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Episode 19 - The Tsuyama Massacre and Victorian Death Culture
11 Plays1 month ago
Nylene covers the shocking 1930s massacre that took place in the village of Kamo-Machi Japan, and Nym keeps the macabre rolling by exploring the several many intricacies of Victorian death customs.
Enter the Nightmare for show notes, sources, transcripts, and more!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:29
Speaker
Welcome to Nim and Nyleen's Nightmare Cottage, where we discuss dark locations, sinister media, and other tales of the macabre. I'm Nim. And I'm Let the begin. Let the nightmare begin.
Banter and Glasses Woes
00:00:49
Speaker
into the nightmare if you dare and a good nightmare to you hello all you cool cats and kid no i'm gonna veto that one we're not allowed to do cool cats and kittens i'm not ever gonna say you're not allowed to do anything all you ghoul friends and grifters okay i'm done so how is life I mean, good.
00:01:16
Speaker
I mean, as good as it can be. i broke my cute orange glasses. um No. I'm really sad. Oh, yeah. They're green today. Yeah. I had... They just fell apart. Not fixable.
00:01:29
Speaker
And I can't find them to reorder them. Do you even know where you got them from? I got them from Zenni. They don't have them anymore. See? Okay. I don't know how, like, you get them from Zenni because I've heard a few people do stuff like that.
00:01:41
Speaker
But, like... Because you have to pay for like the actual lens. And I don't know about you, but after like I get through my like lens prescriptions, it's usually like 200 something dollars. And I'm like, what if I don't like the way they look?
00:01:55
Speaker
So because the frames are so cheap, usually if that's a concern, get like the super basic version as like a backup pair. And then if you hate them, you have to worry about it. If I do my basic prescription without blue light, which is what makes mine expensive because I want to have the blue light. Yeah. Yeah.
00:02:12
Speaker
If I get it without the blue light, they're real cheap. Like it doesn't add anything because I don't my my old lady eyes aren't complicated enough yet to require like both bifocals or anything like that yet. So you don't need the blue light. i Like if without the blue light, I get these worse. These ones have blue light.
00:02:28
Speaker
My orange ones did not because those are my at home glasses and I don't do as much screen time at home as I do at work. So really. I mean, I didn't when I ordered those glasses originally. I was going to say, like, are you not playing like Monster Hunter and like reading on your iPad?
00:02:42
Speaker
Does that not admit blue light? ni Well, I would say that the only thing that I really mess with at home. Well, OK, so my phone and and the and my laptop, which I use my laptop a lot more now than I did.
00:02:53
Speaker
But. Did I just make you realize your whole life is a lie? No, i already knew my whole life was a lie. But yeah, so that's my sadness is I can't replace my glasses that I love with the ones that I wanted because they were, you know, they made me feel cute and not a lot does that.
00:03:12
Speaker
I really like those. So now I've got to find something new.
Parenting and Childhood Freedom
00:03:16
Speaker
It at least forced me to go to the eye doctor and upgrade my prescription. Yeah, I don't know how long it's been, but I know I need a new prescription.
00:03:22
Speaker
i only went because my glasses fell
00:03:27
Speaker
How are you? You know, um surviving as a boy mom this week alone, he has busted his knee up pretty bad and got a pretty bad scrape up on his knee.
00:03:43
Speaker
I mean, he gets up pretty fine. Did you consent make it better? his grandparents did so yeah he's just been asking for band-aids so i bought some some uh paw patrol band-aids because he loves those yeah and then you know he ended up with a big bruise because he doesn't look where he's walking and he just like runs into things all the time same he collided with someone on the playground so he had ah huge welt on his cheek and like a black mark there and then he fell off a stool at school and busted his lip like he had a fat lip like it looked aggressive but yeah I mean he's he's always fine like shortly after but it looks like we beat him it really does like if anyone didn't know us they would think we beat that child it looks like he's a three-year-old kid who is testing the boundaries of
00:04:30
Speaker
physics in all the ways my family is just so concerned they're like they're not even watching him like he's a kid he's gonna he's gonna run into things i wonder if our parents in the 80s and 90s kept as close an eye on us
00:04:47
Speaker
ah Just, just, I remember being quite free. So I don't know. Same. Same. And I brought that up to my mother too before. I'm like, I honestly don't know where you were half the time. She was like, we were always watching you. I was always, always watching. I'm like, sure, sure, sure, sure. sure I'm sure you were.
00:05:03
Speaker
100%. Yeah. Yeah. um yeah Okay. When I was out in the woods, I'm sure you were there. Yeah.
Hobbies and Ghost Stories
00:05:10
Speaker
But yeah, so just that and like I'm really sad because I haven't had any time to like monster hunt because happy to i was working on this other story, which I will get there one day, but I actually like bought a book and everything and it's really good.
00:05:23
Speaker
But like, it's very graphic. I got the audio and the audio is great. But I can't listen to it in the car because Bash is there. yeah fair. And I can't listen to it at work because like,
00:05:39
Speaker
I don't know. It gets real graphic and I like find myself just kind of staring off into space. Getting too focused on it. Yeah. And ignoring your job. Exactly. I was like, so it's just like having to find time. It just doesn't feel right to like be in the shower relaxing to...
00:05:53
Speaker
that. So, you know, we'll get there, guess. Yeah, fair enough. I do that. I've got several subjects that like I dipped into them. And when I got there, I was like, I have to do this justice and I have to spend more time on it if I'm going to do it at all.
00:06:07
Speaker
um I've got a couple that I've i've been working on and will eventually hopefully get to and they'll, you know, have an obnoxiously long story. Fair enough. What else? What else? What else?
00:06:19
Speaker
Is there a spirit on the ceiling? Well, yeah, but. Well, Bastet used to say there was, what was it? It was Fan Man. Fan Man. I remember that. I remember Fan Man. Yeah, that's great.
00:06:31
Speaker
He would point to the ceiling and laugh and say man. And we were like, oh, that's the Fan Man. It was really creepy. Yes. And he's been seeing ghosts here.
