Edward Mordake / Mordrake

Edward Mordake was the heir to a 19th century English peerage.  He had an extra face on the back of his head that looked to be like that of a parasitic twin.  Most reports say that the face didn't show any emotion, but did appear to cry at times when Edward was laughing, and would laugh at the times when Edward was crying.
Reports say that he committed suicide at the age of 23 because of the face on the back of his head.  He pleaded to several surgeons to remove the face off of the back of his head but none would remove it after the first surgeon who had agreed to the surgery had died of mysterious causes the day before the surgery was slated to take place.  Edward complained openly that when he was alone that the face would start to whisper to him in a strange language and he started to refer to it as his "demon face"
His family would place a gag in the face's mouth and have Edward wear ornate head wraps when going out to any official function, and in his last three years alive was not allowed out in public at all.

Darkman of Culver House

Built in the early 1900's the Culver House had all of the hallmarks of a typical mansion in Decatur, IL.  All of the modern luxuries afforded at the time were installed in the house.  Originally build by Bryan Lockheart and taken over by the Culver family three years later after the family suddenly vacated the house.

After the Culver family moved into the house, they started to notice the house was not a normal mansion.  The "tower" in the front of the house was unique for Decatur at the time, and the library had a large array of occult books that the previous family had left.
In 1909 the family was gathered at the dinner table enjoying dinner when something came down the chimney and across the dining room then up the stairs.  When the family tried to follow the creature that had run up the stairs, they could not locate where it had gone.  Many family members described the creature as a small creature that fell down onto four limbs, then got up onto two "legs" and ran like "a drunken man".  
After the chimney incident, everything was quiet until the summer of 1910.  The Culver's youngest son, David, started talking about vivid dreams he was having at night where a man who appeared as nothing but a silhouette would be standing at the foot of his bed until he woke up and the man would turn around and walk out the door of his bedroom.  Soon, many of the other family members would report seeing the man standing at the foot of their bed until they awoke, when he would turn around and walk out of the room.  The events continued on for about a year until someone visited their house and commented on the strange man who approached them on the street.
The family noticed that things in the house started to move when the family was sitting around the dinner table.  The climax was in the spring of 1912 when they were seated at the dinner table and a glass candlestick flew across the room and almost struck Mr. Culver in the head.
The family reported seeing the man repeatedly until 1965 when Mr. Culver died and the family vacated the house.  Many people in the family reported seeing the darkman standing at the foot of the hospital bed of Mr. Culver as he was dying.  
People who live in the neighborhood have reported seeing lights on in the tower of the house, and seeing a shadowy figure in the window sitting in a rocking chair.  If you are ever in Decatur, IL and are approached by a shadowy figure, local legend says you should turn the other way.

Faces of Belmez

On August 23, 1971, María Gómez Cámara noticed that a dark spot in the shape of a face had appeared on the cement floor of her house.  After showing her husband Juan Pereira and their son, Miguel, the two men decided that the face on the floor should be removed.  The two set about the floor with a pickaxe and destroyed the face.
After they relaid the floor with cement nothing appeared for a few months.  In December of 1971 several dark spots began to appear on the floor and by February of 1972 they had all turned into faces, with new ones appearing and some seeming to move across the floor.  In the picture above is the original face that the family had destroyed and it reappeared after the floor was relaid.  
Maria contacted the local government who immediately thought that it was the source of fakery and had portions of the floor removed and sent to a lab.  After samples returned from a lab showing up negative, the city helped Maria and her family tear the floor up and relay the concrete in the room to see if the faces were going to show up again.

A chunk of the floor during demolition

one of the faces becoming more clear over the course of a few weeks

The room was sealed off from the rest of the house and Maria's family had agreed to the experiment as they had not used the room since the faces started to appear.  The doors and windows to the room were bricked up and the floor was covered in a clear coating so if someone were to tamper with the floor the faces would have only appeared on the top layer and not the concrete.  

After six months of nobody entering the room the mayor, the Pereira family, and a chemist entered the room for the first time.  All of the faces had reappeared on the floor and every square inch of the room was covered in figures and faces.  The chemist immediately took samples of the top coating for analysis and sent them off to a lab to check for any pigments or dyes on the coating that was put on the floor.  
The tests that were sent to the lab came back negative for any kinds of dyes or pigments.  The ICV in Spain had tested the samples and all of the materials found in the sampling were found to be within acceptable limits in concrete manufacture at the time.  

