In 1993, a gruesome discovery in the deep jungles of Pahang, Malaysia, opened a doorway into the darkest realms of South Asian occult practices, Jinn summoning, and human sacrifice. At the center of it all was Mona Fandey, born Nur Maznah binti Ismail. She had spent her early life chasing fame as a pop singer, but after her music career completely flopped, she abandoned her dreams and transformed herself into a feared Bomoh—a practitioner of traditional Malay shamanism, black magic, and Jinn interaction.

In Malay occult traditions, a Bomoh acts as an intermediary between the physical realm and unseen entities, specifically Jinn or spirit entities. High-ranking politicians, wealthy elites, and celebrities frequently sought out Mona. They were not looking for spiritual healing; they wanted shortcuts to absolute power, invincibility, and the destruction of their political rivals. Mona built an empire on black magic, owning mansions, fleets of luxury cars, and living in five-star hotels. But her dark trade required dark currencies.

In July 1993, a prominent Malaysian politician named Datuk Mazlan Idris approached Mona. Desperate to climb to the top of his political party, he was promised an ancient talisman—a cane and a traditional hat allegedly owned by Indonesia’s first President, Sukarno. Mona claimed that this object, bound with Jinn magic, would make him invincible and unimaginably wealthy. The price was set at 2.5 million Ringgit. On July 2, Mazlan withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and met Mona at a remote house for what was supposed to be a sacred cleansing ritual.

Mona instructed the politician to lie on the floor, close his eyes, and place an orchid on his forehead. She told him to listen closely for the mysterious voices of spirits asking him how much wealth he desired. As the politician lay blindfolded, expecting Jinn to manifest money from the void, Mona’s assistant stepped out of the shadows with an axe. Mazlan’s head was severed in three sharp blows.

What followed was not a simple robbery, but a ritualistic butchery. The politician's body was dismembered into 18 pieces, partially skinned, and buried six feet deep under a newly cemented floor, with several vital organs and his testicles completely removed. When police later raided the property based on a confession, they didn't just find a grave; they uncovered an occult altar, statues of dark deities, ritual knives, and four glass jars filled with preserved human organs buried in the backyard. Investigators suspected Mazlan was not the first, linking Mona to earlier disappearances of an entire family and several maids, believed to be human sacrifices offered to spirits in exchange for wealth.

What truly solidifies Mona Fandey in paranormal history is her unnerving behavior during her trial and execution. Throughout her capital murder trial, she wore vibrant, extravagant clothes, smiled eerily at photographers, and blew kisses to the courtroom crowd, acting as if she were attending a red-carpet premiere rather than facing the gallows. When the judge handed down the death sentence by hanging, she didn't flinch—she simply smiled and thanked the public.

On the morning of November 2, 2001, at Kajang Prison, as the black hood was placed over her head, Mona Fandey uttered her infamous final words with a calm, eerie smile: "Aku takkan mati" (I will never die). To this day, local folklore across Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore holds that Mona did not die on the gallows, but successfully bound her soul to the spirit world, becoming an entity herself. The case created such deep public terror surrounding dark magic that it directly influenced the Malaysian government to completely abolish jury trials in 1995.

These 30 hooded figures were created in 2012 by sculpture student Jakub Hadrava as a university project. He used live models wrapped in plastic and raincoats, coated in plaster, to cast the shapes.

The installation is located inside St. George’s Church in Luková, which was built in 1352. The church was abandoned in 1968 after its roof caved in during a funeral. The sculptures represent the ghosts of the Sudeten Germans who worshipped there before WWII.

The project brought international attention and enough donation money to fully repair the roof and preserve the historic structure.

When we think of human sacrifice in ancient Mesoamerica, we usually imagine random cruelty, but across civilizations like the Olmecs, Mayas, Incas, and Aztecs, it was seen as an absolute necessity to keep reality going. They believed the universe ran on a literal blood debt. According to their creation myths, the gods sacrificed themselves or tore apart cosmic monsters to build the world, so feeding them human blood was the only way to repay that debt and prevent everything from ending.

