Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 514 - Carl Tanzler: Romantic... Necrophiliac?

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

In Key West, Florida during the Great Depression, an obsessed German radiology technician, Carl Tanzler, became convinced that a dying young woman named Elena de Hoyos was his supernatural soulmate. After her death, his delusion led him to commit one of the most bizarre and disturbing acts of grave robbery in American history. We explore the strange intersection of obsession, tuberculosis, embalming, mental illness, and necrophilia in yet another dark, weird, and fascinating episode. Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com  Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :) For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast. Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Carl Tanzler loved Elena de Hoyos. He positively adored her. He loved her slender figure, her gentle smile, the way she laughed. He loved her Cuban features and heritage, which reminded him of entrancing couple of days he had spent in Cuba on his way from Germany to the U.S. He loved to gaze into her wide, trusting eyes. He frequently bought her gifts from various little stores in their small eccentric town of Key West Florida, stuff like fancy jewelry and clothing, things that are full.

family couldn't afford to buy her. Whenever he wasn't with her, he imagined traveling with her, bringing her to all these fantastic places he had seen during his many, many travels in the first two decades of the 20th century. Despite his status as a married father of two, Carl firmly believed that the much, much younger, Elena, was the girl of his dreams. And I mean that literally. He truly believed she was the girl he had seemingly been dreaming about since he was a kid, dreams he considered to be visions. Visions heavily influenced by his mother's stories about this supposed spirit called the white woman who had supposedly haunted his family's estate in Germany for many years. Uh-huh. From the moment Carl saw Elena, he knew that she had to be his. She had to be. It was destiny.

There was just one problem. Well, there were two problems, actually. The first problem was that he was, as I mentioned, married with kids. The second, arguably even bigger problem was that Elena was dying. Dine fast. She had tuberculosis, the most deadly disease in human history. It is estimated to have taken well over a billion lives by the dawn of the 19th century, tuberculosis, or as it was known then, consumption, had killed one in seven of all people who had ever lived. Victims suffered from hacking bloody coughs, debilitating pain in their lungs and fatigue. Not a pleasant way to go. In 1882, Robert Koch's discovery of the tubercle bacillus revealed that TB was not genetic, but rather high contagious. It was also somewhat preventable through good hygiene. As the medical community came to

accept that tuberculosis was contagious, officials launched public health campaigns to educate people on how best to protect themselves. In 1943, under Dr. Selman-Abram and Abraham Waxman's supervision, Rutger University graduate student, Albert Schatz, discovered the bacteria that would later create the antibiotic streptomycin, a huge breakthrough in TB treatment, which would pave the way for later even better antibiotics that the virus was less resistant to. But that treatment would not come nearly soon enough for Elena De Hoios. Elena died on October 25th, 1931 at the age of only 22, and Tanzler was devastated. The woman he had been searching for his entire life, the woman of his actual dreams was gone, slipped out of his grasp like she had been no more than smoke. Of course,

she hadn't actually vanished, as almost every person alive does, if they don't spontaneously combust or actually disappear, Elena had left behind her body, which under normal circumstances would be prepared for burial and in turn at a local cemetery where it steadily would rod and turn into bones and eventually into dust. But Tazler's love, it didn't adhere to normal circumstances. Soon, Tansler was convinced that Elena was calling out to him from beyond the grave, that she wanted him to protect her, to protect her body from decay, to take care of her, that they could still have the life he had always dreamed for them, the traveling, the gift. the togetherness.

He started to believe that he could preserve her body so well that the illness that had ravaged her that had taken her life could actually be reversed. He started to believe

that he could resurrect her. Tanzer just needed two things to make this happen, Elin de Hoyo's body, of course, and somewhere where they could be alone or he could perform his experiments. Oh, and maybe he needed a third thing, like an actual miracle.

Against all the odds, he would get exactly what he wanted, except for the except for the miracle and except for the resurrection. But he would get the body. Not for a month, not for a year, but for over seven years. The incredibly strange story of Carl Tanzer's undying love

for the dead right now on this incredibly romantic, loving, tender, or maybe incredibly disturbing, delusional and psychotic addition of time suck. This is Michael McDonald, and you're listening to TimeSuck. You're listening to TimeSuck. Well, happy Monday. Welcome and welcome back to the cult of the curious.

Happy Fourth of July, if you are a space lizard here in this early, or hope you had a good Fourth July if you're not. I'm Dan Kempelman's a suckmaster, necrophile shamer. Work in progress. And you are listening to TimeSuck. Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina, praise be to Good Boy Bojangles, and Glory B to Triple M. Wanted to give one of the final reminders this week

that tickets are still on sale for wet hot bad magic summer camp, 26, the Ho Down Showdown, the final camp, Thursday, September 10th, 2026 through Sunday, September 13th. Thanks so much to the people who have bought tickets already, many of them recently. Definitely have more than enough people coming to have an awesome time. Go to bad magic productions.com. If you want to get tickets, same place you go to for merch. And thanks to all those who do continue to get their merch there, a ton of fun designs. Tickets will no longer be for sale as of August 1st.

So time is running out to join us if you are thinking about. about it. And that's it for Camp, uh, just realizing now, but this is the second topic in a row that strongly relates to necrophilia. Oh, whoops. Uh, or for some of you creeps, oh, fuck yeah, bro. Let's go. About time this fucking podcast found a true theme to stick with. Uh, maybe it will learn more about how to create a zombie baby this week. Who knows? Let's find out. All right, first off, let's learn about the funerary practices that help lead to Tanzler. keeping a corpse for as long as he did

and entertaining the notion that he could bring her back to life before we jump into our timeline and cover this, his story properly. Have you ever been to an open casket funeral? I haven't been to one in many years. Not since the incident. Not since the, well, since the funeral

for my cousin, my cousin, my sexy cousin, first cousin, Katie. Not since I wasn't, you know, not since I was warned. I wasn't warned. I guess, you know, rather, that she was going to be buried in a tight little perfect black dress. Not since she was buried in that little push-up bra. I mean, what was I supposed to do?

Not squeeze them? Keep my pants on! Oh, shut up! I don't have a cousin, Katie. And I've never been to an open casket funeral. Not once. Still have never seen a corpse in real life, which is fucking crazy, considering how much I've talked about corpses here over the years. That being said, I am in no hurry to see one.

I'm good. I'm good. I'll take your word for it, what they look like. I've seen pictures on the internet For some people, open caskets are the norm They give people the opportunity To see their deceased loved ones One last time as they were in life

More or less Probably a little bit quieter I'm guessing than they were in life A little stiffer, hopefully But at least some approximation It gives them the chance To potentially lay them to rest in an outfit They loved with things that were important to them

Before it's time to say goodbye Kind of a one-sided goodbye You know, but still it's emotional Some families are resolutely closed casket families like mine, we don't need to see your face again. We got plenty of photos. And you're even smiling with your eyes open.

You're real eyes and a lot of them. And you don't look like a zombie. And hardly any of them, you know, so we're good. For some families, it depends on the situation. After all, open casket funerals are often easier on mourners if the deceased body is, you know, in relatively decent condition. If they've suffered an accident that impacted their physical body significantly, or if their body was not discovered for a couple of days or a couple of weeks or months,

You know, that can open the door to a lot of trauma, but how do bodies, well, become ready to be buried at all? It's not something most of us probably spend a lot of time thinking about. And some we know is sick, for instance, we naturally focus on spending the most amount of time we can with them, pushing the question of what comes next to the back of our minds. But if you have helped plan a funeral, you know, you know that there's a lot more that goes into it than simply sticking them in the ground.

Indeed, when people die, they leave behind a life that must be legally and administratively closed out, An official declaration of death is the first step to get a death certificate, which is a critical piece of paperwork. If your loved one died in a hospital or nursing home where a doctor was present, the staff will handle this. But if your relative died at home, especially if the death was unexpected, you'll need to get a medical professional to declare them dead. To do this, call 911 soon after your loved one passes and have them transported to an emergency room, where they can be officially declared dead and moved to a funeral home. if your family member died at home under hospice care, a hospice nurse can declare them dead without a declaration of death.

