Taste Test

William Seabrook was a journalist, active during the years of 1919 to 1945, whose thirst for esoteric knowledge was only matched by his thirst for booze. He got his start in the news business as a reporter and later editor for the August Chronicle of Georgia. After World War One, he contributed articles to the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Reader's Digest.

Perhaps it was the suffocating boredom of Reader's Digest that pushed Seabrook into a life of world travel. He was fascinated by occult practices and foreign mysticism, and sought out then-unusual locales to investigate. He wrote accounts of his time spent with the Bedouins and Kurds of Saudi Arabia, the habits of voodoo practitioners of Haiti, his adventures with daredevil pilots, and what must have been an extremely stressful weekend with self-proclaimed evil wizard Aleister Crowley. In adherence to journalistic standards, he claimed to never embellish his stories, but the books were very much like pulp novels in their subject matter.


In addition to these pursuits, Seabrook also dabbled in culinary criticism, submitting perhaps the definitive analysis of the taste and texture of....human flesh. For Seabrook, cannibalism was apparently just another exotic experience to write about. The man had books to sell, after all.

While visiting the tribes of West Africa, Seabrook met up with some cannibals and was disappointed when they were unable to fully articulate the process of cooking and eating people. Determined to find out for himself, Seabrook departed for France and somehow managed to get a large chunk of flesh from a hospital. He proceeded to get a stew going and the results were apparently delicious, with Seabrook comparing human to "fully developed veal."

The decision to become a cannibal may or not have been made under the influence of alcohol. Despite checking himself into a mental institution to deal with his addiction (which he wrote about in his book Asylum) Seabrook's alcoholism lead to the ruination of his marriage to novelist Marjorie Worthington, which in turn lead to his suicide in 1945. Aleister Crowley marked the occasion in his diary, referring to the Seabrook as a "swine-dog."

An indecent epitaph, even for a cannibal.


But don't take my word for it!
-You can read about it in a book!

The Volcano God and US Navy

The nation of Vanuatu spreads across eighty small islands between Fiji and New Guinea. As is typical for the region, these islands were created by volcanic upheaval. The central island, Tanna, is defined by an active stratovolcano called Yasur. There are minor eruptions every hour and there is a persistent plume of smog hanging in the air.

According to many of the islanders, Yasur is the home of god. In this case, god is John Frum; an omnipotent spirit who takes the form of a sailor from the United States Navy. Frum is worshipped by 6000 people, who swear that he shall one day emerge from the volcano bearing gifts of motorboats, cigarettes, kitchen appliances, and Coca-Cola. Every February 15th, John Frum's adherents celebrate their god by raising approximations of the American flag, painting "U.S.A" on their chests, dancing with bamboo rifles, and singing songs about chainsaws. There is also ritualized consumption of intoxicating beverages, which are said to facilitate communication with John Frum.

The Cult of John Frum extends back to the 1930's. Vanuatu had been under Western control since the 1880's, and the tribes of warrior cannibals had been thoroughly conquered. Missionaries were determined to erase all elements of native culture in order to cultivate proper Christian communities, and the islanders were kept under strict control. Meanwhile, the US Navy had a growing presence in the area. As the legend goes, a group of elders were secretly imbibing a traditional concoction made from the kava plant and they were visited by a man dressed in a Navy uniform. Some say he was black, and others insist he was white, but he spoke their language and introduced himself as John Frum.

Frum explained that he would save them from the missionaries and urged them avoid church, throw away Western money, and remove their children from Western schools. At first, the colonial powers insisted that this John Frum was merely a native impostor and no true god. Then they started arresting followers of John Frum and deporting them from Vanuatu, but the cultists eventually became to numerous to deal with. By 1941, the followers of John Frum had become the dominant cultural force of the islands. Coincidentally, America had declared war of the Axis powers and Vanuatu was soon to be converted into a naval base. The cultists believed these men to be the emissaries of John Frum and approached them with reverence and loyalty.