00:06:43
Speaker
So listen, don't do that to me. It's what he told me. okay He was probably talking about his TV show. He said it was outside in the backyard. Why is the ghost outside in the backyard? Why wouldn't it come inside?
00:06:56
Speaker
I'm not the ghost police. I don't know. Do you think ghosts get cold? Like I have 10 different ways to answer that. Choose one. Well, provided, i mean, I would assume that they are cold. Like, they exist as cold.
00:07:11
Speaker
If they exist, which I don't believe But, like, do you think they get hot or cold like we do? I don't believe that would be a thing if that was a thing. if If ghosts can be a thing, that means they are residual energy from what was left.
00:07:27
Speaker
And, i mean, I guess i guess energy can change. Right? Like, what do they do during hurricanes? Yeah. ah hold on for dear lives so they don't get was gonna say do they get blown into like another place i mean i assume they're just like sheets right so yeah i'm just imagining but ghosts being like blown into another state yeah so like if you see a tornado with a bunch of sheets you think that it was actually like somebody like a clothesline that got hit but no it's actually all the ghosts that's all the ghosts yeah i love that actually i
00:07:59
Speaker
Oh, that sucks. Like they just like stick to their new spawn point now. New spawn point. I love that. Anyways.
00:08:10
Speaker
So that's my life right now. I feel like I get on here and I'm like, my life is horrible. It's not guys. Like, it's really great. I think it's just easier to complain, isn't it? Well, we're talking about the the things that aren't the the normal everyday moments. I mean, nobody wants to hear us talk about, man, I just snuggled up on the couch and watched the best movie the other day or like laid there for two hours and didn't talk to anybody. It was great.
00:08:34
Speaker
Like nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to hear the nice, happy little bit. You think so? I don't know. I i mean, that's fair. i I spent a lot of time chasing my cat around that I really don't know how to tell people that in a way that sounds entertaining. That's not a cat.
00:08:47
Speaker
He is a cat. he is a skinwalker. That cat is massive. Like I looked at his paws the other day when he was cuddling up next to me and I looked at Sushi's paws, my cat.
00:09:00
Speaker
Your cat's not even a year old. I know, but like I figure it's like dogs, right? Like where they have big paws when they're little. Like they, I'm not saying their paws stay the same size. Right, right, right. But proportionately. Yeah.
00:09:12
Speaker
um I don't remember Grimm's paws seeming exceptionally large. He just had that really long tail that kind of always told us he was going to be a big guy. Yeah. Yeah.
00:09:27
Speaker
What kind of dark nightmare are you bringing to my door today?
The Tragic Tale of Mutsui Toi
00:09:32
Speaker
Yes. So today we are going to talk about a small town in Japan and something that happened there.
00:09:40
Speaker
Okay. so we're going to take you across the world to jap Japan. Ooh, exciting. Yes. Specifically a small town called Kamo Machi or Kamo for short. And it's 1938. So it to it's a while back.
00:09:54
Speaker
One source describes it as um an isolated agricultural town, not like overtly primitive. Like they have like electricity that it's just farmland, right? It's rural, rural very rural. Yes.
00:10:08
Speaker
The village is about 23 houses and 111 people living there at the time that this takes place. So our specific focus is on a 21-year-old man named Mutsui Toi.
00:10:21
Speaker
He's one of the few people in this village with his sister and his grandmother. His parents ah contracted tuberculosis when he was still a toddler, and they unfortunately died from it.
00:10:32
Speaker
So that left him and his sister in the care of his grandmother.
00:10:37
Speaker
Luckily, ah his parents were pretty well off at the time they passed, and his grandmother had some farmland, so they didn't live too too badly. Just, you know, small town, i isolated life where everyone knows everyone's business, which can be not great sometimes. Sure. yeah um So Mutsui did well in school. He liked, he was well liked enough by his peers. um He didn't have a lot of close friendships or connections, but he wasn't like a full on loner either.
00:11:03
Speaker
at some point in his youth, he kept getting sick and he was diagnosed with pleurisy. Do you know what that is? I don't. It's like an inflammation of lungs. So it can come from lots of things. It can be like bronchitis, it can be a cold, it can be tuberculosis. It can be a lot of things, um but it's just like basically like respiratory issues, respiratory infections.
00:11:21
Speaker
So he did miss school a lot because of it, which shouldn't really help with, you know, making friendships and relationships. So an interesting note about this village, it is said in some sources that this village was engaged in the practice of yobai or night crawling.
00:11:37
Speaker
what is this so this was where men or women would sneak into each other's houses to have sexual relations um no i thought it was gonna be more nefarious yeah no i know like they made it sound like it was like so but i mean i guess it was the 30s right sure like it wasn't anything that wasn't consensual like it was always consensual most of the time it was it was just naughty stuff arranged beforehand yeah but like you know um So eventually, after a while of doing this, what's it called?
00:12:09
Speaker
Yobai. Like, they would settle down or decide to, like, publicly date or marry. So it was just dating, like, in a small village, right? Like, kids doing kid things. But, I mean, it was also, like, adults doing it. Like, there were people who were married that were doing it. So it was just...
00:12:25
Speaker
You know, Netflix and chill about the Netflix. Yeah, and exactly. The relevance here, though, is that Matsui was believed to have been engaging in this behavior with one or more of the village women at one point or another. So it wasn't unusual for him, like, while he didn't have close friendships, like he still was like having like,
00:12:42
Speaker
relations with people in some way. But around his late teens, he started to get sick a lot more. um He had a lot of problems with his lungs, leaving him just really tired, unwell, not really able to be around others because he was so sick.
00:12:56
Speaker
So it kind of made his isolation worse. And then his sister married and moved out when he was 17, which left him alone, just him and his grandmother. So as he was coming of age, he was looking more into like joining the military as this was something that was like the thing to do for a young man in a village at this time.
