PYF unnerving article or story: Why is everything always so fucking weird - The Something Awful Forums

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The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > PYF unnerving article or story: Why is everything always so fucking weird

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

I seem to remember that there was a family member of one of the dead boys who abruptly had all of his teeth pulled when the police announced that they were analyzing a bite mark on one of the bodies. There was a lot of weird stuff with that case.

# ¿ May 19, 2014 17:32

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 05:13

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

quote:

Mt. Mihara, a volcano in Japan (more than six hundred people jumped into it in 1936 alone);

Suicide by jumping into a loving volcano. Now that is metal. :stare:

:stare:

# ¿ Jun 3, 2014 01:17

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Extreme religious mania is always a box of :stare:

:stare:

. For instance, the Convulsionnaires, an eighteenth-century French sect which believed in extreme chastisements of the body as a way to become spiritually closer to God.

quote:

While the first recorded case of convulsions at the tomb of P�ris occurred in July 1731, one of the best recorded early cases is that of l'abb� de Bescherand, who made two daily pilgrimages to the cemetery: During these visits, Strayer writes, "his body was wracked by convulsions that lifted him into the air, his face was contorted by grimaces, and foaming at the mouth, he yelled and screamed for hours on end." A number of other pilgrims began to exhibit similar convulsions, and the convulsion phenomenon began to rival and eclipse the miracle phenomenon. The cemetery's atmosphere became busy and noisy as people variously prayed, sang and convulsed. Rumours spread through Paris that people were speaking in tongues, stomping on Bibles, barking like dogs, swallowing glass or hot coals, or dancing until they collapsed.

Just like their saintly P�ris, the convulsionnaires appear to have regarded the body with increasing contempt as the movement evolved through the 1730s. They began the practice of secours (release), which involved the violent beating of the individual who was experiencing the convulsions. The secours was intended to release the individual from the painful experience of the convulsions, while simultaneously symbolizing the pain of persecution. They viewed the body with disgust as the site of disease, sinfulness and corruption. Eighty convulsionnaires were arrested in 1736 for beating and cutting each other. They also began to practice regular crucifixions�with nails�to further connect their suffering to that of Jesus Christ and the early Christian martyrs. Brian E. Strayer argues that movement descended further into sadomasochism from 1740 onward. The torture became increasingly brutal while the spiritual content decreased.

The practice of secours culminated in the early nineteenth centry with a young girl named Margaretta Peter.

quote:

Margaretta Peter, born into a large Swiss farming family in the late eighteenth century, was a preaching prodigy. In 1800, when Margaretta was just six years old, she enthralled relatives and other residents of a tiny hamlet near Schaffhausen (either Wildisbuch or Wildispuch) with her impromptu sermons, seeming to have a better grasp of the Bible than any minister five times her age.
This was a marvelous quality in a preschooler, but over the years, Margaret began to exert a spiritual dominance over her family that made her pastor uneasy. He noted that when Margaretta was still a teenager, her widowed father and older sisters would obey her every command as though it was the will of God.

Margaretta�s commitment to her faith deepened even more at the age of 20, when she fell in with a group of Pietists and went through a year of self-chastisement for her sins. At the end of that year, she announced she was ready to become a preacher and prophetess. She returned to her home village in the spring of 1817, and quickly established a small following that included her father, sisters, and an epileptic servant named Margaret J�ggli. J�ggli thought her seizures were caused by demons, and hoped that Margaretta could heal her.

In the spring of 1823, Margaretta began talking about the Devil, warning her followers that he was close at hand. J�ggli�s seizures increased and worsened, probably due to stress. This further reinforced the group�s notion that Satan was moving in on them. In March, Margaretta summoned her followers to her father�s house and descended into an ecstatic state, experiencing visions of Satan�s hordes overtaking the planet. She, alone, stood in their way. For days, she uttered prophecies to her breathless disciples. She declared that Napoleon�s son would reveal himself as the anti-Christ, and this cued her older sister Elizabeth and J�ggli to mimic spirit possession by Napoleon and the Duke of Reichstadt; they marched around the room like military men until Margaretta banished the spirits.

The next day, the prophetess led ten of her followers into a small attic bedroom and exhorted them to gird themselves with both prayer and any weaponry they could find, for the final battle between Christ and Satan was imminent. The group included her elderly father, two of her sisters, and a married tailor who may have been Margaretta�s lover. They obeyed Margaretta�s instructions to board up the farmhouse and arm themselves with axes, hammers, clubs � anything they could find. Napoleon�s troops were coming, she said, and the invisible minions of Satan had already besieged the house. Her followers took up their weapons and swung wildly at the air inside the attic room, trying to kill discarnate entities that only Margaretta could see. This madness went on for about three hours, drawing curious neighbours to the yard.

When the attic room was destroyed, the melee moved to a downstairs parlour. There, Margaretta began pummeling Elizabeth with her fists at Elizabeth�s urging. Somehow, the crazed group imagined that inflicting pain on each other would help repel the demonic invaders, as did the French convulsionnaires who tortured one another in the most sadistic ways imaginable in the St. Medard churchyard during the previous century. They continued punching themselves and each other in a night-long frenzy. The ruckus finally attracted police, who found Margaretta�s followers piled in a heap on the sitting room floor while she beat them senseless. The group was ordered to disband, and local authorities issued an order that both Margaretta and Elizabeth were to be sent to an asylum.

The disciples paid no attention to these orders. Just one day after their punching fest, a dozen people gathered around Margaretta in the little attic bedroom, prepared to carry out any instructions she issued. The prophetess announced that more blood had to be shed, and proceeded to strike her brother, Caspar, repeatedly with an iron wedge. While she bludgeoned her brother, her followers resumed beating themselves and each other.

Next, Margaretta announced that the ghost of her mother was commanding her to sacrifice herself. Elizabeth immediately offered to take her sister�s place, and Margaretta obliged by striking her with the same iron wedge she had used on Caspar (who was alive, but unconscious). The others followed suit, striking the prone woman with any tools they could find. Elizabeth was soon dead. Only one person, a young woman named Ursula, protested. Margaretta assured her that Elizabeth would be raised from the dead in three days� time.

Then Margaretta ordered her disciples to crucify her. Reluctantly, they gathered the materials for a wooden cross and assembled it in the attic room. Her sister Susanna provided the nails. Again, Ursula protested and was told that both Margaretta and Elizabeth would rise from the dead in three days.

Margaretta�s followers nailed her hands, elbows, breasts, and feet to the cross. They later told the authorities that Margaretta remained fully conscious throughout this ordeal, coaxing them on. When she was secured to the cross, she demanded to be stabbed through the heart. Ursula attempted this, but was unsuccessful. Another woman and a young man took up a hammer and a crowbar and smashed Margaretta�s head until she fell silent.

Margaretta�s lover, the tailor Jacob Morf, was not present during the murders. He had remained at home with his wife after the beating frenzy. When he returned to the Peters farmhouse and saw the corpses of his beloved prophetess and her sister laid out in a bloodstained room, he was horrified. He reported the murders to a pastor. Meanwhile, the others sat vigil in anticipation of the resurrection. The Peters sisters died on a Saturday, so it was expected they would rise again on Monday. On Sunday night, Ursula removed the nails from Margaretta�s body so that she would not be fastened to a cross when she came back to life. Throughout the night, the group remained with the bodies and prayed.