At first the Navy found the John Frum Cult to be extremely convenient. In exchange for surplus and a 25 cent daily salary, the islanders helped the Navy construct airstrips in the jungle and haul cargo from ships. The islands were fascinated by the material goods of the Americans and saw them as gifts from John Frum. Ultimately the Navy grew uneasy and tried to suppress the cult to little success. As the war ended and the Navy started withdraw from the region, entire bases were bulldozed into the sea. Beneath the waves, a coral reef began to grow on this pile of jeeps, radio equipment, and concrete debris. Vanuatu divers would scrounge through these underwater junk heaps for useful items, tantalized by glittering Coke bottles.

To this day, despite an influx of modern culture in the form of tourists, the cultists continue to praise the name of John Frum and await his return. They build symbolic airstrips in the jungle (complete with bamboo radio towers), and adorn themselves with holy crosses (most likely appropriated long ago from military medical vehicles). While anthropological study continues to glean new insight of this group and of the nature of religion in general, important questions remain unanswered, not the least of which being: who was John Frum, really? Was he a kava-born hallucination? A con-man sailor? Perhaps one day he'll rise up from the volcano and shed some light on all of this.

Would you like to know more?
-Read this article from Smithsonian Magazine
-Read this article from the BBC

Happy moments in art!

At age 73, a sickly Goya purchased a small house by the banks of Manzanares River and produced fourteen oil paintings directly on the walls of his new home. They were called The Black Paintings as each had unsettling subject matter. The most famous of these paintings was Saturn Devouring his Children, depicting a moment from Greco-Roman mythology in which Saturn (or Kronos) eats his offspring to prevent them from eventually usurping his mastery of the universe. Jupiter (or Zeus) escaped this fate of course, but that's for another day. The painting is wonderfully gruesome, particularly in the partially eaten headless body and the wide, almost Muppet-like, eyes of Saturn.

Saturn Devouring his Children is on display in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Postcards are available in the lobby.

You Are Who You Eat

Among its other features, the town of Thetford, Vermont, is home to Sawnee Bean Cemetery and Sawnee Bean Road. This is rather anomalous as Thetford is a very ordinary town, and Sawnee Bean was one of the most infamous killers in history.

Because of sheer brutality of his crimes, Alexander "Sawnee" (or "Sawney") Bean has entered the realm of folklore in much the same way as Jack the Ripper. It is difficult to determine which details of his life actually happened and which are fabrication. There are even those who postulate that Sawnee Bean is a mere bogeyman, and never existed to begin with. Assuming he was a real person, here are the details of his savage life.

Born in 16th century Scotland, Sawnee Bean demonstrated only misanthropy and malice. As a young man he departed to a cave near the ocean shore, bringing with him an equally monstrous wife. After a few years of robbing unlucky travelers, the Beans took to murdering and ultimately devouring the bodies of their victims. Later they had a few children, who joined in the family business of robbery and human-hunting when they became old enough.

Thanks to incest, the Bean clan soon blossomed to forty-eight troglodytic cannibals, and the now-crowded cave was strewn with bones. They had become too numerous to conceal their crimes from the outside world, and word spread of their man-eating ways. Finally, King James the First decided that he had enough of all this depravity and dispatched an army of four-hundred men to track down the Beans. The loathsome family was rounded up and taken to Edinburgh. The male Beans had their limbs cut off and were left to bleed to death. The women and children, after being forced to watch the previous executions, were burned at the stake. A happy tale, to be sure.


Presumably Thetford had a citizen with the unfortunate luck of sharing a name with this notorious figure, but perhaps the town decided for unknowable reasons to honor the Scottish cannibal. Could it be that Thetford is populated by Bean's man-eating descendants? It may be too terrible to imagine, but travelers are urged to keep their wits about them while passing through.







Would you like to know more?
-Mysterious Britain's entry on Sawney Bean
-Virtual Scotland's entry on Sawney Bean

Vicious Video

Here's a slice of history for you.

During the eighties, the UK went through a national panic. Police were dispatched, raids were made, businesses were forcibly shut down, people were arrested. What was the catalyst for this unpleasant outbreak of martial law? Was it social unrest triggered by high levels of unemployment? Was it the protests made in response to the Thatcher government trying to effectively ban homosexuality? Had the installation of Orwellian security cameras on every street corner provoked rioters that resulted in brutal police action?