00:13:14
Speaker
um It would make him more attractive prospect to be able to marry and, you know, provide for his family and, you know, live with honor. But when he attempted to join at the age of 20, he failed his physical examination and he was informed he had tuberculosis.
00:13:27
Speaker
And this wasn't something that could be treated in 1937. And there was, you know, the trauma of his parents having died from it when he was young. So not only could he not serve, he wouldn't be able to marry and he was looking forward to a long agonizing death, right?
00:13:42
Speaker
A quote from a psychopathologist, Nakamura Kazuo, I'm doing my best states quote, there were not a terribly large number of lung disease sufferers in the Hamlet, yet there was a strong customary social aversion to tuberculosis and leprosy.
00:14:00
Speaker
Mayor Mishma of Kamoamachi was someone with a great passion for public health. According to Mayor Mishma, the level of disgust town people held for tuberculosis was even beyond the run of the mill.
00:14:12
Speaker
They believed it to be hereditary. And when passing in front of the house of the diseased, they would even cover their mouths and noses with a handkerchief. So they were just like, just not, they were being overly cautious, right? Right.
00:14:27
Speaker
He basically became a social pariah. He's getting increasingly violent. He's making unwanted sexual advances at women in his village because he's just getting real desperate. People are now not just avoiding him because he's sick, but also because he's just giving off some really creepy sexual assault type vibes.
00:14:44
Speaker
Yeah, this is feeling real a lot like friend zone white knight kind of acting out of because it's not me, it's you. Yep, that's what it's turning into. That is spot on.
00:14:59
Speaker
um And the deeper he falls into this rabbit hole, the more he starts to get paranoid that the whole town is conspiring against him. When you make them conspire against you, they will conspire against you. And he's kind of feeling like the whole system's rigged and maybe he should be the one to clear the town out of all these horrible people who are, in his mind, the reason that his life isn't going so great. So pretty spot on there. Yeah.
00:15:22
Speaker
I don't know why... I just suddenly got dread because it's not like you're bringing me a happy story. Oh, no, it's never happy. nice Okay. No, it will always end in murder of some kind.
00:15:34
Speaker
Continue. All right. So he decides to go buy a Browning Auto 5 recoil operated semi-automatic shotgun.
00:15:45
Speaker
In fact, he got a loan out on the house and farmland to get more weapons. So he's stockpiling weapons at this point. Wow.
00:15:56
Speaker
So he starts going deep into the mountains during the day for target practice. And at night, he prowls through his town, toting his gun and just walking around the town, creeping everyone out. Of course, freaking everyone out, especially his grandmother, who's seeing firsthand that he's becoming increasingly erratic to the point that she catches him pouring powder into her soup one day.
00:16:15
Speaker
ah And she's convinced he's trying to poison her. Well, sure. Yeah. So she calls the police on him claiming he tried to kill her. ah They search the house. They find a bunch of swords and knives and and stuff that he had recently purchased.
00:16:29
Speaker
No poison powder, which he claims was just medicine, which, okay, it's not suspicious at all. But yeah, so the police, they take away all of his weapons. They they find and revoke his hunting license.
00:16:39
Speaker
So he can't go buy more weapons because he's truly scaring most of the town at this point. guess perks of the small village, right? But of course, there is always that one guy who's willing to sell a weapon to someone that should not be wielding one. yeah And he somehow is able to buy more weapons.
00:16:56
Speaker
So like I mentioned earlier, everyone in this town knows each other. So word around town is that one of Matsuko's previous girlfriends who had left to marry someone else was going to be returning soon to visit her family.
00:17:10
Speaker
This seemed to be the spark that Matsuko needed to complete his plan. Warning for everyone, things are about to get a little bit graphic. So if you don't want it, maybe skip.
00:17:22
Speaker
And I feel like this is going to feel a lot like news we see a lot these days. Yep. Yep. On May 20th, 1938, around 5pm, Matsuko cuts the power to his village by severing one of their power lines.
00:17:36
Speaker
No one makes a fuss about it. They all just go about their day. They, you know, some of them don't even really use electricity. So Matsuko dressed in his college school uniform with military gaiters attached to his shins and work boots on his feet.
00:17:48
Speaker
He wrapped a Hachimaki headband on his head and tied a flashlight to each side of his head, which felt silly. He also had a full length katana at his waist, two daggers on his side and a nine round shotgun.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah. At around 1am, Matsuko began his rampage. He started with his grandmother first and decapitated her with an axe while she slept. In the letters he left behind, he states that he killed her first so that she wouldn't have to suffer social ridicule for being the grandmother of a murderer.
00:18:22
Speaker
His next set of victims were his neighbors, where he murdered a woman and her three children with his shotgun. He went to the next door, shot another woman and her two daughters to death. And shotguns, they're not very quiet. so So the town's starting to stir and realize something is very, very wrong.
00:18:37
Speaker
And he moves on to the next house. He killed a couple, one of their parents, a friend who came to visit. And the fifth person in this house was an old woman who survived being shot at point blank. She stated that he shot the others in the house with no remorse as they begged for their lives.
00:18:53
Speaker
And to her, he stated, quote, I have no quarrel with your family. But then your son went ahead and married a girl from one of those other families. So now I got to kill you. um my God. End quote.
00:19:04
Speaker
So basically the only reason they were targeted was because her son married one of the girls that had shrugged off his advances. The next house he went to, he killed a couple and their two daughters, with the third one fleeing to a neighbor's house where the man of the house hid her under the floorboards with his own daughter.
00:19:20
Speaker
He killed the man in this house as well, while the two girls hiding under the floorboards survived with minimal injuries. In the following house, he killed two people. And in the one after that, he killed a woman and her two daughters, leaving the man of the house unharmed.
00:19:35
Speaker
He told the man, quote, you never spread rumors about me. Suppose I'll give you a reprieve, end quote. Moving on to the next house, he killed a child and her grandmother. The child's father escaped and made it to the nearest police station to report what was happening in the town.
