Lizzie Borden, born July 19, 1860, was tried in court for the murder of her stepmother, Abby Borden, and father, Andrew Borden. Although she was acquitted, no other person was accused and she remains infamous for their murders. The murders occurred on August 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Abby Borden was found face down on the floor next to a bed; Andrew was found sprawled across the sitting room couch. Their skulls had been smashed in. A hatchet was found in the cellar, and suspicion fell on their 32-year-old daughter Lizzie, who also lived in the house. Lizzie claimed to have discovered the body of her father about 30 minutes after he came home from his morning errands. Shortly after, the maid, Bridget Sullivan, found the body of Lizzie’s stepmother.

It was said that Lizzie did not get along well with her stepmother, and that they had a falling out years before the murder occurred. Lizzie and her sister, Emma Borden, were also known to have conflicts with their father. They feared their stepmother’s family had designs on the family’s money and property, and they disagreed with his decisions regarding the division of that property. Her father was also responsible for killing her pigeons that were housed in the family barn.

Just before the murders occurred, the entire family fell ill. Since Mr. Borden was not a well-liked man in town, Mrs. Borden believed foul play was involved. Although Mrs. Borden believed they had been poisoned, it was discovered that they ingested contaminated meat and contracted food poisoning. The contents of their stomach were investigated for toxins following death; however, no conclusions were achieved.

Lizzie was then arrested on August 11, 1892. She was indicted by a grand jury; however, the trial didn’t begin until June 1893. Her sister was out of town at the time and was never a suspect.  The hatchet was discovered by the Fall River police; however, it appeared to have been cleaned of any evidence. A downfall for the prosecution occurred when the Fall River police didn’t properly execute collection of the newly discovered forensic fingerprint evidence. Therefore, no potential prints were lifted from the murder weapon. Although no blood-stained clothing was found as evidence, it was reported that Lizzie tore apart and burned a blue dress in the kitchen stove a few days following the murder because it was covered in baseboard paint. Based on the lack of evidence and a few excluded testimonies, Lizzie Borden was acquitted for the murder of her father and stepmother.

Lizzie and Emma inherited a significant portion of their father’s estate, which allowed them to purchase a new home together. The Borden sisters lived together for the following decade. Although free, Lizzie was considered guilty by many of her neighbors, and thusly never enjoyed acceptance in the community following her trial. Her reputation was further tarnished when she was accused of shoplifting in 1897.

In 1905, Emma abruptly moved out of the house that she shared with her sister. The two never spoke again. Emma may have been uncomfortable with Lizzie’s close friendship with another woman, Nance O’Neil, although her silence on the issue has fueled speculation that she learned new details about the murders of her father and stepmother. No member of the household staff ever offered additional information on the rift, even following Lizzie’s death.

Lizzie died of pneumonia in Fall River, Massachusetts, on June 1, 1927. Emma Borden died days later in Newmarket, New Hampshire.  The case has never been solved.

The House is now a Bed & Breakfast.  Mr. Borden’s “couch of death” disappeared years ago — supposedly it was stored in a warehouse that was destroyed by a hurricane — but Lee Ann Wilbur (the previous owner) found a nearly identical replacement that is now the most sat-on piece of furniture in the house. The carpeted floor next to the death bed is also popular. “More people lie on that spot, and have posed on that spot, than do on the couch.”

Over at the county historical museum, the curator of Lizzie Borden’s Murderabilia told us that the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast was voted one of the scariest places on earth by the viewers of Scariest Places On Earth. Even levelheaded Lee Ann conceded that “something’s going on here,” and told us of phantom footfalls and unnatural gusts of wind, especially when guests use the Ouija Board in the sitting room. House cat Max acts as her paranormal alarm system. “When he has issues with the house, I’m gonna have issues with the house.”

Of course, most visitors here WANT an encounter with Lizzie’s pulp-headed parents. Abby Borden’s death room is the most popular rental in the house. For the murder anniversary night Lee Ann put it up for auction online (in 2008 it went for $405.00). “I haven’t had anybody have a heart attack yet,” she says, “but I have lost people around 2 AM. And there are no refunds if you leave.” Visitors can pull their lace coverlets over their heads if the ghosts pop in, but those who run for the exit don’t get breakfast — and that’s a shame, since it’s designed to be similar to the one that the Bordens ate on the morning of their murders.

NOTE: Lee Ann put the property up for sale and it was bought in 2021 by Lance Zaal, who is no stranger to the ghosts and spirits world. He is the creator of Lily, a supernatural doll that wards off ghosts and ghouls around Halloween. He also operates US Ghost Adventures, which offers ghost tours in over 35 states.

