come to Salem.'"


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A lot of people who aren't quite sure why they're in Salem eventually find themselves at 310 ½ Essex Street. Tucked between the Historic Salem headquarters and an ordinary residence, the so-called "Witch House" is the only building still standing that actually played a role in the 1692 trials. On Friday, an attendant ushered damp participants down the paved path and into the black clapboard building, where they paid $8.25 to see choice bits of history arrayed to tell a particular story.

The Witch House was once home to Judge Jonathan Corwin, a merchant and politician who held great standing within the community. After being appointed to a sort of witchcraft investigation committee, Corwin heard testimony from three different accused women, potentially in that very house. This came across almost immediately—as you walk into the Witch House kitchen, the first thing you see is a long trestle table, covered end to end with photocopied testimonials from the trials. In later rooms, everyday 17th century objects, like spinning wheels and rope beds, intermingle with spookier artifacts.

Some of these are intimately related to the trials—there's a "poppet" doll similar to those found in the home of witch hunt victim Bridget Bishop, and used as evidence in her conviction. Others—like a display themed around corpse medicine, and a vial of "Winthrop's Black Powder" made from smushed toads—seem to be there simply because they're creepy. Even with all the horrors of the 17th century arrayed before us, though, the trials stand out, and two young guests peer at a plaque with more printed testimony and ask the question on everyone's minds: How did this happen?

Elizabeth Peterson, the museum's director, offers up thoughtful, nuanced answers about mass panic and historical context. "I wish we could just say it was ergot," she says, referring to a theory that a hallucinogenic fungus caused it all.

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People have long had questions about the Witch House, and there has almost always been someone to answer them, for a price. After later generations of the Corwin family let go of the building, in 1856, it was purchased by an entrepreneur named George Farrington. Farrington turned much of the house into an apothecary, with boarding rooms on the second floor. Along with his medicines and tinctures, he marketed the house's history, selling his wares in bottles emblazoned with a small witch on a broomstick and charging patrons extra to take a peek at what had been Corwin's kitchen. He also made postcards and stereoscopic inserts, establishing what he had begun calling the "Old Witch House" as a spot worth seeing. People began coming to Salem just to visit it.

The building went through many incarnations—soda fountain, umbrella repair shop—but the shifting proprietors "always charged five cents to see the judge's staircase and fireplace," says Peterson. In that way, they kept its reputation as a historic tourist site alive. In 1944, the building was threatened by widening roads, and the city of Salem bought it in order to save it, transforming it into a museum and officially naming it the Witch House.

As a community leader and historical expert, Peterson is often called upon to vet the appropriateness of the world's many attempts to dramatize her city. When she weighed in on the WGN show Salem, in which actual supernatural witches live alongside Salem's accused innocents, she argued that the show could do little harm, because it's so obviously fantastical.

The Witch House is, in many ways, Salem's most truly historic site. But its name is also a bit fantastical, in that it housed zero witches. Peterson and other concerned parties have been lobbying to change it to the less zingy but more accurate "Corwin House." "We've tried to rename it for years, through the tenures of three mayors," she says. "They've disapproved every time." The brand is just too strong.


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As the day grays into black, my companions and I explore more of the city's themed offerings. We hit up the Witch Museum and the nearby (and confusingly similar) Witch History Museum, both of which present the story of the trials as a series of lit-up wax tableaus. We tour the cauldron-heavy sets of WitchPix, in which, for $34.99, you and your friends can dress up in long furs and pointy hats and be photographed posing around a cauldron. We opt for a cheaper option—sticking our heads into plywood cutouts that offer up scenes of happy, dancing witches.

This strange brew of voyeurism and role-playing serves to separate the two meanings of "witch" that Salem has on offer. It's sobering to watch people (even wax people) get ostracized, tried and executed for crimes they couldn't possibly have committed. It's fun and wacky to pretend to be a glamorous lady with a pointy hat and actual magic powers. Before we depart, we find ourselves in HausWitch: a high-ceilinged, softly lit retail space that offers tarot decks, "Witch City" tote bags, and affordable spell kits for your home.

HausWitch is capitalizing on another burgeoning trend—that of the chic, modern-day Tumblr witch, steeped in feminism and self-care. Its couches are covered with moon-shaped pillows, and its tables are strewn with incense bundles. Advertisements for in-store yoga hang alongside silkscreened "Womyn" posters and plump succulents. My impulse is to consider it the nadir of Salem's commercialization: tourists coming to Witch City and leaving with a bunch of $12 magic rocks.

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But even as I take snarky notes, something undeniable slowly occurs to me: it feels good to be there. Teenage girls are bustling in and out, tasting herbal tinctures and giggling and waving around bundles of sage. As I smell candle after candle and watch my friends pose with various geodes, the tension of the day's contradictory narratives starts to dissipate. I think of something Kate Fox said, back in the tourism board office: "Having this penetration into someone's psyche is a heavy burden for the community." The heaviness goes both ways, and it's nice to spend a little time with some crystals.

