Skeletons Behind The Walls

Thornton Abbey in Lincolnshire

A famous case of the immurement of a person, who was walled up alive and left to starve, was in the ruins of Thornton Abbey, Lincolnshire. Thomas Greetham, a 14th-century Abbott, who was referred to as a very wicked man, was sentenced by judges to be immured. According to the English antiquarian, William Stukeley, the abbot's skeleton was discovered in 1722, behind a thick wall at Thornton Abbey, with a table, book and candle.

Houston Heights, Texas

A 61-year-old woman named Ms Cerruti vanished from her home in Houston Heights in 2015. Mail was piling up around her letterbox and her bills had not been paid. When police entered Ms Cerruti's house to investigate her disappearance, they found that her six cats were dead but there was no sign of Ms Cerruti.

Later that year, the house was sold at a foreclosure auction and new owners moved in. After Mrs Cerruti had been missing for two years, the new owners found the remains of Ms Cerruti, inside a wall cavity beneath a broken floorboard, in the attic, along with a pair of glasses and a pair of shoes.

Ancient Rome

Claudia Livia Julia, the only daughter of Nero Claudius Drusus and Antonia Minor and sister of the Roman Emperor Claudius, was a woman who was regarded as promiscuous and who had plotted treason. According to the historian Cassius Dio, Livilla died by the hand of her mother, Antonia Minor, who locked her up in a room and starved her to death.

The Vestal Virgins were women priestesses to the Goddess Vesta, of the Hearth, the home and domestic life, in Ancient Rome, who took a vow of chastity. Being selected as a vestal virgin was a great honour, but if a vestal virgin allowed the sacred fire to go out, or was found to be unchaste, she could be bricked up in a chamber and left to starve to death.

Heidelberg, Germany

In 1770, the remains of an entombed knight were found at Heidelberg Castle, inside a sealed niche next to the staircase leading to the castle dungeon. The skeleton was dressed in full armour, with a helmet which still carried traces of gilding, along with several sword strokes. It is not known whether the entombment was a punishment or a special form of burial. The knight’s suit of armour became part of the antiques collection of the Prince Electors, and another suit of armour was placed in the niche.

The Kingdom of Hungary 

This is a copy of the original portrait of the Countess Elizabeth Bathory from 1585 

The female 17th-century Hungarian serial killer, Countess Elizabeth Báthory, was good-looking, well-educated and wealthy. She was born in 1560, into a family which ruled Transylvania. At the age of 11 or 12, Elizabeth was betrothed to Ferenc Nádasdy, who also came from an aristocratic family. They married when Elizabeth was fourteen but as her husband was a soldier, he spent a lot of time away and Elizabeth had lovers.

It soon became apparent that Elizabeth was a sadist. Many said a vampire. She tortured and killed many young girls, including servants and those belonging to local gentry and she drank their blood as she believed that it would keep her youthful. There were also suspicions of cannibalism. According to the Budapest City Archives, the girls were burned with hot tongs and then placed in freezing cold water and covered in honey and live ants.

In 1610, Elizabeth was arrested and she was sentenced to be held in Csetje Castle, in a room whose windows were walled up. She was 54 when she died in 1614.

Poughkeepsie, New York

Joann Nichols was a 55-year-old former first-grade teacher at Gayhead Elementary School in Hopewell Junction, New York, when she went missing in 1985. Ms Nichols did not attend a hairdresser appointment and she could not be located. Her husband, James Nichols, reported her missing on December 21, 1985.

James Nichols helped police find his wife's car in the parking lot of a shopping mall and he told the police that his wife had called him on Christmas Eve morning, saying that she was fine, then she quickly hung up.

Twenty-eight years later, the skeleton of Ms Nichols was found behind a "false wall" in the basement of her own home. An autopsy showed the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. Her husband, James Nichols, had died in December 2012.

Galway, Ireland

The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, in Galway, Ireland, operated between 1925 and 1961, as a  maternity home for unmarried mothers and their children. The Home was run by the Bon Secours Sisters, a religious order of Roman Catholic nuns.

Not only were around 1,000 children illegally adopted from this home, but "a vault with twenty chambers" was revealed behind the walls of the septic tank, containing the bodies of 800 children.

A child died at this institution, on average, almost every two weeks between the mid-1920s and 1960s.

The Virgin Whose Body Tried to make A Baby

An ovarian tumour is a generally a benign growth in the ovaries, also called a germ cell tumour or dermoid cyst, which occurs when an immature egg attempts to create various body parts on its own. These cysts are composed of different types of tissue, such as, hair, muscle, or bone.

In 2003, Japanese doctors were operating on a 25-year-old virgin female when they found the most advanced ovarian teratoma yet found. What the doctors saw, was a small, mostly complete doll-like body, which appeared similar to a normal foetus.

The deformed body of this foetus-like thing was covered with fine, downy hair; it had spina bifida (“split spine” in Latin) and its brain failed to divide into two normal hemispheres. A single “eye” with long, thick eyelashes was set in the centre of its forehead. It had one ear, all its limbs, a brain, a spinal nerve, intestines, bones, and blood vessels and a jaw, with a few teeth. And even more disturbingly, it had something that looked like a phallus between its legs.

Cyclops-genetic condition which causes a foetus to have only single eye in the centre of head

Another nightmare inducing ovarian teratoma was found during an appendectomy on a 16-year-old female patient. The doctors found a partially formed brain with its cerebellum covered by thin skull bone.

A baby girl in China was found to be “pregnant” with twins after being born in Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hong Kong. She underwent surgery at 3 weeks of age to remove the foetuses that were believed to be at 8 to 10 weeks of gestation.