The sisters remained dead, of course. Their father now had little choice but to report their deaths. In December 1823, eleven of Margaretta�s disciples went on trial for murder in Z�rich. All were convicted, and received prison sentences ranging from 6 months to 16 years. None expressed remorse for their actions. On the contrary, they insisted that the murders had been the will of God.

# ¿ Jul 19, 2014 17:55

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

serious norman posted:

Where did you find the Margaretta story?

A skeptic blog called Swallowing the Camel. She posts a lot of interesting stuff.

http://swallowingthecamel.wordpress.com/

# ¿ Jul 23, 2014 22:57

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

DStecks posted:

Probably because most people just think of pigs as harmless, dopey, indiscriminant eaters, not genuine meat lovers, let alone predators.

Then they've never had to deal with feral pigs. I do a lot of hiking and camping, and I'm more afraid of the pigs than any alligator or snake. They're smart as hell, weigh a couple hundred pounds but can still run at speeds up to 30mph and jump up to three feet, are really strong, and they've been known to hunt in packs. They generally won't try to take down a human adult without being provoked (which you can do unknowingly by getting between a sow and her piglets) but if you are out in the woods and swamps and have a dog or a kid with you, keep a very close eye on them in pig country.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2014 14:48

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

benito posted:

As much as feral pigs are a problem, they are also delicious. When they're out there getting exercise and eating acorns and blackberries, the meat is awesome. You can always add a little conventional pork fat if you're making sausage.

That very much depends on what season it is. You don't want to eat the meat of a feral hog in rut. :barf:

:barf:

# ¿ Aug 3, 2014 18:07

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Helena Handbasket posted:

I'll call this one out specifically, the Disappearance of Maura Murray. Relatively recent, we know a fair amount about what was happening immediately prior to her disappearance, and yet she vanished 10 years ago and we don't have anything conclusive.

Explanations range from "stumbled off the road, died someplace where her body hasn't been found" to "picked up by opportunistic murderer" to "traveling in tandem with another driver in a separate vehicle who picked her up after the crash." This last one is the preference of James Renner, who has written and researched a lot about Maura, evidently - his blog is here He also pops in on this Reddit thread from 2012 about the case. I haven't read back through his archives so I can't comment on the crackpot/legit investigation ratio here. In the Reddit thread, he tells someone who theorizes that Maura was abused by her father that they "have a good read on the case."

Much like the bog people or Jack the Ripper or most of the other human things we've discussed here, which theory makes the most sense depends on how you weight the evidence. We have a lot of info in this case - like the fact that she was being investigated for credit card fraud - that could be key or could be completely unrelated.

Some nasty gently caress also released strange videos taunting her family a few years ago. (James Renner re-hosted them here.) One of the videos included a picture of a lift pass from nearby Bretton Woods ski area, dated two days after her disappearance (and many years before the videos).

Alden Olson, the guy who made the videos, is a very intelligent and mentally-ill alcoholic who lives in a halfway house and occasionally works part-time helping a guy who buys unclaimed storage units. He lives in the same general area where Maura disappeared. He found the lift pass in one of the old storage units he was going through, and decided to make those videos both to troll Topix, where he hangs out under different names, and to taunt Maura's parents and the people investigating her disappearance, but mainly to get attention. I actually posted a thread about this a few years ago (and was promptly banned by Senor Woodchuck, who thought I was James Renner promoting his blog, lol) and ended up tangling with Alden a little bit online. He's a pretty sad case; a well-educated man who writes beautifully, who could have had a good life except for late-onset schizophrenia and alcoholism.

As for Maura, I think she had a drinking problem herself, she definitely had an unhealthy relationship with her father (though I don't agree with Renner and his hints about sexual abuse) and she had money troubles and minor legal troubles (she used the credit card of another student in her dorm to order takeout food, that's it.) She took off with a carful of booze that she was possibly drinking as she drove, she had a fender-bender on an icy, rural road, and I think she wandered off into the woods and froze to death. There's a lot of other weird, creepy poo poo around her disappearance, but I think it only becomes weird and creepy in the context that she disappeared.

If you ask Topix, she staged the accident, was met on the road by a Canadian boyfriend no one knew about, and is currently living under another name and managing a Curves workout salon in Toronto.

bonestructure has a new favorite as of 15:51 on Sep 13, 2014

# ¿ Sep 13, 2014 15:44

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

RevSyd posted:

While we're on the topic of Chernobyl, I simply can't resist quoting this passage from the excellent and highly unnerving Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters by James Mahaffey, because it is just so

It also contains this great quote regarding nuclear power:

:aaa:

I know what I'm going to be thinking about the next time I go fishing.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2014 18:00

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Helena Handbasket posted:

I'm glad somebody else is intrigued by this case. I agree that it's hard to sort important from unimportant with Maura Murray. E.g. when I was writing that post, I saw some references to the potential significance of her "clearing out her bank account," which seems to refer to the fact that she took $280 out of an ATM and left almost nothing in her account, but she had some paychecks incoming. If I had disappeared during any random weekend in college, and payday was soon, they would have noticed that I had also "cleared out" my bank account. College kids, not usually maintaining a healthy cushion of savings.

Missed seeing your post earlier.

Yes, that's an excellent point about the bank account. I guess what drew me to Maura's disappearance is the sad sense of how much she lived her life the way other people wanted her to. West Point for her dad, running for her boyfriend, planning a wedding for his (more than a little overbearing) mother, etc. I think the odds are heavily against her staging her own disappearance, but if she did God knows I wouldn't blame her. She was being smothered under other people's expectations for almost all of her life.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2014 18:52

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Man, that's a ratty-looking deer mount.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2014 17:33

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Anna Coleman Ladd

quote:

On the day after Christmas in 1920, a French mailman and veteran of World War I wrote an American woman named Anna Coleman Ladd to thank her for what she had done for him during the war.

Ladd knew the veteran, Charles Victor, who had been wounded in the face by a hand grenade in 1915. She had two photos of him.

In one, he is sitting in a chair, wearing his uniform and military medals. He has large ears and a shock of dark hair, parted on the side. But the lower half of his face is mutilated. Most of his nose and lips are gone, and his mouth looks crooked and rearranged.

In the second photo, he is sitting in the same chair. But now he is wearing glasses and a jaunty mustache, and there is no sign of injury.

What Ladd had done for Victor was not plastic surgery.

She was a sculptor. And he was one of the scores of disfigured French and American soldiers for whom she had made exquisite metal masks to conceal their war injuries.

quote:

�She was a neoclassical sculptor,� said David Lubin, the Charlotte C. Weber professor of art at Wake Forest University.

�She was very interested in principles of ancient art, the sort of beautiful serene face,� he said. �And she gives these men . . . this almost unreal serenity.�

Millions of soldiers were wounded or killed in the Great War, and it created an especially grim subset of casualties.

