Ghosts have held a fascination for all of us from time immemorial. We may be scared of them and would prefer not to encounter them, but we love to hear stories about them and about homes where they live.
Here are some of the most famous haunted locations in the world:
1. Raynham Hall, Norfolk, England:
The “Brown Lady ” has been sighted here many a times, and there is also a world famous photograph of her gliding down the stairs, taken in 1936. She is believed to be the ghost of Lady Townshend who lived and died here in the 18th century. There have been frequent sightings of her as she wanders around the premises in a brown brocade dress.
2. Winchester Mystery Mansion, San Jose, California:
A home built by ghosts for ghosts? There are so many stories connected with this home that fact seems to get intermingled with fiction. The fact is that this convoluted house has doors that lead nowhere, staircases that end suddenly, and many other weird features. Built by Sarah Winchester , ostensibly to exorcise the ghosts of the people killed by the rifles built by her family concern, even today it is believed that you can hear an organ playing and you can smell chicken soup in an empty kitchen.
3. Lizzie Borden House, Fall River, Massachusetts:
Now here is a haunted home, where you are actually invited to stay over for bed and breakfast, and personally encounter the spirits which haunt this home. The site of the grisly murder in 1892 of Abby and Abe Borden, ostensibly by Lizzie Borden, this home is renowned for the sound of a woman weeping softly, of cameras working when no one was near them and lights flickering, all manifestations of troubled spirits.
4. Bachelors Grove Cemetery, Midlothian, Illinois:
One cemetery where there have been over a hundred sightings is the Bachelors Grove Cemetery near Chicago. There are stories about the White Lady, the Phantom Farmhouse and the Farmer with his Plough. There is also the famous picture of a lady sitting at a grave taken in the 80s by Jude Fetz.
5. The Tivoli Theatre, Hamilton, Canada:
Nobody has been able to solve the mystery of what really happened to Ambrose Small when he disappeared in 1919 in Toronto, but his ghost is believed to be haunting one of his favourite haunts, the Tivoli Theatre in Hamilton. Many staff members have seen him loitering around the area, dressed in Victorian clothes with his trademark large moustache very much in evidence.
Virginia Macdonald died in 1851 after she had been ill for a long time. After she was buried, her mother was sure of the fact that Virginia was not dead. Unfortunately, when the coffin was taken out, it was found that the poor girl’s hands were bitten and the body showed other traces of having been buried alive.
Madame Blunden was declared dead in 1896 and was buried under a school. The coffin was opened up after complaints from children about noises and those who were around managed to watch her take her last breath.
In 1886, New York Times carried an article about a young girl named Collins who died suddenly and was then buried. When her body was being shifted, it was discovered that her knees were pulled till her chin, her arm was turned in an unnatural manner and her face was twisted in such a manner that it was obvious she had been through dreadful torture.
The Daily Telegraph carried an article in 1889 about a man who had been buried in Grenoble. Because he stayed intoxicated for 20 hours, it was assumed that he was dead. However, when the sexton was placing the thick coffin in the grave, he heard loud moans and frantic knocks. By the time he opened it up, the man had died and his head was badly mutilated.
The Sunday Times carried an article in 1838 about a man in Tonneins who was buried alive. When the coffin was being lowered into the Earth, the grave-digger heard loud noises and sure enough, the man had been declared dead prematurely.
The song is brilliant and Jeff Buckley’s voice is beautiful, to say the least. However, the lyrics are so depressing that you will want to kill yourself before the song ends. It’s a pretty song which mixes breakup with a breakdown and talks a lot about loneliness.
Pink Floyd is known to have created some of the best songs ever and this one is not an exception. If you come out alive after listening to Lover, You Should Have Come Over, make sure you listen to the lyrics of this song which talk about having an unresponsive and indifferent attitude towards the world.
The fact that Ian Curtis had unmistakable suicidal tendencies becomes apparent in this song. The lyrics talk about how ‘we’ knocked on hell’s doors and forced ‘ourselves’ in. It is quite a breaking taking ode to suicide.
This song is laced with every depressing theme you can think of- mutilation, annihilation, alienation and deprecation. Richey James Edward was clearly emotionally unstable and the fact that he disappeared without a trace in 1995 makes it easy to understand why he wrote such mind-numbingly depressing lyrics.