HausWitch is also notable for its newness. It's more of a piece with other parts of Salem's culture—the burgeoning restaurant scene, the growing Peabody Essex Museum, which is now the ninth largest art museum in the country. The current draw of witches dovetails with the historic one, setting Salem apart for positive reasons. "It's a mutual, symbiotic relationship," says Ocker.  "If it weren't for the fact that everyone wanted to come to Salem on Halloween and party, the town would be forgotten."

15 Amazing Photos from the Boston Mayor's 1980 Halloween Party

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The late Kevin White, longtime mayor of Boston, is best known for steering the city through tumultuous times. During his twelve-year tenure, White oversaw fraught school desegregation efforts, refurbished downtown Boston, and worked to decentralize the city government.

Apparently, though, he also threw super chill Halloween parties. These pictures, from a Mayor's Office Halloween Party in 1980, were shot at Daisy Buchanan's—a Back Bay standby until it, too, shuttered a couple of years ago. In them, mustachioed cowboys string up balloons, businessmen chat up adult babies, and even the bartender throws on a fake-nose-and-glasses set. Who says public servants can't have fun?

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6 Infamous Places of Political Corruption

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By this time next week, the 2016 presidential election will be over, for better or worse, and regardless of the outcome it will no doubt go down in the history books as one of the most stressful and foul displays of American politicking in action. But it won't be without company. The footprints of political lies, scandals, and corruption can be found all over this fine nation, if you know where to look. Here are six places in the Atlas that serve as a reminder that power corrupts.

1. Tammany Hall

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

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It's impossible to talk about political corruption in the United States without talking about New York City's infamous Tammany Hall, the ruthlessly efficient Democratic Party political machine that largely controlled New York elections from the 1830s up to the 1960s.

Located in lower Manhattan, Tammany Hall was the headquarters known variously as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, and finally, the Tammany Society. In addition to rigging elections and bribing police, under the notoriously crooked William "Boss" Tweed, the Tammany machine was also largely responsible for the rise of immigrants, especially Irish immigrants, in New York politics during the 19th century.

2. Deep Throat Parking Garage

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

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As the 1970s rolled around American politics was a far cry from squeaky clean, and in fact found itself in one of the biggest political scandals in American history, this one running all the way up to the White House.

This quotidian underground parking garage bore no special significance until 2005, when reporter Bob Woodward revealed that it was the location of secret meetings he had with Watergate source “Deep Throat.” The men met in parking space D32, which sits beneath the Oakhill Office Building in Rosslyn, Virginia. The location was ideal for such covert conversations with easy ingress and egress through stairs that led to the street from the subterranean garage. These late-night chats under a cloak of darkness were part of the investigation Woodward and fellow reporter Carl Bernstein launched into the 1972 break-in at Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel and the subsequent coverup by the Nixon administration.  

3. Site of Eugene Sawyer's "Inauguration"

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

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Another parking lot, another political scandal. In this particular parking lot, Chicago mayor Eugene Sawyer was inaugurated under very sketchy circumstances in 1987.

When the current mayor at the time, Harold Washington, died suddenly, a tumultuous scuffle immediately began within city council to fill his seat. With opinions split between two aldermen, Sawyer and Timothy Evans, debates became heated and shady dealings were thick on the ground. Then, in the early morning hours of December 2nd, using back alley channels including, allegedly, promises for six-figure retirement plans Sawyer's supporters were able to secure the vote, just before dawn in the parking lot of a closed restaurant.

Sawyer’s secret and shady inauguration was met with angry protests from minorities and progressives with many people accusing him of selling out to white politicians. However ionically, and to his credit, Mayor Sawyer passed an Ethics Ordinance to prevent corruption while in office. 

4. Underground Tunnels of Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

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In the Prohibition Era, while the rest of the country was forced to go dry, underneath downtown Los Angeles the party never stopped.

Despite laws forbidding alcohol, 11 miles of service tunnels became passageways to basement speakeasies with innocuous fronts above ground. Patrons were able to move about under the city, boozing it up without a care in the world, while the Mayor's office ran the supply of hootch.

Aside from the service tunnels, there are also abandoned subway and equestrian tunnels from the days before personal vehicles began clogging up LA's city streets. There are stories of these tunnels being used by police to transport prisoners, bank security to move large sums of cash safely, and both coroners and mobsters to store bodies.

5. Teapot Dome Service Station

ZILLAH, WASHINGTON

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Inspired by the Teapot Dome Scandal of the Harding administration, Jack Ainsworth built the Teapot Dome Service Station in 1922 along Old Highway 12 in Zillah, Washington. The building, from which petroleum products were sold, humorously reminds passerby of the scandal involving erstwhile Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, leasing Navy petroleum reserves to private oil companies without a competitive bid process. Fall eventually went to prison for taking bribes, though nobody joined him for paying a bribe.

6. The Parthenon of El Negro

ZIHUATANEJO, MEXICO

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While not in the United States, Arturo "El Negro" Durazo Moreno, the notoriously corrupt Chief of Police in sprawling Mexico City from 1976 to 1982, deserves an honorable mention on this tour of civic malfeasance. During his tenure he developed a reputation for egomaniacal behavior and crookedness that would follow him to the grave.

