You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News - Writers of Cracked dot Com [80]
5. THE LIVING SEVERED HEAD
The legend
Your head remains aware even after it’s severed from your shoulders (giving you just enough time to reflect on how stupid you were to stand up on that roller coaster).
The legend says severed heads have been known to blink and, yes, even to try to talk.
The truth
Throughout history, death by decapitation has been assumed to be instant and painless (the guillotine was designed as a humane execution method—the fact that it looked freakin’ cool was a bonus) but there’s evidence that your brain remains conscious anywhere from several seconds to a minute after your head gets lopped off.
One of the earliest and best-known proofs of this came from a Dr. Beaurieux, who conducted an experiment on a French murderer named Languille. Post-guillotining, Languille’s eyes and mouth continued to move for five to six seconds, at which point he appeared to pass on. But then when Beaurieux shouted the subject’s name, Languille’s eyes popped open.
In Beaurieux’s own words: “Languille’s eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine, the pupils focusing themselves,” and the doctor continued to get similar results for up to thirty seconds (at which point Languille possibly just got tired of playing decapitation peekaboo).
Since modern beheadings tend not to be scheduled public events, scientists are rarely on the scene to interview a freshly chopped head. However, according to the website the Straight Dope, unlucky eyewitnesses to car accidents have reported seeing facial expressions and eye movements that seem to indicate a long moment of awareness during which the victim’s detached head had time to see their own body and register whatever horrifying emotions accompany such a realization.
We did find it comforting to learn that people have taken advantage of this horrific phenomenon.
Multiple adventurers and “ethnologists” who explored the Congo basin in the late 1800s wrote about a tribe that would tie a condemned man’s head to a springy sapling before chopping it off, so that the head was then catapulted into the distance after the blow. Thus their last few moments of awareness were of their head sailing breezily through the air.
If you have to die, that’s got to be one of the top five ways to go.
4. THE DEADLY ELEVATOR
The legend
The metal doors clamp down on a hapless victim, who can do nothing but scream in terror as the elevator dings and begins to rise, shearing off his head or limbs as it does. It’s a scene that’s turned up in several cheesy horror movies. But everyone knows the doors always safely open back up when they close on your hand.
The truth
There are safety measures in place, sure. But as Dr. Hitoshi Nikaidoh learned on August 16, 2003, sometimes they don’t work. Why didn’t the elevator open again or shut down when the doctor became pinned between the doors at the shoulders as he was getting on? To this day, nobody knows.
On that day, the doors held Dr. Nikaidoh in place like a vise as the elevator began to ascend, until it sliced his head in two at mouth level. Find that a little nauseating? Well, try to imagine what it was like for the other person in the elevator. Yes, a nurse was in there and had to spend almost an hour in a blood-soaked box with the doctor’s head.
But don’t worry, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics only around thirty people are killed by elevators each year. In the United States alone.
3. THE TOXIC WOMAN
The legend
A sick woman arrives at a hospital, and when the nurses withdraw blood it is so toxic that it begins making everyone around her sick too. Realizing they’re dealing with the human embodiment of the creature from Alien, the nurses flee for their lives.
The truth
On the evening of February 19, 1994, Gloria Ramirez was admitted to a California emergency room, suffering from an advanced form of cancer.
When a nurse drew Gloria’s blood, she detected a foul odor, so foul that hospital staff started gagging and even collapsing around her. Eventually, as many as twenty-three people were affected. The