NOTE: If you are squeamish, this is NOT the do-it-yourself project for you.

So, let’s say a king or other high-ranking official has died.  The embalmers would slit open the body and remove nearly all the organs.  These would be placed in ceremonial jars called canopic jars.

A few of the important organs, like the heart and the kidneys, were left in place.  The embalmers apparently thought the brain was useless (he’s a king or other official after all…lol) because in most cases, the brain matter was scrambled or shredded with small hooks inserted through the nostrils and pulled out through the nose using tiny spoons.  (The brain was then thrown away.)

Next the embalmers packed the body in oil of cedar (similar to turpentine) and natron, a special mineral with high salt content.  These chemicals slowly dried the body out, a process which took anywhere from 40-70 days.

The body was then completely dried out and “preserved” but that process rendered it shrunken and wrinkled like a prune.  The next step was to stuff the mouth, nose, chest cavities, etc. with sawdust, pottery, cloth and other items to fill it back out and make it look more human.  In many cases, the eyes were removed and replaced with artificial ones.

Then the embalmers doused the body with a waterproofing substance similar to tar, which protected the dried body from any moisture.  (In fact, the word mummy comes from the Persian word mumiai which means pitch or asphalt and was originally used to describe the preservatives themselves, not the corpse that had been preserved.)

Finally, the body was carefully wrapped in narrow strips of linen, and a funerary mask resembling the deceased was placed on the head.  Afterward it was laid in a large coffin that was carved and painted to look like the deceased, and the coffin was placed in a tomb outfitted with the everyday items the deceased would need in the afterlife.

If you’re like me, you probably thought mummies were only royalty or high ranking officials, but that was not true. Once embalmers got a fairly good working procedure for mummification, it wasn’t just kings and officials who were being mummified.  Nearly everyone in Egyptian society who could afford it, was having it done.  By the end of the 7^th century AD, the country contained an estimated 500 MILLION mummies! Egyptians from the 1100’s onward thought of them more like a natural resource than the bodies of distant relatives, and treated them as such.

For over 400 years, mummies were one of Egypt’s largest export industries.  As early as 1100, Arabs and Christians ground them up for use as medicine, which was often rubbed into wounds, mixed into food, or stirred into tea. By 1600, you could buy a pound of mummy powder in Scotland for about 8 shillings.

But by then, medicinal mummy use began to decline, as many doctors started questioning the practice.  “Not only does this wretched drug do no good to the sick,” the French surgeon Ambrose Pare wrote, “…but it causes them great pain in their stomach, gives them evil smelling breath, and brings on serious vomiting which is more likely to stir up the blood and worsen hemorrhaging than to stop it.” He recommended using mummies as fish bait.

By the 1800’s, mummies were imported only as curiosities, where it was fashionable to unwrap them during dinner parties.

Mummies were also one of the first sources of recycled paper.  During one 19^th century rag shortage (in the days when paper was made of cloth fibers, not wood fibers), one Canadian paper manufacturer imported Egyptian mummies as a literal source of raw materials.  He unwrapped the cloth and made it into sturdy brown paper, which he sold to butchers for wrapping food.  The scheme died out after only a few months, when employees in charge of unwrapping the mummies came down with cholera.

Note: Tomorrow we learn how to make a mummy.

Yes, that’s NOT a typo.  There have been several nominees for Frankensteins in my opinion.  But first a warning: some of these segments are quite gruesome, and if you are a dog lover—perhaps watch Young Frankenstein instead and have a few laughs.

Jonathon Dippel

Was “mad scientist” and alchemist Johann Konrad Dippel the inspiration and original model of Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein? Although Mary Shelley never mentioned Dippel or a castle in Germany in any of her previously known writings, the similarities are astonishing.

Johann Konrad Dippel was born in 1673 and died in 1734. He wrote over seventy works and treatises on mathematics, chemistry and philosophy, most written under the pseudonym of Christianus Democritus, with his texts now buried in various academic collections.  Dippel was an alchemist, trying to turn base metals to gold, and searching especially for the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir Vitae, the secret to extended, if not eternal life.

Dippel was an early chemical manufacturer. He created a concoction called “Dippel’s Oil” or “Dippel’s Animal Oil” used primarily as an agent in the tanning of animal hides, from where it most likely gets its name, and in cloth coloring. It was also said to be useful in calming the pangs and distempers of pregnancy. Whether it was to be used topically, digested, or as an aromatic, is unclear. Its chemical composition with ingredients like Butyronitrile Methylamine and Dimethylpyrrole Valeramide would suggest that ingesting any significant amount would not be very healthy.

