10 Creepy Murders in Old New York

New York City, one of the most famous cities in the world, has a reputation—deserved or not—for violence. Certainly, the Big Apple has experienced its share of criminals and crime (including the hideous crime against human decency that is Donald Trump’s combover). Here are ten of the more gruesome murders in New York, pre-1905.

10

Hacked to Death

September 29, 1892

Let’s set the scene: Cries and the sounds of a struggle come from a room at the top floor of a Hester Street tenement. A man in a soft felt hat is seen leaving in a hurry. Alarmed neighbors enter the room and find Frank Paulsen horribly murdered.

The sexagenarian victim had been attacked with a meat cleaver or axe, leaving deep head wounds that exposed bone. The room was painted with blood, but amazingly, Paulson was still alive. By the time police officers summoned an ambulance, however, he succumbed to his injuries and died. Unlike an episode of Colombo, he didn’t manage to gasp out a clue with his last breath. Investigators found a defensive wound on his right hand, a cut presumably delivered by the murder weapon, and he clutched a lock of hair so blood soaked, its color couldn’t be determined. This sole piece of evidence would prove useless.

A man fitting the description of the person seen hurrying from the crime scene was arrested by police in the Bowery, but since his clothes didn’t have a speck of blood on them, he was released. Further investigation turned up Frank Roehl, who admitted killing Paulsen, but claimed the victim had attacked him and he’d used a hatchet in self defense. The jury thought otherwise, and convicted him of murder.

BONUS FACT: During the trial, the district attorney narrowly avoided injury when Roehl attacked him during cross examination.

9

The Nurse Girl Murder

December 7, 1900

Let’s set the scene: A comfortable middle class home on Palmetto Court in Brooklyn. Mr. and Mrs. Jones linger over their meal, while the hired nurse takes care of their eighteen-month-old baby boy. Later, poor Mrs. Jones enters the kitchen and makes a horrific discovery.

While the Jones’ were enjoying post-dinner piano playing in the parlor, Alice O’Donnell—twenty eight years old, a nurse recently hired to take care of their infant son—calmly took a straight razor from the husband’s dresser, cut the baby’s throat from ear to ear, changed her clothes, and left. At eleven o’clock, Mrs. Jones walked into the kitchen and found her son’s body where Alice had abandoned it on the floor, the little corpse pale and stiff in a pool of blood. The police were immediately summoned.

Alice O’Donnell was arrested at her home on North Portland Avenue. When confronted by police, she admitted to the murder and expressed no remorse. Her motive? Unknown. She said she’d killed the baby on impulse. While I haven’t been able to determine Alice’s ultimate fate, detectives at the time speculated that she was insane, although the dead child’s parents insisted she had been in her right mind and lucid at the time of the murder.

BONUS FACT: Mrs. Jones believed that Alice, who had been forced to give up a newborn baby eight months previous, cold-bloodedly murdered her baby out of jealousy.

8

Terror in the Tenderloin

September 27, 1902

Let’s set the scene: From the sub-cellar of the Hotel Empire in the infamous Tenderloin red-light district, a ghastly stench begins to rise, distressing the guests. Police discover the source of the smell: a human head smoldering in the furnace.

Police were first tipped off by a witness, who said he’d seen ex-convict Thomas Tobin drag an unconscious James “Captain Jim” Craft downstairs. The reek of burning flesh coming from the basement drew investigators to break down the door. A few buckets of water put out the fire in the furnace, and a round, blackened object resembling a barbecued soccer ball was scraped out of the embers. It was a human head with most of the hair and flesh burned off. The bloody murder weapon—a meat cleaver—and the rest of the body lay nearby. The victim was naked and almost split in half due to a massive, deep gash running across his chest.

Tobin was arrested immediately – his clothes still covered in blood. He had killed Craft to steal $50. Despite attempting an insanity plea (he had spent time in the past in Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane) he was judged sane, convicted of murder, and sentenced to death.

BONUS FACT: After finding out how difficult it was to cut up and dispose of his victim’s body, Tobin decided to prevent identification by decapitating Craft and burning the head. He didn’t know he’d been seen by a witness, who saw the whole horrible thing.