00:19:50
Speaker
Matsuko continued on to three more houses and killed seven more people, afterwards fleeing to a nearby village. He entered a random family's house at this point, soaked in blood, and calmly asked for a pen and paper.
00:20:04
Speaker
They gave it to him, and he left without harming or threatening them. And as the sun was rising, Toyomutsuko climbed up to a nearby mountainside and wrote a final note to go with two others he had left at his home, explaining why he planned this.
00:20:17
Speaker
He stated that he did regret killing his grandmother and felt bad that he was leaving his sister to bear the brunt of the shame. He also stated that he was upset that two of the women that he was seeking to kill that night had escaped.
00:20:29
Speaker
And finally, he stated his main motivation was the way he had been treated after his tuberculosis diagnosis and that those he killed deserved what had happened to them. His final words read, quote, already dawn is breaking time to die.
00:20:43
Speaker
End quote. He put his shotgun to his chest and pulled the trigger. The end of to this rampage found 11 households had been broken into. 30 people were killed.
00:20:54
Speaker
Three who were shot survived but sustained injuries and a lot of emotional trauma, I'm sure. This was a quarter of the population of this village, but... it was targeted to specific households.
00:21:06
Speaker
This real life horror has made its way into mainstream media with a book being written in 1949 by mystery novelist Yokomo Seishi titled The Village of Eight Graves.
00:21:17
Speaker
There are many other books, movies, even a manga, some plays that were written about this massacre as well. It was a really, really one of the biggest ones until more recently in Japan.
00:21:28
Speaker
Yeah. um The village eventually did die out and was absorbed into a nearby town and modernized with time. Even speaking of the murders in the area was discouraged by the locals. The house that Toi Matsuko lived in with his grandmother was left uninhabited for almost 80 years oh wow and was finally torn down in 2015.
00:21:47
Speaker
I believe it's called the Tsuyama Massacre because that's the name of the town now. um But that's ah how it's more well known, the Tsuyama Massacre. that was really, really dark.
Victorian Death Culture Explored
00:21:57
Speaker
Short, quick, and dark.
00:22:00
Speaker
That's how I like them. There's a lot
00:22:12
Speaker
You just talk a lot about death. Do you want to talk a little more about death? Always. Because that's what we're going to talk about today. is So are you familiar with the Victorian cult of death? Cult of death?
00:22:24
Speaker
Yes, that's a very dramatic way to put it. It's mostly the Victorian death culture, but it's been shortened to the Victorian cult of death or Victorian death cult because they were just obsessed.
00:22:35
Speaker
Yeah, I know there was like a lot of modernization at that time. And I feel like curiosity was very sparked too. So yeah, we're doing weird things. There's there's there's a lot of factors for sure.
00:22:46
Speaker
So we're going to dig into why they were so fixated on it, how they behaved, how they dressed, how it became such a lucrative industry. Quick note, I'll be covering Victorian England almost exclusively with a quick dip across the pond to the US.
00:22:59
Speaker
There's culturally specific death traditions and customs all over the world to explore, so we may visit some of those in other episodes. Cool. So before I get into it, I want to talk about the Victorian era itself and the things that were going on during the time to kind of explain, you know, why there was such a fixation. hmm.
00:23:16
Speaker
Queen Victoria ruled from 1837 until her death in 1901, which is, I mean, that's an obnoxious amount of time. Think of yourself in the year 2001, or for listeners who are younger than us, your parents in 2001. And then think about how far 1937 feels from that. You think, i mean, didn't your story take place in 1938? lot has changed then, right? so from to you have quite a bit of cultural...
00:23:40
Speaker
changes we were going 70 years right right yeah um 60 60 and change yes we can agree there we can agree there um so so many things locally and globally change in really some unrecognizable ways over that span of time not all of these things i'm going to go over were prevalent the whole time period but most were present in some form or fashion throughout All societies have some kind of etiquette based on their commonly accepted morals and culture.
00:24:11
Speaker
The 19th century brought with it many wars, but it also was kind of the crescendo of the Industrial Revolution. Like you were saying, we were getting so many new things, things were advancing so quickly. And this kind of led us more or less into modern times.
00:24:22
Speaker
But there was like, there wasn't a lot of regulation too, like, right? Like people were dying from most random, you know, everyday things. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah, 100%.
00:24:33
Speaker
which we will get into in sec. The middle class began to develop as larger cities created more opportunities for reliable income and manufacturing made things that were luxuries turn into everyday items. As people would move from the cities from rural areas, they would want to make sure to fit in with the standards expected of the locals.
00:24:50
Speaker
A popular way to do this was to obtain and follow one of the many available books on etiquette. These were generally used to teach the middle class how to uphold themselves to the standard of upper class and royal court in an effort to raise their own status.
00:25:02
Speaker
I'll also note that the upper class and members of the court could bend and break these rules at will, but it would spell ruin from anybody else. Oh, yeah. You know, mess with that. i feel like that's like a lot what I was talking about, like with the Empress of Austria, like her son was basically able to murder someone and still get to do all these things. And yet the poor woman he was with, like, yep just rules do not apply for rich people. Everything is legal for a price.
00:25:24
Speaker
Anywho, this isn't even about that. It's it's about acceptable socially, right? and You'll become a pariah if you don't uphold the standard, right? And I don't actually have it here, but I do have in my references, I've got a link to ah specifically death etiquette guide. It's like everything you have to do, which we're going to go through. oh my gosh. Yeah. That's interesting. I'm excited to see that.
00:25:45
Speaker
Yeah. So, well, I mean, it's boring. It's all just text, but it's also interesting. It's interesting to me. Yeah. yeah An important factor that contributed to the fixation on death at the time was the extremely high mortality rate. So the medical body of knowledge was still expanding. There was still a lot of ailments that weren't understood. You know, you can die from a paper cut, you know? Yeah.
00:26:03
Speaker
Life expectancy at this time period was around 40-ish in the earlier bits and then later up into the mid to upper 50s. Wow, I'd be like at the end of my life right now. Me too. The child mortality rate was almost 45% newborn to five years old.