These were the �mutil�s de la face,� men who had suffered terrible facial injuries wrought by shrapnel, bullets and flamethrowers.

British author Ward Muir, who worked as a wartime hospital orderly, wrote in 1918: �Hideous is the only word for these smashed faces.�

quote:

�I endeavour by means of the skill I happen to possess as a sculptor to make a man�s face as near as possible to what it looked like before he was wounded,� Ladd wrote. � The patient acquires his old self-respect . . . [and] his presence is no longer a source of melancholy.�

She traveled to France in December 1917, and the next month, with four assistants, founded the American Red Cross Studio of Portrait Masks in Paris.

She decorated the studio with flags, patriotic posters and flowers. And she drank cocoa and tea with her �brave faceless ones,� as she called them.

She tried to make the studio a warm gathering place where the men could relax, smoke and chat.

quote:

The mask began with a plaster cast of the soldier�s disfigured face. Later, Ladd would hang on the walls a collection of the casts, visible in photographs taken at the time.

Then, using pre-injury photographs or just �psychological insight,� as she put it, Ladd would model on the cast the patient�s original appearance, filling in gaps and adding correct features.

From the improved cast, a thin copper mask was fashioned to cover the damaged part of the patient�s face.

The masks were held in place by wires, ribbons or eyeglasses. Eyelashes were made of fine metal strips, and mustaches and beards were added when necessary. The masks were painted to match skin tone.

quote:

Ladd directed the making of about 100 masks, and subordinates made many more after she returned to the United States in late 1918.

�The letters of gratitude from the soldiers and their families hurt, they are so grateful,� she wrote two days before the war ended in November 1918.

quote:

One letter among her papers, written in French, says in part:

�I owe you great gratitude . . . for I wear and will always . . . wear the marvelous device that you created. Thanks to you I can live again. Thanks to you I haven�t buried myself in the depths of a hospital for the disabled.�

Elsewhere, Ladd quoted from another soldier letter: �Thanks to you I will have a home . . . The woman I love no longer finds me repulsive, as she had a right to do. . . . She will be my wife.�

Yet another wrote: �My family and friends marvel . . . I am a tremendous success.�

# ¿ Sep 26, 2014 13:49

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Screaming Idiot posted:

This woman and her work is amazing, and I'm glad you shared this with all of us, bonestructure.

I'm also certain there's a pun in your username and this post, but I have neither the wit nor the heart to make it.

Aw, I'm glad everyone enjoyed it. I figured we could use a palate cleanser.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2014 00:23

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Herv posted:

The crucial detail would be if he cooked his lovers dork and threw it on a bun.

"Try the cock, Albert."

# ¿ Oct 6, 2014 18:59

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Mr. Flunchy posted:

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K...

Apparently my brain thinks Clerks jokes are funny again.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2014 01:31

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Nah, I'm just dumb.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2014 16:21

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Dissapointed Owl posted:

That's pretty scary and unnerving imo and signs of at least some kind of mental disorder.

You must not know many high-functioning alcoholics.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2014 00:32

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

I was born in 1965 and I work in IT. Computers still seem like magic to me, in the best possible way. The things I dreamed about as a sci-fi-reading kid are real and now I get to work with them every day.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2014 23:38

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

TipsyMc posted:

Nah,I was born in 1965...I'm sure there are some older goons than us.

I think it's genesplicer now.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2014 00:34

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

drat, son, you old

# ¿ Dec 15, 2014 19:13

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

ravinghobo posted:

I laugh that I'm somehow the old fart among most of my friends, and occaisionally I regale them with stories of the horrors of early videogaming (16mb of blazing power!!) or the brain crippling sights and sounds of the early 90's,..And then make them very jealous when I get nostalgic and talk about how arcades used to be all over the place and even every convenience store would most likely have a couple machines to donk around with,...

Guess I don't have anything scary or unnerving at the moment, just basking in my semi old fart memories.

Here, this both gets us back on topic and lets us bask in our old-fart memories. :corsair:

:corsair:

Polybius

quote:

Polybius is an arcade cabinet described in an urban legend,[1] which is said to have induced various psychological effects on players. The story describes players suffering from amnesia, night terrors and a tendency to stop playing all video games. Around a month after its supposed release in 1981, Polybius is said to have disappeared without a trace.[2] There is no evidence that such a game has ever existed.[3]

Polybius is thought to take its name from the Greek historian of the same name[1] who was known for his assertion that historians should never report what they cannot verify through interviews with witnesses, as well as for his works in relation to cryptography and for developing the Polybius square.

The story tells of an unheard-of new arcade game appearing in several suburbs of Portland, Oregon in 1981, something of a rarity at the time. The game is described as proving very popular, to the point of addiction,[1] with lines forming around the machines, often resulting in fighting over who would play next. The urban legend describes how the machines were visited by men in black, who collected unknown data from the machines,[1] allegedly testing responses to the game's psychoactive effects. Players supposedly suffered from a series of unpleasant side effects, including amnesia, insomnia, stress, nightmares and night terrors.[citation needed] The story tells of how Polybius players stopped playing video games, while one became an anti-gaming activist. The company named in most accounts of the game is Sinnesl�schen.[1]

The first documented reference to the game was an anonymously authored entry added to the site coinop.org on August 3, 1998.[1] The entry mentions the name Polybius and a copyright date of 1981, and its "About the game" describes the "bizarre rumours" that make up the legend.[4] The author of the entry claims in the description to be in possession of a ROM image of the game, and to have extracted fragments of text from it, including "� 1981 Sinnesl�schen".[4] The remainder of the information about the game is listed as "unknown".[1]

Some commentators think the game is an urban legend that grew out of exaggerated and distorted tales of an early release version of Tempest that caused problems with photosensitive epilepsy, motion sickness, and vertigo.[citation needed] Writer Brian Dunning notes that two players fell ill in Portland on the same day in 1981, one of them suffering from stomach pain after playing Asteroids for 28 hours in a filmed attempt to break a world record,[5] and the other collapsing with a migraine headache after playing Tempest at the same arcade.[1] Dunning records that the FBI raided several video arcades in the area just ten days later, where the owners were suspected of using the machines for gambling, and the lead-up to the raid involved FBI agents monitoring arcade cabinets for signs of tampering and recording high scores. Dunning suggests that these two events were combined in an urban legend about government-monitored arcade machines making players ill, and believes that such a myth must have been established by 1984, as it was referenced in the plot of the film The Last Starfighter, in which a teenager is recruited by a man in black who monitors him playing a covertly-developed arcade game.[1]

Dunning considers the Sinnesl�schen company name to be "not-quite-idiomatic German" meaning "sense delete" or "sensory deprivation", and sees it as being the kind of name that a non-German speaker would generate if they tried to create a compound word using an English-to-German dictionary.[1]

sick orthographical :iceburn:

:iceburn:

there, Dunning

# ¿ Dec 15, 2014 21:24

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

'65 checking in. PYF is the forums old folks home, apparently. :corsair:

:corsair:

New Leaf posted:

Holy gently caress. I've never heard of this guy. He is pure evil. I hesitate to call him a victim of his environment, but his upbringing certainly didn't help.. A microscopic part of me feels a little sorry for him, but goddamn, what a monster.