7

The Silver Lake Horror

July 19, 1878

Let’s set the scene: Three boys walk through the woods near picturesque Silver Lake, Staten Island. One trips on a barrel stave protruding from the ground. When they dig up the carpet wrapped barrel and open it, to their horror they discover not treasure, but the ghastly, stinking, decomposing remains of a young woman.

The victim’s face was unrecognizable since the killer had sprinkled quicklime over her body after shattering her skull with a blunt instrument and stuffing her in the barrel. The coroner discovered she’d been pregnant when she died. After about a month, efforts to identify the victim finally led investigators to suspect Edward Reinhardt, whose wife, Mary Ann Degnan, was missing. The couple had quarreled, and Reinhardt was known to have a violent temper. In addition, a couple of days following Mary Ann’s disappearance, Reinhardt told neighbors she’d gone to Newark. Not long afterward, he married another woman.

The defense tried to get the murder case dismissed on the grounds that the body couldn’t be positively identified, but that argument went over like a ham sandwich at a vegan picnic. During the trial, Reinhardt finally confessed, admitting he’d struck Mary Ann on the head with a hammer during an argument. Later, he recanted, claiming she’d actually died from medicine she’d taken for dropsy (edema), and he’d only buried the body to avoid trouble with the police. The jury didn’t buy this story either. He died on the gallows.

BONUS FACT: Originally, police suspected the victim might be Annie Hommel, another missing girl who’d broken her wrist as a child. To test the theory, the body was dug up from a pauper’s grave. The coroner removed both the arms and boiled off the flesh in a cauldron right in the cemetery to examine the bones. Turned out it wasn’t her after all.

6

The Eighth Ward Mystery

May 18, 1873

Let’s set the scene: A bartender at a dance saloon on Thompson Street in the vice ridden district known as Satan’s Circus goes into the rear yard. Inside the “water closet”—an outdoor toilet—he discovers a shockingly large pool of clotting blood and a straight razor lying open on the floor. What he doesn’t find is the victim’s body.

Shortly after the horrified bartender summoned the police, more investigators were called to a room close by on Broome Street where a woman’s corpse lay huddled in blankets on the bed. Mary Jane Sullivan, a prostitute, had been beaten to death with a hickory walking cane. The murderer struck her so savagely that the cane broke (and hickory is a very hard indeed). The only cut on her body was a thin slice over her left eye..

At first, police weren’t sure if the murder was related to the blood found at the dance saloon, but Mary Jane was known to frequent the dance saloon. How had she hemorrhaged from such a small wound? It was a question that wouldn’t have fazed Jessica Fletcher, but NYC police found it baffling. Soon the picture became clearer. Mary Jane had lived with two other women, also prostitutes, under the “protection” of James Jackson, a kalsominer (whitewash painter), part-time pimp, and known ruffian. In the early hours of the morning before Mary Jane’s body was found, witnesses saw Jackson beating her on a street corner.

Police reckoned a drunken Jackson had caught Mary Jane freelancing in the dance saloon’s water closet. He cut her customer with his razor—hence the blood—and dragged her home to finish her off. Within a couple of days after the murder, Jackson took $200 from his bank account and fled the city for Philadelphia. His fate remains unknown.

5

The Fiend of Second Avenue

August 26, 1871

Let’s set the scene: A Manhattan railroad depot. A busy porter loading baggage onto a Chicago-bound train. A trunk that reeks of death so strongly that the station master orders it opened. The awful stench is caused by a young woman’s body—pretty and blonde no more.

The discovery kicked off the “Great Trunk Mystery.” Subsequent police investigation revealed the victim had died of an infection caused by a botched abortion. Worse, it appeared she’d been stuffed into the trunk while still alive. When a certain Second Avenue address was identified by the delivery man who had picked up the trunk, police arrested the resident, Jacob Rosenzweig, an abortionist who’d bought his medical degree from a diploma mill.

The unidentified body in an advanced stage of decomposition was put on public display like the world’s most stomach-churning performance art piece. Hundreds of gawkers flocked to view the putrid remains. Alice Augusta Bowlsby, a New Jersey girl, was eventually identified by her family’s doctor and dentist, and Rosenzweig was tried and convicted.

BONUS FACT: Alice’s lover, Walter Conklin, presumably her baby’s daddy, committed suicide by shooting himself when he learned of her death.