You can't plan a funeral, at least not legally. You can't legally bury your cremated body without specific permits, much less handle the deceased legal affairs. Now, ideally, you've had an opportunity to talk with the deceased about what they want, whether that's as vague as they want to be buried or as specific as. They want the macarona played as they are lowered into the ground. or as I have clearly specified many times. You know, you would like to be laid to rest in an animatronic exoskeleton.

And then right before your casket is lowered into the ground, Michael Jackson's thriller starts to play loudly. The casket opens. Your body is raised up by some sort of hydraulic contraption. Your animatronic suit is then activated by the DJ playing the music, and you start dancing your motherfucking dead ass off. Now, as a backup, is a plan B. I would, of course, be open to having my body launch towards a target via a massive catapult.

And if I hit that target, well, then naturally, everyone present gets a free car. Load the Dan! Aim, the Dan! Fire! The Dan! And yes, I would like to have my funeral sponsored. However, if the deceased has not laid out a specific burial plan, we'll need to choose a funeral home and decide on specifics like where the service will be, whether to opt for cremation, where the body or ashes will be interred, what type of tombstone or earned to order. And all of this can get pretty expensive. Not like animatronic choreography expensive or massive corpse catapult expensive, but still pretty costly. The average cost of a funeral with a casket and burial has risen to... $8,300 approximately as of

2023. Furthermore, the average funeral with cremation by passing the cost of a casket and other preparation measures still costs around $6,280. You can't just legally throw them in a fucking fire pit in the backyard for some reason.

The most important factor, of course, is location. Funerals are most expensive in New England, where the average cost are more than $9,100 and the least expensive in around the Rockies and the West Coast. States like Oregon, Washington, here in Idaho, where the average costs are well under $8,000. Generally, areas with higher cost of living will have higher costs for the dead, higher funeral costs.

So try to die over here if you're worried about costs, I guess. Unsurprisingly, a service with viewing, ceremony, and burial will cost more than a service that just involves cremation. So-called economy wood caskets made of things like pine, poplar, or veneer construction can cost $1,000 to about $3,000. bucks. Oak or cherry caskets can cost $3,000 to 7,000. Some luxury materials like mahogany, walnut, other exotic woods can cost upwards of $20,000.

Especially when accounting for additions like hand-finished details, custom interiors, specialty designs. I was not able to get an estimate for what an animatronic exoskeleton would cost or a casket designed to push it up and out via a hydraulic mechanism.

Turns out you can find everything on the internet. Making things much more expensive, caskets often sell for 300% to 500% more than wholesale prices. A $600 casket might cost $3,000 at a funeral home. Thankfully, by U.S. federal law, funeral homes generally must accept a casket purchase elsewhere and cannot charge a handling fee simply because they bought it from another vendor. And then there is the matter of where to put the casket. A burial plot typically costs anywhere from about $500,000 to $25,000 or more, depending primarily

on location. In rural areas, plots can often be found for less than three grand. All suburban cemeteries commonly charged between two grand and ten grand. And major metropolitan areas, especially where land is scarce. Prices of five grand, a 25 grand, not unusual at all, and particularly prestigious or historic cemeteries, they can charge far, far more. The most expensive cemeteries in America are in New York and Los Angeles. In the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park in L.A., the final resting place of Maryland Monroe, space is severely limited and plots regularly trade on the open market, which is fucking weird to me. People out there trading resting places. Premium spaces near celebrities

frequently cost between $200,000 and several million dollars. Situated in the heart of Hollywood, the historic graveyard, the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, home to countless stars like Judy Garland and Rudolph Valentino. Prices in the exclusive Garden of Legends area start at 200 grand can exceed six million for custom family mausoleums. Six million bucks for a house for the day. Finally, the National Historic Landmark of Woodland Cemetery in the Bronx in New York City features elaborate private family mausoleums that have sold for upwards of $4.5 million. Some families have sold their family mausoleums to other families for seven figures.

That's an interesting way to make money, but why not, I guess? Oh, shit. Do you know our dead grandparents' final resting place is worth almost five mil? Do you think they'll care if we sell it? I don't think they will. And if they do, I don't think they can stop us. Let's do it. When buying a burial plot, the plot price is simply for the right to be buried in that space.

Usually does not include the cost of digging the grave, closing it up afterwards or installing a headstone or mausoleum. Then there's the burial vault, the oftentimes optional structure that a casket can go into. A basic concrete graveliner generally costs anywhere from $700 to $500, while a standard burial vault will run between $1,000 and $3,000. 3,000 typically, higher end, sealed, signed, delivered, sealed, reinforced, or metal-lined, vaults can cost anywhere from 2 grand to 15 grand or more. Many cemeteries require either a vault or a liner because it helps prevent the ground above the grave from sinking as the casket eventually deteriorates. And why do any of this?

Wouldn't it be easier to simply leave the bodies of our loved ones out in the woods where they can just decompose peacefully? You know, return them to the land from which they came? or, you know, set them off on a Viking funeral, burn them on some kind of floating pyre, catapult them towards a floating target

for fucking prizes? Maybe. Like with many things, our attitudes towards death how we engage with a ritual of experiencing the end of another's life is largely the product of our wider culture.

And our attitudes about death, the final right of passage for every human being has been one of the primary topics for every culture to address with traditions, belief systems, and practices. For a long time, these practices

were directly influenced by what kind of technology was available, which, you know, for most of human history wasn't much. It was typically a hole in the ground, maybe a box, maybe a shovel, and then anything like, you know, food, drink, or gifts that would spring up around the funeral to support mourners. In early America, as most of us know, death was a frequent part of colonial life. The conditions of the 17th century in the U.S. were such that 40% roughly of children in society

did not reach adulthood. That's a disturbing number. early death parental grief just a constant back then i know we got a lot of problems in the current day but we don't have problems like that at least not in most of the world who the most profitable funeral related material produced by the colonial press back then was mourning broadsides these pamphlets basically that contain eulogies for the deceased while puritan funerals were silent somber affairs the night before them was generally a lively communal event the night before the burial friends and family of the deceased would gather at the house of mourning to partake in a viewing or time of watching over the body to make sure that the disease did not awaken.

This so-called wake was accompanied by a large feast where mourners celebrated with food and liquor. The rum bill was often the most lavish expense of the entire funeral. Real quick, the term wake does not come from the ritual of making sure that the dead were truly dead, by the way, though. The term originated centuries earlier. The true origin of the word wake comes from ancient Celtic and old. old English traditions of staying awake to act as a spiritual guard or a vigil over the body. People believe that the soul remained with the body until burial, and the vigil was held to protect the deceased from evil spirits, guide their soul to the afterlife.

Man, even if you lived a good life, you still had to hope that your fucking dipshit friends kept the appropriate vigil so the dark forces didn't get a hold of you. Got to keep an eye on that body and fight off the demons with, I don't know, squirt guns full of Holy Water, or fucking blessed swords, or blessed wands, or just regular ones, I don't know. Back to America, as the population of the colonies grew, their funeral ceremonies became increasingly elaborate public displays of mourning. The exchanging of gifts became a major part of colonial death rituals, the most common being pairs of gloves and gold rings that were distributed to the attendees. At the funeral of Wait Still Winthrop, grandson of the founding governor

of Massachusetts Bay Colony, 60 rings were given to friends and attendance. how odd odd that this dude was literally named wait still right first of all like hold still also odd that 60 people

got a weight still death ring to remember him by no one's get a fucking remembrance ring in my funeral not no one maybe new car

if I hit the target the total expense of the entire ceremony was over 600 pounds which amounted to one fifth of Winthrop's entire estate what an absurd waste of money

unsurprisingly the increasing grandeur of funeral ceremonies became a financial burden for many in the community, particularly for widows and children who became impoverished sometimes by spending so much of their estate money on daddy's funeral bill.

Feeling a little bit guilty now about my wish for an animatronic suit and catapult. I'm definitely not going to even consider, not anymore, a catapult and an exoskeleton. Apparently spending that much money would just be selfish. Colonial legislators began to pass

some sanctuary laws to regulate extravagant funeral purchases. This legislation restricted the amount of money that could be charged for things like morning garments, the tolling of the church bell, undertaker services. It also enacted fines for excessive gift giving and providing liquor at funerals. The more I learn about humanity, the weirder, I think we collectively are. For example, in 1761, the Massachusetts Bay Province enacted an act to retrench the extraordinary expenses at funerals. That's actually what it was called, which read in part. No scarves, gloves, except six pair to the bearers, and one pair to each minister of the church or congregation, where any deceased person belongs.