From petitioning to become a five-star general despite never serving in the military, to enjoying the kickbacks of an illegal cocaine smuggling ring, El Negro managed to convert Mexico City's police into a racketeering empire the likes of which had never been seen before. All that extra cash had to be funneled somewhere, so El Negro established a couple of lavish mansions and this Greek-styled seaside playhouse along the cliffs. Today it is possible to tour the Parthenon in its former glory, where patios look out on to empty pools, and murals of Bacchanalia still adorn the walls of a crooked cop's erstwhile dream home.

Voting Booths Were a Radical 19th Century Reform to Stop Election Fraud

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Voting booths aren’t spaces that voters give much thought: you’re in, you vote, you’re out. That’s how it’s meant to be. They are designed for quick exits; one 19th century law stipulated an eight-minute limit for booth use, if all were occupied. But their unobtrusive nature is a relic of a major controversy in American democracy. When the U.S. made the controversial switch to a secret ballot, we needed a place to cast them. 

Back in the 19th century, election day in America worked differently than it does now—there was even more drama, if you can believe that in 2016. There were no official ballots; political parties would print their own “party tickets.” Some states had standardized printing rules, but in some places voters could write down the names of whoever they wanted to vote for a hand that piece of paper in. Kentucky voted by voice almost to the end of the 1800s.

When parties printed up their tickets, each ballot listed the party’s candidates for all the seats at stake. Most voters accepted the pre-selected slate, rather than the candidates that most impressed them. There were measures one could take against an undesirable candidate, though, like physically cutting his name out of the party ticket.

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Polling places might be set up in private homes or “sodhouse saloons”—usually there was some separation between the election officials and the crowd of voters, but there was no privacy for voters. Partisans would corral people to the polls to cast their party tickets and keep other parties’ voters away from the polls—using fists, knives, guns...or any other effective means. Voting could mean risking your life: in the mid-1800s, 89 people died trying to get to the polls.

By the 1880s, ballot reformers were looking for a new way to run elections, one that would wrench some control away from parties and limit vote buying and other fraudulent practices. They found it in Australia.

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Since the 1850s, Australian states had been pioneering a different method of electing leaders—they let people vote in secret. This system used official ballots and provided space for people to vote without anyone knowing who they had chosen. With no way of verifying who a voter had actually cast his ballot for, parties had less power to coerce or bribe people to choose their slate. After the close and contentious election of 1884, when Grover Cleveland won New York—then allocated the most electoral votes of any state—by just over 1,000 votes, American states started seeing the appeal. In 1888, Massachusetts was the first state to adopt the “Australian ballot” system, but it was followed quickly by Indiana, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Minnesota, Washington, New York, and other states across the country.

Under these new systems, states had to provide votes with voting booths and figure out what those should look like. One county in Ohio, for instance, considered buying pre-made iron booths, before settling on cheaper wooden stalls. Often, the ballot reform laws specified in detail what voting booths should look like. New York’s law required at least one voting booth, three feet square, with wall six feet high, for every 50 voters in a district. The booths had to have four sides, with the front working as a door, and a shelf “at a convenient height for writing” that was to be stocked with “pens, ink, blotting paper, and pencils.”

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Over the next century, states tweaked the design of their voting booths little by little. Sometimes, the changes were meant to accommodate new technologies. In New York, with its giant lever machines, for instance, booths were expansive, and usually built against the wall. As electronic voting system were developed, machine manufacturers started designed bespoke booths to fit their particular machines.

Some of the changes in booth design were just meant to make set-up easier and simpler. By the middle of the 20th century, it was more common for booths to be fronted by curtains than heavy wooden doors. By the 1980s, freestanding, metal stations had come into vogue. Each state developed its own quirky requirements. “New Hampshire had an archaic state law that the booths’ curtains had to extend down to the ankle,” says Hollister Bundy, who works at Inclusion Solutions, a company that sells election booth. Most states were happy to have shorter curtains, reaching down about the height of a person’s thigh, so for many years there was one curtain for New Hampshire voting booths and one curtain for any other state that wanted it. (The state has since changed the law.)

Today, one of the primary concerns for the designers of voting booths is making sure there are accessible options that meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Help America Vote Act, passed after the election controversy of 2000. Other than that, there’s no centralized requirement for voting booth design: each state has its own rules, and often it’s up to county clerks and other election officials to make sure voters have a place to vote—in private.

Watch This Cute Squishy Caterpillar Launch a Stinky Attack

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This adorable black swallowtail caterpillar may look harmless curled up around a piece of bark, but if you sneak up on the critter, it will unleash a surprisingly putrid counterattack. 

Hidden in the caterpillar's head are two large, bright orange antenna or forked gland, called osmeterium. When agitated or in danger, the snake tongue-like gland shoots out towards the threat and emits a foul, spoiled cheese smell.

On the account NatureBrainz, two teachers in New Jersey posted this video of the black swallowtail caterpillar's violent defense mechanism, poking the creature's soft fluorescent green body. You can see the finger in the video immediately jump away in shock when the caterpillar's body retracts and springs the forked gland forward.

There does not seem to be any pain if you are attacked by the insect, however people have reported that the chemical odor released is so strong that it can take several washes to rid of the stink.

Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.

Inside the Strange Sport of Paramotoring, in Which Competitors Risk Life and Limb to Fly

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Risk is a part of everyday life. Even basic tasks, such as commuting to work or eating, involve a minimal amount of danger.