4

The Witch of Staten Island

December 25, 1843

Let’s set the scene: Christmas night. Fire engulfs a wooden house in a Staten Island neighborhood. The flames are beaten back by neighbors and relatives who live close by. Two bodies are discovered in the ashes: a mother and her baby, not burned but brutally slain.

The stage is set for one of America’s most infamous murder cases, which in its day was more sensational than Lizzie Borden’s shenanigans with an axe. Both Emeline Van Pelt Houseman, wife of George Houseman (who wasn’t home that night), and her twenty month old daughter suffered crushed skulls, broken bones, and in the mother’s case, a slit throat before the house was deliberately torched by their killer.

Police suspected Polly Houseman Bodine, Emeline’s sister-in-law. Certainly, Polly was no angel. A married woman with teenage children, she’d left her husband to live in sin with an apothecary, George Waite. She drank. She lived across the street from her brother’s place. And according to witnesses, she’d not only lied about Emeline going out of town that day, she lied about her own whereabouts as well.

However, it wasn’t a slam dunk prosecution. Polly seemed to have no motive for a gore-fest that would have done Jason Voorhees proud. Witnesses changed their statements or were refuted by the defense. The first trial ended in a hung jury. The second trial in a conviction – later overturned by the State Supreme Court. The third trial saw Polly finally acquitted. The murder of Emeline Houseman and her baby remains unsolved.

BONUS FACT: George Houseman, Emeline’s husband, was quoted as saying, “I can get another wife. I can get another child. I can never get another sister.” Nice guy, huh?

3

Jack the Ripper in America

April 24, 1891

Let’s set the scene: Manhattan’s waterfront, the East River Hotel. The walls, floor, and furniture in Room 31 is soaked in blood. The body of a known prostitute, Carrie “Old Shakespeare” Brown, is discovered strangled, stabbed, and hideously mutilated. The killer had attempted to gut her with a knife found by police at the scene.

Occurring just a few years after the infamous Jack the Ripper killings in London, the city’s sensation-seeking newspapers immediately pointed out the similarity between Brown’s murder and the Whitechapel killings. Headlines screamed, “Jack the Ripper in America!”

The police didn’t agree. They arrested Ameer Bin Ali, an Algerian who had been staying in Room 33, just across the hall from the crime scene. Although witnesses couldn’t identify him as the man who had been spotted with Brown earlier that evening, investigators claimed to have found blood on the door and doorknob of his room.

Without witnesses to the crime, the prosecution’s case hung on the blood evidence. However, at this time, it was impossible to tell with certainty if the blood belonged to the victim. In fact, whether the blood even belonged to a woman or a Xenu was anybody’s guess. Nevertheless, the jury convicted Ameer of second degree murder, probably because he was a French-speaking foreigner. He spent eleven years in Sing-Sing before his conviction was overturned, when it was learned that police had tampered with … yep, the blood evidence. Carrie Brown’s murder remains unsolved.

BONUS FACT: More recently, the dreadful murder of Carrie Brown has been linked to some Jack the Ripper suspects including George Chapman and Francis Tumblety.

2

The Bloody Sixth Ward

July 18, 1856

Let’s set the scene: A tailor’s clerk prepares to open the shop at 378 Broadway early in the morning. He finds blood on the door handle. A policeman is summoned to kick in the door, revealing the naked body of Bartholomew Burke and a scene awash in gore.

Burke, an unmarried porter who’d worked in the shop for several years and slept there in the evenings, was found murdered with such horrific violence, Tarantino would take a step back and say, “Whoa.” It was clear to investigators that Burke had struggled with his killer, as evidenced by the gory pair of oversized shears and other bloody objects close at hand. A peculiar, blood clotted short sword had been used to savagely cut Burke’s throat and mutilate his body in a frenzied attack. A bloody hammer had left a visible dent in his forehead.

Police determined the killer had stabbed Burke to death, coolly washed his hands (not very well), and left the shop, locking the door and pocketing the key. A blood trail left behind led nowhere. No witnesses. No clues. Nothing belonging to the tailor’s shop or to Burke had been stolen, although his personal effects had been searched by person(s) unknown.

Police were baffled. Attempts to trace the sword failed. Lacking a suspect or a motive, the murder of Bartholomew Burke remains unsolved.

