Haunted portraits change before your eyes!

It’s like your own Haunted Mansion! We haven’t seen these in person, but judging from the animated gifs the website provides, we’re guessing they’re lenticular images. At any rate, they look awesome. Check out the page at GoreyDetails.net for dozens of options, from decaying pirates and wenches, to ghastly daguerreotypes, to eerie “family” portraits to help you fill in those mysteriously barren branches on your family tree.

Haunted Pirate Portrait

[GoreyDetails.net]

August 30, 2007 | Filed Under Decor, Shopping | View Comments 

Nickel-plated skull

This 7-inch-tall, nickel-plated resin skull looks like the core of a baby Terminator–all it needs are blinking red eyes and a desire to kill.

Nickel-plated skull

[$48 from Bluelips]

August 22, 2007 | Filed Under Decor, Shopping, Skulls | View Comments 

Papercraft skull from Skulladay

Papercraft skull from SkulladaySkulladay’s latest grinning offering (#72, to be exact) is a wonderful papercraft PDF document that you can print out, cut, and fold into your own low-budget memento mori. It even has a moving jaw.

[Download from Skulladay]

August 16, 2007 | Filed Under Decor, Skulls | View Comments 

Buddhist self-mummified priest gods of Japan

As if Japan’s ghostly legends and particular style of horror don’t already creep the fuck out of us, here come tales of real life monks who starved, then poisoned, the suffocated themselves over a period of years–first ridding themselves of all body fat, then severely starving and dehydrating themselves, then infusing their system with a poisonous lacquer by drinking a special tea made from sap. Finally, they’d bury themselves alive:

Self-mummified priest of Japan The third and last step of the process was to be entombed alive in a stone room just big enough for a man to sit lotus style in for a final 1000 day period. As long as the priest could ring a bell each day a tube remained in place to supply air; but when the bell finally stopped, the tube was removed and the tomb was sealed.

When the tomb was finally opened, the results would be known. Some few would be fully mummified, and immediately be raised to the rank of Buddha; but most just rotted and, while respected for their incredible endurance, were not considered to be Buddhas.

According to another website, “It seems that most Japanese mummies are to be found around Yamagata Prefecture (Northern Japan), and there may not be more than 6 of them.” This site offers some clues on where to find them, if you’re in Japan and want to pay your respects to a Buddha.

Buddha monk

“The Self-Mummified Monks of Japan” [thethinkingblog.com]

“Japanese Buddhist Mummies” [Japan Reference]

“Mummies in Northern Japan” [Daruma Forum]

August 7, 2007 | Filed Under People, Places, Religion | View Comments 

Diamond-crusted skull

Damien Hirst’s latest controversial piece, “For the Love of God,” is a real skull encrusted with 8,601 diamonds, with a pear-shaped pink diamond set in the forehead. It cost about £14 million to create, and was sold to a group of private investors at the end of August for approximately £50 million, which makes it the most expensive work of modern art ever created.

Damien Hirst with Diamond Skull

According to the BBC, the skull belonged to a 35-year-old European man from the 18th century.

August 1, 2007 | Filed Under Fine Art, Skulls | View Comments