Yet some people prefer activities that involve an inordinate amount of risk, activities in which the high risk might be the whole point. 

It’s certainly the whole point of the Icarus Trophy, a cross-country paramotor race, that, for the second year in a row, has attracted some of the best paramotorists in the world. What is paramotoring? Imagine a parachutist with a propeller engine strapped to their back. With a running start from the ground, that setup, it turns out, can take you pretty far and high. 

It is a predictably dangerous endeavor but also one that has its enthusiasts. For the Icarus Trophy, those enthusiasts gather to compete in two classes: race and adventure. To win a race class, pilots are required to complete a given course without pre-arranged support, while for the adventure class, the way to win is a bit more ambiguous, to simply have the best paramotoring adventure. (The adventure for the winner involved a medicine man, a nude selfie at a hot spring, and almost beating some of the best paramotorists in the world.)

For the privilege, Icarus pilots pay a $2,000 fee and cover their own expenses during the 14-day race, something the race's sponsor, the extreme sports firm the Adventurists, says is not for the faint of heart. 

“These are not holidays,” the website for the Adventurists states. “These are adventures and so by their very nature extremely risky. You really are putting both your health and life at risk. That’s the whole point.”

During this year’s Icarus Trophy race, which began Sept. 30 and wrapped up Oct. 15, I followed along in Montana (and Idaho, and Utah, and Arizona, and Nevada), on the trail of the still relatively new extreme sport, trying to see what I could learn about flying, and desire, and risk. 

The race began in Polson, Montana, where, on one beautiful Sunday morning, a small collection of pilots gathered. They were there to fly their paramotors, which are one of the cheapest and most basic ways to fly. 

To take off, pilots turn on their motor, catch wind in their “wing," and start running. If the conditions are right, they quickly gain speed and, hopefully, take flight.

But of course, that doesn’t always happen, and at this Icarus Trophy race, failure was pretty common. Failure or liftoff is in large part determined by the air, which, at this race, was thin, thanks to an altitude of over 4,000 feet. Face plants were pretty common. 

“The air changed on me,” Dean Kelly explained after a failed takeoff attempt outside of St. Ignatius, Montana. An Australian that’s piloted paramotors for over two years, Kelly cracked two props and damaged the outer cage surrounding his motor. Fortunately, he was not hurt.

The risk associated with paramotoring can seem great, but James Borges, a pilot from the United Kingdom, said that for him it was mostly about the reward. 

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“It’s not really about risk, we try to manage risk as much as possible," Borges said. "If we do that, we get to fly in a way few people experience."

Borges explained verbally what extreme sports athletes and scientists have long known: that while fear is common, the reward is a healthy dose of adrenaline and dopamine, the chemicals in the brain responsible for happiness and satisfaction.

In paramotoring, that translates to a lot of high fiving and handshaking after a successful flight, even if, pilots say, the adrenaline rush can wear off after a while.

“When you first start, oh yeah, there’s always an adrenaline rush,” said Trey German, an engineer from Texas that’s been flying paramotors for nearly three years. “After a while, you really only feel it during maneuvers or extreme conditions.”

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Which might explain why these pilots would choose to participate in the Icarus Trophy, claimed by its organizers to be the world’s toughest air race. The 2016 version of the race started in Polson and ran 1,100 miles through five states before ending near Las Vegas. This course was 300 miles longer than the previous year’s, which ran from Seattle to Sacramento.

“During one flight, I experienced hail, snow, rain, and turbulence,” Kelly said about the experience. “I had never dealt with those conditions before and I got to deal with them all at once.”

The Icarus Trophy starts in Polson, Montana, which is around 3,000 feet above sea level, before moving to a host of cities across the West, including Moab, Utah; Monument Valley; Idaho Falls, Idaho; and, unofficially, the Bonneville Salt Flats, where some competitors made a stop this year to fly. 

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Along the way, tormented competitors and their support staffs dealt with cramped living conditions, unpredictable weather, and broken equipment.

On the first day, Scotty Duncan, a well-known Australian pilot, blew an engine and had to repair it with the help of a local machinist, who was also kind enough to serve him elk stew.

“It’s part of the experience and adventure,” Kelly said after his failed attempt to launch on the first day. “Where’s the fun if everything goes right?”

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And then there are injuries, which, this year, thankfully, weren't too common. Seven pilots flew, in total, with all but one finishing. Last year was worse: one competitor suffered a severely sprained ankle, while another had a broken wrist.

This year, though, the hazards were, at most, some tumbles and muscle strains, in addition to a few strange situations. 

German, for one, landed among thick desert shrubbery and had to remove his pants to pull out dozens of thorns. He later said he considered paramotoring about as safe as riding motorcycles

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“There are maybe twenty or thirty thousand paramotorists in the world but ones that fly regularly are much less, maybe ten thousand.” German said, “And there are only seven pilots with the balls to take on Icarus.

“Challenging yourself to do new things is a big part of Icarus,” German said. “If this were easy and without risk, it wouldn’t be as fun or memorable.”