When this song was released, it became clear that the band was a part of the ‘goth pop’ genre. The lyrics centre around a woman who is stuck in a dark society and how she drowns herself to make it end. The atmosphere surrounding the song is dark and depressing enough to make you want to cry yourself to sleep.
Jack La Roca played by Lou Diamond Phillips is supposed to take “Rabbit” to California who in turn has to testify in court. The rest of the movie is about their journey and the obstacles they face. They realize they are short on time which is why they go through this particular route.
Lieutenant Marion Cobretti played by Sylvester Stallone is supposed to protect a blonde woman who is being targeted by a secret society, if you please. Stallone goes all out to save the girl and has massive stocks of firearms, guns, grenades and knives. The movie is unnecessarily bloody but has one car chase that will make you fall off your chair laughing.
This low budget action movie stars Brian Bosworth and is among the funniest action movies ever made. The director did nothing right with the film and the scenes meld into each other because they are all equally atrocious and mind-numbing.
Watching Jean Claude Van Damme is always a treat mainly because his behavior is quite funny. His dialogue delivery is unique to say the least and the way he ends his action scenes is remarkable. After beating up the villains, he screams out in the end for some reason.
Billie Blanks is a CIA agent who loses his memory. The man then befriends Rowdy Roddy Piper and the two of them fight each other every time they have a conversation. Blanks almost always wins these physical fights because he is in fact, quite the killing machine- only he cannot remember how or why.
These coffee beans are created from the feces of a mammal known as Civet. These animals are fed ripe berries of the finest quality and their feces are only partially digested. It is used to create the costliest coffee available today and can be bought for 600 dollars per pound. The flavor is complex and the beans are not tampered with in order to sustain the original flavor.
An Ox’s Penis is enjoyed by dogs in Western countries after it is dried out. However, the residents of a few Oriental nations seem to enjoy it too. It is either steamed of fried but many prefer to eat it raw. To get an idea of what it tastes like, you can overcook squid and eat that.
Cave Swifts create their nests by spitting repeatedly and when the chemical comes in contact with the air, it hardens and becomes solid. It is also among the most expensive food items available today and is usually mixed with water and served in the form of a soup.
Caterpilla Fungus enters the body of a particular kind of caterpillar and kills it almost instantly. The mushroom will grow out of the caterpillar’s forehead during early summer. It is usually used for medication purposes and is also considered to be an aphrodisiac. Certain groups of people believe that it has the ability to cure anything from cancer to fatigue.
This may shock you but Rats are quite common in a number of countries all over the world. They look slightly different from the rats we are familiar with. The meat is tough and they taste like chicken strips.
Porfirio Diaz’s presidency went on for about 20 years and he single-handedly managed to annihilate the Mexican economy. He headed the Government in the country and gained complete control over the authorities. The Mexican revolution was kick-started when this dictator was re-elected for a second term.
Fidel Castro was Cuba’s prime minister in 1959 and became the president soon after. He was successful in what he did and was not as ruthless as the rest mentioned in this list. His record is quite clean and he was a good leader.
Mao Tse-tung headed the People’s Republic of China for a long time till his reigned ended in 1976. His philosophy was created keeping the elements of both Marxism and communism in mind. He believed that the peasants should be liberated and he spread his ideas through the country with the help of well-designed campaigns. He managed to gain control over all of China except Taiwan. However, Mao was quite ruthless when it came to dealing with the enemy.
This Ugandan dictator controlled this small nation and was the self-proclaimed president of the nation. He replaced certain laws with military law and ran the country on martial law practices. Thousands were murdered during his regime and dozens of villages were wiped out quite frequently. Amin had some unique quirks and a short fuse.
Lenin started off as a lawyer and later started publishing pieces laced with Socialist literature. He was against the World War and did not like the fact that the working class had no choice but to fight. Elements of Marxism and communism can be seen in his policies and his body is at display at a certain mausoleum.
Extra is a brand which manufactures chewing gums. It claims to make the consumer’s teeth stronger. Some time back they created an advertisement which showed a steel spoon lying in a plate. The consumer realizes that a bit of the spoon has been bitten off and then their logo flashes on screen- “The Extra for Healthy Teeth.”