BONUS FACT: Despite the evidence of a knock down, drag out fight taking place between Burke and his murderer, the family who slept upstairs didn’t hear a thing.

1

The Dutchman Divided

June 27, 1897

Let’s set the scene: Half a human torso, wrapped in a package, is found by a couple of boys swimming in the East River. A parcel containing two adult male legs is found floating in the Navy Yard. As days pass, horrified citizens discover a severed human thigh wrapped in burlap; more of the trunk, a foot, and a pelvis in the woods at 176th Street; and other dismembered body parts scattered across Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Bronx … the only thing missing was a head.

The murder victim was William Guldensuppe, a “rubber” by trade (quit snickering, Beevis, it’s old fashioned slang for a masseur), who had been murdered and hacked to pieces. In the sort of unbelievable coincidence that wouldn’t pass muster on a bad CSI episode, a New York Journal reporter sent to view the remains for a story recognized the victim. Furthermore, he traced a distinctly patterned oilcloth used to wrap some of the body parts to the woman who had purchased it—Augusta Nack, Guldensuppe’s former lover.

After breaking up with Guldensuppe, Augusta wasted no time taking up with a new boy toy, Martin Thorn. The jealous man confessed to a friend that he’d killed Guldensuppe in the house he shared with Augusta in Queens because the victim wouldn’t stop macking on his honey. The friend alerted the police. Thorn was found guilty and executed by electric chair in Sing-Sing on August 1, 1898. Augusta turned state’s evidence and did ten years in jail.

BONUS FACT: Though some newspapers of the time dubbed him a Dutchman—likely a corruption of “Deutsch”—Guldensuppe was, in fact, born in Germany.

New York’s streets are allegedly safer these days. Crime rates have steadily dropped in the last ten years. However, I suspect that as long as people live in NYC, they’ll continue to perpetrate acts of dismemberment, defenestration, disembowelment, and other violence on each other. It’s the city that never sleeps … probably because of all the screaming.

10 Famous Landmarks That Are Creepy Suicide Magnets

Suicide is always a terrible tragedy that hurts everyone it touches, in one way or another. Even so, some people view the end of their life as a grandiose final act, and insist on making a spectacle out of it. As such, certain famous locations have a reputation of attracting a statistically unreasonable amount of suicides. Such locations include…

10

London Underground

London Underground is perhaps the most famous public transit system in the world. “The Tube”, as it is commonly known, has been operational since the 19th Century. It covers an impressive 270 stations with its 11 lines and 250 miles (402 kilometres) of track.

It is also one of the most likely places in the world to witness a suicide.

As the Underground is readily accessible from almost everywhere in London, its fast, heavy trains have become popular instruments of self-destruction among the more desperate city dwellers. People jump in front of oncoming trains on a weekly basis. The most popular suicide station is King’s Cross St. Pancras, while the Northern Line takes home the “line with most jumpers” prize (145 deaths between 2001 and 2011).

Tube suicide is common enough that these tragedies have become just another routine annoyance for the poor Underground staff. Delays caused by jumpers are called with code names such as “passenger action” or “one under”. The water drain openings many stations’ tracks feature are commonly called suicide pits, because the jumpers who fall in them have a better chance for survival.

As popular as the Underground method is, it is possibly the least dignified way to commit suicide in existence. It is surprisingly ineffective (only 40% of jumpers die), and survivors will be charged with a number of misdemeanors with passive aggressive names such as “obstruction of trains with intent”. Successful jumpers are not treated any better: Their mangled remains will be collected by the disgruntled staff and unceremoniously stuffed in a cleaning cupboard until the authorities arrive.

9

Eiffel Tower

Gustave Eiffel’s 1,063 ft (324 m) masterpiece is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world and a symbol of both Paris and the entire France. But not all the attention it gets is desirable. The “Iron Lady” has seen its share of jumpers. So many, in fact, that it is said to be the third most popular means of suicide in the entire country (right behind poison and hanging).

Despite its open-frame design, the tower is actually quite difficult to jump from thanks to railings and various safety measures. Yet many are determined to succeed. Some attempt to scale the tower after it’s closed from the public. Others are less considerate, jumping during business hours and landing on the roof of the packed restaurant on the second floor of the tower.