Dippel’s connection to Frankenstein comes from his days at the castle on the hilltop near Darmstadt above the Rhine River Valley below Mainz. Johann Dippel was resident there for a time when the castle had fallen vacant of its lordly Franckenstein family owners after the Reformation and the War of European Succession. Dippel tried unsuccessfully to induce the Landgrave of Hesse to deed him the castle in exchange for Dippel’s providing the duke with the secret of everlasting life, the infamous elixir.

He never did come up with a successful Elixir of Eternal Life while at Darmstadt and eventually moved on, with the locals rather chasing him away like those pitchfork wielding villagers in the Universal Frankenstein movies. His permanent acquisition of the castle was opposed and the legends of his making his oil and formulas from the body parts of human corpses was likely an early form of conspiracy theory, born from his boiling animal bones to get ingredients, mixed with the castle’s time as a prison where prisoners were buried in pauper’s graves, and it was hinted that he dug them up to make his concoction, and therefore an easy connection to digging up the dead to bring eternal life.

Dippel moved on from the castle at Darmstadt, still ever seeking his life sustaining elixir, but in the end it may have had the opposite effect. He died of complications of chemical poisoning, either from his close work with some very toxic substances over time, or perhaps sampling his own elixir formula, which may have had the opposite effect than the one intended.

Andre Ure

Andrew Ure was born on May 18, 1778, in Glasgow, United Kingdom. The son of a wealthy cheesemonger, he received an expensive education, studying at both Glasgow University and Edinburgh University. He received his MD from the University of Glasgow in 1801 before spending a brief time with the army, serving as a surgeon. In 1803, he finally settled in Glasgow; becoming a member of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons.

In 1804, at the newly formed Andersonian Institution (now the University of Strathclyde), Ure became a professor of chemistry and natural philosophy. He gave evening lectures on chemistry and mechanics, which he encouraged the average working man and woman to attend. With audiences of up to 500, his lectures inspired the foundation of numerous mechanical institutions throughout Britain.

During this same time, Ure worked as a consultant for the Irish linen board. There he devised his alkalimeter for volumetric estimates of the true alkali contents of various substances that were being used in the linen industry. By this time, he had successfully earned himself a reputation as a highly competent practical chemist.

It was at Glasgow University where Andrew Ure became acquainted with James Jeffray, a professor of anatomy and physiology. Jeffray was a renowned teacher, attracting over 200 students to his classes each year. An innovative surgeon, he is credited (along with Edinburgh obstetrician James Aitken) with the invention of the chainsaw for use in the excision of diseased bone. As a teacher in anatomy, a field that was growing in demand, his options for teaching instruments were limited. The only legal supply of material for dissection was the bodies of hanged criminals. On November 4, 1818, Ure joined Jeffray in the dissection of one such criminal.

Matthew Clydesdale was a weaver, arrested and found guilty of murdering a 70 year old man in a drunken rage. He was sentenced to death by hanging, and on November 4, 1818, that execution was carried out. Upon his death, his body was placed in a cart and transported up to Glasgow University and into the Anatomy Theatre.

During this time, people, especially scientists, were fascinated with electricity. In fact, in 1780, Italian anatomy professor, Luigi Galvani, discovered that by utilizing sparks of electricity he could make a dead frog twitch and jerk. This discovery quickly led to others experimenting with electrical currents on other animals. Shows were made where scientists would electrify the heads of pigs and bulls.

James Jeffray and Andrew Ure would take that experiment one step further. The crowd gathered in the Glasgow University Anatomy Theatre where they would learn what would happen when electricity was exposed to a deceased human body.

With his galvanic battery charged, the experiments commenced.

Incisions were made at the neck, hip, and heels, exposing different nerves. Ure stood over the body, holding two metallic rods, charged by a 270 plate voltaic battery. Those rods, when placed to the different nerves, caused the body to convulse and writhe. When the rods were touched to Clydesdale’s diaphragm, his chest heaved then fell. “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.”

The experiment lasted about an hour. Ure wrote his account of the experiment, and even delivered a lecture. Ure and Jeffray did not bring Matthew Clydesdale back to life, though they did not believe it was a failure on their methodology. Instead, Ure believed that if his death had not been caused by bodily injury, there was a possibility that his life could have been restored. He also noted that if their experiment had succeeded in bringing him back to life, it would not have been celebrated. After all, he was a murderer.