He is still, no poo poo, like the boogeyman in South Carolina. I remember his arrest when I was a kid, and the awful details that kept coming out. He still terrifies us around here. They found remains from two of his victims in a swamp not far from my family's house.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2015 19:07

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Screaming Idiot posted:

Because altruism isn't a sickness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_R._Price

quote:

George Robert Price (October 6, 1922 � January 6, 1975) was an American population geneticist.

Originally a physical chemist and later a science journalist, he moved to London in 1967, where he worked in theoretical biology at the Galton Laboratory, making three important contributions: first, rederiving W.D. Hamilton's work on kin selection with a new Price equation; second, introducing (with John Maynard Smith) the concept of the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS), a central concept in game theory; and third, formalising Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection.

After converting to radical Christianity and giving all his possessions to the poor, he committed suicide.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2015 05:59

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Solice Kirsk posted:

Do they mean that their individual hands went to heaven? Cause if heaven had a bunch of limbs just floating around that sounds weird.

From reading the article, the kids both had their hands surgically reattached, but were going to need multiple operations to get them healed and working again. The school raised money for the operations and "their hands are in His hands" was the (remarkably dumb) slogan they picked for the fundraiser.

It's a lot funnier to imagine the kids and their families showing up to put flowers on tiny little partial graves, though.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 16:01

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

KozmoNaut posted:

If that hits even harder after reading what comes before it in the book, I'm not sure I want to read it

It's a tough read but very worth it. Supposedly some of the anecdotes have come into question since publication, but I haven't had time yet to google that and see what's up. The book seemed very well-documented to me.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2015 02:22

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Super Waffle posted:

For actual creepy Disney parks, nothing beats River County!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney%27s_River_Country

http://www.yesterland.com/rivercountry.html

http://moviepilot.com/posts/2014/09/25/check-out-the-eerie-abandoned-disney-park-that-time-forgot-2298198?lt_source=external,manual

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UO5guVY-9c

My family went to River Country on vacations on a fairly regular basis when I was a kid, because a relative was an employee of the main park and always got us free passes. We still have lots of family photos from there. It was awesome when it was open and maintained, it makes me sad to see the wreckage.

Even then, though, there were rumors that the water was bad.

But that White Water Rapids tube ride was the best, it started at the top in a knee-deep pool in a fake cave that was pitch-black, and after you rounded a bend your tube suddenly dropped ten feet in utter blackness into the main run, then blasted you out into bright sunshine and the main river. It was so much fun that the lines were always really long, so I got in the habit of sneaking "ashore" (the landscaped fake river banks on each side) with my tube right before the last turn into the plunge pool, then climbing the hill back to the top and jumping back in for another run. Of course, that meant missing the cool cave drop at the beginning, but I was small and sneaky and could usually get in six or seven runs for each turn in line before I got caught.

The whole hill was landscaped and decorated, Disney-style, so the bushes had been carefully trimmed to look "wild" and every so often there was a statue of a Bear Jamboree character standing in the bushes waving or what have you, but a few feet back from the tube river edge it turned into natural tree growth woods. One time when I was climbing back up I spotted a little side path leading into that, and left my tube behind and went for a look. The path led up the hill, then around a big rock, and then to a little gray shack that was built cartoon-style, with the off-kilter windows and tilted roof, etc, that was sitting on top of the rock. I figured it was for pump machinery but couldn't hear anything, so I tried the door and to my amazement it opened. Inside was empty except for a small table, a chair, and a hardback notebook open on the table. It faced one of the little dusty cartoon windows and when I looked out, I was seeing the first part of the river run below, the part right after the cave drop when you come out into the light. The notebook was ruled like an accounting ledger and the only thing written in it was a single column of numbers done in pencil. I guess at some point they stationed an employee in there to count the number of riders as they went by? It all seemed very mysterious to a twelve-year-old, though.

River Country was cool.

Interesting page with then-and-now comparison shots: http://www.imagineeringdisney.com/blog/2009/12/19/abandoned-disney-river-country-part-1.html

The now-abandoned cave at the start of the tube ride:

Shows the inside and the turn just before the drop:

sic transit gloria mundi

bonestructure has a new favorite as of 17:19 on Apr 25, 2015

# ¿ Apr 25, 2015 17:07

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Kat R. Waulin posted:

I'm late for plane crash chat, but this definitely fits the topic of the thread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSA_Flight_182

In 1978 a Boeing 727-214 collided with a Cessna 172 over a San Diego neighborhood.

There's sort of an urban legend regarding the crash, involving "the screaming man" a.k.a Superman.

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=153499171

[/spoiler]

There are a few eyewitness accounts backing it up. I'm hoping that what they heard was coming from the general chaos in the area.

I wish I could find it again, but the first time I read about this crash four or five years ago, there was a long post online in a nurse's forum that I found by googling. It was written by someone who claimed to be a nurse who lived near that street, and it was both believable and pretty unforgettable, but not in a good way.

She ran out to help when she heard the explosion, only to be told by first responders that there was no one left alive to help. So she spent hours helping retrieve body parts, only to go home to find a crew combing her own backyard after someone reported that an arm and half a trunk were hanging from the limbs of a tree there. Six months later she was gardening and turned up a mostly-fleshless hand in one of her flowerbeds. :cry:

:cry:

# ¿ May 5, 2015 16:49

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

3 posted:

There's also the famous sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, the largest vessel to ever be sunk on the Great Lakes and the subject of a well-known Gordon Lightfoot tune:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgI8bta-7aw

There's also a good book about it, Mighty Fitz, on Amazon. Lots of detail about the iron ore trade, Great Lakes merchant shipping, and the Fitz herself and her crew and how they came to find themselves in the middle of every sailor's nightmare, and about the discovery of her resting place and the wreck, too. It's a good read.

# ¿ May 9, 2015 18:45

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

pixelbaron posted:

Necropants, Necropants
Everybody look it's a grand

This made me laugh like a loving fool. :xd:

:xd:

# ¿ Jun 8, 2015 13:22

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Madkal posted:

Yea. My roommate wants to get those books. By what he tells me about it sounds like people got lost in the woods and died, or got attacked by cougars or bears. Of course those aren't true because sasquatch totally did it and the authorities don't want you to know about it. Also apparently the author doesn't outright say bigfoot apparently, but heavily hints towards it because what other explanation can it be.

I remember when those two Dutch girls vanished in Panama last year while hiking a very popular tourist trail. After a few months some of their possessions and a few bones washed up on the banks of the river in the middle of the jungle, and Websleuths et al went nuts with theories about mad rapists and white slavers because "how could you disappear on that trail in broad daylight, there's so many people and the route is so clearly marked!" Well, yes. That's why you stay on the trail and never go off of it unless you are genuinely prepared and have a good damned reason. Plus the pictures people were posting of the trail (it is called La Pianista) were all from hotel websites and tourist brochures, so of course it showed the lowest sections of it that were broad and clearly-marked, well-manicured and safe-looking. If you googled just average tourist snaps of La Pianista, though, you could see this was a largely unimproved, unmarked trail through deep Panamanian jungle with cliffs, waterfalls, slot sections, you name it. Tons of hazards even keeping to the trail, and those girls were woefully inexperienced and under-prepared (no food, little water, no first aid stuff or GPS or even an emergency whistle, inappropriate footwear and clothes.) It doesn't require any stretch of the imagination to think that they left the trail to explore and take pictures, got lost, got benighted, and one or both became injured or were killed by a fall, drowning or exposure. Ten feet off that trail in any direction was deep rainforest, but still people insist that it's "impossible" the Dutch girls simply met with a terrible, tragic accident after making some mistakes.

