No Rest for the Dead, Playtime Instead?

Via The Globe and Mail: You know, there are certain crimes that are just made for humor. You know the ones. When things like grown men steal the life-sized cardboard cut outs of a tween girl’s heartthrob, the articles really write themselves.

But grave-robbing historians? I’m not talking about stealing-the-gold-watch we buried with great aunt Fanny, nor the whole politically-charged “raping ancient native American burial grounds.“ No, my friends. This guy was digging up the bodies of recently deceased, young, females from the area near Nizhny Novgorod in Russia, dressing them like dolls, and keeping them in his home. Every so often, you come across a story that defies you to isolate what’s the worst thing about it.

• Is it that he was living with his parents at the time, and that he was only caught when they detected the smell—after 29 bodies?!
• Was it that he blames all of his problems on being forced to kiss a deceased girl at a funeral when he was a small boy?
• Maybe it was that he was a noted expert on cemeteries who’s studied 13 languages, but not the language of love, apparently. 
• He had 29 of them in an apartment! (How many people could you collect in yours and still have room to move?) He had to steal nameplates from the cemetery to keep them straight.
• He dressed them in bright headscarves and dresses he’d scavenged from other graves, like he was trying to make his own set of matryoshka dolls.
• People who knew him well report that he was ”quirky” at most.

People are just plain strange, but this hits new high notes of tragic weirdness within weirdness.

 

Image via Art Dolls Only