00:26:18
Speaker
Death was a constant regardless of class, though the upper classes did fare slightly better. So now that I've got the historical context laid out, let's dig into the good stuff. While funeral homes were beginning to exist, they were few and far between, and the ones that existed were not the one-stop shop they are today.
00:26:35
Speaker
Most funerals took place inside the family home. When a family member passed, if in the home, they would stop all the clocks in the house or the room that they passed away in at the time of death. After this, the first thing that had to happen was to get your clothing situation settled.
00:26:49
Speaker
Men were required to wear dark suits and a black armband. Sorry, sorry. Do you know why they would stop the clocks? Like what was the reasoning behind it? Most everything I saw was bad luck.
00:27:00
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I was wondering if it was like a superstition. Yeah. Oh, most of everything they did was a superstition. it's like they wouldn't go to heaven or they would their soul would be trapped or like they would be haunted or i think that it was up to interpretation. Okay.
00:27:14
Speaker
Especially we're going to get into the spiritualism movement and stuff here in a bit. ba Yeah. Okay. So yeah, so the men had to wear dark suits and a black armband. Women were required to wear black non-reflective fabric in their dresses, black gloves, hat, parasol, etc. No jewelry unless it was jet jewelry.
00:27:32
Speaker
If the deceased was the woman's husband, she would be made to wear a black veil if she went into public to give her privacy while she grieves. Fun fact. Well, maybe not fun. So fucked fact.
00:27:45
Speaker
The dyes that went into these fabrics were frequently made with toxic chemicals, including arsenic. So they have to wear these this fabric for like two years, right? Or at least a year in the in the full black.
00:27:56
Speaker
And especially with the veils, they would get sick. they would their skin would get broken out like it was just it was miserable other items that had to be procured immediately aside from your own mourning clothes were the coffin and the shroud the coffin was to be the vessel that ushered the dead into the afterlife it was also frequently a status symbol depending on how it was made The shroud is what covered the dead.
00:28:20
Speaker
ah common version of this were casket robes. They looked like normal clothing, but they were open in the back and they tied around the deceased's neck and wrists. And that was the easiest way to dress a corpse while it was in the coffin.
00:28:31
Speaker
Another fact fact, if you will, it was considered bad to bury someone in the clothes of someone still alive. It was feared that as the clothes decayed, the person they belonged to would also decay. oh More practically, it was also seen to be a waste to bury perfectly good clothing. Yeah.
00:28:48
Speaker
Other types of shrouds included simple sheets that just covered the body and then embellished nightgown type dresses. I saw it mentioned in a couple of places, but couldn't drill it down to the solid source. So take this one with a grain of salt. But it was said that women would often sew their own burial shrouds as part of their marriage tradition process, as it was not uncommon for women to die during childbirth. Oh my gosh. Could you imagine like getting pregnant and just being like, well, there's a chance I won't survive this. Like it was really common. So sad. Yeah. It was kind of a given that it was a strong possibility that you would not make the process.
00:29:24
Speaker
Terrifying. and we're in our mourning clothes. Our corpse is dressed to the eight and a halves and is laid out in their coffin. They are now moved into the best room of the house where they are accompanied day and night by family until they are interred.
00:29:36
Speaker
A crepe wreath or sash is hung from the front door. Black of the deceased is an adult. White if it's a child. To signify that the home is in mourning to any visitors that come by. Sorry, I'm going to need to ask a question here.
00:29:48
Speaker
So how long were they in this room with a corpse? Depending. But there always had to be somebody with them. Yeah, but like I'm thinking like it's going to be like days to a week, right? And they didn't have embalming at this time. They did have embalming, but it was not widely used at this time here. So these people are like rotting.
00:30:08
Speaker
Yep, we're going to get to that. they're barely covered. Oh, God. God, could you imagine the stench in that house? And this is why flowers are... common for funerals, sending flowers and for the smell, which will be coming up.
00:30:22
Speaker
Sorry. No, no. But yeah, yeah, that's 100% a thing. And there's, yeah. Yep. Don't, don't think about decay. All reflective surfaces such as mirrors, glass, even vases were covered with dark cloth. No, I know that one. Yeah. It was feared that if a spirit saw their reflection, that they would be stuck.
00:30:39
Speaker
There was also superstitions that if you saw your reflection while in the room with the deceased, you would have bad luck. Mm-hmm. Interesting note, some areas had beliefs that if you touched or kissed the corpse, they wouldn't be able to haunt you.
00:30:51
Speaker
Oh, that makes sense. Because you can it's kind of a proper goodbye, right? Yeah. ah The deceased must be accompanied, as i was mentioning, they must be accompanied by someone at all times for a few different reasons.
00:31:02
Speaker
um It was important that there was always someone to greet any visitors or far-traveling family. Another purpose for this was for there to be someone there if the dead woke up. um It did actually happen that people were declared dead but were actually in a coma and some did actually wake up while waiting for their internment.
00:31:17
Speaker
As we talked about, flowers are used... Well, today they're used as a lovely sentiment of shared grief and condolences and funerals today. In Victorian times, as we mentioned, they were used to mess mask the smell of decomposition. gosh. There was also patents for cooler coffins where, like, they were...
00:31:33
Speaker
Yeah, built to keep the body cool. they believe Some believed that it was best to freeze the corpse solid and then let it thaw once it's buried. Oh, God. Condensation. Yeah, some people just put the dud on ice.
00:31:45
Speaker
But that was people with money. Everybody else just had to work with what they had and fragrant flowers for the frugal option. The only consistent thing I could find about food traditions were funeral cookies.
00:31:55
Speaker
These were shortbread or molasses, gingerbread style type cookies stamped with some kind of a symbol like a skull or cross or whatever. and You can find some cool pictures of the different kinds of stamps they would use for these online.