I was in the Himalayas once on the trail to Namche Bazaar, one of the most popular and well-traveled routes in the Solu Khumbu area. The weather had been off-and-on rainy and so I had taken my rain poncho out of my pack, then tied it on the back after the rain let up. I was following behind the other people in my group when a gust of wind blew my poncho loose and over the edge of the trail down a slope, where it caught on a bush. It was only about ten feet away so I slid down to get it. When I was pulling the poncho off the branches, I realized the bush was right on the edge of a slot gorge invisible from the trail, one that was probably a few hundred feet deep. If the ground had been muddier or I had been moving faster, I might have gone right off the edge of that heavily-traveled, well-marked, popular trail where I was barely fifty feet behind my companions, and no one would have seen me again and there would be no sign of how I "disappeared". (And the 411 dude would have put it in his book and blamed it on a Yeti.)

Most of us are civilized city and suburb dwellers. It's easy to forget just how essentially unsafe and unforgiving (though beautiful and amazing) the natural world really is, and how easy it is to die.

Edit: excellent case in point http://www.wetasphalt.com/content/jungle-not-people

I'm willing to bet 99% of the mysterious disappearances in 411 dude's books have an explanation that goes a whole lot like this, but without the happy ending.

bonestructure has a new favorite as of 23:10 on Jun 9, 2015

# ¿ Jun 9, 2015 22:19

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

Alereon posted:

It's been posted in this thread before, but The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans and other stories on this guy's site are great. He volunteers to recover missing bodies from Death Valley that no one else could find, and his major point is that you have to put yourself in the mind of the missing people and what they were doing to find out where they went. People will often head out in what seem like non-sensical directions based on what seems like it will give them the best chance from where they are on the ground, and can often make it MUCH further than anyone would expect before expiring.

The missing Germans got their car stuck and walked off into the middle of a giant empty military reservation, because they were used to Europe and expected that any area marked in a map as "Military - ACCESS PROHIBITED" would be patrolled by guards and that they would be immediately noticed and get help. Instead they died in the middle of nowhere and no one found them for over a decade.

I'd read that before and I have tremendous respect for him, his analysis of the Death Valley situation was brilliant. His work gave their families closure and and answers. I've never done S&R but I know a lot of people who have, and it's hard, thankless work, especially when you're sure the person(s) you're searching for have almost certainly already died.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2015 00:27

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

That drat Satyr posted:

I live on unsolved murder / strange death scenarios, and something about this case scares the heebiejeebies out of me. The Thinking Sideways podcast did a great episode on the girls and their unfortunate end, as well as cover the evidence - GPS and call data from the girl's phones, photos from their last days alive still in the camera, and even finally body parts turning up.

Listen here:
http://thinkingsidewayspodcast.com/lisanne-froon-and-kris-kremers/

Ugh, I tried listening to it but between the vocal fry and the uptalk, that woman's voice irritated me so much that I only managed about fifteen minutes of it. And she also got a lot of details wrong, though to be fair they are details that are often given wrong because it deepens the "mystery" (for instance, the guide they'd hired for the next day was for a different trail, not La Pianista, so there's no mysterious decision to hike a trail alone that they'd hired a guide for the next day.) That timeline image on their website is excellent, though, and I'm going to attach it to the bottom of this post because it really does help make the sequence of events clearer.

The brief gist of the Panama disappearance (there's no wikipedia article on it to link) is that in April of last year two young Dutch women, Lisanne Froon (21) and Kris Kremers (22) went to Panama to teach English and spend some time abroad. They were good friends who had saved up for the trip together, and they were excited about it. Their second day in Panama they left Boquete, the small town where they were staying with a host family, to hike a well-known local trail, La Pianista (so named for the beautiful choruses of birdsong you can hear along it.) They never came back. Two and a half months later several bones, a shoe with a foot in it, and their backpack were found in the jungle. A few months later a rib was found. No other evidence or remains have been recovered since.

I'm no Tom Mahood, but here is my theory about what happened to Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon. I'm going to post this in two parts, because it's gotten really long.

Part One

March 31 - Kris and Lisanne arrive in Boquete. They were both excited about beginning a job teaching English at a school run by a German expat the next day. After settling in with their host family, they go to the school, where they find there has been a misunderstanding and that they are not to start work until a week later. Lisanne apparently was very upset by this (it's possible that it was going to impact their finances) to the point where she wrote about it in her diary that night.

April 1 - TThey have a week to kill. After talking to some locals and doing some research, the girls hire a guide for the next day, April 2, to climb Volc�n Bar�, a local volcano. They decide to spend that day hiking La Pianista, a well-known local trail. There is a lot of confusion over details here, with contradicting eyewitness accounts of where they did or did not have breakfast first, whether they took a taxi or a bus to the trailhead, etc. I've disregarded all of that because I don't feel it's important, as inarguably the girls made it to the trailhead and started their hike of La Pianista. A camera and two phones were recovered from their backpack that show photos of the two of them on the trail and at the top, where they took pictures of one another at a summit viewing spot. This is where ordinarily people turn around and descend back to Boquete. It was first believed that the girls reached the summit around 3pm, but later analysis of the shadows in the summit photos put the time at about 1pm. This is often overlooked or not included when their disappearance is discussed, and I believe it's really important. Lisanne and Kris were not experienced hikers (as shown by their bringing just two bottles of water, their phones, a camera, money, and some candy on their hike) but they were intelligent young women and neither seemed to be reckless or foolish. If they reached the summit at 3pm, I believe they would have then turned around, knowing that it was getting late in the day. But they got there at 1pm, on a beautiful, cloudless day on one of the loveliest trails in Panama. If you have done much hiking or trekking, you're probably familiar with the "runner's high" (it's the "anything athletic" high, really) that one gets a few hours into a really good trip. You hit that second wind, you feel great, you're nearly euphoric. It just feels really, really good to be out in the fresh air moving your muscles (especially if one is just coming off a long, cramped plane trip and bus ride, as they were) and you just want to keep going forever. Their trip had gotten off to a bad start with the work misunderstanding, but now they were having fun. They were both young, athletic, and adventurous. So they did.