Andrew Egan is a writer living in Texas. He’s previously written for Forbes and ABC News. He just completed his first novel, Nothing Too Original, and his collection Drink Your Whisky Like a Man spent one week on Amazon’s American poetry best seller list. You can find his terrible website at CrimesInProgress.comA version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.

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The Best Political Cartoon In History Is This Fake Banknote from the Panic of 1837

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Blur your eyes, and the banknote above looks normal enough. It has the right proportions. It's covered in intricate line drawings, so as to discourage counterfeiting. It's got serious-looking slogans and strongly penned numbers. If someone passed it to you across a counter after a long night, you might not look twice.

Focus, though, and you'll notice a few weird things going on. A panel on the left side shows a bony, balding person dressed in a tattered American Flag. Across the top, a dragon rides a carriage through the streets, crushing pedestrians willy-nilly. The right side sports a donkey defecating into a monkey's top hat. And along the bottom, a dung beetle with a human face rolls a poop ball emblazoned with the bill's weird denomination: 75 cents.

In case you hadn't guessed, this bill is not legal tender. It's a parody note, "issued" during the Panic of 1837 to lampoon the figures on whom the artists blamed the crisis. Today, it provides a monstrous sort of history lesson, along with a timeless example of bonkers political art.

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Like most economic crises, the Panic of 1837 was made of many stressful strands. Mostly, though, it hinged on how different parties defined money. In the early 1830s, Andrew Jackson was running a "hard-money" White House, insisting that it was best to use pin the U.S. economic system on money that had actual value—in this case, gold and silver coins, known as "specie."

This clashed with the policies of various states, and after Jackson revoked the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, these states began happily printing and issuing paper currency, without necessarily having the loot to back it up. The early 19th century also saw a pioneer-style real estate bubble, as speculators bought up Western land newly stolen from native people, using this paper money.

In 1836, Jackson issued an executive order requiring that people pay for government land in specie instead. As a result, paper money quickly lost value, and those who had been relying on it ran into trouble. Foreign investors began rescinding on their loans, hoping to get out before things got worse. On May 10th, 1837, banks in New York City announced that they would no longer trade paper banknotes for gold or silver, making them even more worthless. Thus began a seven-year recession, during which unemployment skyrocketed, banks shuttered, businesses were bankrupted, and entire fortunes crumpled away like the paper they were.

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This banknote tells about the same story, but through the kind of surreal, nightmarish imagery only achievable in times of political crisis. It takes the form of a "shinplaster," a kind of ad-hoc small bill printed by merchants and other private entities. "Small bills were really important when you were paying workers, or trying to get your hair cut or buy a loaf of bread," explains Jessica Lepler, an associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire and the author of The Many Panics of 1837.

But even state banks didn't issue bills smaller than $5, and thanks to the specie shortage, coins were hard to come by. To keep in business, barbers and shopowners drummed up their own local economies, issuing change in homemade shinplasters. "These shinplasters existed and before the panic, and even more after," says Lepler.

This particular shinplaster wasn't worth anything. Instead, it was the equivalent of an editorial cartoon, meant to lampoon all the high-level decisions that had forced average Americans to print their own cash. It was drawn by an illustrator named Napoleon Farrady, and printed by H.R. Robinson, a staunch Whig who blamed the other Democratic faction, the Loco Focos, for the crisis.

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Look closely at its weird populace, and you'll see the caricatured faces of towering historical figures. That lady on the left side? "That's Andrew Jackson in drag," says Lepler. Jackson is dressed as Lady Liberty, and holding a knife that says "veto," meant to remind everyone of that time he had vetoed the Second Bank of the United States. The cracked globe he is standing next to represents The Globe, the leading newspaper of his party. "It was kind of the Fox News of its time," says Lepler.

Jackson also makes a second cameo on the right side, this time as an incontinent donkey. "He's pooping out gold currency because that's supposedly what he wants to happen to the money supply," explains Lepler. His vice president and successor appears too: "Martin Van Buren, his little trained monkey, is collecting the poop in a top hat." Van Buren was also widely maligned, both for sucking up to Jackson and for continuing his policies once he himself had taken office. (He was also considered overly stylish, which explains the top hat.)

It is also Van Buren's face on the crazy dragon on the top of the note, hoarding bags of money and riding in a wagon labeled "Treasury Department." The wagon is being pulled by Loco Focos, who in turn are being whipped by John C. Calhoun, an infamous Southern successionist who supported Jackson on economic issues, if very little else. The whole crowd is running roughshod over people in the street. "A lot of Democratic support came from working class men," says Lepler. "They're trampling them."

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And then there's the dung beetle, sporting the small, determined face of Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton. "Benton was known as Old Bullion Benton, becuase he was really in favor of hard currency," says Lepler. "People called specie 'Benton's Mint Drops.'" The Benton bug is pushing a massive lump of dung, labeled with the banknote's supposed value. Around him, in pompous script, loops a promise "to pay out of the United States Treasury, seven years after it is convenient, the amount of seventy-five cents."

It's difficult to consolidate a whole issue into an image, as evidenced by today's one-panel political cartoons. As monstrous as this one looks, it's actually pretty subtle, lampooning the country's sad situation in its form—a useless piece of paper, dressed up as money—as well as its weird, weird content. As the Treasury Department begins to redesign our current American currency, they might want to consider a few more important financial players: flag drag Jackson, monkey Van Buren, and a certain human-faced, hard-money-loving dung beetle.