Wine, rum, or rings shall be allowed and given at any funeral. Upon the penalty of 50 pounds to be forfeited by the executor, to the will or state the person interred, or to be recovered by action in any of his majesty's courts of record. Great job, guys. way to put on those powdered wigs and just get some important shit done. Way to fucking regulate that problem. Problem solved. Not even really sure that there was a problem, but you fucking solved it. Moving along now, the 19th century is considered to be the genesis of the modern American funeral industry. Towns grew in the cities, which quickly became severely overcrowded,

as local urban cemeteries ran out of burial space, the rural park cemetery emerged. Since these were located far enough away from the city to require transportation, coffin makers began to offer additional services like Kempark. carriage rentals and Hearst transportation to the gravesite. Over time, these coffin makers began to take on other duties of what is now considered death care. They offered morning wear, burial clothes, flowers, preparation of the body, coordination of the entire funeral service. But for the most part, the act of physically getting the body ready for burial was much the same as it had always been, cleaning and dressing the body in appropriate garments. But with the Civil War, that would change.

soldiers were desperate not to be buried on what they considered enemy soil and likewise their families were very eager to have their loved ones bodies returned to them but that presented a problem right just logistically despite remarkable advances in transportation like trains the journey was still very often quite a long one from a battlefield in a border state or the upper south to a northern city transport might take several days to about a week for much deeper in the confederacy could take one to several weeks right for much deeper in the Union, you know, or vice versa. In addition, rail networks were fragmented, wartime damage, often disrupted service. And even before you got to the transportation method, arranging identification, permits, and the proper pathways for the bodies could take days. Sometimes bodies would be preserved for transportation or for viewing by packing them in ice, or laying them on so-called cooling boards with a concave ice-filled box fitted over the torso and head. What if they didn't have any fucking ice handy? Right? That wasn't always an option. Even when it was, didn't always work very well. You know, shortages of ice, other materials during the Civil War meant that families were likely to get back something that looked less like a body and more like a nasty, noxious bucket of human soup, which is probably my least favorite kind of soup. Not that I've tried it, which I haven't, to my knowledge. Luckily, scientific advances would help preserve bodies through a new process called embalming. Now, embalming existed long, long before the Civil War, long before the 19th century, the most famous embalmers with the ancient Egyptians. and they developed elaborate preservation techniques for mummification over 5,000 years ago, back between 4,000 and 3,500 BCE.

But their goal was religious and spiritual preservation rather than viewing before burial. In balbing in its modern form actually goes back to the 1600s. The English physiologist William Harvey developed some of the earliest techniques while studying how blood moves through the body. As part of his experiments, he injected colored liquids into the arteries of cadavers. Later, scientists such as Frederick Roche and Gabrielle Clotteris used similar methods to slow decomposition. Royce was an interesting dude. Among a lot of other things he did, he used preserved anatomical specimens preserved by either drying or embalming them to create these macabreliaments, some scenes incorporating human parts.

You know, just fun stuff like infant skeletons, adorned with lace and jewelry and arranged in artistic displays. I mean, I wouldn't necessarily mind some of that, but it would freak some people out for sure. You know, can you imagine walking into somebody's living room, seeing something like, oh, my, oh, my. Oh, is that what I think it is? Well, do you think it's three baby skeletons wearing diamond necklaces, playing ring around the rosy, wearing crowns made of squirrel spines? If so, then yes, it is! Do you love it? The first person to fully describe, embalming as a way to preserve bodies for burial was a scum. Scottish anatomist William Hunter.

Billy's work became especially famous after his younger brother, John Hunter, embalmed a woman named Mrs. Martin, Mrs. Martin Van Butchell in 1775. Her will had stated that her husband could keep control of her fortune, if and only if, her body remained above ground. To satisfy that condition, he had her embalmed, dressed in fashionable clothes, and displayed in a glass-topped case in his sitting room. where visitors could and did come and view her during visiting hours. What a fun thing to look at. When you get up in the middle of the night to grab a fresh glass of water, for example. Oh, fuck. God damn it. Why are you still there? I hate this.

Still pre-19th century. The average American was pretty opposed to embalming the body. Most people considered it to be a mutilation. But with the Civil War, that perception would change. Dr. Thomas Holmes considered the father of modern embalming would start using a new embalming process on fallen Union soldiers embalming over 4,000 bodies before he privatized his practice. He had come up with his new process as a result of his experience in college, where he had fucked a whole bunch of corpses and did not like how it made his dick feel. Wait, what?

No. Back in college, he had complained that preservation was either improperly rendered, ineffectual, or not attempted at all. The preservatives used at the time, including mercury and zinc-based compounds. were bad for medical students' health, who had to spend a lot of time inhaling all that stuff, not the best for them. Also, by this time, medical students,

or schools, rather, were facing the problem that was about to hit the U.S. during the Civil War. Students needed cadavers to learn anatomy and practice their skills on, but the bodies were decomposing too quickly before they could practice on them. That led to a lot of grave robbing and body selling on the black market.

The proposed solution to this problem was to pump the bodies full of a bunch of really toxic chemicals. But Holmes thought, there might be a better way. Over the course of his studies, he learned about how in 1838, a French chemist named Jean-Nichaelus Ganal

had introduced a new method for preserving human remains in which arsenic was injected directly into the carotid artery. This allowed anatomists to dissect corpses or prepare anatomical specimens without worrying about the putrefaction or decay. By and large, the method worked, though many anatomists suffered arsenic poison as a result. so it wasn't quite the non-toxic approach, Holmes had desired.

But it did deliver astonishingly lifelike results, which would end up unsurprisingly being exactly what a lot of people wanted. Right before the Civil War, Holmes experimented with arterial embalming, and through this developed an arsenic-based solution that could be pumped into a cadaver's arteries via an injection apparatus. And how does arsenic do what it does? Well, it preserves bodies by blocking the biological processes are required for decomposition,

effectively acting as an extreme sterilizing agent. When a person or an animal dies, the body naturally breaks down through self-digestion, atollysis, and bacterial putrefaction. Arsenic disrupts these pathways at a molecular level, largely preventing the tissue

or more accurately really slowing down the tissue from Roddy. So then, as a captain in the Union Army Medical Corps, stationed in Washington, D.C., Holmes got his chance to show off his new technique after the death of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth. Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth. Why Elmer's mom and dad? Why would you do that to baby boy?

Anyway, a friend of President Abraham Lincoln, Ellsworth, was also the first officer to be a military casualty of the Civil War. On May 24, 1861, he was shot while removing a Confederate flag from the roof of a hotel in Virginia. Thanks to Holmes, Ellsworth's body was embalmed and displayed to the public at his funeral,

and people were reportedly very impressed with his life-like look. Afterwards, Ellsworth's body was taken to New York City, where thousands lined up to view the funeral procession. Mourners on the route displayed a banner declaring Ellsworth, his blood cries for vengeance. And now this new but really old signs of embalming takes off. Over the course of the war,

homes alone embalmed 4,000 men at $100 per corpse. A lot of dead bodies, how weird were his dreams after seeing all that shit. In shops in D.C., Georgetown, and Alexandria, he displayed the preserved bodies of unknown soldiers, which he'd collected from battlefields. The fuck? Man, we used to be so much more morbid than we are now. Imagine seeing a dolled up, propped up, fresh battlefield corpse

in the window of some little boutique shop downtown. Thanks, my God, thanks to the number of dead bodies piled up, it soon became a quick way for other people to make some money. And Balmers literally followed the Union and Confederate armies across the country, not ominous at all, pitching tents next to battle sites, even offering soldiers the chance to prepay for their own embalming.