The management of the tower wisely does everything in its power to stop jumpers, from security nets to other, undisclosed safety measures. They also refuse to give statistics on the number of jumpers to the media, instead stating: “It’s always too many.” And really, can there be a better answer?

8

Nusle Bridge

Imagine the quiet, idyllic Nusle neighborhood in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. It’s a picturesque collection of small houses and old apartment buildings, located neatly in a small valley. However, this particular paradise has a massive snake: The Nusle Bridge, a massive concrete construction that spans over the entire neighborhood, 140 feet (around 43 meters) over the streets below. Nusle Bridge holds the country’s main motorway, a viaduct and the local subway line.

Still, having the local subway system cast a shadow on them is the least of the Nusle people’s worries. The real trouble is the people falling on them.

The ominous bridge is a notorious suicide spot, to the point that it’s nicknamed “Suicide Bridge” by the locals. Around 300 people have jumped to their deaths since it was built 40 years ago. The city authorities have added a chain link fence and additional safety measures, but these have done little to diminish the bridge’s eerie reputation.

7

Beachy Head

Beachy Head is an instantly recognizable, steep chalk cliff formation in the English county of East Sussex. It is essentially a majestic, 531-foot (162-metre) drop into the sea below. As such, it is one of the foremost suicide spots in the world (around 20 documented cases annually).

The locals are well aware of their landmark’s tendency to attract suicidal people. As such, pretty much everyone in the nearby town of Eastbourne has developed a keen eye for potential jumpers, up to and including taxi drivers and pub staff. A local organization called the Samaritans also patrols Beachy Head daily.

6

Prince Edward Viaduct

Canadians are notoriously jovial, except for when they’re playing ice hockey. As such, it never occurred to the builders of the Prince Edward Viaduct (a huge 5-lane bridge construct in Toronto) to include safety features in the design. The Viaduct’s railings were designed low, to the point where people could (and occasionally would) climb or trip right over them, plummeting into the ground below.

As social pressures arose and suicides became commonplace, Prince Edward Viaduct suddenly turned into one of the main suicide hotspots in the world. At the height of this questionable phase, the Viaduct’s suicide rate averaged one person every 22 days. To Toronto’s credit, they fixed the issue with extreme prejudice. They built a suicide barrier of steel rods on a frame, incorporating it to the very design of the Viaduct. The barrier is awesomely called ”Luminous Veil”, and has effectively stopped suicide on the structure.

5

The Gap

The Gap is the Australian (and therefore automatically more dangerous) version of the Beachy Head we mentioned earlier. Located on the South Head peninsula in eastern Sydney, the steep cliff has seen numerous suicides (including some high-profile ones) over the years.

As with Beachy Head, the residents are well aware of the dark side of their beautiful scenery and are combating jumper activity with means such as fencing and surveillance cameras. Still, the area’s best weapon against suicide was a man called Don Ritchie. Don was a WWII veteran who lived right next to the most popular jumping cliffs. He had a habit of wandering over to jumpers who were bidding goodbye to the world and engaging them in conversation, often starting with the phrase “Can I help you in some way?” Usually, he could and the suicide candidate would end up having tea at Don’s house, their will to live brought back by his sympathetic ear.

Before his death in 2012, Don saved over 160 jumpers this way and was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for being a decent human being. People called him ”The Angel of the Gap.”

4

Niagara Falls

When we think of people falling to their doom on Niagara Falls, we usually think of old movies and wacky characters trying to ride the falls in a barrel. However, the reality leaves little room for laughter. 20-40 people (depending on who you ask) jump to their deaths in the roaring waters of Niagara every year, with an estimated 5,000 bodies found at the foot of the falls between 1850 and 2011.

The area is almost impossible to secure entirely, thanks to the vast amount of potential jumping points. The only people to benefit from the tragedies are said to be the captains and crews of the ”Maid of the Mist” tour boats. They allegedly have a fairly lucrative side business in retrieving the bloated corpses of the jumpers.

3

Golden Gate Bridge

The panoramic Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco is an icon of the West Coast, rivaled only by the Hollywood sign itself. As a massive construct that grants pedestrians a majestic view and free access on a deck that’s 245 feet (75 m) above the freezing San Francisco Bay, the bridge is a particularly attractive suicide spot.