00:32:07
Speaker
And they'd be wrapped in ah in black paper or sometimes poems or Bible verses. They could be handed out at the funeral, sent as the funeral invitation or sent as a thank you after attending the funeral.
00:32:19
Speaker
The idea of it being a funeral invitation kind of appeals to me because like when I get sad, cookies kind of help a little bit. Yeah. So I mean, that's, I think that's kind of sweet. Pun intended. Once the viewing period is over, the coffin is carried out of the home feet first to ensure that the dead could not look into the house and fool someone else's soul with them. Oh my gosh.
00:32:40
Speaker
In the procession to the burial, people frequently hired mutes or professional mourners to ensure that the the deceased was properly grieved and loved. The ones that could afford it had their family members coffins enclosed in a cage, not to prevent them from waking as vampires or zombies, but to prevent from grave robbing.
00:32:58
Speaker
This was such a prevalent concern at the time because the scientific movement was gaining a lot of steam. Yeah, and they needed bodies. They needed bodies. Yeah. And the easiest, cheapest way to get them was to dig them up. So real concern there.
00:33:09
Speaker
Photography was still fairly new at the time and was too expensive for everyone to have family photos. Oh, God. The expense was usually reserved for very special occasions. Death was one of the most prominent of these occasions, especially with children. hate it. hate these like I love old pictures but this is the one reason I hate them it's because you can never tell sometimes that these people are alive or dead especially the children it's yeah it's kind of rough but this was the thing that people cherished and loved it was not quite as morbid as we would feel it is today because I mean it's it's the only it's the only picture you'll ever have right I will say a quick warning i am including photos in the show notes for this but I'm only using photos of adults do not click the accompanying links if you want to avoid the pictures of children
00:33:51
Speaker
Most of the death photography out there is children. Yeah. So don't don't click. Don't dive into this if it's something you want to avoid. Another popular death keepsake is hair. Locks of hair would be collected and placed into lockets or woven into bracelets or other pieces of jewelry.
00:34:07
Speaker
You can still find some of these claiming to be authentic Victorian hair jewelry, even on Etsy. You know what I think is funny about that, though, is like in the times before that and other cultures like hair is it's used a lot for like curses or if you have someone's hair, you you you own them. You can do a lot with that. Right, yeah, there's a whole theory about sympathetic magic, which is like when you have an item of something that's connected to another and it being able to affect it more.
00:34:34
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, there's there's a whole episode on that too, I bet. no. My mom told me that was one of the reasons that she didn't like saving the baby hair or any hair because she felt like it was an easy way for someone to put a curse on you. Oh, wow.
00:34:48
Speaker
i My instinct was to say, that's fun, but i don't think anybody else would agree with me. So, but... I do have some picture examples here so you can see that it's got the hair in the middle.
00:35:00
Speaker
wow. They're woven, really. And like the little brooch? Yeah, and then this right here, the the bracelet itself, like it's actually... A hair bracelet? Yeah, it's crazy. You should look at those up close.
00:35:11
Speaker
Like they look cool, but I don't want it to touch me. Like i don't like the feeling. Nope.
00:35:18
Speaker
So looking at all of this stuff, it's starting to add up, right? Morning clothing for yourself and for your family, not just for the initial period, but before the burial, but for the whole morning period. It was also bad luck to keep morning clothes in the house when they're not needed, but people died a lot. So you were constantly having to procure a new morning clothing. But I mean, wouldn't a shroud count as morning clothes? No.
00:35:38
Speaker
Nope. You're buried in that. You're buried in that. Fair. ah So wait, you had to get like new burial clothes, new mourning clothes every single time? Pretty much. sounds expensive. It sounds very expensive. Yeah.
00:35:49
Speaker
And if you were judged so harshly, if you didn't do it the way they wanted you to. Right. So wives were required to dress in mourning for their husbands for over two years. And that's a lot of crepe, which was an expensive fabric and a lot of wearing of toxic dyes constantly.
00:36:03
Speaker
So that's neat. ah Men were only required to mourn for three months, by the way. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's super fair. The women's morning expectations did change over time. The first six months, it was the all non-reflective black fabric with no ornamentation.
00:36:17
Speaker
And then like after so long, you could implement silks again and have reflective fabrics and and jet and more dark jewelry. um And then eventually you kind of go into grays and lavenders. So pretty.
00:36:28
Speaker
Yeah, I would totally like I could just live in Victorian mourning clothes. I mean, you would die in them. But yes. Well, yes, that's true. I'll use modern dyes instead of their old toxic arsenic dyes because that's going to happen.
00:36:41
Speaker
Yeah. I have a cool, well, and also a fucked up chart of when you want to click it and look on that. That's got the time period, like the expectations for mourning. If it's your husband or if it's like a... And like what you need to wear. And what you need to wear, what the expectation was.
00:36:57
Speaker
And for the amount of time. Gosh. And for anybody, like if you're a child and you're mourning parent versus a cousin. or A wife for her mother-in-law is 18 months of mourning.
00:37:08
Speaker
Oh, sorry. No, a total of two years of mourning for your mother-in-law. Interesting. Yeah. So on top of all of these clothes, the coffin, the shroud, the flowers, the cloths covering the reflective surfaces, the professional mourners, the funeral cookies. Expensibly. The expenses involved in the actual burial and the partridge in the pear tree.
00:37:26
Speaker
Many families went broke trying to maintain the standards. If you didn't make it clear that you missed your loved one this many dollars worth, then fuck you and your family. yep yeah Luckily, places like Jay's Morning Warehouse were there with all of your funeral accessory needs.
00:37:41
Speaker
So this place, it started as just a morning clothes shop. And then over time, it took over all except for two shops on this entire block on Regent Street in London. They had clothing for every stage of mourning, cheaper items for your household staff, shoes, hats, flowers and anything else you might need.
00:37:58
Speaker
The Victorian funeral industry pretty much rivals what our wedding industry is today. my God. Yeah. Queen Victoria mourned the death of her husband, Prince Albert, from the day he died in 1861 till the day she died in 1901. And Jays dressed her for the entire duration.