Wow. In January of 1865, General Ulysses S. Grant withdrew embalmers' permits and ordered them to stay beyond the lines. It was affecting morale. Got no shit. By this point, some embalmers

were already moving on to do another business model. Many of them started woodworking, too, which allowed them to make coffins, and now the modern American funeral industry was up and running. Ironically, before his death, the 1900, Thomas Holmes stipulated that his own body should not be embalmed. And why was that? Well, perhaps he knew that embalming, well, it presented a problem. Not a physical problem,

but an emotional one. After all, part of the body's natural decaying is what allows us to move on. When we see a fresh corpse, especially one that looks like the person is only sleeping, it is harder to understand, especially in the throes of grief that the person's soul or essence or whatever you want to call it has already moved on. It looks like, they should be able to just open their eyes and start talking to you again, that they're not really dead. And this was exactly what had happened to President Lincoln. On February 20th, 1862, Abraham's 11-year-old son, Willie, lay dying of typhoid fever in the guest bedroom of the White House. At 5 p.m. that evening, the young boy took his last breath. As Lincoln locked himself

in his office, overcome with grief, preparations were made for Willie's body, and Henry P. Catell, who later would handle Lincoln's own body, after he'd been assassinated, was hired to embalm the little boy. Once Catell's work was done, Willie's body was laid out in the green room of the White House. The poet Nathaniel Parker Willis later described the dead boy's appearance at the funeral with the following. He lay with eyes closed. His brown hair parted as we had known it. Pale in the slumber of death, but otherwise unchanged, for he was dressed as if for the evening, and held in one of his hands crossed upon his breast a bunch of exquisite flowers. According to those in attendance, the family intended to send Willie home to the West so that he may sleep under the sod of his own

valley after the funeral. At the last minute, however, Lincoln decided that he could not bear to be separated from his dear son's body, and he had the boys' remains interred in William Thomas Carroll's family vault in D.C. The president then visited the grave many, many times, and requested that his coffin be reopened on at least two occasions so we could look upon his boy and perhaps caresses cold but still somewhat lifelike face. Some stories about this state that Lincoln could not stand to leave the boy alone in the dark cold tomb. And we do know that he would sit with Willie's body for hours on end, and that Lincoln once admitted to a Union soldier, since Willie's death, I catch myself every day involuntarily talking with him as if he were with me. Now, to be fair, there is

little solid evidence that embalming itself causes prolonged or unhealthy grief. But anecdotally, there is quite a bit, which only makes sense in my opinion. Looking at a skeleton, you know that that person is long dead. No matter how powerful your grief, they've been dead. But looking at a dearly missed loved one who still appears to be alive, just sleeping, it's like refusing to bandage the wound their parting has left you with and you just keep bleeding and bleeding profusely. But there are, of course, other perspectives on all this. In his influential essay, and not 1965 book, Death, Grief, and Morning, English anthropologist Jeffrey Gore, argued that Western societies had made death increasingly private, hidden, and even taboo. He compared death in the 20th century

to sex in the 19th century, something that everyone was experiencing or would experience, but that people avoided discussing openly, which made it harder to deal with when inevitably it came up. Similarly, in her 1963 investigation of modern-day burial practices behind the formaldehyde curtain, English America, that's a great title. English-American author and activist Jessica Mitford came to the same conclusion that the funeral industry and embalming in particular turned a normal human process

into something commercialized and fake. As she famously opened her essay, The drama begins to unfold with the arrival of the corpse at the mortuary. Alas, poor York, how surprised he would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor

and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trust, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rused, and neatly dressed, transformed from a common corpse into a beautiful memory picture. No law requires embalming, no religious doctrine commends it, nor is it dictated by considerations of health, sanitation, or even of personal daintiness. In no part of the world, but in Northern America, is it widely used?

At one point, she describes the vast array of products that embalmers used to preserve and even to improve corpses. She wrote, there are various choices of embalming fluids. If flex tone is used, it will produce a mild, flexible rigidity. The skin retains a velvety softness. The tissues are rubbery and pliable, ideal for women and children. It may be blended with B and G products, the company's Life Lick Tint, which is guaranteed to reproduce nature's own skin texture, the velvety appearance of living tissue.

Sun Tone comes in three separate tints. Sun tan, special cosmetic tint, a pink shade, especially indicated for young female subjects, and regular cosmetic tint moderately pink. and all of that is in my opinion pretty damn creepy when you really think about it by this time mortuary science dictated that between three and six gallons of dyed and perfume formaldehyde glycerin borax phenol alcohol and water be circulated through a corpse along with massage cream to plump any areas of flesh that might have been emaciated or sunken in other words to erase any sign of illness disease etc to erase any in all signs of death itself and on one level that's not entirely a bad thing like we said at the beginning many of us may prefer to to remember our loved ones as healthy and vibrant, not as ravaged by illness and see him one last time. Today, too, most funeral homes position themselves at places that help bring people closer to death,

not further away from it, but for somebody deep in grief, for somebody who may have already had shaky mental health to begin with and say a persistent and powerful delusion about a dead woman who he was meant to find, could this new science of embalming have inadvertently contributed to some very fucking weird behavior? Yes.

And today's story is a shining example of that, potentially. You know, it's hard to know what exactly made Carl Tanzler do what he ended up doing. I'm sure it was a mixture of things, but was one powerful ingredient in that mixture, the relatively new science of embalming. I think so. Was another of the specific cultural climate around the idea of eternal romance, and specifically eternal romance as it was connected to tuberculosis, which was widely considered one of the most aesthetically pleasing diseases? Yeah, yeah, I think so. and was another ingredient probably the most powerful one something going on in Tanzer's brain something that none of us will ever be able to fully explain perhaps let's jump into our timeline

and look into all of this now or in a moment right after today's first of two mid-show sponsor breaks if you don't want to hear these ads ever again please sign out to be a space alert on Patreon help us make monthly charitable contributions get the catalog ad-free episodes three days early and more. Thanks for listening to our sponsors, and now it is actually timeline time. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time-sunk timeline. January 12, 1877.

That is where today's story begins, potentially. Since a lot of our information about Carl Tanzer's life is from his own memoirs, and since he loved to lie about himself, we don't actually know that with certainty. as he tells it however he was born January 12th 1877 in Dresden, Germany, in the townhouse that his family called the castle. But he would grow up in their other house, what his family called Via Cassell, out in the country. And that house was potentially haunted. Carl's mother apparently told him that the villa, I guess probably villa is in this situation. Villa was haunted by an active spirit called the white woman, supposedly one of Carl's ancestors who had died over a century earlier in 1765.

Later, Carl would wonder if his own fondness for dead women started here. Interesting. Did young Carl have a hankering for ghost titties? It's possible. It's certainly possible. And don't you dare kinkshame him. If he and his ghost ladies want to go all succubes and get their spectral fuck on, don't try and stop them.

Maybe you can't ask if you can watch so. Right? If you're one of those ghost cucks I've been hearing so much about. I haven't been hearing anything about ghost cucks, but I wish I had been. Sounds fun. being weird. Refocusing now. When Carl was 12,

he apparently had a dream or rather a vision of a very beautiful girl in a white dress, reclining on a rococo sete, which I painted on a piece of paper then. So that's what he wrote. Young Carl also had other interests

outside of a crush on a ghost. He loved electricity, chemical experiments, astronomy, dreamed of inventing a flying machine. I love the back then. That's still how you thought of these what airplanes would be called flying machines. On high school,

he supposedly would build a glider plane and tested himself from a hill in a nearby park. By the time he's in college, he wrote that he had an entire room in the villa devoted to his experiments with high voltage electricity and that he built a workshop where he had made a boat and two hot air balloons. Huh. Okay, so he's Frankenstein.

He's a type of Frankenstein working in his laboratory. 1901 at the age of 24, he earned a Master of Arts and Medicine, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry, and more for a total of nine different degrees. from the University of Leipzig. Or so he said, do I think that's true?

Oh, fuck, no. No, uh. I don't think a lot of, I don't think the fucking balloon shit is true. I don't think the plane shit is true. I don't think almost any of this is true. Around this time, he'd also claim he had another paranormal experience, though.

