Oddity Central |
- La Pascualita – The Corpse Bride of Mexico
- Russian Woman Aims to Become Most Realistic-Looking Human Doll
- Gaza Zoo Puts Creepy Stuffed Animals in Cages to Cut Food Costs
- Delicious Street Art – Sugar Icing Murals by Shelley Miller
| La Pascualita – The Corpse Bride of Mexico Posted: 24 Apr 2012 06:14 AM PDT
La Pascualita or Little Pascuala is a bridal mannequin that has “lived” in a store window in Chihuahua, Mexico for the past 75 years. That is quite a long time for a bridal gown shop to retain a mannequin, but then the dummy has a rather strange history behind it. According to an urban legend, La Pascualita isn't a dummy at all, but the perfectly preserved corpse of the previous owner's daughter. For years, the story of La Pascualita has been drawing loads of visitors, including media personalities, from all over Mexico to Chihuahua. Now, people from South America, the US and Europe have also started paying visits to the corpse bride. People smudge their noses up against the shop window, staring at the dummy, trying to figure out if she is real or not. They are taken in by her mesmerizing gaze and realistic-looking features. Most people walk away convinced that she has to be real.
Photo: Angel Vega La Pascualita was first installed in the store window on March 25th, 1930, dressed in a spring-seasonal bridal gown. The effect was instantaneous. People simply could not tear their sight away from this new mannequin, with the wide-set glass eyes, real hair and blushing skin tone. Soon, they realized that the mannequin closely resembled the shop's owner at the time, Pascuala Esparza. It didn't take long for them to come to the conclusion that the dummy was in fact the embalmed body of her daughter, who had died recently on her wedding day after being bitten by a Black Widow spider. This revelation did not go very well with the locals, and they started to express their disapproval. But by the time Pascuala could issue an official statement denying the rumors, it was too late. Nobody was willing to believer her. The daughter's name has been lost over time, and 'La Pascualita' stuck through the years.
Photo: Angel Vega Of course, the speculated presence of a corpse must naturally be accompanied by supernatural happenings as well. Several odd incidents have been reported around the dummy, none of which have been confirmed, of course. It is said that a love-sick French magician would arrive at night and magically bring it to life, taking her out to town. A few others believe that her gaze shifts and follows them around the store. At night, she is also believed to shift positions in the window. These tales are pretty scary, perhaps most of all to the shop workers who have to see Pascualita every single day. The ones to leave the shop last are definitely not a happy lot. The dummy's outfits are changed twice a week behind closed curtains. Sonia Burciaga, a shop worker says, "Every time I go near Pascualita my hands break out in a sweat. Her hands are very realistic and she even has varicose veins on her legs. I believe she's a real person." Now, an account like that coming from a person who has actually changed the mannequin's clothes seems very believable. Could Pascualita really be a 75-year-old corpse? I'm terribly curious to see it for myself.
But although most Chihuahua locals are convinced La Pacualita is actually a well preserved corpse, the Internet is full of explanations as to why that couldn’t possibly be true. The Museum of Hoaxes, for example, states that “ it would be impossible to embalm someone and have their flesh be preserved that perfectly. For some reason, people tend to think that it’s easier to preserve a body than it actually is”, while one commentator adds “Yeah, bodies really go bad pretty darned fast unless you take some rather heroic measures to keep them from doing so. Both Lenin and Mao have basically been renedered to a state much like rubber, and are kept under extrodinarily monitored conditions. Most of the stuff that undertakers and whatall do is with the aim of making the corpse look good until burial. Anything over a couple weeks, and things start going very, very bad. A taxidermist might manage something, but it ain’t gonna be pretty.” What do you think? La Pascualita – The Corpse Bride of Mexico was originally posted at OddityCentral.com |
| Russian Woman Aims to Become Most Realistic-Looking Human Doll Posted: 24 Apr 2012 05:25 AM PDT
I don't know why, but there seems to be a sudden surge in the obsession over Barbie-like looks on the internet. It was only a few days ago that we did a complete feature on five different doll lookalikes, and now we have news of one more such woman. 21-year-old Valeria Lukyanova is an internet sensation in her home country of Russia. Her popularity stems from the fact that she might be the closest anyone's ever come to looking like a real live Barbie Doll. Valeria looks very unreal, almost plastic. Her face is expressionless, and her body proportions are quite abnormal. It's highly unusual to find a woman with a naturally tiny waist, a huge chest and plasticy-looking blond hair. Many speculate that Valeria is either a product of plastic surgery, or her photographs have been doctored by photoshop. The girl has no qualms about discussing her looks though, and refers to herself as the most popular woman on the Russian-language Internet, on her blog.