Object of Intrigue is a weekly column in which we investigate the story behind a curious item. Is there an object you want to see covered? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.

A Map of Some of the Most Disastrous Elections in History

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Democracy has never been a smooth path. Starting with the ancient Greeks and modified by ancient Romans, the idea of holding elections is still relatively new. After all, it wasn’t until fairly recently that the Western world started questioning the idea of the “divine ruler,” beheading its monarchs or forcing them to grant citizens rights that absolute monarchs would have never dreamed of bestowing.

The world has witnessed several elections that place into question the efficiency of democracy as a system, and the veracity of common human decency. This map illustrates some of these most disastrous elections—the scandals, the bad decisions, the folly of voters.

Starting with Julius Caesar’s corrupt campaign for his election as consul, and moving through the line of history, there is a dark irony to this list. We are reminded of the tumultuous 1876 presidential elections in the United States, which were decided more by a truce between the candidates than by citizens: Not only was Rutherford B. Hayes elected president despite losing popular vote, but also Republicans withdrew from the South, ending the Reconstruction Period and giving way to a legacy of institutional disenfranchisement of black Americans.

Other disastrous elections include the rise to power of corrupt governors that take much more than they give. This includes Arnoldo Aleman, ex-president of Nicaragua, who stole 25 million dollars from the country; and Alberto Fujimori, who resigned by fax to his position as the Peruvian President as he was fleeing the country. Some are pitiful shadows of real elections, in which only one person is included in the ballot. Perfect examples of this are the North Korean "elections" and the Liberian contest of 1927, in which the standing president won with more than ten times the votes than there were voters.

Yet money and choices have unfortunately not always been the only thing taken away by democratically elected governors. Some elections have resulted in repressive regimes that have been responsible for horrible crimes against humanity, including genocide. The most notorious of these instances is the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany in 1932. Though not elected by majority vote, the inconclusiveness of the parliamentary elections gave Hitler a way into political power, which he eventually consolidated as the Fuhrer of the Third Reich. Other examples of atrocious consequences of an election include Robert Mugabe’s rule in Zimbabwe and François Duvalier’s in Haiti.

For all the horrible electoral stories, however, there are sometimes positive outcomes. The election fraud committed by the standing president, Ferdinand E. Marcos, during the Snap Elections in the Philippines eventually led to the end of his rule. Likewise, the Rose Revolution that followed the Georgian parliamentary election of 2003 ended the Soviet regime that governed the nation.

Take heart, prepare yourself mentally, and peruse through a collection of these most disastrous elections.

If you feel like there is an election that should be included, just let us know. We’ll be happy to add it to the map.

How a Forged Sculpture Boosted Michelangelo’s Early Career

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If you’ve seen any of Michelangelo’s artworks in person, you have probably felt the same awe that millions of pilgrims to the Sistine Chapel have experienced, while staring up at his singular ceiling frescoes. With masterpieces like the Pieta and the astonishing statue of David, he is decidedly one of the most influential artists in the history of the western world. But what most people don't know is that, at the beginning of his career, Michelangelo was a forger.

In his teenage years, he was a protege of Lorenzo de Medici—also known as Lorenzo the Magnificent—and studied under some of the most respectable sculptors of the time. In his circle, he quickly gained a reputation for talent that went far beyond his years and experience.

But despite his promising future, back in 1496 he was just another starving artist trying to find ways to fund his art. At 21, he had the talent and the passion, but not the name necessary to sell his work at a profitable price. He was also working in Florence at the beginning of the Renaissance, when many art collectors were more fascinated by the idea of possessing some of the classical sculptures that were just beginning to be unearthed, than in acquiring contemporary art.

Faced with this dilemma, Michelangelo opted for the seemingly logical solution: he forged a classical sculpture by artificially aging it.

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Or so one version of the story goes. In The Lives of the Artistconsidered the first art history book of the western world—Giorgio Vasari complements this version with another one: Instead of Michelangelo, it was the art dealer Baldassari del Milanese who took the sculpture, which depicted a sleeping cupid, and buried it in his vineyard in order to age it.

Whether it was Michelangelo’s or Milanese’s idea, the statue was artificially aged and successfully sold as an antiquity to an Italian Cardinal named Raffaele Riario. Everything went according to plan until the victim of the pair’s astuteness became aware that he had been duped.

One could assume that the Cardinal’s hurt ego and depleted wealth would incur his wrath against the young artist. It seems, however, that his indignation was centered on Milanese, who had to give his part of the money back. As for Michelangelo, not only was he able to keep his cut, but he also received an invitation from the Cardinal to come to Rome, an opportunity that proved essential to his career.

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Why would the Cardinal reward the artist who had taken him for a fool? To fully comprehend this attitude, it is necessary to grasp the artistic environment of the time. According to art historian Noah Charney, author of The Art of Forgery, far from valuing originality, Renaissance patrons of the arts admired artists who could reproduce the works of their masters. A good imitator proved that he had true potential. Therefore, being able to forge an ancient Roman statue showed the incredible talent Michelangelo had.  Rather than hurting his career—as it would now—it helped propel him to fame.