00:38:12
Speaker
And obviously, you know, everybody wants to do what the Queen does. The royals are your Kardashians, right? So ah beyond the crippling expense of keeping up with the standard death and mourning etiquette, more ways to explore it, exploit the grieving began to surface.
00:38:26
Speaker
Do you know what you just did? No, what? Keeping up with the Kardashians, keeping up with it. Oh, let's pretend I did it on purpose. So we talked about how photography was just starting to spread in popularity and obtainability.
00:38:42
Speaker
Spirit photography became began to become popular. Spirit photography showed a ghost in the frame with living subjects. And I put bunny ears around ghosts. It's usually like what? Overexposed? Yeah.
00:38:53
Speaker
I think, yeah. and This is most certainly due to the photograph plates being exposed before the people come in. um Here is an example here. Oh, that's so creepy. I hate that. And then there.
00:39:05
Speaker
don't like it. Yeah. So it wasn't people that they already knew. Now, I will say somebody did one for Mary Todd Lincoln that had Abraham Lincoln but behind her, which was actually really kind of sweet and broke my heart a little bit.
00:39:18
Speaker
But these were proven to not, this was not real. This was not actually us taking pictures of ghosts. But then also we have spiritualism, which became popular in Victorian England, most notably between the 1850s and 1880s.
00:39:33
Speaker
Basically, spiritualism was the belief that the dead could communicate with living. This seems to have been brought out of the woodworks because it's been around forever. But in 1848 in Hydesville, New York, where young sisters Margaret and Kate Fox claimed to have communicated with a man who had been who had died in their house five years earlier.
00:39:52
Speaker
Their neighbors shared the story with others, and soon the girls were doing this for audiences and being observed for evidence of fraud. There were no initial discoveries that would give people reason to doubt their authenticity, so their popularity exploded.
00:40:06
Speaker
Many more joined the movement, and people paid good money for a chance to reach out to the loved ones they had lost. One of the sisters eventually admitted that it was all made up. oh yeah like wasn't there a whole thing with houdini like he yeah yeah but that's actually one of my references is this video of a girl doing her her thesis on victorian death stuff or or no spiritualism specifically and she goes through all of these different main players in spiritualism it's super fascinating i recommend anybody watch it like it's just a it's a speech but it's like really interesting make sure you give me the link so i can add it's in it it's in here yeah
00:40:40
Speaker
And in that she talks about Houdini and don't remember her name. I think it's something Cranford or something. She was a spiritual spiritualist that was very prominent and he wanted to prove her wrong. And like eventually got to the point where he was going to offer her a thousand dollars if he couldn't figure out that she was a fraud. But he did, of course, prove that she was a fraud. But then they also maybe kind of had a relationship a little bit.
00:41:01
Speaker
so it's a really interesting story he's like you're a fraud but you're kind hot right yeah so I don't know it's it's there's a lot of fun characters and interesting players in that whole spiritualism movement it'd be another great episode to do I think I want everyone to understand how many episodes she signed herself up for so many so many episodes so many hypothetical theoretical episodes if she forgets one please make sure to write us nightmare cottage at gmail.com and let her know that ah she needs to get on it Yeah, if I've talked about something that you actually want to hear about, totally tell me, seriously.
00:41:35
Speaker
So I have really mixed feelings about the whole situation. i first think, first and foremost, that profiting from the grieving is slimy to begin with. Yeah. But instilling the false hope that they can be reached, that you can actually talk to them. Yeah. and It feels deranged to me. It's wrong.
00:41:49
Speaker
Nearly all spiritualists that were challenged on their authenticity were easily exposed to be frauds. So it's fucked up. People were making money off of this. Yeah. Now, conversely, this was also a largely feminist movement in a lot of ways.
00:42:02
Speaker
It's a really fucked up way of going about it, but it was a rare and new opportunity for women to work independently and make really good money. yeah ah No husband required. There are also ties between this the spiritualist movement and the suffragette movement.
00:42:14
Speaker
So there's, you know, maybe we wouldn't be voting if, of course, I don't know that we're going to get to do that much longer anyways. But ah so on one hand, disgusting of exploitation of someone's grief. On the other If I saw that as my only path to independence in that situation, would I have chosen differently?
00:42:31
Speaker
Would you? No, I would have done it. would have Yeah. I mean, considering how I figure my old age, like if if I decide to go evil, I will absolutely read tarot cards in my... Go evil?
00:42:43
Speaker
Yeah. Well, because I just, you know... It's exploitative. and Anyways. I do want to put in a quick note that there were a lot of men spiritualists too. So that was still a part of the thing, but it was, it was a job that you could just do. You could go and, and post yourself up and the claim that you could do things and and make money at it.
00:43:04
Speaker
People still do. People still do. So there were various ways of practicing spiritualism. Spirit boards and spirit writings were popular for many that didn't have access to a spiritualist. Spirit boards were what Ouija boards are modeled after.
00:43:18
Speaker
and then spirit writing, that actually looks pretty neat. it's Imagine a planchette from a Ouija board, but elevated it has little wheels on the little butt side. And then at the point, there's a pencil.
00:43:28
Speaker
okay And then everybody puts their fingers on it lightly like you do with a planchette over a piece of parchment. And then the dead is to put those spirits you're supposed to write on the parchment. Why can't they just do it themselves?
00:43:40
Speaker
Why do they need my hand to do it? yeah It looks like a little skateboard. Because there's rules, bitch. I don't know. Fiances and possessions were things that were practiced by spiritualists.
00:43:52
Speaker
This is what you're typically going to see in pop culture. a group of people sitting around a table with a medium. It's dark. It's candlelit. They hold hands around the table and the medium channels the spirit.
00:44:03
Speaker
The spirit will either speak to her and she will share with the group or it will possess her and speak directly through her. There were sometimes manifestations in the form of either knocking or other sounds or like smells like you'd get a bloom of perfume or a smell of a certain kind of food wafting through the room. Mm-hmm.