Photo: Facebook A spoof video on Valeria's story is actually doing the rounds on YouTube right now. I watched it, but I didn't really find it too funny. It's a cartoon depicting the various plastic surgeries that Valeria may have undergone, such as using a chainsaw and some putty to reshape her face. In response to this video (you can watch it at the bottom of this page) Valeria left a comment saying it’s an exaggeration and that she just had her breasts done, everything else was given to her “by nature”. Valeria's Facebook page is quite popular too, but not everyone has nice things to write about her. "She looks not only ugly, but ridiculous," one reader commented. There are nice guys too, however, such as this one man who has liked and commented 'beautiful' beneath each and every photo of her. Some people, like me, think Valerie's looks are pretty scary. How about you?
Photo: Facebook At the bottom of the page you’ll find a video of Valerie wearing very little makeup and saying something in Russian. I don’t know what she’s talking about, but I thought you guys might want to see what her face looks like without tons of makeup on.
Photo: Facebook
Photo: Facebook
Photo: Facebook Russian Woman Aims to Become Most Realistic-Looking Human Doll was originally posted at OddityCentral.com |
| Gaza Zoo Puts Creepy Stuffed Animals in Cages to Cut Food Costs Posted: 24 Apr 2012 04:42 AM PDT
If you visited the Khan Younis Zoo in the impoverished Gaza strip, you would see quite a variety of animals, but on close inspection, you would realize that over half of them aren't even alive. The ones that died have been stuffed before going on display to keep visitors entertained. It sounds pretty creepy but the zoo keepers really have no choice. They cannot afford to get new animals across the border, and don’t really wish to smuggle them illegally, and can barely afford the food costs for the few live animals they have left. So it's up to the embalmed corpses of the zoo’s dead animals to entertain the 200,000 odd people of Khan Younis. In total, the Palestinian zoo has only 65 live animals the rest of which have all been stuffed. The zoo owner, Mohammed Awaida, said that he lost several of his animals in December 2008, during Israel's 3-week military offensive against Hamas. He could not reach the zoo during this period and the animals died due to starvation and neglect. "The idea to mummify animals started after the Gaza war because a number of animals like the lion, the tiger, monkeys and crocodiles died. So we asked around and we learned from the Web how to start."
Photo: Adel Hana / AP Starting out with just formaldehyde and sawdust, Awaida agrees that he is no expert, and it shows. A gaping hole in the porcupine's head and the flies swarming around the embalmed animals are pretty hard to miss. Most of the stuffed animals look pitiful, with their bones sticking out. The live animals don't really enjoy a better fate. The absence of a real zookeeper on the premises encourages children to poke bread, chips and chocolate to the animals through wires and puts them at risk of being mauled by one of the wild beasts.
Photo: Adel Hana / AP Interestingly enough, preserving animals isn't something new for Palestinians. A giraffe named Brownie was stuffed nine years ago, when it died during the second Palestinian uprising against Israel. This was in the West Bank city of Qalqilya. Even though fighting has now subsided, Israeli restrictions make it very difficult to get new animals. Amjad al-Haj, the zoo's financial director says, "We have more variations and different species as preserved animals than we have living." Soon, a time may come when they will have to call it the "preserved animals zoo," he states.
via TIME Gaza Zoo Puts Creepy Stuffed Animals in Cages to Cut Food Costs was originally posted at OddityCentral.com |
| Delicious Street Art – Sugar Icing Murals by Shelley Miller Posted: 24 Apr 2012 01:42 AM PDT
Montreal-based artist Shelley Miler uses sugar and edible blue paint to create incredibly detailed murals on the side of buildings. Her works are influenced by the cultures of the places in which she’s creating, and although they look as durable as ordinary murals, they simply wash away at first rain. Looking at Shelley Miller’s artworks for the first time, you’d think they were carved in stone, but in reality the talented artist just applies cake icing using a common pastry bag and paints them with edible blue paint. Trained at the Alberta College of Art and Design and Concordia University, Miller has experienced with a variety of art mediums, ranging from sand to marble, but always found herself returning to sugar. She also spent some time decorating cakes during her university days, but quickly moved on to bigger and better things, and now she is internationally-known for her unique street art sugar murals.
Having traveled to India and Brazil, Shelley Miller’s sweet creations are influenced by Portuguese tile themes, mosque and temple architecture, textile patterns, but she also draws inspiration from modern street art. She first drew the critics’ attention to her unique sugar murals in 2001, when she applied cake icing to an outside wall, in an artwork called “Pipe Dreams”, but it was her 2009 masterpiece, “Cargo”, that left everyone baffled. Inspired by the azulejo tile tradition of Spain and Portugal, Miller painted a scene of ships in a harbor using edible blue paint on white sugar tiles, fixed to the wall with icing.
But not everyone appreciated her sweet works of art. During her travels in India, in 2001, the Saskatchewan native found her work criticized by several Indian artists for using an edible material they considered a luxury item.
via Inhabitat Delicious Street Art – Sugar Icing Murals by Shelley Miller was originally posted at OddityCentral.com |
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