I think that qualifies as creepy. I wonder if he has a successful insanity defense, he has to stay confined until he is “cured”? Prison or psych ward, I don’t see him being released into the public.
I’m not a lawyer and I’m sure states differ, but my understanding is that the insanity defense can be used when you can show that the accused didn’t know that what they were doing was wrong. It doesn’t mean the person is or isn’t insane.
Joseph James DeAngelo AKA the East Area Rapist AKA Original Night Stalker AKA Visalia Ransacker.
They caught him… after 40 years. He got away with these sickening crimes for so long and then went and had a normal life.
Speaking of Ramirez, a story which was while like a horror movie, but while it did not inspire fear in me per the OP, it was touched on by Cecil in one of his columns, which has to count for something:
That’s what insane means in a legal sense. The states do differ on how they say that in the law. John Hinckley who shot Ronald Reagan and others was then found not guilty of a slew of charges because of a mental defect according to the laws in place at the time. Other laws are more specific about a defendant’s ability to realize their actions are wrong. For instance in cases where someone hearing voices telling them that it is right to kill someone also has to not realize that it would be illegal and others would consider it to be wrong,
This case of Munchausen by Proxy - the mother poisoned him with salt. All Munchausen by proxy cases creep me out, because of their twisted way of gaining attention and accolades (when they “save” the child.)
It’s hard to explain the one staffer who wound up in intensive care for an extended period. In other cases, “toxic exposure” is less believable.
“Electric shocks administered during emergency defibrillation could have then converted the DMSO2 into the highly toxic dimethyl ester of sulfuric acid, exposure to which could have caused some of the reported symptoms of the emergency department staff.”
Seems like a bit of a stretch.
There are numerous people who have self-treated with DMSO for a variety of reasons. Some of them surely wound up in the hospital for one reason or another, but I haven’t heard of any mass poisonings of staff who treated them.
Might be a case of group hysteria. Bad odors can trigger emotional responses in people. From there the story can get muffled.
There have been mass hysteria cases where one person (the index case) was physically ill for whatever reason - and then, others who saw the sick person and smelled odd odors (toxins!) started experiencing symptoms and it became a chain reaction.
I remember one situation where a child sick with a cold passed out in school. Classmates noted the presence of an odor (from adhesive used on carpet that had just been laid down), a few reported feeling faint or nauseous, and before long there was an auditorium half-full of kids with similar complaints.
The Ramirez case was investigated and a genuine toxic response was postulated, so I could be wrong. I suspect at least some of the symptomatic health care workers were psychologically affected.
I can’t provide a link to this tale so I will tell it to the best of my memory. Back in
the 1990’s late one night, a gasoline tanker truck was transitioning from the
5 freeway to the 91 freeway when it was cut off by a car. The driver of the
truck lost control, went over the side of the ramp and fell onto the 5 freeway below.
The truck burst into flames but the driver was able to escape with the help of
some motorists who stopped to help. Unfortunately, he died the next day due
his injuries.
Witnesses told the police that the tanker truck fell on top of a small car. After
the wreckage had cooled the truck was removed. And just as the witnesses
had described there was a small car underneath. There was no body to
be found - the heat of the fire burned everything away. The car itself so
badly burned and melted it could not be identified completely. Any part that
had a VIN or serial number had been destroyed. They only were able to identify
the make, model and approximate year.
About a year later the local paper ran a story that the police still didn’t know
who had been driving the car on that night. No one had come to the police
to report a missing friend or relative who had been driving in the area
of the accident that night. I never read or heard anything after that and as
far as I know this case was never solved.
Here is another story has always creeped me out. Was this some sort of mass
murderer committed over 150 years ago? We will probably never know.
Bones found in attic of Civil War era home
Something similar happened at a high school here, about a decade ago; students complained about dizziness, nausea, and stomach pains after experiencing an unknown odor. A friend’s sons went to that high school, and her eldest called her mid-day: “The school’s being evacuated 'cuz of a weird smell like a gas leak or something. Can [Younger Brother] and I go to Taco Mac?”
Mom: “What?! Say that again!”
Son: “Can. We. Go. To. Taco. Mac?”
My friend’s son later told me the cause of the symptoms and smell: a group of 9th graders who wanted to get out of a biology test.
30+ years ago, one of our cats had a condition that we were instructed to treat with a DMSO-based ointment. I vaguely recall that it did tend to smell sort of rotten-egg-like. It’s hard to imagine using enough of it to cause the kind of fallout described in the article - but if the patient was in that much pain, she might really have been overdoing it. It’s surprising that nobody has tried to replicate this experimentally - surely it could be done safely in a laboratory.
Two famous but really genuinely creepy cases come to mind:
-
Tourist found dead in a hotel roof top water tank after erratic behaviour
Death of Elisa Lam - Wikipedia -
Woman horrifically mutilated by pet chimp
Travis (chimpanzee) - Wikipedia
The second falling into the primal dread of sudden animal attack like the “bears” story up thread.
Reflections and refractions are the likely explanation of numerous ufo sightings, especially from aircraft windshields.
I get them from my eyeglasses from time to time. It’s worst when it disappears from my peripheral when I move my eyes because it only hits my retina at that exact angle. Creeped me out for a long while
A while back, some Trump cronies said that what they dubbed a “satanic portal” had opened up above the White House. Even I, not a photographic expert by any stretch of the imagination, knew that was a lens artifact.
That anyone would believe these doofi is pretty creepy in itself.
Couldn’t just have been some DJ sneaking his own or a friend’s group song on the radio?
I still shudder when I think of this crash:
It was a commuter flight between silicon valley and the LA area. Down and back in the same day. Like going to work. I, and most people I knew, had used it.
The creepy part is that it’s outside of natural statistics. It’s not just risk. You’re locked inside of an aluminum tube and your very existence is at the whim of any one of 44 strangers.
I remember watching the video that was released before they found her. It was weird/creepy enough to have been in a slasher movie.
I wished I’d never heard of this one. Just horrific all around.
I lived very near this crash site when it happened. It was unspeakable. Knew most of the Sheriff’s deputies who were responsible for the clean up. Let’s just say there were few pieces of anything larger than around 2 inches, and departmental trauma ensued for a long time.
Terrifying crash. On the bright side, a lot of changes were made to security measures for crew after.