The story eventually took on a life of its own. Memories and accounts differed, and one such account is that of Peter Mackenzie. In 1865, Mackenzie claimed to have been present at the Glasgow University Anatomy Theatre that day. He claims that Ure had actually been successful, and Clydesdale had been brought back to life. To abate the risen fear among the crowd, one of the scientists grabbed a scalpel and slit his throat. Clydesdale fell down, once again, dead.

Robert Cornish

Tales of Mad Scientists have been in existence for centuries now. And while many are criticized for being wacky, inhumane and downright psychopathic many can also be celebrated for making breakthroughs within various scientific fields–especially within the field of medicine where procedures today have origins from millennia ago; in medieval times and before them in prehistory. One such tale with a more modern spin comes from the 1930s in Berkley, California where an American called Robert Cornish attempted to bring the dead back to life.

Cornish was a medical phenomenon, graduating at 18 from the University of California and gaining a Doctorate at 22. He was a handsome chap but his eccentricity was soon apparent as one of his invention concepts was a pair of spectacles to allow the reading of newspapers underwater. This may illustrate his intelligence; however as to gain a patent in those times was considered very noteworthy and could propel a person to fame. Cornish worked at the Department of Experimental Biology at a University when he began to get notoriety for something of a darker nature than underwater specs.

Dog-lovers read no further. Cornish began an experiment to cure the undead but not permitted to use human beings he had to operate on dogs. The doctor organized a public demonstration which Time magazine witnessed. He named his patients – five fox terriers – Lazarus after the mythical figure brought back to life by Jesus.

Robert Cornish tried many different techniques before gaining moderate success with the following. He would suffocate the animals first with either Nitrogen or ether. He would wait no more than five minutes after the heart had stopped to try and resuscitate. To do this he found a way to keep the blood circulating by using a piece of wood called a teeterboard, a type of see-saw to rock the patient up and down to maintain the circulation of blood.

Before re-animation, he would inject the creature with a concoction of saline, oxygen, adrenaline, blood as well as anti-coagulants and coagulants. Oxygen would be blown into the mouth via a rubber tube. Bear in mind this was in the 1950s when CPR and techniques of the sort were in their infancy meaning his methods were extremely right-field.

The first three dogs were revived but showed little signs of life after. The best result was Lazarus II who was in a coma for eight hours before passing again. The fourth dog – Lazarus IV – came back to life albeit blind and brain-damaged, Cornish reported that she recovered to near full strength in a matter of months. Lazarus V was the same but returned to normality in shorter time. These are the words of Doctor Cornish only however and were not confirmed by Time or anyone else it appears. Despite these factors, Cornish hailed his experiments a success.

The mad-cap doctor was heavily criticized and eventually fired from the UCLA Laboratory when protestations about the canine killings reached their ears. He was forced to do his experiments in the confines of his own abode and with pigs rather than dogs.

Requiring funding, Robert Cornish tried to clear his name by convincing people that his work was vital. This was through a movie titled ‘Life Returns’. Cornish played himself as does one of the Lazarus dogs. It uses a familiar aspect to pull at the heartstrings of the audience, with the doctor attempting to resurrect his son’s dead dog. It was the only way his son would love him again after all. The film was far from a success and ergo did nothing to improve the reputation of the doctor.

His next plan was to find a human patient. He searched the jails and found a willing convict called Thomas McMonigle, an inmate of San Quentin prison, convicted of killing a fourteen-year-old girl. The government declined the request on compassionate grounds. There is another rumor however which seems to be justified by newspaper reports from the time. This relates to the courts fearing a ‘double jeopardy’ clause. Death by the gas chamber which would have released the convict from his conviction and therefore he would have been a free man.

Vladimir Demikhov

Calling Soviet doctor Vladimir Demikhov a mad scientist may be undercutting his contributions to the world of medicine, but some of his radical experiments certainly fit the title. Case in point — though it may seem like myth, propaganda, or a case of photoshopped history — in the 1950s, Vladimir Demikhov actually created a two-headed dog.

Even before creating his two-headed dog, Demikhov was a pioneer in transplantology — he even coined the term. After transplanting a number of vital organs between dogs (his favorite experimental subjects) he aimed, amid much controversy, to see if he could take things further: He wanted to graft the head of one dog onto the body of another, fully intact dog.

He was “successful”. In the above picture, laboratory assistant Maria Tretekova lends a hand as noted Russian surgeon Dr. Vladimir Demikhov feeds the two-headed dog he created by grafting the head and two front legs of a puppy onto the back of the neck of a full-grown German shepherd.

{{SHUDDER}}

I can’t leave the reader with such horrible images…let’s end with some happy, funny ones instead.