00:44:19
Speaker
All of these methods have been exposed like they're you can see how they were done. Having said that many very notable people employed spiritualists and studied the movement. Queen Victoria of course Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Marie and Pierre Curie and even Thomas Edison were believers.
00:44:37
Speaker
Edison wanted to make a spirit phone so he could talk to the dead. Yeah I heard about that. That sounds cool. Yeah. So the big elaborate mourning etiquette started to wane with the First World War. Death tolls were enormous.
00:44:48
Speaker
The reality of the excess made it feel less necessary. Mourning became more of a private matter to be handled as a surviving family saw fit. Today, elaborate funerals and rituals still exist. And they're expensive. We have our customs and traditions and we still have holdovers from the Victorian era like sending flowers, wearing black, performing eulogies, and to some extent hanging mourning wreaths on the door.
00:45:11
Speaker
These days, people are more uncomfortable talking about death, planning for it, or even thinking about it. But it comes for us all. But it's part of everyday life. one hundred percent 100%. Death was normalized in the Victorian culture. It was a part of the everyday life and they leaned into it rather than avoid it.
00:45:26
Speaker
And that brought me to my one of my favorite well Latin phrases, memento mori. Remember that you die. Oh, is that what that means? That's what that means. And that's my very summarized, clipped version of Victorian death culture. I definitely recommend looking into my references if you're interested in this. I read ah book. I bought a book, a physical. i don't buy physical books anymore. It's funny. I've got an audiobook. I never buy audiobooks.
00:45:53
Speaker
But it was really cool. And i I didn't even get anywhere near as far through it as I wanted to. the Same. Because I ordered it last week. And then here we are. But it was called The Victorian Book of the Dead by Chris Woodyard.
00:46:06
Speaker
Chris Woodyard is kind of one of the foremost experts on Victorian death history. She's got a blog that's related to this book that I very much recommend. Like article but articles upon articles about any Victorian death, anything you could imagine. like that.
00:46:22
Speaker
That sounds really cool. The more you know.
Nightmare Fuel and Modern Death Facts
00:46:28
Speaker
So Nightmare Fuel. Yes. So my Nightmare Fuel is the book that was written about the Tsuyama massacre. It was from Yoko Miso Sishi.
00:46:43
Speaker
I'll put it in the show. We'll put it in the Nightmare Fuel thing. And it was titled The Village of Eight Graves. There was also a movie about it, um which I can link on there too.
00:46:55
Speaker
I think we should put the manga also because that's a really... Yeah, and I have some some pictures from the manga too. But yeah, we'll include all of the to all of it. There's a lot. I'll include a few of different kinds of media on there.
00:47:06
Speaker
Cool. Yeah, I'm gonna make my Victorian book of the dead, my nightmare fuel. Just it was, it's so neat. Yeah, I don't know. I super fascinated with deaf culture in general. And this is one Victoria and stuff just really smacks at my aesthetic a bit, you know, like it's it's it's definitely shaped me a bit.
00:47:33
Speaker
Is it time to cleanse palates? Do you have a palate cleanser? I completely forgot. um i do I do, but much like you said another time, that i don't know how cleansing it's going to be. oh okay.
00:47:47
Speaker
I'm just going to provide some interesting facts about death. Oh, okay. What got? So, did you know? That just three days after dying, the enzymes that help break down a person's food begins to eat that person's body.
00:48:02
Speaker
Oh. Part of your decomposition. Oh, that's probably why your stomach swells the way it does. Oh, yeah. That makes sense. All the gas is getting trapped. More people die from selfies than from shark attacks.
00:48:15
Speaker
What? Take that social media. How do you die from a selfie? um So there's people that like take selfies over like the edge of something and then they fall off or something. Yeah. It's just people being dumb.
00:48:26
Speaker
Fun. Natural deaths spike on Christmas, the day after Christmas and on New Year's Day. oh Researchers believe junior staffing at hospitals and the tendency for people to delay treatment are the main reasons for the increase.
00:48:39
Speaker
However, suicides and homicide rates decrease during the holidays. all There's also something to be said about like, it feels like because so many times with people that have died around me, it feels like they're holding on for like,
00:48:54
Speaker
a specific person, you know? i know that sounds weird, but I, it's just like one of those, like they, they, this person came to say goodbye and they died like an hour later, you know?
00:49:04
Speaker
So that kind of thing. And I do think there's something to be said for that. Like for the holidays, they're like, Oh, I just want to have one more Christmas. Not to be too, you know, we're talking about death. We're all ready to whatever you were going to say.
00:49:18
Speaker
Your nails are pretty. Thanks. I bite them. They don't look like do. There are animals that don't die, or at least don't die from old age, including jellyfish and a kind of flatworm.
00:49:32
Speaker
What do you mean? Jellyfish don't die? Not from old age. Where they die from? Assholes. Predators. And what else? Bad breath. I don't know. you said jellyfish and wild flatworms. What?
00:49:49
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Near-death experiences seem to be caused by dopamine and oxygen deprivation. Whoa. um and We'll end with this one. Animals such as dolphins and elephants grieve the loss of a pack member and recognize it via elaborate memorial rituals.
00:50:06
Speaker
oh I know whales do too, right? Because ah there's been reports of like them carrying their... And and ah apparently some corvids like crows do as well.
00:50:17
Speaker
my gosh. But then it might also be seen that they're trying to figure out why it was, why the death occurred, which means it might be a murder investigation. A murder of crows investigating.
00:50:29
Speaker
That's fantastic. That's horrible. Let's, let's end it with that. Thanks everybody. So here we are. We're just the end of our episode.
00:50:39
Speaker
Y'all have a great week and we'll see you next time. Sweet dreams. Sweet dreams. If you have topic requests, book or movie recommendations, or just want to say hi, email us at nightmarecottage at gmail dot com or visit our website at nightmarecottage dot com.
00:51:00
Speaker
Sweet dreams! Bye bye!