In 2009, a British man named Gavin Hyatt “gave birth” to an “undeveloped identical twin” when a 4cm growth parasitic twin that he had absorbed after it had died in the womb, early in their mother's pregnancy. Hyatt named the tiny creature “little Gav.”

Explaining Why Some Animals Like To Live Alone

Animals which live in groups experience reproductive competition and conflict, and so, some species resolve this problem by living alone.

Our closest relative, chimpanzees, with whom we share 99% of our DNA, live in a fission-fusion society; which means that the group's size and composition are fluid and change over time with merging of groups and splitting of the group occurring.

Chimpanzee groups also feature dominance hierarchies. But of course, there are benefits and costs of aggressive competition within a group. Male chimps will compete aggressively for positions in the social hierarchy. While, generally, female chimpanzees often emigrate to another community after reaching sexual maturity, entering the new group at a low level and waiting for senior high-ranking females die, so that they can rise in the hierarchy of the group. Other females chimps, however, are aggressive to immigrant females and they will kill the newborn infants of other chimp community members.

Of all of the species of animals in the world, humans and chimpanzees, are among the few who engage in coordinated attacks on the same species. Although chimps can exhibit selfless behaviours and even understand and mourn death, they also actively seek out to attack others, as do humans.

Human females cease being able to produce offspring midway through their life span, as do Killer whales. This means that a mother will be fertile for a relatively small part of her daughter's life. The reason for this low degree of reproductive overlap between generations is an evolutionary adaption which reduces reproductive competition between generations, giving the younger female an advantage in reproductive conflict with older females.

While the significant costs of reproductive competition and conflict are inevitable in group‐living species, some animals are more solitary, avoiding each other, except during mating, territorial encounters, or when raising young.

Solitary animals like polar bears, eagles, opossums, skunks, owls, tigers, cougars, pumas, armadillos, and orangutans, live in a solitary manner to avoid competition over food, space, mates and shelter. Such animals often exhibit a reduced need for bonding and attachment and less separation distress, but they tend to be are fiercely territorial.

Books To Read

Hour of the Wolf, is a steampunk novel written by Andrius Tapinas.

Victorian Era Superstitions Were Barmy and Strange

The Victorian Era (1837-1901), was a strange and prudish time, when the sight of a bare ankle was deemed scandalous and people often used the language of flowers to convey their feelings.

While the homes of the era were often dark and gloomy, filled with over-stuffed furniture and cabinets of taxidermied birds and skewered butterflies behind glass, the funeral customs were often highly theatrical and elaborate, shrouded in superstition and belief in the supernatural.

When Prince Albert died in December 1861, Queen Victoria was plunged into a period of intense mourning. She wore black for the remaining forty years of her life and rarely appeared in public.

However, the rules of mourning for most people, at this time, were also rigid, complex and expensive. 

The main reason for the strict adherence to mourning rituals was that death was more commonplace and public than it is today. Three out of every twenty babies might die before their first birthday in those days and the elaborate customs provided a sense of stability. There was also the superstitious idea that additional deaths might be avoided by following certain rituals.

Cover The Mirrors

When someone died, the curtains of the house were closed, clocks became silent and mirrors were covered, because of the belief that the spirit of the deceased might become trapped in the glass. 

If you were out walking one day and you happened to run into a funeral procession, it was believed that this may bring you bad luck. If you were able, then it was advisable to turn around and go another way. However, if this was not possible and you had no choice but to continue toward the funeral party, then you could avoid bad luck and a bad future, by holding tightly onto a button. How the button attained this power was never explained. 

John Hislop Undertakers, Brisbane, circa1902

The dead mostly stayed at home, until the burial in the Victorian era. For the poor with limited space, this might mean having grandma in the front parlour, or a dead sibling in the same room. But most families, rich and poor, put themselves into debt to properly respect the dead and give them a decent burial.

Black Ostrich Feathers 

Coffins might be of rich, expensive timbers and intricately carved. Horses might be adorned with black ostrich feathers and the hearse was often expensive and black as night. Professional mourners (called mutes) might be hired to take part in the funeral procession and deep mourning required the wearing of black clothing and armbands for men, for a prescribed amount of time. A widow was expected to mourn her husband and wear black for at least two years. After this, there was a period of "half mourning", when dresses of grey or lavender could be worn.

Shops had to supply these morning clothes and Jay’s of Regent Street, London, was one of the best. Women might also buy a mourning broach and keep a lock of the deceased's hair inside, or wear jewellery made from jet. The poor, however, often dyed their clothing and then bleached it after the period of mourning had finished, as the cost of another set of clothes was beyond their means.

 Mrs Brown is dressed in mourning following the death of her husband, circa 1908

Harbingers Of Death

After the funeral and the mourning period had finished, it was still not possible for the Victorians to relax as they believed in so many superstitions and omens about death. For example, if a person smelled roses and there were no roses about, then this was considered a harbinger of death. Yours or someone else close to you. Seeing an owl in the day time was also an omen of death, as was three knocks at the door and no visitor; a dog howling, a vase of red and white flowers together and opening an umbrella inside the house, were also dire. 

People in the Victorian era thought that tying black ribbons onto things could stop death and so black ribbons were tied to doorknobs and added as trimmings on underwear and handkerchiefs and even pets would have be-ribboned tails. If a family had experienced too many deaths, in a short amount of time, they may have insist that guests to their home wear a crepe ribbon, as they stepped through the door....just in case.

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum. "Of the dead, [say] nothing but good"

Books To Read


Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier. “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”