Nope. It all had to do a bunch've videotapes.

To place things in context, the VCR and Betamax player had only recently become available for the general public and video stores were a new retail phenomena.Things were vastly different from today in that movie companies were very hesitant to release their films. Amid uncertain new territory for copyright regulations and wild speculation that the videotape would doom the silver screen to obsolescence, few major studios wanted to commit their films to VHS or Beta tapes lest it lead to their own economic ruin. At the time, only a smattering of "classic" movies saw the light of day on videotape (with reluctance on behalf of their owners) and a good portion of these were colorized.

So, during this initial period, it was difficult to find contemporary movie releases for home viewing. Store owners were eager to access the fresh and growing market but when faced with a considerable lack of product, they turned to only alternative. Numerous small distribution companies had arisen specializing in:
1). Porn.
2). Schlock and trash movies. Public domain, poverty row thrillers from the forties alongside easy to procure exploitation movies from abroad, especially from the United States, Spain, and Italy. Before long, the shelves of British video stores were lined with films featuring cannibals, zombies, and psycho killers. Within all this sordid glop were some genuinely entertaining flicks and genre classics, but mostly these movies were notable only for being badly made and almost hilariously gruesome.


Titles like Gestapo's Last Orgy and Brain Damage Nightmare drew some complaints, but for the most part business was going well. Distribution companies were churning out new finds, and heavily promoted these videotapes. Vipco, a UK-based company, took out a full page in the Sunday Times to advertise the arrival of The Driller Killer, a lovely film about a crazed artist who takes to murdering homeless people with a cordless drill. Other companies followed suit, relentless hyping the notoriety of their movies. One company, Go Video, attempted to stir up some additional sales through a little engineered controversy, and sent an anonymous letter to conservative media watchdogs describing the depravity of Cannibal Holocaust.

This was a big mistake.

The letter wound up in the hands of Mary Whitehouse, a sour faced Christian crone who had launched a crusade against objectionable material on television. Convinced that Cannibal Holocaust was practically a threat to Western Civilization, Whitehouse spearheaded a community movement to ban the sale and distribution of such films. The tabloids were quick to exploit the public outcry, and ran spurious and half-baked claims that dreck horror was responsible for violent crime and delinquent youths. They coined the phrase Video Nasty to describe the infamous tapes. The term caught on like wildfire.

It was all hysteria and reactionary censorship. The "think of the children" argument was absurd as no retailer in their right mind would ever lend titles like SS Experiment Camp to kids. Additionally, there was never evidence to suggest that anyone would be actually hurt by watching such a movie. They were tasteless, stupid, violent, and often misogynistic, but they were ultimately harmless. Those that objected to them never seemed to consider simply never renting them in the first place.

Eventually, parliament passed the Video Recordings Act in 1984. The act redefined pre-existing obscenity laws to include explicit horror movies and foreign-import smut. Police would investigate the sale and renting of such videotapes, and would arrest shop-owners found with the illegal items in their stores. Some faced as much as eighteen months in prison. The tapes were collected in garbage bags and destroyed on police premises. It was insane. Even copies of Dolly Parton's Best Little Whorehouse in Texas were swept up, under the decidedly incorrect assumption that it was porn.

The liberal and counter-culture institutions of the UK were outraged, and the cheap gore movies that the government had sought to eradicate were suddenly lionized as expressions of free speech. The tapes gained more infamy than they could've hoped to achieve otherwise and movies like Make Them Die Slowly and I Spit On Your Grave became highly sought after items.

More than twenty years later, cooler heads prevailed and the restrictions were reevaluated. However, there are still movies that remain banned in Britain and others are allowed only in truncated, edited forms. Still, freedom won out in the end and the noble people of the UK can insert the special edition DVDs of The Toolbox Murders and Killer Nun and watch the ensuing carnage. For better or worse, the Video Nasties are here to stay.

For better or worse.