Golden Gate Bridge has been called the second most common suicide site in the world (we’ll get to number 1 shortly). There is an official suicide count that is at around 1,200 (2005 figure), but the authorities say the actual number may be much higher because not all jumpers have been witnessed. The ones that have are meticulously (and somewhat creepily) catalogued and sorted according to which of the bridge’s 128 lamp posts the jumper was nearest.

Luckily, the bridge is fairly well protected. It has its own highway patrol force that is able to talk roughly 80-90% of jumpers out of actually taking the fall. A safety net that should prevent the rest of the suicides is under development, but lack of funding (it can cost up to $50 million) has so far delayed the project.

2

Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge

China is known for its massive constructs, and the fact that life can get difficult there if you’re one of the unlucky downtrodden masses. The massive four-mile Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing, China is testament to both facts. This hulking bridge complex is an engineering masterpiece by any account. However, it also has an fearful reputation as one of the most prominent suicide sites of the Asian supernation. In fact, the Nanking Yangtze is listed as the most common suicide site in the entire world, with over 2,000 suicides on its dreary record.

Still, that terrifying number might be much larger if it wasn’t for the bridge’s very own watcher. Mr. Chen, a stout man recognizable by his baseball cap and an ever-present pair of binoculars, is the bridge’s operator. He spends all his spare time scanning the bridge from a vantage point at its South Tower, not unlike Don Ritchie at the Gap. Whenever he spots a jumper, he attempts to help them both by himself and by calling backup. Sometimes he succeeds. Sometimes he fails and has to witness a horrifying death. But every single day he’s there, vigilantly watching over his bridge. By 2010, Mr.Chen had personally saved the lives of no less than 174 people.

1

Mount Mihara

Mount Mihara is a famous landmark on the Japanese isle of Izu ?shima and a staple of Japanese popular culture. It’s the place where the government imprisoned Godzilla in “The Return of Godzilla”, and played a prominent role in the original version of the movie “Ring”.

It is also a suicide hotspot that rivals even Aokigahara forest, the oldListverse favorite.

Mount Mihara happens to be an active volcano, and it’s open enough that its lava flow can be accessed from the top by jumping. This fact was abused in 1933 by Kiyoko Matsumoto, a 21-year-old student. Kiyoko leaped in the depths of the mountain and immediately evaporated in the lava pit’s hellish temperatures of up to 2,200 °F (1,200 °C). This started a fashion trend among the Japanese. For almost a decade, jumping into the boiling lava rivers of Mount Mihara became the hottest way to commit suicide… literally. Thousands of people imitated Kiyoko’s example. 944 people jumped in the crater in 1933 alone.

The authorities have since fenced off the vantage point where the jumpers leaped to their fate. This is said to have stopped the suicides, although there’s no way to be sure. It’s not as if there’s going to be a bodies to be found.

10 Creepy And Bizarre Suicides

One odd side effect of human consciousness has been our penchant for suicide. In the United States, suicide is currently a bigger killer than car accidents; in Britain, it remains more likely to kill young men than literally anything else. Part of the reason for this is our cultural view of suicide as something hopelessly romantic and deeply subversive. But the truth is that there’s little to celebrate in suicide. More often than not it’s grimy, unpleasant, and very weird, while “romance” can easily take a backseat to creepy and perverted.

10Manchester’s Bizarre Love Triangle

In 2004, a 14-year-old boy was stabbed in a frenzied attack in Manchester. His 15-year-old attacker plunged a kitchen knife once through his chest and again through his stomach, but didn’t quite manage to kill him. To the first cops on the scene, it must have sounded like a typical tragedy: both boys were former best friends who’d become involved with the same woman. But then other, atypical details began to emerge; like how the “woman” was a middle-aged spy they’d met in a chat room, or how the younger boy was secretly in love with his older friend. And then things got really weird.

It transpired that the woman had ordered the murder. It also transpired that she didn’t exist, despite having had frequent webcam sex with the older boy. In the subsequent investigation, detectives discovered a complex web of fiction spun around the older boy, with one purpose: to end its author’s life. Yeah, turns out the 50,000 messages the “three” had sent each other were nothing more than a perverse suicide bid on the part of the 14-year-old. At the end of the trial, the judge announced that “skilled writers of fiction would struggle to conjure up a plot such as that which arises here,” and we’re inclined to agree.