As to the fate of the sculpture,  it was returned to Milanese, the shady art dealer who had sold it. Reportedly, when Michelangelo asked for it back, the dealer refused, saying he would smash it to pieces before returning it. Instead, he sold it again, and kept all the profits. From there, the sculpture moved around, as it was sold or gifted to new owners, and even taken as a bounty in the sacking of a palace. 

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At some point in the late 17th century, the sculpture was transported to England, where it disappeared. The treasure is believed to have perished along with countless other priceless pieces in the devastating fire that reduced London's Whitehall Palace to ashes. Once the largest palace in all of Europe, the splendid Tudor house was brought down by a linen that was left to dry close to a fire. This was the last anyone saw of Michelangelo’s controversial cupid. 

No other verified forgeries are known by this Renaissance master, though his past has aroused suspicion about the authenticity of other great works. The famous statue of Laocoön and his Sons has been viewed as stunning sculpture from Greek antiquity since its discovery in 1506. Now, art historian Lynn Catterson is spearheading an investigation on whether the sculpture could be another one of Michelangelo’s forgeries.

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The suspicion arose not only because there are early sketches from the artist that resemble this statue, but also because it was unearthed from the backyard of one of his close friends. This coincidence resulted in Michelangelo being commissioned to restore the sculpture. Though the legitimacy of the claim has been heavily questioned, there is no doubt that the great artist's less enviable past life has followed him. 

In the eyes of the world, however, Michelangelo is the embodiment of a true artist, so much so that the adoring public seems to have turned a blind eye to the less inspired works he created at the beginning of his career.


Lose Yourself in 12 of the Most Extraordinary Labyrinths Ever Built

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In Fontanellato, near Parma, Italy, 1.85 miles of bamboo spread across 17 acres of land to create the Masone Labyrinth. If you reach the center, you’ll be greeted by a plaza with a pyramid—assuming you can navigate the maze of right-angled walls, some of which reach over 16 feet high. 

The Mason Labyrinth is one of several featured in the new book by Francesca Tatarella, Labyrinths and Mazes: A Journey Through Art, Architecture and Landscape. It includes labyrinths formed from nature—hedges, bamboo, even snow—as well as those created as art, such as Via Negative II, pictured above. Created in 2014 by artist Lee Bul, it’s labyrinth of mind-bending proportions, in which visitors walked through a maze of mirrored walls and LED lights.

So if getting lost sounds fun to you, time to get lost. Just remember: There is always at least one way out of a maze. Here are a selection of images from the book: 

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How to Make a Clock Tick

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Shop the styles in this video: the Carleton, the Glancy, the Wheelwright, and the Beckwith

As unusual as it may be to see a centenarian grandfather or cuckoo clock these days, finding someone who knows how those complex pieces of machinery works is even more difficult. Horology is complicated work and each old timepiece, whether it be a tiny pocket watch or a heavy French Morbier, comes with its own quirks and intricacies. This fall, Atlas Obscura set out on the modern trail with footwear, clothing, and accessories company Timberland, to learn the tricks of the trade from exceptional curators and clockmakers.   


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 Philadelphia, our host city.

We began our adventure at the Franklin Institute, one of the country’s leading science and technology education centers. Museum curator Susannah Carroll offered us the rare opportunity to closely examine some of the antique timepieces in the Institute’s collection. These remarkable clocks, with their varied forms and delicate internal workings, are not usually on display to the public.

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 A minimalist timepiece from the Franklin Institute's collections.

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Enough gears to go around.

Old clocks, like the ones at the Franklin Institute, require expert care. After a long lunch, we continued to the studio of one of these experts: artist-turned-clockmaker Lili von Baeyer. Lili is a master maker, fixer, and restorer of timepieces, who currently works with around 200 historic clocks.

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Clockmaker Lili von Baeyer.

Under Lili’s guidance, we disassembled small clocks and challenged ourselves to put the pieces back together.

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Sketching the clock's interior.

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A participant inspects her half-finished clock.

As we sorted through our arrays of cogs and pins, we became increasingly impressed by Lili’s prowess. By the end of the afternoon, with a combination of beginner’s luck, focus, and her patient guidance, our clocks were ticking once again. 

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Carefully tightening a screw.

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Timeless.

This event was part of Timberland and Brooklyn Brewery's Mash Tour, which focuses on urban art, culture, and exploration. You can watch a recap of our day (and get a peek inside some tremendous timepieces) above.

In Deadwood, Men Wore Fake Five Dollar Coins on Their Wrists to Show Off

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In the 1880s, the U.S. Mint tried an experiment: it created a 5-cent coin, made of nickel, that featured the head of Liberty in its design. The nickel wasn’t the only coin at the time to feature that design—the gold one dollar coin had it, too.

In fact, the new nickel looked a lot like the dollar coin, so much so that clever hucksters realized they might be able to inflate the value of the nickel 100-fold. There was a roman numeral, V, on the coin, indicating that it was worth five cents. But the coin didn’t actually say “cents” on it. To increase the coin’s apparent value, people would plate the nickel with gold and try to convince their marks that the V meant it was worth 5 dollars, not 5 cents.