Each civilization carried out this responsibility with different motives and disturbing methods. In Maya culture, the focus was heavily on the flow of blood itself rather than just the heart, and sacrifice was often used as a brutal punishment for war captives and criminals. In the Andes, the Incas prioritized children, believing their purity made them the most acceptable offering, and they explicitly valued tears, sometimes inflicting pain to ensure the child cried to appease the gods. The Aztecs eventually took it to the largest scale, but the foundation came centuries earlier from the Olmecs.

Recent bioarchaeological studies on bone remains show just how systematic these rituals were. Forensic analysis reveals three precise surgical methods used to cut open chest cavities depending on the culture and ceremony: cutting right below the ribs, slicing between them, or sawing straight through the sternum with obsidian blades. To them, it wasn't just a grim myth, but a daily duty that shaped their entire worldview.

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I was looking into weird insect antennae and came across the male Cedar Beetle (Rhipiceridae). Those massive feather-shaped structures on its head are basically sensory radars used to pick up female pheromones from huge distances.

What makes them even crazier is how they survive. The females drop their eggs right next to cicada eggs on tree barks. Once the larvae hatch, they go underground, find live cicada nymphs, and literally feed on them internally like parasites until they grow up.

Giant radar antennae on top of an underground body-snatching lifecycle. Nature really went dark with this one.

(Credit: Nicky Bay for the macro shots)

These traditional wooden clogs, known as Nalın or Takunya, have been carved in Türkiye for centuries, mostly for wet surfaces like public baths (hamams) and mosques.

What makes them fascinating is just how varied they were depending on who wore them. While men usually used basic, functional designs, the clogs made for women were a huge part of fashion and social status. Women’s Nalın were carved with high wooden platforms and decorated with silver or mother-of-pearl inlays. In women’s hamams, walking in taller and more detailed clogs was a direct way of showing wealth and standing.

They were also a major part of wedding culture. Elaborately carved clogs were placed in a bride’s dowry chest. Customs even dictated the level of decoration—lighter patterns for engaged women, and the heaviest, most detailed mother-of-pearl work reserved for new brides.

Artisans would carve each pair from a single block of dense wood like walnut or boxwood, often splitting the timber down the middle so both feet matched in wood grain. Beyond utility, there’s also a long-held local belief that walking on bare wood helps draw out static electricity from the body.

Sadly, plastic footwear has mostly replaced them, and today only a handful of aging craftsmen in places like Gaziantep, Mardin, and Bursa are keeping the art alive.

In 2022, archaeologists at the Huaca Las Ventanas site in northern Peru excavated the tomb of an elite Sican cranial surgeon dating back to around 950–1000 CE.

The discovery shattered a lot of modern assumptions about ancient medicine. He was buried with over 50 surgical instruments—including bronze awls, needles, and razor-sharp crescent-shaped blades called tumis. Alongside his gold mask and copper bowls, his grave contained the partial frontal skull bones of an adult and a child, carefully preserved as proof of his successful trepanations.

What really catches attention is the survival rate. A comprehensive 2018 study analyzing over 800 trepanned skulls from Peru revealed that ancient surgeons maintained a 75% to 91% patient survival rate. In stark contrast, battlefield surgeons performing similar skull procedures during the American Civil War in the 1860s managed only a 44% to 54% survival rate.

Researchers suspect ancient Andean practitioners had solved basic infection control long before modern germ theory, likely using natural antiseptics and pain-relieving tree barks like willow (which naturally contains the compound used in aspirin). The surrounding bone on most unearthed skulls shows clear signs of remodeling and healing, proving these patients lived for years after the surgery.

Singapore's Old Changi Hospital is much more than an ordinary abandoned structure. Used as a torture center by Japanese occupiers during World War II, the building became the country's most famous haunted location after it closed in 1997. But what makes this place truly strange is that its reputation has been officially acknowledged by government institutions. The Singapore Land Authority began leasing the dilapidated buildings to filmmakers on a short-term basis. Local television series such as Growing Up and Incredible Tales were shot there. In other words, this place was officially used as a horror film set, in addition to being famous for its ghosts.