After the faces were confirmed to be a mystery people started to flock to the town and the city of Belmez.  Many people would visit yearly and would take photos to keep track of where figures and faces had moved along the floor.  
Many psychics have said that there are spirits who are drawn to the area and are projecting themselves upon the floor thoughtographically.   There have been numerous seances held within the house most people come into contact with a spirit of a woman name Anne Cordoza and a male spirit named Pedro Ortiz.  They both have purported to have been murdered in a massacre that had taken place in the 1700's.  
After Maria passed away in 2004 the faces started to slowly disappear and today only one face remains on the floor.  Many have said it was because she was perpetrating a hoax and keeping the faces fresh, but the faces would not have disappeared completely like they have.  Continued chemical analysis of the floor has show that there has been no change in the chemical composition from the time they appeared to the time they disappeared.   

Aokigahara: The Forest of Suicide

At the base of Mt. Fuji lies a small(14sq miles) and dense forest that is renown around Japan and around the world as a popular place for people to commit suicide.  One step into the forest and the air grows silent and noticeably colder than the temperature outside.  Few animals choose to call the forest home, even prey animals which could easily take advantage of the dense cover and ample hiding places from predators.  The calls from a few carrion birds can be heard, but the chirping and singing of birds that is common on the outlaying areas of the forest quickly stop once one is only a few hundred feet into the forest.

This forest has become home to over 2,000 suicides since the 1960's when Japanese officials started to keep statistics after the book Nami No To by Seicho Matsumoto had the novel's two protagonists commit suicide within the forest and attracted more attention to the forest's whispered reputation.  The forest was used for ubasute(abandoning the elderly or infirm and allowing them to die especially during times of drought or famine) since the 1800's according to local lore.
The suicides have become such a problem that Japanese officials have started to do "body sweeps" every year in order to find and remove the remains of those who have chosen to end their lives within the forest.  The last numbers were published in 2003 with 123 people choosing to end their lives.  The local government has stopped publishing numbers and has tried to keep the times of the body sweeps quiet as to keep attention off of the forest.
 The people who do the sweeps also have to contend with tourists that come to the forest every year to visit the two caves located within a km of the entrance to the forest.  Many tourists make their own unofficial trails with tape so that they don't get lost within the forest once they start exploring.  Over 31 bodies have been reported to the local authorities within the past five years with one person choosing to take their own life within the ice cave.
The first kilometer or so of the forest is where human activity is the most present with humans rarely venturing  in deeper towards Mt. Fuji.  This has lead to problems for authorities as people wishing to commit suicide have started to venture in deeper to the forest where Yurei(dark spirits of the abandoned ones) are said to reside.
The few who have ventured deeper into the forest have said to hear whispering voices through the trees.  One man who ventured deep into the woods to commit suicide decided against it when he ventured into a makeshift shelter that had a pile of human remains scattered within and said, "I want to have dignity in death not to be discovered by wanderers."
Despite signs posted in English and Japanese begging those who enter the forest with the intent of killing themselves, the suicides still occur.  Why this forest is a hotspot for people who want to commit suicide is open to debate.

Osiris' Tomb Under the Sphynx in Egypt

95 feet underneath the hind legs of the Sphinx in Egypt lies the tomb of the god Osiris, which few people outside of the archaeological world know about.  The tomb has been called "symbolic" by a few members of the Egyptology community, but several archaeologists express doubt that the tomb is only a "symbol" and not an actual tomb.  Many have pointed out that the Egyptians did not believe that their gods were able to die, let alone build a "tomb" to house one.  It has also been pointed out that this would be the only example of a "symbolic" tomb in ancient Egypt.  Osiris was also one of the main gods of Egyptian mythology and to say anything of him dying would shine doubt upon their whole religion and great abandonment of their theology would have followed none of which have been shown as of record. 

A view of the tomb showing the water that leads down to the blue sarcophagus which is believed to be the "true" sarcophagus of the tomb 

After descending the ladder down into the antechamber of the tomb, the only place that is available to stand is the stone "sarcophagus" that is supposed to house Osiris.  The rest of the tomb is flooded with water which is at least 500ft deep and a clear blue color. 

The tomb is located 95 feet beneath the Sphinx.  There is a "sarcophagus" which x-ray imaging has shown there is at least several layers of inner sarcophagi located beneath the stone.  They have not been able to x-ray all of the way through it and even using advanced sonar imaging technology have proved fruitless to see all the way through. 

