Category Archives: urbanlegend

Johnny One Leg’s Great Adventure

Posted by scottsplatter on

This is one of those stories that is almost too absurd to believe…

John Wood had to have his leg amputated following a plane crash that killed three members of his family in 2004, including his father. If the story ended there we’d all stop for a second to feel for the guy and go back to what we were doing. The story however does not stop there.

When the leg was amputated Mr. Wood put in a request with the hospital that he wanted the leg after it was removed. It was his wish to have the bones to hold onto so that when he eventually died he could be cremated as a “full man.” To his surprise, he was presented, not with the bones, but with the fleshy leg and foot combo by the funeral home attending to the matter. He kept the leg in his freezer and despite becoming a bit of a macabre joke, all was well.

Then Mr. Wood got behind on his bills and his electricity was shut off. It was decision time for Mr. Wood, but after the plane crash, loss of family and amputation he wasn’t going to take another hit from the power man. He cut the screen from his front door, wrapped the leg in it and tied it to a a couple posts to let it dry in the sun. Once it dried he put the remains inside his barbecue smoker for safe keeping.

He eventually became homeless and was living out of a van which he also ultimately lost. His family had put all of his belongings in storage for him while he dealt with his situation. Eventually the bill for the storage space went unpaid and the contents of his storage space were put up for auction. Including the barbecue.

Enter Shannon Whisnant, the buyer of the smoker from the storage auction. He found the leg, and notified the police. Wood’s family saw the story on the news and came forward with their story. Crazy eh? Well… there is more. After surrendering the leg to police Wishnant has since changed his mind and decided he paid for the leg and wants it back to use in a Halloween display in intends to charge admission to and is willing to go to court to fight to have it back. The police have said “he doesn’t have a leg to stand on”. (yes, the police really did say that) they will return the leg to Mr. Wood to hang on his rear view mirror or whatever his next great idea is.

– Prof. Gruntsplatter

The Yamabiru Are Coming!

Posted by scottsplatter on

Long sequestered in the mountains of Japan, the Yamabiru have decided their time is at hand. Urbanization and reforestation efforts have ignited the flames of migration and the long silent Yamabiru have teamed up with their forest brethren and come down from their isolated realm to feed. Feasting on the blood of the humans that have inadvertently rousted them from their quiet existence, they have been known to gorge upon their victims to the point that they reach 10 times their normal size. So clandestine are the methods of the Yamabiru that frequently their victims are unaware they have been visited until they discover the bloodied point of entry and the predator has moved on.

The Japanese see three options in confronting this invasion. They can dramatically reshape the environment to something less hospitable in the hopes that the Yamabiru return from whence they came; they can fight them off with poisons and chemical warfare, or they can concede and accept their place in the food chain. All of these are obviously dramatic and carry their own hazards. However, in these dire times when nature is rising to subjugate humanity the dramatic may be the last hope.

– Prof. Gruntsplatter

Creepy Crawlies in Fairyland

Posted by scottsplatter on

Here are a couple of tangled tales for you. The picture to the left (They removed the picture) appeared with a LiveScience.com article on a 200 yard long stretch of trail in Lake Tawakoni State Park in Northern Texas that is enveloped in spider webs. Some entomologists are calling this potentially a once in a lifetime event, while one killjoy is saying he sees them every couple of years.

“At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland,” said Donna Garde, superintendent of the park about 45 miles east of Dallas. “Now it’s filled with so many mosquitoes that it’s turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs.”

The next tale comes to us from Dortmund, Germany, via The Sun tabloid out of Britain…Mark Voegel loved reptiles and insects. He loved them so much that he had over 200 of them in his small apartment, many of them running free that were quite dangerous and even deadly. Most notably for our purposes was his pet black widow “Bettina.” Bettina bit and killed Mark, and the other critters proceeded to eat and infest his body over the next 7-14 days before he was discovered by police when neighbors complained of a foul odor…

Police broke in to Mark Voegel’s apartment to find spider Bettina along with 200 others, several snakes, a gecko lizard called Helmut and several thousand termites had gorged on his body.

Police spokesman said: “It was like a horror movie. His corpse was over the sofa.

“Giant webs draped him, spiders were all over him. They were coming out of his nose and his mouth.

“There was everything there one could imagine in the world of reptiles.

“Larger pieces of flesh torn off by the lizards were scooped up and taken back to the webs of tarantulas and other bird-eating spiders.”

One thing I was curious about… The article describes Mark as a loner, which is how the media diplomatically calls someone crazy and friendless. Yet somehow the police knew the names of the animals that were eating him. Even if the tanks were labeled how would they know who went where if most were loose in the apartment.

I suggest someone tack this story to the a few of the trees in Lake Tawakoni State Park.

– Prof. Gruntsplatter