The claims circulating about the area do not come from a single source. The spirits of Japanese occupation victims, homeless ghosts, and the souls of patients who died in the hospital are among the entities said to have been seen there. The 2010 mockumentary Haunted Changi turned this location into a global ghost-hunting hotspot. There is also a widespread belief that secret underground bunkers from World War II exist beneath the hospital, and that access to these bunkers is no longer possible. A video that circulated online in 2017, allegedly showing a nurse carrying a baby, reignited debates about the building's creepiness and the supposed paranormal activities within it. Even a photograph taken at the nearby Changi Aloha Chalet is claimed to contain a ghostly figure.

All of these elements transform Old Changi Hospital from an ordinary urban legend into a genuine paranormal phenomenon with official records and numerous witnesses.

While entities like Mokele-mbembe dominate mainstream African cryptozoology, a far more visceral terror haunts the oral traditions of the Baka Pygmies in the Congo Basin: The J'ba Fofi, literally meaning "great spider." Locals describe a massive, tarantula-like ambush predator with a 4 to 6-foot leg span. According to tribal lore, they lay peanut-shaped white eggs, and hatchlings emerge bright yellow with a distinct purple mark on their abdomen that darkens to brown as they mature. Unlike typical web-weavers, they dig shallow burrows under tree roots, conceal them with leaf doors, and string near-invisible trip-lines across animal paths, erupting from their lairs to envenomate and subdue anything that triggers the line. In one of the most famous Western accounts from 1938, British explorers Reginald and Margurite Lloyd were driving through the Belgian Congo when a massive brown shape crossed their path; they initially mistook it for a monkey or a small cat, only to be horrified to realize it was a spider with a 3-foot leg span before it vanished into the brush. In the early 2000s, cryptozoologist William Gibbons interviewed Baka pygmies during his expeditions, recording consistent accounts of their trap-door hunting, and the cryptid even made its way into a recent 2024 academic paper attempting to systematically evaluate indigenous testimonies in the Congo. Arachnologists remain deeply skeptical, noting that modern atmospheric oxygen levels and arthropod respiratory systems make a dog-sized spider physically improbable under current biology, pointing instead to jungle folklore, misidentified giant land crabs, or exaggerated tarantulas.

Source Link:https://www.historicmysteries.com/unexplained-mysteries/the-legend-of-jba-fofi-the-giant-spider-of-the-congo/40097/

Image 1: J'ba Fofi illustration sourced from Historic Mysteries.
Image 2: Public domain historical photograph of British explorers Reginald and Margurite Lloyd, who encountered the giant spider in 1938.

Born in England in 1860 before her family migrated to a remote farm in Ohio, Fanny Mills seemed completely ordinary from the waist up. But as she entered her teens, a rare and relentless congenital disorder—today recognized as Milroy's disease—caused her lower extremities to swell to grotesque, unmanageable proportions. Her feet reached a massive size 65, weighing nearly 50 kilos combined. Since wearing normal shoes was impossible, she wrapped her legs in makeshift fabrics, used pillowcases as socks, and wore heavy boots crafted from three whole goat skins.

For years, her father kept her hidden away from the world on their impoverished Sandusky farm. But after circus scouts (talent spotters) discovered her, Fanny was thrust into the brutal spotlight of late-19th-century dime museums. Billed as the "Ohio Bigfoot Girl," she drew massive crowds and brought in staggering ticket sales—sometimes earning promoters up to $4,000 a week in modern equivalent—while others profited off her exploited body. Despite the money, her life remained one of physical agony and isolation, culminating in an early death at just 39 years old after a heartbreaking series of personal and health tragedies.

Rheum ribes thrives on high-altitude rocky slopes above 1,500 meters in Eastern Anatolia, facing intense solar radiation and harsh seasonal shifts.

From a botanical and ecological standpoint, its fleshy petioles accumulate high levels of organic acids (such as oxalic acid), which serve a dual purpose: acting as an osmotic regulator and a chemical defense against herbivores. Regionally known as "mountain banana" or "işgın," these succulent stems are traditionally harvested in spring. However, from a physiological perspective, excessive consumption requires caution due to the high oxalate concentration, making its chemical profile both a survival mechanism for the plant and a point of ethnobotanical interest.