Two, actually. He wrote, I was sitting in my chair in the green room, which was his laboratory. The hour was late, about 11, I would say, I felt tired, but my day's work was not yet finished. Suddenly, without looking up from my paper,

I noticed a movement near my side. It was a pencil lying on the table. It moved slowly half across the table, then it lifted itself off of the table performing a few somersaults in the air and down to the floor. Now a matchbox started walking about the table, lifting itself gyrating in the air. Then there followed my books. Finally, the entire heavy oaken table lifted itself off the floor and floated upward, as if carried by water. Then there was a noise, like the retort of a gun, or report of a gun, from the direction of my static electrified. electricity machine. You didn't have a fucking satic electricity machine. Walking over to see what had happened, I found that all four huge central glass discs had been broken right to the middle. Then he said as the furniture began to shake and move all around the room, crashed into hundreds of dollars worth of scientific equipment, and Carl didn't know what to make of it.

Was it a prank? A thief? A prowler? Something weirder going on? All made up? Two nights later, he wrote that he woke up at two in the morning to find two women standing over his bedside. Fuck yeah, bro.

Manasatatatatat. and with ghosts. No worries about STIs or pregnancies. Ideal scenario. Get after it. If people watch, let some ghost cucks watch. Apparently they didn't try and fucking know. The first was a tall lady with snow white hair.

She seemed to Tansler to be the white lady he had been told about as a child. The second figure hid behind the white lady who clutched her hand. I thought she was going to clutch her pearls there, but hand. Then the white lady bent down and spoke and said, I've been trying to get your attention for quite some time, my boy. But you wouldn't take note. You were too much engrossed in your experiments. That's why I had to use some violence.

Look here, Carl. I have brought you the bride whom someday you will meet. Carl couldn't respond. I bet little Carl could, though. I bet little Carl was fucking hard as a rock, but regular Carl, I guess he was dumbstruck. He said he was frozen as the white lady drew the second figure closer. The second woman's veil slipped,

and for just a moment he saw this woman's long, dark hair, and beautiful face. The girl smiled, but then vanished. And then Carl came. Maybe, possibly, probably. Thanks to that, Carl became obsessed with the supernatural. He had no rational explanation for what he'd experienced. Nothing that had been written about ghosts or apparitions satisfied his curiosity. So he had to investigate himself.

His investigation led him to Composanto, an expansive open-air monumental cemetery in Genoa, Italy. There he wrote that he had another strange paranormal experience. This time, he claimed he saw a marble statue of a beautiful girl who bore a striking resemblance to the apparition, introduced to him in the green room, in his laboratory. He learned that the girl immortalized and Stone had died at the age of 22, and that interestingly, her name was Elena.

As if under a spell, he claimed he kept repeating her name, Elena, Elena. And then all of a sudden the figure of the apparition of a girl seemed to detach itself from the statue and slowly walk past him. Had he summoned his bride to be? Perhaps. Or he made all that shit up years later in this reverse engineering attempt to fucking somehow rationalize his supposed faded love for a corpse. Either way, Carl still had to get on with his life. Thanks to an expertise, an X-ray imaging.

He had apparently picked up across the supposedly very diverse course of his studies. The now 24-year-old Tanzer got a job with the Australian government and headed to Sydney where he arrived in 1901. He had made enough money to buy a house overlooking Darling Harbor, a 110-foot powerboat, and even a torpedo boat that he intended to use for deep-sea exploration, of course. but did he this all seems like a lot that's unclear again how true all this is according to tanzer the age of 24 would have been a busy year for him passing nine different examinations for nine different degrees hunting down ghosts and moving to sydney to what's now a very uh you know bougie little area very expensive uh some of it may have been true though he did speak and write in english quite well which seems to indicate that he probably lived for a while in an english-speaking country later people would remark that he had a german accent that was slightly British inflected, but it's still unclear how he wound up in Sydney or if he really worked a good, respectable job while he was there. Indeed, co-workers in Florida would later say that Tanzler only mentioned Australia in connection with the time he was incarcerated there, that he would remember that he'd been placed in a, you know, or talk about being placed in an internment camp for Germans in 1914, during the first year of World War I after he'd supposedly been there for 13 years already.

According to Tanzler, life in Australia was mostly about x-rays and apparitions, though. he would describe another paranormal encounter that supposedly took place one night at exactly 7 p.m. writing. Still frozen to the threshold, she stretched out both her hands to me in friendly gesture like a child. As I walked across the room to meet those arms,

I felt my hair raising and cold shivers running down my spine. The closer I approached her and then felt her arms closing around me and felt my arms embracing her. I cannot possibly describe the upsurge of a divine happiness such as I had never experienced before.

There was a melting together in divine bliss. Her wonderful dark tresses, fragrant and caressing, covered us both. There were no longer any chills, only warmth, filling my entire body. It was as if my feet were off the ground and she and I were floating in space. Did he describe sex with the ghost? Phantom fucking? Raith, coitus? Seems like he did. Melting together in divine bliss? He definitely did. Now he's not only encountering spirits, he is fucking him. And we're all listening to it. We're all hearing about it. We're all hearing about it. We're all ghost cucks. He wrote that he wanted to stay in the ghosty woman's embrace forever,

but that as he held her tighter, she disappeared into mist. Luckily, she would be back. She wanted more of that hot carl action. Apparently soon after the apparition returned, stayed with him for seven days while Tanzer went to work and did errands. She never spoke during this seven-day period, but stood by his bed while he slept at night. Hmm, no more melting together in divine bliss.

Did that specter just friends own him? After this visit, once again, she vanished into thin air. All of this, especially the paranormal experiences, made Australia something of a paradise for Tanzler. But on the eve of World War I, all of that changed. Tanzler was still German, and now Germans were the enemy. The Australian government supposedly interned him at the trial bay concentration camp for five years. This does seem to be backed up, at least partially by some others who were there and wrote of their experiences. When he finally returned to his house on the shore, he claimed it was basically destroyed, that he'd lost his library, all his documents.

his laboratory A collection of diamonds emeralds and opals Oh no not the opals One can never have enough opals Australia does produce Around 95% of the world's precious opals So I guess you know

If you were going to stockpile him That would be the place to do it Tansor claimed to arrive back in Germany 1920 And between then in 1926 We don't know much about what he was up to Probably you know Working in another laboratory

He never wrote about his marriage To a young woman named Doris Or the birth of their two daughters not as noteworthy as an opal collection His story picks back up in 1926 When he decided to start a new life On February 6th, 49-year-old Carl Tanzler left Germany

To be born anew Leaving his young wife Well, she wasn't that much younger than him But leaving his wife, Doris And small daughters behind He planned to join his sister in Zephyr Hills, Florida His family would follow once he had settled And felt he could provide for them

Carl's ship departed from Rotterdam In the Netherlands bound for Cuba initially, but once in Cuba instead of heading on to Key West, Carl decided to stay for a few days. Why? Because of the sweet, sweet Latin ladies. As he would write in his memoirs, it was the time of the carnival, and all of Havana seemed to be intoxicated with a carnival spirit. As it was, I stayed four days, not to amuse myself, but held to the spot by some strange irrational hope that I could find my lost bride in this carnival crowd. This was probably because there were so many, so many, beautiful ladies of the Spanish type

who somehow resembled her and because in this carnival time so many of them wore veils and fairy-like dresses which made this similarly still more possible he had oh he was fucking excited he's like god damn it they're so hot these women reminded him of his lost bribe the ghosty woman that he was apparently still obsessed with

even though he had already married a real living woman and they already had two real living children with each other and he was planning of bringing them all across the Atlantic to join him shortly. Anyway, well, Carl liked Cuba, his first impression of Key West, not as favorable. Perhaps there weren't as many sexy ladies there. Perhaps there weren't any ghostly women there trying to seduce him. Or maybe it's because the terrain was, as he thought, less beautiful than the mountains of Cuba.

Interestingly, most of the buildings that Carl saw there are still standing today. Houses built by shipwrights around the turn of the 19th century from sturdy pine and held together with hand-shaped wooden pegs rather than bolts or nails. Some of them were one story, some consisting of two levels. Many had these things called widow walks or widow's walks on their roofs to enable their owners to look out at the harbor. Other houses were essentially small shacks, which had been built by the owners of local cigar companies for employee housing. Altogether, these houses were spread across about four square miles, and as Tanzer got out the ferry, he took it all in. There was nobody to greet him because his telegram had not made it to relatives.

