New stuff! Shenanigans! Weird things! Welcome to the fourth instalment of Curious Things Found on the Internet. We’re taking it eclectic this week, and curating a mishmash of different things from various areas, and different parts of the world. Cat funerals! Tiny coffins! The hotel from Stephen King’s The Shining! Hell yes.
Let’s have some fun, and get those inspirational juices flowing.
Curious Things Found on the Internet – Part IV
Edinburgh’s Mysterious Miniature Coffins
Edinburgh’s Mysterious Miniature Coffins via Smithsonian Mag
“The “fairy coffins” discovered on Arthur’s Seat, a hill above Edinburgh, in 1836. Were they magical symbols, sailors’ memorials—or somehow linked to the city’s infamous mass murderers, Burke and Hare? Photo: National Museum of Scotland.”
Edinburgh’s Mysterious Miniature Coffins
The haunting pictures and dark histories of Wales’ abandoned asylums
The abandoned North Wales Hospital, Denbigh
“They were the products of an age when fear and stigma guided our “care” of the mentally ill.
A time when isolation in an asylum was the treatment for conditions like postnatal depression, alcoholism, senile dementia, and even infidelity.
Those whose only offence was to be ill were sometimes condemned to die in now decaying buildings like the North Wales Hospital, in Denbigh, and the Mid-Wales Hospital, in Talgarth, Powys.”
The haunting pictures and dark histories of Wales’ abandoned asylums
You can take a virtual reality tour of The Shining hotel and it’s terrifying
“‘Hotel caretaker simulator’ is hardly the most tantalising of video game offerings. Changing virtual sheets? Sorting out the mess in room 32? We’ll stick to making our own beds, thanks.
But The Caretaker isn’t set in any old crummy motel.
The creation of games group Franbo, this is a chilling virtual reality experience for the Oculus Rift, set in the vacant halls of the Overlook Hotel – the setting of Stephen King’s The Shining, and Stanley Kubric’s masterful film adaptation.”
You can take a virtual reality tour of The Shining hotel and it’s terrifying
Cat Funerals in the Victorian Era
Inconsolable Grief by Ivan Kramskoi, 1884.
“During the early 19th century, it was not uncommon for the mortal remains of a beloved pet cat to be buried in the family garden. By the Victorian era, however, the formality of cat funerals had increased substantially. Bereaved pet owners commissioned undertakers to build elaborate cat caskets. Clergymen performed cat burial services. And stone masons chiseled cat names on cat headstones. Many in society viewed these types of ceremonies as no more than an amusing eccentricity of the wealthy or as yet another odd quirk of the elderly spinster. Others were deeply offended that an animal of any kind should receive a Christian burial.”
Cat Funerals in the Victorian Era
Until next time, stay creepy!