Tabasco, as we all know, is the hot sauce we cover our food with when it is too bland or just plain bad. A certain advertisements showed a bottle of Tabasco lying next to a corn on the cob. A significant portion of the corn has been removed and has been replaced by popcorn. The message is clear- the sauce is hot enough to pop corn!
This laptop claimed to be the thinnest laptop in the world. When it was first launched, the advertisement was placed in a magazine. The reader would flip over a page to find himself staring at a keyboard and a screen. The pages would combine to give the appearance of a real laptop. The Macbook Air is paper thin and Steve Jobs has done a great job in marketing it!
When the movie Kill Bill was about to hit theaters, the publicity department came up with a great idea. What they did was plaster a life-size picture of a man whose back is towards us on the outside of the elevator doors. The doors would open to reveal Uma Thurman standing with a knife and the man would be sliced in half.
A certain fitness studio tried to promote their services with the help of paper bags which were created in such a way that it seemed like the person was carrying weights as he walked around.
J.R.R. Tolkien was a professor before he started writing- fact which is clear in these books. Even though The Lord of the Rings series is very popular and has raised the bar as far as the fantasy adventure genre is concerned, it will not be an exaggeration to say that the details are superfluous and the plot is slightly vague.
The characters in this popular book are described in such a way that they seem like wooden and lifeless caricatures, the plot is quite boring and the writing is out-dated.
Don Delillo is doted on by professors of English literature and is despised by an equal number of students who are forced to read it.
Once a child passes a certain age; he is told to read Atlas Shrugged. It is a widely celebrated book and is considered to be epic and massively successful. In reality, the book moves at a snail’s pace and the political theme is over-hyped enough to bring down the overall quality of the book.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is said to be that book which gave rise to the genre of magical realism. The plot is extremely complex and there is no doubt that the average and for that matter, the above-average reader will need to log onto the internet just to understand the basics of the novel.
While this candy may just taste okay, the experience is definitely ruined as it has to be scraped out of a plastic ear. The container consists of a swab as well- thank god. It makes one wonder if kids will start using the swab to eat their own ear wax once the ‘candy’ runs out.
Again, this candy may just taste okay but they look like real scabs and come along with plasters as well. How can kids enjoy consuming something that looks like it was once oozing blood?
This candy is in the form of small balls and is licorice flavored. This may sound okay to you but wait for it- it is also drenched in salt. Dubbel Zout is candy which is salty. This is definitely among the most revolting candies ever and the fact that it looks like a pill does not make it any better.
A Hotlix Candy is colorful and is definitely sweet but once the coating is licked off, you will find yourself face to face with a real scorpion. Kids will be expected to consume a scorpion’s guts after ingesting a large amount of sugar. It is difficult to figure out which part is worse.
Gorilla Boogers are black beans which have been dried and sweetened. This candy tastes like dirt which has been doused in sugar. Children should just go outside and sprinkle sugar on some mud and eat that. It will definitely taste better than Gorilla Boogers.
They were known for their poaching abilities during the 1800s. These identical twins came from a good family but for some reason, turned to crime related activities. They got each other out of trouble all the time and never went poaching together.
A German man and a Jamaican-English woman gave birth to a pair of twins in 2006. While Alicia’s skin is dark and her hair is black, Jasmin’s skin is fair and her hair is blonde. A Genetic expert explained that this happened because the mother’s genes which determine what the skin color of her babies will be, were mixed.
These twins were considered to be telepathic after several experiments were carried out on them. One such experiment involved Richard plunging his hand into freezing cold water and while his respiration rate changed, so did Damien’s.
Tamara Rabi and Adriana Scott were given up for adoption shortly after they were born. Both adoptive parents kept this secret from them but surprisingly, neither knew that the sisters were growing up only 20 miles away from each other. When they turned 20, mutual friends started figuring it out and made the two meet. Even though they did not grow up together, they had very similar traits and tastes.
These two are also known as the Silent Twins. The twins were inseparable from the time they were born but spoke only to each other in a language that nobody else understood. They did not interact with other children and the situation got so bad, that they had to be separated. However, this only made the problem worse and the two got withdrawn and catatonic. After they got reunited, they came to a decision that one of them had to die. Jennifer took the plunge after which June started speaking and communicating with others.