The next morning, 12 miles from Key West, carrying the few possessions he had brought. with him, Carl climbed aboard the overseas railroad and took a train to Miami. From there, he traveled further north to the small town of Zephyr Hills, close to Tampa and St. Petersburg. Once there, he sent a congratulatory water cooler. He painted to his wife waiting in Dresden. I'm sure that was exactly what she wanted. A painted water cooler. Oh, thank you, Carl.

That's the perfect gift. Handwritten on the back in German was Happy Birthday, 7 September, 1926. It's a different world in Florida. The next year in 1927, when Carl was now 50, his family would join him. Unlike the imaginative mystical Carl, Doris Tanzer, who was now 38, stocky, healthy, determined, practical, strong-willed. She insisted once she was in America that her daughters only speak English and learn the ways of the people in their adopted country. And basically forget their German traditions. For a while, Carl seemed to do right by his wife.

He Americanized his first name by spelling it Carl with a C instead of Carl with a K. Oh, what a change. Also bought some land, laid the foundation for a home they hoped to move into. To do that required more money, though, which he didn't have. So we took a job at what was supposed to be a one-time stopover point, right, back in Key West. And Carl's own words, the Marine Hospital at Key West employed me as a pathologist, an x-ray specialist. I built up a fairly well-equipped X-ray department and peace of mind and scientific work until the fateful day of April 20th or 22nd, excuse me, 1930. Now that makes it sound like Carl was fairly prosperous,

but a woman who worked at the hospital would describe him as destitute. According to her, he started out as an attendant who only cleaned up after procedures, like, you know, just a type of custodial position. A dude loved to talk himself up, stretch the truth, though, or just outright lie. Still, he must have been pretty good at his job,

or at least a smooth talker, because eventually he would end up heading the X-ray department. Thanks to the recommendation of Commander Lombard, the physician-in-charge who had been transferred, who had been transferred there from a stint in New Orleans where he had battled with the bubonic plague. Huh. Seems like this hospital was an interesting workplace.

Two articles about the hospital appeared that year in the Key West Citizen. The first one was a response to accusations made in the Miami News that described the Marine Hospital as nothing other than a saloon and a brothel. Huh. Charges that were angrily denied by the drunks and sex workers there. I mean by doctors and staff. The other articles seem to point to a more ordinary workplace. stated that patients at Marine Hospital

will have Christmas second to none in whole island city. The final sentence in the article was technician Carl Tanzer cooperated by helping with the decorations. That's a weird usage of cooperated, isn't it? They just say like, yeah, he helped fucking with the decorations. Carl Tanzler initially tried to attack the tree decorators,

but a deal was struck with him, and he agreed to cooperate with the other decorators and helped them as long as they promised to give him its fair share of gingerbread. if the hospital was a Bordello or a saloon, they actually wouldn't have been that out of place for Q West. Well, the town wasn't exactly lawless. It was difficult to get, you know,

anywhere else in Florida from this town and vice versa. And that isolation meant that people were pretty free to do the kind of work they wanted, live the way they wanted, which included doing things like smuggling. Cuban rum was an especially popular form of contraband brought in by any number of sea captains and sailors, many of them who had fled to the keys to lay

and make a little money off the area's numerous shipwrecks. Indeed, as soon as the ship crashed into the nearby rocks, which happened about once a week back then at the height of this, some would shout wreck ashore and then people would run out of their houses, hop into boats and claim whatever they could from the disaster. Just run along the beach and just grab shit. In the first half of the 20th century, there was an attempt to make Key West a more upstanding place.

President Roosevelt's New Deal brought to WPA or Works Projects Administration, work project administration, which offered jobs that paid decently. Even so, most of the town was unemployed, aside from the people who worked regularly at the cigar factories, men and women who filed into large brick buildings where they would sit in straight back chairs and hand-rolled tobacco leaves,

while on an elevated platform, other workers would literally read stories to them to keep the rollers from getting too bored, in early form of podcasting, basically. But if you couldn't make a living with a conventional job in Key West, that wasn't exactly a catastrophe. It drew a lot of eccentric types of people. Florida heat being what it was.

A lot of people could and did just crash out on the beach. The sea offered plentiful lobster conch, yellow tail, fruits and vegetables like mangoes, you know, grew naturally. Limes, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and more. Nobody really had to worry about, you know, affording a grocery bill or having a proper shelter. If you happen to get a good catch or if you pulled some valuable cargo out of a wreck, you know, you could always trade it for what you needed, you know, or like a simple luxury, like a cigar. But for Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyas, her father's job as a cigar manufacturer

brought, if not prosperity, stability. The who was she? Maria Elena, Maria Elena, Milagro de Hoyas, later Maria Elena Milagro de Meza was named according to Cuban tradition. Maria, her first name, Elena, her middle name,

Hoyles, the surname she took from her father, Milagro, that came from her mother. Mesa would come from her husband, which of course she took when she got married. But at first she was just Elena, middle child in a lineup of three daughters. The spy growing up in a place that to many was an island paradise where people bartered and traded for essentials,

Elena's childhood fairly conventional. Her family had been upper middle class back in Cuba, but then they fell in hard times. In search of work, her father uprooted the family, brought them to Key West, where he found a job at a cigar factory. And in phases, the rest of the extended family would come to join them. when Elena was growing up, her house was full of relatives

and their friends, uncles, cousins, aunts, cooking in the kitchen. Oh, I bet making the most delicious shit. Boyfriends and girlfriends sneaking off together. Children giggling, chasing each other across the lawn. Just everybody generally having a good time. Elena and her two sisters, Florinda or Nana, as she was called, and Celia, they would also spend every Saturday morning at the Strand movie theaters matinee show.

Every Saturday morning they could, I guess, you know, afford to get away, where they would swoon at Rudolph Valentino or laugh at Charlie Chaplin. The sister's main pastime would become dancing, though. All three girls became very good at it. You know, as they grew up, they grew into becoming some of the most beautiful women in the area by many accounts,

especially Elena, became very popular dance partners at the Cuban club where they would dance the rumba, Samba, the cha-cha, a two-step called Tony's wife, and of course the conga line. Because their family couldn't afford fancy dancing clothes or makeup, the girls made mascara from Vaseline and charcoal,

They rubbed a damp and red crepe paper on their cheeks for blush. Sometimes on special occasions, their parents would buy them cotton dresses for 50 cents apiece. Leather sandals were a special once-in-a-blue-moon treat. And then at 18-year-old, on February 18, 1926, the same month that Carl Tanzer set out for America, Elena got married. Her husband was Louise Meza, their courtship, the wedding, the honeymoon period afterwards, among the best times of Elena's life. The newlywoods were apparently crazy about each other, as newlyweds often are.

which predictably led to Elena quickly getting pregnant. But then just a few months later, November 5th, 1926, she had a miscarriage and was devastated. As she grew paler and more withdrawn, her family thought it was because of the loss she had suffered. Indeed, studies have shown that roughly 30% of women experienced depression and anxiety

immediately following the loss of a pregnancy. But soon it became clear that something else was going on with Elena. Her health was deteriorating. She had a recurring cough, weakness, shortness of breath, chest pain. Finally, the family doctor would confirm the grim diagnosis of tuberculosis. And since it has been a minute

since we've discussed it in the suck verse, what is tuberculosis? In a word, bad. In more than a word, tuberculosis often abbreviated to TB is a contagious and infectious disease that is caused by the bacteria mycobacterium tuberculosis or MT.

And it's, as I mentioned up top, the deadliest disease in human history. Even with all the medical advances we have today, over a million people still died of tuberculosis in 2023. that year, in fact, more people died of TB than died of malaria, typhoid, and war combined. One estimate from Frank Ryan's tuberculosis, the greatest story never told, maintains that TB has killed around one and seven people who have ever lived, as I mentioned earlier. COVID-19 displaced tuberculosis as the world's deadliest infectious disease from 2020 through 2022, but then in 2023, TB regained the status.