There was a gold $5 coin at the time, so it wasn’t such a huge stretch to try to convince people these coins were just a new design. But not everyone was easily fooled by these “Racketeer Nickels,” especially in a place like the infamous Deadwood, South Dakota, the gambling frontier town where residents tended to have creative views of the law to begin with.

In Deadwood, some young men didn’t use the trumped up coins to buy goods, but used them as a fashion statement, reports the Rapid City Journal. As a local paper wrote at the time, “A number of the tony young men about town are wearing cuff buttons made of the new nickels… They are highly plated with gold, and to the uninitiated look for all the world like genuine five-dollar gold pieces.”

Back in 2001, the city dug up one of these fashion statements with a bunch of other coins during an archaeological study. But they only just realized what they had found, when coin experts came in to examine a separate haul of Chinese coins. The experts immediately recognized the Racketeer Nickel in the city’s coin collection. It’s not in particularly good shape or worth that much: Racketeer Nickel are not uncommon and are easily faked. What makes this one special is that it was found in situ—it’s an archaeological treasure, rather than a numismatic one.

Please Tell Us About Your Panic Dreams

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Whichever 2016 presidential candidate you support or don't support, we can probably all agree that this election is causing a lot, a lot, a lot of anxiety.

With the election less than a week away and cortisol levels across America spiking, this nightmare political season is manifesting itself in many as actual stress dreams about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and general end-of-times scenarios. If you are suffering from such panic dreams, this is your outlet—tell us about them, and we will gather your stories into a pool of anxiety to share with the world. At least we're all in this together?

The Animal Kingdom's Oddest Ways of Handling Anxiety

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In 1646, scholar and polymath Athanasius Kircher took a break from inventing new projection devices and studying the blood of plague victims to try and hypnotize a chicken.

Kircher held a hen down on the ground, taking care to press firmly on her head. He waited for her to become still, and then drew a chalk line on the ground, extending from her beak off into the distance. When he backed away, he reported, she lay there, paralyzed—"as if, despairing of escape through the fruitlessness of her motions, she gave herself up to the will of her conquerer." Kircher figured she thought the line was a string, and was acting as though she had been bound.

Now, thanks to our slightly improved understanding of chicken psychology, it's clear that Kircher's hen wasn't roleplaying Fifty Shades of Grey— she was just super freaked out. This paralysis, which researchers now call "tonic immobility," is a fear response, probably meant to help chickens and other animals "play dead" in the presence of threats. (The chalk line isn't strictly necessary.) As the psychologist G.G. Gallup Jr. explained in a series of papers from the 1970s, chickens freeze for longer when exposed to loud noises, stuffed hawks, or other scary stimuli.

When it comes to over-the-top panic behavior, humans definitely win. But when faced with the many dangers of wild life, animal brains do strange stuff, too. Here are some of the weirdest fear responses in the natural world.

1. Stackable Toads

All different kinds of animals, from crayfish to rabbits, exhibit tonic immobility. Different physical orientations inspire the state—toads, for example, will conk out pretty easily when turned upside down. In the video above, a patient Australian man demonstrates a "simple three-toad stack that anybody can do at home," carried out in his garage with a few unlucky cane toads. As soon as he flips them over, they go limp and cross their arms, as though preparing for their little toad coffins. Fun!

2. Freezing Goats

Goats are among the most exciteable of Earth's creatures—one expert has attested that "it does not take much for them to scream bloody murder," and the Greek god Pan, namesake of panic itself, was half-goat. To top it off, certain of them straight-up fall down when they get scared. These particular goats have a condition called myotonia congenita, which means it takes their muscles a while to relax after seizing up. Because fear involves rapid muscle clenching, they get frozen in position and keel over.  Take a moment to study it further, in the video above.

3. "Dead" Opposums

When an opossum gets scared, it, too, keels over. But the possum fear response involves a little extra panache—it also gapes its mouth, drools excessively, and begins leaking smelly green fluid out of its butt. This is likely meant to make predators think it's extra-dead, from some kind of foul disease. Next time you metaphorically "play possum" to get out of a tough situation, consider ramping it up a bit for accuracy.

4. Mutating Aphids

Fish, ants, and other animals that hang out in groups often warn each other about scary things by emitting "alarm pheremones"—smelly chemicals that mean "run!" The pea aphid, though, takes things one step further. When it gets a whiff of alarm pheremone, it not only takes off as fast as possible—if it survives, its offspring are more likely to be born with wings, enabling multigenerational escape. (The guy above didn't make it.)

5. Chicken Chickens

Let's finish this off with the classic choice. Kircher was far from the only person to make a hobby out of chicken fear—by the 19th century, The American Naturalist was calling chicken-hypnotizing "an experiment sufficiently familiar to all of us"—but despite its oversaturation, the pasttime has found popularity in every century. Hemingway shared his technique in The Dangerous Summer, and Iggy Pop sings about it in "Lust For Life," just before insisting that he's had it in the ear before. Comparatively, the people in the video above are just simple chicken-freezing folks. At least they wake their hen up again at the end.

Naturecultures is a weekly column that explores the changing relationships between humanity and wilder things. Have something you want covered (or uncovered)? Send tips to cara@atlasobscura.com.

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