Another "mystery" about their disappearance is how it could happen on La Pianista, which is often described as an easy or intermediate trail that it would be nearly impossible to become genuinely lost on. This is true of the trail up to the summit viewing spot. But La Pianista continues on long after that point, descending the mountain again into the valley and eventually to the village of Bocas del Toro, a hike of four or five days. This part of the trail is much rougher, only occasionally marked, and is very seldom taken by tourists, it's used mainly by the locals traveling between Boquete and Bocas del Toro. This part of the trail would be something that should absolutely not be done without serious preparation and a guide, but the girls wouldn't have known that. If they followed that trail onwards from the summit, only gradually would the markers have started to peter out, the terrain become rougher, the path become easier to lose. And that is what I believe probably happened. There's a chance that they might have voluntarily left the trail, but again, these were described as prudent, mature young women. They were careful and they had common sense. But even on improved trails in US parks it's easy to lose the path; on an unimproved jungle trail in Panama, any animal track, any abandoned side trail, any seasonal rain rut starts to look like trail. By the time you realize you haven't seen a marker in a while, you don't know where you are. So what do you do?

Two calls to 112 (the Dutch version of 911) were registered from their phones that day at 4:39 and 4:51pm. From their 1pm summit, this was enough time for them to have followed another mile or two of trail into the wildnerness area and gotten turned around. They would have realized that they were very lost and needed help. A photo retrieved from the same time frame shows an empty stretch of something that looks like it might not be trail at all, but instead a seasonal rain arroyo that would have looked very much like a trail to them. I think they tried to call emergency services, and took the picture to send to the authorities to show their view of where they were in order to help find them. But the calls were never completed, which is another "mystery." Local people and tourists have both said that there is usually good signal all along La Pianista, that their cell phones should have worked. But again, they are talking about the part of La Pianista before you reach the top of the mountain. As you descend, you're placing the continental divide between yourself and most of the signal towers around Boquetes. If that's where they were, chances are they were getting no signal.

I don't think they panicked; neither seemed like the panicking type. I am more inclined to think that instead they methodically tried to re-orient themselves, probably ascending if they could, and attempted to rediscover the trail. But by then it would be starting to become very late in the day and they would have been smart enough to be very afraid of getting benighted in the jungle. I think this tempted them to try to take shortcuts or climb cliffs in an attempt to get higher on the mountain again. They were not dressed for anything like this, wearing just shorts and tank tops and light walking shoes. I think they either both slipped at the same time and fell into a seasonal rain arroyo, a deep one with steep sides, or one girl fell and the other then slipped in while trying to help her. Either way, I believe they ended up at the bottom of a deep seasonal rut, one with steep slick sides, and both had serious injuries that kept them from climbing out again. There are plenty of ruts like this in the jungle where you can't get back up once down, much less do it hurt. So they were stuck there, and there they stayed.

The timeline chart shows what happened next. The first day or two after their fall, both girls made frequent attempts to call emergency services. Then the pace of the calls slows, as they realize they need to conserve battery time. They do a spectacular job of this (eight days on one charge for an iPhone? Now there's a supernatural mystery) restraining their phone use to three times a day each, then two; turn on, check for signal, try emergency number, turn off. The calls never connected.

By April 2nd, the girls had been missed in Boquete and a search began on April 3. The searchers, again, mainly stuck to the first part of La Pianista during the early days of the search, but by April 5 the disappearance had become international news and a major story in the Netherlands, with a lot of pressure on Panama to find the girls. The more informal local search teams were joined by much bigger efforts from the capital. The girls' parents flew in with Dutch detectives, search teams and dogs. For the first time the search teams fanned out all along La Pianista, including into the much rougher section, and also for the first time they searched overnight, firing phosphorus flares periodically.

It is during this period, on 8 April, when the "mysterious" 90 blank black photos were taken on Lisanne's camera. I believe this is when a search party reached a part of the trail close to where Lisanne and Kris were trapped. They saw flares, and answered back the best way they had; with the flash on the camera. It was a clever idea and a valiant effort, but a doomed one. I'm going to quote here from an article in a Dutch newspaper, because it is more succinct and eloquent about that moment than I could ever be.

Telegraaf posted:

The final seventy of the 133 sequential photos "appear to have been taken from a deep, dark location, almost certainly after sunset and presumably featuring a large amount of overhanging vegetation." The photos were taken "on April 8th during the night, presumably to draw attention."

That matches the already documented period of night photography between 01:00 and 04:00 on Tuesday 8th. This happens to be the first night out for a rescue team, said to have used light and sound signals. These are not described in detail, but a rescue party would normally use a Very pistol to send up a series of white parachute flares to indicate their own position.

It seems plausible that the women saw the light signals. How could they answer them? Apparently they didn't have the standard orange plastic whistle hikers usually carry. Wonderful piece of kit - costs little, weighs grams, makes a hell of a lot of noise. But tropical mountain woodland won't carry any sound very far, even in the almost windless conditions prevailing that night. And they did have a light source; their camera's flash.

But they couldn't aim that flash directly at the rescue team. Too many trees in the way. They were somewhere near a narrow river, with tall woodland on both sides. But they could see a patch of sky. Did it make sense to flash roughly vertically upwards? The reliable source of historical hourly weather data (links below) skips these particular hours, but highish humidity and partial cloud cover are on the cards. Perhaps they fired the flash a couple of times and saw some Tyndall scattering - like you would see a searchlight beam in damp or dusty conditions. In any case, they had nothing to lose and would certainly fail if they didn't try.

So they tried for hours. But the fingernail-sized flash of their pocket camera was too weak, or there wasn't much scattering and all the light just disappeared straight up. The dark frames themselves show no significant reflections. This is perhaps the most heartbreaking part of their ordeal.

There are three clear photos from that night. One shows a steep sided jungle cliff, looking from the bottom up. One shows a branch lying on a rock with ribbons of red plastic (ripped from a bag known to be in the girls' backpack) tied to it -- something one could wave as a signal, especially when one had become too hoarse and dehydrated to scream for help any more. And one shows the back of Kris Kremers' head, recognizable by her long red hair. I believe that at that point, Kris was already dead and Lisanne was dying.

Edit: Imgur album of the photos, including some :nws:

:nws:

:nms:

ones of human bones and separated foot in shoe : :nws:

:nws:

http://imgur.com/a/ITPQC :nws:

:nws:

Timeline:

bonestructure has a new favorite as of 03:04 on Jun 11, 2015

# ¿ Jun 10, 2015 18:06

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

lenoon posted:

This is all very interesting, and tragic - thanks for posting it. Should point out that the imgur album contains images of human remains - you might want to tag it as such in case anyone stumbles upon it who isn't ok with seeing that. Not a trigger warning as such, but plenty of religious and social possibilities as to why someone might not want to see a pelvis and a shoe complete with foot.

Dang, thanks, I didn't think of that. I've nws'd it now.