9Self-Decapitation

As a motivation for suicide, “revenge” seems pretty pathetic. But that didn’t stop Gerald Mellin, whose disregard for his own life was second only to his hatred of his wife. For complex reasons best described as “first-world problems” the two had fallen out and were preparing for divorce. Where most people might have grumbled for a bit, hired a lawyer, and drowned their sorrows with booze, Mellin decided now was the time to ruin his spouse’s life, end his own, and traumatize loads of bystanders in the process.

Like a toddler throwing a tantrum, Mellin taunted his wife with texts threatening suicide—going so far as to show her the rope he was going to use. Then he canceled his life insurance policies and proceeded to ring up stratospheric debts, before ending it all in a very public manner. Tying one end of his rope around a tree and the other end around his neck, Mellin got into his car, aimed for a busy main road, and floored it. The jolt caused the rope to decapitate him just as his car reached the road, meaning his gruesome death was witnessed by dozens of people. Basically, it was one heck of a selfish way to go, made all the worse by the ridiculously petty reasons behind it.

8The Silver Bullet

Eighteenth-century Polish nobleman Jan Potocki is chiefly known for two things: his bizarre, Gothic novel The Manuscript Found at Saragossa and his bizarre, Gothic death. During the decade or so that he worked on his strange ghost story, Potocki’s mental health began to slowly unravel. Once an explorer, adventurer, and social butterfly, he spent the last years of his life slowly retreating from the outside world—sinking deeper and deeper into both anonymity and melancholia. Finally, it all became too much for him—and what happened next would become the subject of legend.

Hidden away in his castle, Potocki fashioned a bullet from the handle of a silver sugar bowl his mother had given him. He then had it blessed by the castle chaplain and retired to his study, where he drew an insulting caricature of himself before firing the bullet into his head. In short, it was an end so utterly morbid it could have come straight from his own ghost story—and no one has ever known why he did it.

7Entombed Alive

Taphephobia—the fear of being buried alive—is one of the most common phobias, second only to spiders as absolute nightmare fuel. But, as bad as premature burial is, it apparently doesn’t compare to the agony caused by gout. How do we know? Well, in the second century, the Roman oratorPolemon of Laodicea found himself crippled by the “king’s disease.” Like many others forced to live in constant pain, Polemon eventually decided it wasn’t worth carrying on and resolved to end it all. However, his chosen method was less a sad-but-necessary “release from pain” and more a terrifying descent into HP Lovecraft’s nightmares.

At the age of 65, Polemon ordered his servants to shut him up in the family tomb and leave him there to die. Think about that for a second and allow the full horror to sink in. Trapped in a dark chamber, surrounded by the grinning corpses of his ancestors, Polemon slowly starved to death—wracked with agonizing pain even as the life seeped out of him. It sounds like something Jigsaw wouldn’t wish on one of his victims, and yet Polemon did it voluntarily.

6The Triple Gunshot

Despite what TV would have you believe, most methods of suicide have a very low success rate. Drug overdoses may work in as little as 1.8 percent of attempts, while cutting wrists barely kills one in 10 people. So it’s no surprise people often turn to guns. Except guns don’t always work either—and when a gunshot suicide goes wrong, things get pretty unpleasant.

In 1995, an Australian man decided to bow out early. Taking his pump-action shotgun, he placed the barrel against his chest and fired. The resulting blast knocked him off his feet and blew a hole out his back—all without damaging a single vital organ. Getting to his feet, the unnamed man placed the gun under his jaw and tried again, at which point things got gross.

Despite blowing his jaw clean off, the man survived. Now missing half his face, he managed to stagger 120 meters (400 ft) to a nearby slope, lie down, reload, and try again. The third shot finally did the trick, but not before he got to experience the sort of horror usually reserved for combat veterans.

5Disembowelment

Cato the Younger was a Roman orator with two firm principles: never take a bribe and never worship Julius Caesar. During the political turbulence of Caesar’s years, he faced his nemesis on several occasions: across the senate floor, in legal wrangling, and eventually in battle. When Caesar finally seized control of all of Rome and slaughtered the warring factions, it was anticipated that he might pardon his old enemy instead of killing him. Cato, however, was having none of it.