If one looks down through the water, there is another sarcophagus that is very faintly visible.  The second sarcophagus is a light blue color and looks to be partially clear, but it is unintelligible what is farther than the lid.  The symbol of Osiris is visible with advanced imaging technology.

Only one dive has been allowed(in 2003) to the second sarcophagus before the Egyptian decided to disallow all access to the tomb for reasons that have not been explained.  The divers who went down to the second sarcophagus were said to visibly shaken when they emerged from the water and only would say that the sarcophagus was, in fact, see through but they would not comment much on what was inside, except that there was a golden mask that appeared to be glowing from the inside.  The divers will not comment and all of the pictues that were taken of the sarcophagus were confiscated by the Egyptian government.

There is a lot of speculation about what is located in the second sarcophagus ranging from its just an illusion created by the blue water with limited visibility making it look as if something is down there to some sort of alien body. 

With the recent instability in Egypt and the lack of pressure from the public to explore the tomb, there seems to be little hope in anyone figuring out what is down there. 

Secret Chinese Catacombs

Beneath the streets of Bejing, China lies a system of tunnels and passages that were designed to be a fallout shelter in the case of a nuclear war.  Many portions of the tunnels still have electritity and running water for inexplicable reasons. 
There is an entire culture of people who call the tunnels home and the government has decided to ignore them.  These are far more than just a few homeless or squatters calling the tunnels home.  There are entire cities of people located in these tunnels.  China has done census readings of the tunnels and it was estimated over 50,000 people live below in the tunnels.  Several census officials were attacked when they approached the people and one was reported to have been murdered. 

The residences of the "homeless" Chinese people all seem to be strategically placed in the middle of tunnels where you can't get past them without invading their living spaces.  Most people who encounter these settlements turn the other way for fear of attack being in a place they have no business being in and far away from police. 

I have found a few pictures online though of what lurks behind these settlements within the tunnels.  It appears that the people who live beneath the streets have taken to disposing of their dead on their own, and have formed their own culture and religion.  Attempts communicate with the tunnel people of China has resulted in mixed results.  The older ones have been more cordial and able to communicate, but the younger ones have been known to be hostile and the ones who don't attack have great difficutly in understanding Chinese.  It is evidence that they are forming their own dialect of Chinese and it's estimated that within the next 20 years they won't be able to understand Mandarin or Cantonese at all. 

Kell's Hollow Cemetery

This week I'm writing about a cemetery I have heard about many times when I was active in the ghost hunting community.
Kell's Hollow Cemetery was a cemetery rumored to be located in southern Illinois.  The exact location of the cemetery is not known and rumors have placed it from Cahokia to near Paduca, Kentucky.
The cemetery is said to be located just off of the road and located behind a large, Victorian house.  The house and the property was purported to be owned by a local mortician that had discovered a way to perfectly preserve a human corpse.   The main feature of the cemetery that set it apart from other cemeteries was that there was a large mausoleum where the families of the dead had the option to enshrine their loved ones behind a layer of glass, so that they could visit their perfectly preserved family member.
If anyone has any more information on this cemetery, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Dakhma of India, open air gravesite.

On January 19, 2003 Indian officials were venturing into the jungle after receiving several missing persons reports from a nearby city.  What they found can only be described as "disturbing".