Sorry, I am still finishing part 2 of what I think happened (they have a pesky habit of asking me to do work for my money

) That gruesome shoe/foot photo figures into it, as do the supposed "mystery" of why the girls' remains were so widely separated from each other and the backpack.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2015 20:45

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

The disappearance of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon - my theory, part 2 (continued from part 1)

April 9 - I believe that on this day, Lisanne Froon struck out alone down the arroyo (the deep seasonal rain gulch, they are apparently called quebradas in Panama) to try to find the trail again herself. I think that Kris Kremers was dead at that point because I don't think Lisanne would leave her behind, because if they were going to try that it would have been done sooner when Lisanne was stronger and because I believe Kris was more badly injured\incapacitated than Lisanne and needed her care. When the searchers began to discover remains, one of the first things they found was Kris' foot, still in her shoe, and then later her pair of shorts, often described as "neatly folded on a rock" (though I have never yet found a primary source that goes into that kind of detail on them, anything I've found in newspaper or police reports just says the shorts were found and had definitely been taken off and were not mixed in with remains as they would have been if worn.) This is another key point of confusion in the mystery, because most people recounting these events either imply or outright state that the shoe and the shorts were found together (they weren't, they were found miles apart) and that it's inexplicable the shorts were removed unless there was violence of some kind. I don't think that was the case. I think that Kris fell and hurt herself badly, and it was a lower body injury of some type (broken leg, broken ankle, blown knee, etc) that made her not only unable to walk, but also made it very painful to move around at all. Personal anecdote again: when I was on a second trek in Nepal I blew out my ACL climbing a mountain called Kusum Kangaru. Getting back to Lukla walking on that leg sucked, but one of the worst things about the injury was trying to pee or crap along the trail (or in a Nepali squat toilet) with a leg that it was agony to bend. It required this sort of awkward tripod position, a lot of jolting of the bad knee, and a great deal of cussing (alcohol both helped and exacerbated the problem.) I took to wearing my "camp" and sleeping sundress all of the time because it was just easier to hike the skirt up to pee than to pull down a pair of trousers. If Kris injured one or both legs, Lisanne may have taken off her shorts for her at some point to make it easier to help her with calls of nature, and to avoid hurting her by pulling the shorts up and down. It was warm weather (90F during the day, low 70s at night) and likely they were huddled together at night. Kris would have stayed warm enough.

Something else I think supports this theory is that in the picture of Kris's shoe, there is the shoe and the foot. There's no sign of the thick dark hiking socks that Kris in wearing in the earlier photos. I think Lisanne took off Kris' shoes to remove her shorts, then put her shoes back on without bothering with the socks. (It's also very possible that the sock just collapsed into the shoe as the foot decomposed. There is only the one photo.) They probably chose to rest on and around the flat rock seen in the photo of the signal stick; the rock would have been cool during the day and would have been more free of insects than the arroyo floor. Kris was probably lying on or leaning against this rock on the night of the photos, when her red hair appears in one of the 90-plus snaps. Lisanne, depending on how she was hurt, might have stood on the rock as long as she could, lifting the camera as high as she could over her head, firing the flash until the camera was dead. It must have been heartwrenching beyond belief when that battery finally stuttered out and Lisanne knew no one had seen it, but at least she knew that people were looking and that they were close.

If Kris died that night or the next day, Lisanne would have nothing to lose by striking out on her own (again assuming that she was more mobile than Kris) and trying to find the searchers and/or the trail. She would have been very weak by then with hunger and dehydration -- presumably the girls could get a certain amount of water from moisture condensing around them on the rocks, but it wouldn't have been much -- but again, nothing to lose. So she left Kris and started walking down the arroyo to try to find the trail again. Her iPhone would have been very close to dead by this point (it seems like a minor miracle to me that it lasted this long) and with the idea that searchers were physically close by and to conserve the battery, I think she didn't turn the phone on for the next two days while she struggled slowly through the jungle, trying to find the trail or rescue, until she couldn't go on any more.

I doubt she made it very far in total, probably not more than a mile or two at the very most, before she exhausted what was left of her strength and couldn't go any further. Maybe she even found the trail, or was following a track close to the trail. On April 11 just before eleven o'clock in the morning, a last power-on of the iPhone is recorded. This was when Lisanne accepted that she wasn't going to find the searchers and switched on the almost-dead iPhone for the final time. It stayed on for five minutes, but the PIN to unlock it was never entered and a call was never made. Possibly she was too exhausted, possibly the phone just ran out its charge before she could put it in (it was on for five minutes, but she was dehydrated, starved, dying.) No matter what, it was probably not too far from where Kris' body lay that Lisanne's fell when she couldn't walk any more. But it wouldn't have taken much geographical distance between Lisanne and the location of Kris' body to put them in two very different water channels when the rainy season came two months after their disappearance. Instead a lot of the mystery hay is made of the fact that what has been found of them was not found together, but instead very far apart.

The map below, like much of what is available on the web about this case from amateur sleuths, is not reliable in its details, but it is useful in giving an idea of the terrain. The markings for the beginning of La Pianista, Mirador (the viewing spot at the summit) and Quebrada #2 (where the last picture of either of the girls, one of Kris in a deep arroyo, was taken) are accurate, as are the markings for H12 and H13, which are overnight search camp locations. The pelvis and shoe were not found together, as the blue dot seems to indicate; they were several miles apart. There is a tremendous amount of confusion even among the official sources as to where exactly the bones and other items were found, but per DNA testing there's none about whom they belonged to; the pelvis was Lisanne's, the foot in the shoe was Kris', as was the rib found later. The shorts were, again, several miles away from the other remains. And then there's the backpack.

Lisanne's black backpack was brought into Boquete on 14 June by an elderly couple from the local Ng�be-Bugl� tribe of natives, Angel Palacios and his (unnamed in the reports) wife. They said the wife had found it caught on a bush on the banks of the Culebra river, which runs parallel to the Pianista trail, when she left off tilling their rice field and went down to the river for a drink. The backpack contained Lisanne and Kris' bras, their phones, the camera, empty water bottles, about $85 in currency, and several of Lisanne's id cards, including a photo id. The couple recognized her as one of the missing girls and brought in the backpack, an arduous journey of almost four days into Boquete from their tiny tribal settlement of Los Romeros past Boca del Toros. The implications were clear; Kris and Lisanne were dead, and their bodies and possessions were being swept down the continental divide into the river by the torrential rains of the monsoon season that began in June.

I've never been to Panama, but I have been in Costa Rica during the rainy season and India during monsoon season. If you've never been in a tropical rainstorm, it's hard to understand the sheer force and volume of water that can fall in just hours. It's what dug those deep, deep ruts in the jungle floor like the one I think Lisanne and Kris fell into. It broke apart their corpses, sweeping Kris' foot and Lisanne's pelvis down the mountain into the river and then far downstream, and the backpack even further: past Boca del Toro all the way to Los Romeros. That makes sense to me, it made sense to local inhabitants familiar with the terrain and the seasons, it made sense to the authorities. But one thing doesn't make sense and I think it's the only genuine mystery of their disappearance. I'm an avid kayaker and I have spent a lot of time on, in, and around the water, both the ocean and local swamps and rivers, and the first thing I thought was that there was no way that backpack had been in the river. The backpack itself had some dirt and leaves on it, but otherwise was clean and bright. The fragile items inside, including the camera, two phones, and two pairs of sunglasses, were completely undamaged. More than that, when the backpack was opened it was reported to be neatly packed, not damaged and with items destroyed and in disarray as you'd expect from an inexpensive nylon daypack bouncing around a roaring flood-swollen river against rocks and strainers.