Deciding that the only thing worse than dying under Caesar was living under him, Cato attempted suicide by stabbing himself. Unfortunately, an old injury caused him to slip—with the upshot that he only succeeded in slicing himself open. When his servants heard his screams they burst into the room to find Cato lying on his bed with his bowels hanging out. And here things get disturbing. Terrified his physician might be able to heal him, Cato took hold of his own insides and physically tore them out, killing himself instantly. When Caesar heard, he was alleged to have remarked, “Cato, I grudge you your death, as you would have grudged me the preservation of your life,” suggesting that their rivalry held firm even in death.

4Self-Mummification

Throughout history, plenty of suicide cults have come and gone, but perhaps none were so systematic in their approach as the Japanese sokushinbutsu. Buddhists by trade, these monks had a strict ideal for their physical form—to mummify it as quickly as possible.

They began the process by spending three years eating only nuts and seeds and exercising until they’d lost literally all their body fat. Then they spent another three years eating bark while drinking nothing but a foul tea designed to induce constant vomiting. Finally, they crawled into a tiny tomb, sat in the lotus position and waited to die. Once they were dead, they were sealed in their tomb and left there until their bodies naturally mummified—at which point they were carried around and worshiped by other lunatics. Apparently the practice was so prevalent the government was forced to outlaw it in the 19th century—a fact which proves the Japanese were endearingly crazy even before the invention of the Internet.

3A Lonely Death

In 2002, schizophrenic artist Richard Sumner stepped out into the Welsh countryside and vanished forever. He left no note, no trace of his intentions; but when his body finally surfaced three years later, it revealed a suicide as disturbing as it was sad.

Haunted by his illness, Sumner had walked deep into a remote forest where nobody ever went, handcuffed himself to a tree and thrown the key away. Reporting at the inquest, the coroner said Sumner had intended to kill himself, but there were scratches around the handcuffs consistent with someone trying to escape. In other words, after throwing away the key, Sumner had changed his mind. The worst part was that he’d apparently tried the exact same suicide method in 1996, but had been freed after four days. Sadly this time no one came, and Sumner died of exposure—the key to his safety lying only inches out of reach.

2Dramatic Castration

You probably haven’t heard of Isokelekel. He was a legendary warrior who may or may not have existed in 16th-century Micronesia, so take this one with a pinch of salt. That being said, his method of suicide was so utterly bizarre it’s tempting to think you couldn’t make it up.

The legend goes that he was praying one morning when he caught his reflection in a pool of water. Realizing how old he was, this (again, possibly fictional) super-warrior decided to give death a helping hand—and to do it in the most bizarre way possible. Taking a length of rope, he bent a small palm tree down until it was level with him. Then he tied the rope around his penis, pulled it taut, and let go of the tree, which sprang upward—catapulting his severed junk high into the air. Unsurprisingly, Isokelekel bled to death, but not before witnessing a sight which no man should ever have to behold.

1The Survivor

The Golden Gate Bridge is one of America’s suicide hot spots. Over 1,300 people have leapt from its railings, with an average of one person jumping every 16 days. Only two percent of people survive the fall—and their stories make for some terrifying reading.

At the age of 28, Ken Baldwin was suffering from depression. Making his way to the Golden Gate, he counted to 10 then jumped. After four seconds of extreme regret, he hit the water at 75 mph. Unsurprisingly, this did some damage. His legs shattered, and his lungs collapsed. Amazingly, he got off lucky. Most jumpers suffer broken ribs, punctured spleens and lungs, split livers, and snapped spines. Not all even hit the water—those who miss are left to suffocate in unimaginable agony in the thick mud, while those who land on target have their eyeballs eaten out of their sockets by crabs. In short, it’s about as far from glamorous as you can get, with the thought process experienced in free fall apparently being even worse. In an interviewwith the New Yorker, Ken later reported, “I still see my hands coming off the railing . . . I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.”

And with a 230-meter (750-ft) drop, that’s a heck of a long time to keep turning something like that over in your head. So, yeah, if anyone’s feeling low out there tonight—take it from the guy who tried: your problems are nowhere near bad enough to justify such screaming horror.