It had held for most of what we know of human history, killing approximately 1,2505,000. 50,000 people that year. That's crazy, right? Today we understand that tuberculosis is an infection caused by bacteria, MT, which has been around for over 70,000 years, with some thinking that this family of bacteria originated more than 150 million years ago. TB is airborne. It spreads from person to person through small particles contained in cough, sneezes, or exhalations. Anyone can get tuberculosis, in fact, between a quarter and a third of all living humans have been infected with it at some point. In most people, the infection will lie dormant for a lifetime. But up to 10% of all infected people will eventually become sick. A phenomenon we call active TB. Today, active TB, very curable,

thanks to antibiotics. Not so much during Elena's lifetime, not at all. Now back to the mT bacteria that causes it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, MT has a long history. Three million years ago, an early progenitor of MT might have infected early hominids in East Africa. And then somewhere between 20,000 and 15,000 years ago for the first time the common ancestor of modern strains of MT might have appeared and then spread across the globe. Indeed, mummies in ancient Egypt

from around 5,000 years ago show the telltale deformities that accompanied tuberculosis of the bone, wherein the bacteria scrapes out tiny holes in the skeleton, leaving bones that resemble dead coral. Simultaneously, TB was one of the few infectious diseases present in both the Americas in Afro-Eurasia between, or excuse me, before

1492. Archaeological evidence indicates that TB was in the Americas at least 2,000 years ago, and it has been president in China for at least 5,000 years. An ancient China, TB was known by a term that translates to lung exhaustion. In ancient Hebrew, TB was called by a word that meant wasting away. The famous Greek doctor, Hippocrates wrote about TB2, which, as we have learned, was known in Greek by a word, Thysis that meant to decay, right? Pretty dark association.

Around 460 BCE, Hippocrates identified Thysus as the most widespread disease of the time and noted it was almost always fatal. Due to common thysus-related fatalities, he warned his colleagues against visiting TB patients in the late stages of the disease because their inevitable deaths might damage the reputations of these attending physicians. He didn't know that those physicians also were at risk of catching TB. By 200 CE, a new Chinese term for consumption had emerged, a Huifu meaning destroyed palace. A Chinese medical textbook at the time read,

toxic drugs bring no cure, short needles cannot seize the disease. Within a millennia, Taoist priests would begin referring to the illness as shojai or corpse disease because the illness transformed a living being into a cadaver. Man.

And there was something else unique about this disease other than the fact that it made you look like a corpse. Unlike many other diseases, for most of human history, consumption appeared indiscriminate. killing the rich and the poor, educated, and non-educated at the same rate. Charles Dickens called consumption, the disease that wealth never warded off. And indeed, among its victims, was one of the richest individuals of the 19th century, American railroad magnet J. Gold.

Also very hard to predict how TB would spread. Because TB infects and kills so slowly, it doesn't resemble a plague that sweeps through a community, right, where one family member gets sick, and everybody else or nearly everybody else in the household is also sick within a few days. This is because M.T. grows super slowly. The bacteria takes a long time to build up its unusually fatty, thick cell wall, which is a formidable enemy to the immune system. White blood cells then struggle to penetrate the cell wall and kill the bacteria from within. In fact, it's so hard for infection-fighting cells to penetrate the bacteria's cell wall that instead white blood cells usually surrounded, creating a ball of calcifying tissue known as a tubercle.

MT can survive within these tubercles, replicating very slowly consuming dead tissue as food, this type of infection sometimes known as latent tuberculosis will often last a lifetime without ever making a person sick and most people infected with TB will never become ill because the tubercles will continue to hold the bacteria within them preventing active disease from developing, right? Fascinating. But in 5 to 10% of infections,

the immune system cannot produce enough white blood cells to surround all the bacteria with tubercles and MT is able to grow and grow within the lungs or elsewhere as in brain swelling, tuberculosis, meningitis, to the rupture of infected lymph nodes through the skin, scruffula, to tuberculosis of the bone, which can cause lifelong disability through destroying hip spine or limb bones, right? Just brutal shit.

TB affecting the spine, known as Potts disease, is a common and terribly painful cause of a hunched back. Indeed, the fictional hunchback of Notre Dame suffered from Potts disease. Precisely because consumption was so fundamentally different from other infections, classical understandings of the disease varied wildly. in ancient China, Huifu generally understood to be contagious, but lifestyle factors could worsen it.

One book claimed you could get consumption by overworking one's mind and exhausting one's energy, injuring one's chi, and loosening one's sperm. Gotta fucking keep that sperm tight! You didn't want a fucking loose jizz? My God, you fucking trying to get consumption?

In ancient Greece, Hippocrates thought it to be an inherited condition, writing that consumptives beget consumptives. Other Greeks, including including the physician Galen, believed the disease to be contagious. In ancient India, consumption understood

to be caused by excessive fatigue, anxiety, and hunger. In other communities, it was seen to be the result of a curse or a poison or, naturally, demonic possession. But other advanced thinkers thought that the disease was being caused by something not demonic related to a curse, perhaps something of this earth, yet invisible to the human eye. Around a thousand years ago, the Persian scholar and poet, Ibin Sina,

wrote that tuberculosis and other illnesses were caused when the body was contaminated by tainted foreign organisms that are not visible by naked eye. Smart fucking dude. He wrote that shit in the early 11th century, almost exactly a thousand years ago. And he fucking knew more about illnesses than a lot of people do today.

But this view would take a couple centuries to migrate over into Europe, more than a couple, actually. In his Opera Medica of 1679, Dutch physician and scientist, Francisco Silvius, was the first European to a European, to identify actual tubercles as a consistent and characteristic change in the lungs and other areas of consumptive patients and how this would progress to abscesses and cavities.

But what were those tubercles in 1720? The English physician Benjamin Martin would write that TB could be caused by wonderfully minute living creatures, which once they had gained a foothold in the body, could generate the lesions and symptoms of the disease. And he wrote more about how this could happen. It may be, therefore, very likely that by a habitual line in the same bed with the consumptive patient constantly eating and drinking with him or by very frequently conversing so nearly as to draw in part of the breath he admits from the lungs a consumption may be caught by the sound person i imagine that slightly conversing with consumptive patients is seldom or never sufficient to catch the disease right another smart dude he's pretty much figured it out so how did doctors go about curing this though right

that's of course a lot harder to figure out uh being sena the first person to think that t b had a microbial cause, praise the use of garlic and TB treatment, and garlic does, in fact, have antio-antimicrobial properties, but not nearly strong enough to treat the disease effectively. In Europe, bloodletting was a common and completely ineffective treatment. You would still have TB, and now a lot less blood that you needed to fight it with. Sometimes you just bleed to death, so thank you, Doc. The America's herbal remedies were used, some of which were useful to varying degrees, but not curative. Global medical treatment for TB has ranged from rubbing buzzard fat. on the chest, yep, buzzard fat, to ingesting human milk.

Uh-huh. From animal sacrifice to acupuncture. Regarding breastfeeding, it was actually believed that the most powerful cure was suckling directly from a healthy woman's breast. Prescription? Titties. Find them and suck them until your mouth has been filled with warm curative milk. Hopefully no doctors were recommending anybody's mother or sisters, but I bet that happened

from time to time because of how fucking direct. range some of us humans are. Now let's take a quick break, our second of two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to the sponsors. I hope you heard some deals that you liked. And now let's revisit how TB treatment evolved over the years. Identifying effective treatment was made more difficult by the fact that people sometimes seem to recover only to get sick again or seem to get sick after treatment only to recover later. Like many of the time, Herman Bramer, and that's a lot of the time, and that's a lot of the time,