The force of the water tore Lisanne and Kris' (decomposed by then, undoubtedly extensively scavenged) bodies to pieces, but it left their daypack and its contents looking like new? It made no sense to me at all. It still makes no sense to me, unless you assume that Angel Palacios and his wife were not telling the truth about how the backpack was found. I don't think they were.

The part of La Pianista used by the locals is mostly used by local men "commuting" on foot between the area of Boca del Toros and surroundings and Boquetes, either to bring cattle and produce to market, to work as guides for tourists in Boquete, or to buy supplies. Many of these people are Ng�be-Bugl� and they have a long history of being abused, mistreated, and railroaded by the Panamanian government. They are reportedly very kind and friendly people, but they have good reason to fear and distrust the police and officials. If I was an inhabitant of Los Romeros and one of the men of the village brought in a tourist backpack he'd found along the La Pianista trail, one that I recognized as belonging to the two missing Dutch girls, I know my heart would sink. The media furor over their disappearance had flared up again enormously with the discovery of the bones, the heat was back on the Panamanian government hard to explain what happened to them, and already there had been multiple wild allegations in the press and internet (and in local Boquetes gossip) that maybe Lisanne and Kris had been murdered, maybe raped too, on the trail. Maybe by a local, maybe by a guide. Maybe by a Ng�be-Bugl�. And now here is their backpack in the hands of a Ng�be-Bugl� man, probably young, maybe already working as a tour guide; the perfect scapegoat to throw under the bus for the "crime."

I don't think I have to do much convincing of how reasonable that fear is to most people familiar with Central and South American governments. My conjecture is that when the backpack was found, the Ng�be-Bugl� of Los Romeros were selfless enough to take that risk (or, if you're cynical, they were not about to lose out on the $30,000 reward offered) but they knew whoever turned it in was going to be suspected, so they had a tribal council meeting (that part is actually from a news report, only Palacios said the council meeting was after his wife found the backpack) and decided the official finders should be the least suspicious people available, the rice-farming old man Angel Palacios and his wife, who almost never left the village and would have alibis for the whole time of Kris and Lisanne's disappearance. The only problem was, if they never leave the village, how do they claim to have come by the backpack?

The river. I live near a tidal river, and I can tell you that as a river rises and falls, everything imaginable comes along with its inexorable pull. The locals were used to finding all kinds of things on its banks after a hard rain, everything from drowned cows to furniture to farming implements. It had already brought down pieces of the girls' bodies close by, this could be just one more thing thrown up by the Culebra in flood. The girls were already known to be dead, so there was no way the accurate location of the backpack could help them now; the Ng�be-Bugl� of Los Romeros could tell their story with one change and do the right thing, get the reward, and the true finder would be safe from scrutiny and the possibility of a political lynching. It was just a small lie, after all.

And that's what I think happened to Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers, God rest their poor young souls. The one remaining question that no one will ever answer, but is often asked, is why would they have kept going on La Pianista past the Mirador lookout. The path didn't go bad right away, but it becomes noticeably rougher almost immediately and turns very rough long before the point where I think Lisanne and Kris realized they were lost. They had the whole beautiful length of La Pianista back down to Boquete to enjoy; what could have tempted them to go the other way, into the deep forest? There's no way to tell for sure, but I have my own guess. There was evidence found on Kris' laptop that the girls had googled info about La Pianista before their hike and asked several locals for info about it. They were both outdoorsy people; they planned to fill their first and second day in Panama with hiking and enjoying its natural beauty. And one of the most famous treasures of the Panamanian rainforest is a bird called the Resplendent Quetzal.

It's known to avid birders (of which I am one) as one of the rarest and most beautiful birds on earth. A sighting of it is a triumph, and the quetzal is famous far beyond birder circles; there's even a major trail outside of Boquete named Quetzal Trail. You can also find quetzals along La Pianista. But these beautiful birds have been hunted nearly to extinction by poachers and souvenir collectors for their gorgeous plumage, and they are extremely wary of humans. It's well-known that you don't see quetzals on the lower easy part of the La Pianista trail, a birding acquaintance of mine who has been to Panama told me. Only on the rough part, only on the jungle part. Only on the dangerous part.

I imagine one or both of them urging for the push on past Mirador, glowing with energy, filled with happiness as they are in their last few photos, on the track of the most beautiful bird in the world. Maybe it was the quetzal they were looking for, or maybe a certain flower or butterfly or tree; maybe the jungle just looked temptingly cool and green on a hot afternoon and the trail still seemed easy, the scenery still lovely, the weather still smiling, everything beckoning them onward and forward deeper into the forest, and so joyfully they went.

Rest in peace, Kris and Lisanne. :smith:

:smith:

bonestructure has a new favorite as of 16:40 on Jun 11, 2015

# ¿ Jun 11, 2015 00:05

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 05:13

bonestructure: Sep 25, 2008; by Ralp

I'm glad the super-long effortpost wasn't annoying.

Thanks, people who enjoyed it. It's all speculation and could be completely wrong in the details, but I think whatever the true answer to Lisanne and Kris' "mystery" is, it doesn't involve anything more than bad luck and a tragic accident. That's not a controversial position here, but they will flay you alive for saying that on Websleuths. You can say any other crazy poo poo you want (the candy wrappers in the signal stick photo are actually from condoms! They were sex-trafficked! That vaguely green plant-shaped thing in the background of one of the dark photos is their sex-slaving captor! They killed Lisanne and chopped off Kris' foot to make her behave and now she's a sex slave in a Buenos Aires brothel!) and they'll eat it up with a spoon, but mundane bad luck in the wild, never. It was a riot watching Midwestern retirees and LE wannabes tell posters who actually live in Boquetes (and were helpfully translating local newspaper articles) that they didn't know poo poo about seasonal rains and water patterns or trail conditions and dangers in their own town.

Wasabi the J posted:

Yeah people think I'm a bit paranoid for bringing two days of water, a survival blanket, tourniquet, knife, flint, and food for two days on even a short hike. Even if I won't need it, I worry that I'll stumble across someone who does.

I have an old sturdy cross-body bag that I use hiking and kayaking, and I keep it packed with a first-aid kit, boater's whistle (protip: even louder than those orange hiking whistles), two uncrushable steel water bottles, leatherman, a mini maglite, a space blanket, power bars and gorp, and something that was really expensive but worth it: a small waterproof VHF radio with a built-in GPS personal locator beacon. I bought that when I owned a sailboat, but I've kept it ever since because it igives me a lot more peace of mind when I'm out kayaking or birdwatching alone in places where I don't get a cell signal. I get a ton of poo poo from my friends for over-preparing, too.

Edit: Hey, look, I can post a wikipedia link finally. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distress_radiobeacon Those personal GPS locators are about $300 for a good one (don't even bother with the cheapie ones), but look at the stats on lives saved with them. Imagine if Lisanne or Kris had owned one. If you spend a lot of time outdoors, might be a good investment.

Edit edit: Holy poo poo, that reddit post :stare:

:stare:

bonestructure has a new favorite as of 17:52 on Jun 11, 2015

# ¿ Jun 11, 2015 17:11

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