They had discovered a "Tower of Silence" also known as a dakhma.  There are around 70,000 active members of the religion called Zoroastrianism, which dispose of their dead in this manner.  The believe the soul cannot truly be freed until it is eaten by vultures. The strange thing about this instance is that there were no animals to be found other than maggots on the bodies themselves, and that the bodies the officials were able to look at did not look like any carrion birds had been eating the bodies.
The central pit in the middle had a pool of blood in it that they estimated had to be over a foot deep and was far more than the bodies around the central circle could have produced even if they were fully drained.  The stench emanating from the central pit was overwhelming and many of the people became nauseated as soon as they neared it.
The officials had photographs of the missing persons and they could not identify any of the bodies as the people who were missing.  They also noted that many of the bodies were of people in their mid-20's to 30's, not something that is usual in these situations, however it was noted that there were no immediate signs of violence to end their lives.
The officials and a few villagers were only at the site for 45 minutes to an hour before someone accidentally kicked a bone into the center pit.  When it hit the surface of the blood, the coagulated surface broke and a gas bubble exploded up and out of the pit.  The people who were nearest the pit were immediately rushed to the hospital and quarantined for infection prevention.
The people who were quarantined became delirious within hours and the next day they became violent, trying to attack hospital staff and screaming they were infected with the blood of Ahriman (The rough equivalent to satan in Zoroastrianism.  Within three days all of the infected people had died due to fever.
Indian officials organized another trip to the dakhma in order to investigate further.  They had full hazmat gear and medical staff ready in case another incident happened like the day before.   When they arrived at the site, the bodies were all missing and the pit was completely drained of blood.  There were no traces of the bodies and attempts to analyze the DNA of the few pieces of skin and hair they found came back incomplete or were unable to be tested.
A few of the officials repelled down into the pit, where they found several grates on the ground that had pipes attached to them. The pit itself was around 60 feet deep and the stain from the blood was 8 ft up the wall.  Officials also sent samples of the blood back to the lab, and when it was tested the results were mostly inconclusive, but over 1,000 unique DNA identifiers were found.  When they tried to use sonar imaging to find out where the pipes went, they could find no evidence of the pipes anywhere outside of the central stone tower.
Since 2003, the site has been quarantined and monitored by local government officials.  The area has had no activity since that time, other than curious villagers looking to see the site.
One person I found on an online forum who is familiar with the religion speculated that the people were practicing some kind of worship of Ahriman, and the site was a profane shrine to him, and when officials found it, they moved to another location where they will not be bothered.

Polybius Update

I posted a link to this blog on a few forums, there were a few arcade people said they believe that had these arcade cabinets in Oregon...
Pixieland
Aladian's Castle
Arcade Hotel
Games 1 2 3
And a few people said they saw something they believed to be the game in areas outside of Oregon
Gamecon(Chicago, IL)
Gamesworld Arcade (New York, NY)
ARCADE(New York, NY)
Coin-OP Land(Louisville, KY)
Genie Arcade (Omaha, NE)
Genie Arcade (Denver, CO)
Ticketland (Fort Collins, CO)
Disney Arcade (Orlando, FL)

All of these listings are speculation.  These were reported to me by people that said the remember these games from a long, long time ago

Game of Insanity...Polybius

Polybius, the video game of legends.  It is often talked about, yet no one has come up with any concrete evidence that it has ever existed other than in the minds of people, planted by some teller of urban legends long ago.   In this blog I'm going to delve into the mysteries of urban legends and the weirdness of the world. 
Polybius is said to have appeared in several arcades in the Portland, Oregon area, and I have heard a few reports of it showing up in arcades in New York, LA, and Chicago area.  It is said to resemble the game Tempest which if you aren't familiar with; I have linked to a wikipedia page explaining what that game is so you can picture what Polybius might be like. 
Polybius was reported to be a "tube shooter" game with vector graphics.  Many people who have said they played the game reported night terrors, amnesia, suicidal thoughts, insomnia, a feeling that someone is always around them, nightmares, and a constant feeling of forebooding or dread.  It was reported that players would experience euphoria, vertigo, seizures, and muscle spasms during gameplay.  There were also a number of reports of people becoming addicted to the games, going as so far as threatening violence against the arcade owners when the cabinets abruptly dissappeared. 
The game is reported to be developed by Ed Rotberg, and the company named by most is Sinneslöschen, however I have heard one account where the person said it was in association by Mammon's Software.  Mammon is an alternative name for Satan so I can't vouch for the validity of this claim. 

The only picture I can find of anything resembling a screenshot clearly shows Sinneslöschen as the publisher at least. 
There were a number of reports of men in black suits coming into the arcade and hooking equipment to the machines to gather data. 
There were a numer of developers and publishers in the 1980's that came and went without ever having national distribution, so it is entirely plausible that there was a company that put a few cabinets in arcades and a few people got addicted.  If the company went bankrupt, the cabinets might have been pulled after they could not be repaired after the could not get any spare parts for them. 
One more interesting thing to note is that there were reports that a Polybius cabinet appeared in a storage locker in Newport, Oregon.  The locker was auctioned off, and the reported new owner said that it very clearly said Polybius down the side.  The owner wished to remain anonomyous, and the cabinet dissappeared after the auction. 
If you have any information relating to this game, please feel free to post your email in the comments section.  I will be posting at least once a week with more strange urban legends.