19th century Silesian botany students suffering from TB was instructed by his doctor to seek out a healthier climate. He traveled to the Himalayan Mountains where he could pursue his botanical studies

while trying to rid himself with the disease and it actually worked. In the 1850s he returned home kind of cured. I mean, he presented it as totally cured and he started studying medicine. I said kind of cured

because climate can't actually kill the bacteria, but in some cases rest in climate, healthy living, the right herbal remedies, etc., can take the bacteria, you know, help take the bacteria, you know,

help take the bacteria. it from active to latent, right? Help your body fight it off. Your body's immune cells. You can wall off the bacteria, as I mentioned earlier, forming that protective barrier, that shell called a tubercle. And inside that tubercle, the bacteria again placed in a dormant, non-replicating state, you know, where they survive, but they're kept completely under control. They're in fucking jail. They're in consumption jail. In 1854, Brehmer presented his doctoral dissertation. Tiberculosis is a curable disease. In the same year, he built an institution in Gerborsdorf, in the Prussian state of Silesia, where in the

midst of fir trees, patients were exposed on their balconies to continuous fresh air. This setup became the blueprint for the subsequent development of the sanatorium that we've heard about in numerous sucks, especially Wild West ones. Places where people social and sanitary conditions would be improved with warm weather, dry air, a sterile environment, enough that hopefully they could get better, you know, isolated them from healthy populations as well. And then more scientific breakthroughs would follow. In 1865, a French military doctor, Jean, Jean,

Antoine Vilemon single-handedly demonstrated that consumption could be passed from humans to cattle and from cattle to rabbits. He would postulate that a specific microorganism must be the cause of the disease, finally laying to rest a century's old belief that consumption arose spontaneously in each affected organism. Then, as we mentioned in the beginning, in 1882, Robert Koch discovered a staining technique that enabled him to see mycobacterium tuberculosis, which allowed for the development of later antibiotics. And antibiotics for tuberculosis would not be successfully administered until late 1944, sadly too late for Elena. Throughout all this, tuberculosis made an astounding impact on culture, religion, economics,

etc. For instance, did you know that the cowboy hat, the icon of the American West that has experienced a huge resurgence today thanks to country pop superstars, it was invented because of tuberculosis? In the 1850s, a young man named John was living in New Jersey, working as a hatmaker when he started coughing up blood. John visited the doctor and learned he had consumption. According to the prevailing wisdom of the time, his only real chance of survival was to head west.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was commonly accepted that consumption could be effectively treated by dry air, as I mentioned, which made a kind of sense. Consumptive lungs seemed wet. So did the humid, stagnant air in big American cities like New York and Baltimore, where consumption flourished.

People fled to Arizona or New Mexico or California, which came to be known as the land of new lungs. as one brochure boldly promised Come west and live Several cities including Pasadena and Colorado Springs were essentially created for consumptives and their families

But it wasn't only desert air That was mythologized Doctors also recommended island air Or mountain air Or forest air even Italian air The justification for the so-called Travel Cure varied Except for one constant

Consumption thrived in cities And so the solution must be rural Well John headed out from his home in New Jersey to the rough frontier town of St. Joseph, Missouri. He ended up settling there for a while, and miraculously, he started to feel better. For reasons we still don't fully understand, but due to that process, going from active to latent, between 20 and 25 percent of people recover from active TB illness without treatment,

and John was among this lucky minority. Regaining his health over the next few years, he noticed something about the West. Had options? Not great. Fur traders of European descent often wore bug-infested, brimless, coonskin caps. folks who made their way to Missouri from Texas and Mexico Meanwhile tended to wear wide-brim straw hats To protect it from the sun But leaked in the rain

So after returning to the northeast With his consumption under control John John B. Stetson Created a new sort of hat Which in time came to be known as the cowboy hat Or the Stetson Pretty cool little piece of trivia there

And the influence of tuberculosis Went way beyond a single type of hat in America of course It influenced politics at the national level as well For example, even after New Mexico became a U.S. territory in 1848, it was regarded with a lot of suspicion by many white Americans. After all, the majority of people lived in the territory were indigenous people or people who spoke Spanish as their first language. They spoke a different language, so they must be bad. Different always equals bad. Never forget that.

Always be afraid of different. Never learn, never adapt. Always resist. I'm fucking kidding. Hey. I said, I'm fucking candy. Don't you dare mock me, Miles. Anyway, despite New Mexico having the institutions needed for statehood,

such as a large enough population and a strong majority of its voters seeking statehood, Congress repeatedly turned down New Mexico's attempts to fully enter the union. Different, bad. Resist change at all costs. In order to please Congress, New Mexican officials realized they needed to recruit a larger white and English-speaking population and thus began New Mexico's quest to woo consumptives from the American Northeast and South with the promise of desert air, open skies and world-class consumption care.

The plan worked. By 1910, about 10% of all New Mexicans were tuberculosis patients. And with all these new white patients, residents now, Congress finally acquiesced, and New Mexico became the 47th U.S. state in 1912. Same good, different, bad. Love same, hate bad. There was another aspect of TB that we haven't yet talked about, though, one that relates more closely to our story.

Before the 19th century, TB was often associated like so many diseases with immorality, lack of hygiene, and other undesirable traits that made it seem like it was the victim's fault for getting sick. Why do we humans make assumptions like that? Well, because many of us are ignorant, selfish, lack empathy, live fearfully. If we can just believe that bad things only happen to bad people, right? Hello, just world fallacy. Then we get to believe that as long as we be good, we know get hurt. A simple rule for simple people.

In the 1800s, though, this thinking began to change. I mean, a lot of people still employ versions of this today, but thankfully, not as many. As it became increasingly clear to many that stigma alone could not answer the why of consumption, people began to conclude that consumption was caused by a personality, one especially attuned to the fragility and fleeting loneliness of life. Okay? Did you see that coming? I did not.

I guess this made a kind of sense. In Northern Europe, consumption was widely understood to be an inherited disease, passed on like personality traits from parents to kids and so it reasonably followed the consumption might be accompanied by other traits like beauty and brilliance and sensitivity huh indeed consumption was believed to bring one's

creative powers to new levels helping artists get in deeper touch with a spirit as their worldly bodies literally shrank away the fuck said that Victor Hugo's friends joked with him that he could have been a truly great novelist if he had just had consumption and Lord Byron why they considered

one of the greatest English language poets of all time, wrote, I should like, I think, to die of consumption, because then the women would all say, see that poor Byron! How interesting he looks and dying! All of the physical signs of consumption seemed to point, for many, I guess, to this idea of the spirit's beauty.

After all, the person got paler, thinner, with rosier cheeks and larger eyes, almost more beautiful. Indeed, women with consumption were almost always believed to become more beautiful, ethereal, wondrously pure. Oh my God. Some women even applied belladonna to their eyelids, albeit to minimally toxic amounts, to dilate their pupils so they would have this wide-eyed consumptive look.

And magazines offered instructions for how to apply red paint to the lips and cheeks to capture the rosy glow of the dying of consumptive fevers. Oh, we're so fucking weird. As English novelist and poet, Jane Eyre author, Charlotte Bronte put it in a letter she wrote to her sister as her sister was dying of the disease. consumption, I am aware, is a flattering malady. Okay. That's fucking so weird. Perhaps this perception of increased beauty played a role in Elena's story. Of the various strains of tuberculosis, the most dangerous form, the kind Elena hat, was a type called hasty consumption back then, because it very quickly consumed those unfortunate enough to contract it.

Realizing the seriousness of the situation, we're back on track now, her doctor immediately referred to to the naval marine high. hospital for a blood test and an x-ray of her lungs to see if any lesions had formed. During the hospital visit, which took place, April 22nd, 1930, fearing the results, Elena and her husband, Louise, rode the trolley and then walked the remaining block to the hospital for the appointment. Once there, Louise stayed outside in the waiting room while Elena was ushered into an examination room, where a certain distinguished-looking gentleman with a beard and mustache, or a very fucking creepy-looking, looking motherfucker, in my opinion, prepared to take the blood sample from Elena this man was of course

Carl Tanzler and he would later write that he had an immediate reaction to her Boner? Is he talking about Boner there? I think he's talking about Boner. Let's read what he wrote. He wrote, in the middle of my routine work

I received a call from the head office to go and take a blood test from a young signorita who, as an outpatient, had come for examination. I hardly looked at the patient as I entered the room. I don't buy that.

First thing I noticed of her personality as I bent down to take a drop of blood from her from one of her fingertips, rather, rather than one of her ears, which were too exquisitely lovely to Mar, was that her hand was unusually small. It's long, tapering fingers,

the loveliest I had ever seen. Have any of you ever had a moment like that with somebody else's hands, like with her fingers? But, like, the first time you saw someone's hand, were we ever like, oh, fuck! I've never! And I mean, never seen a finger that's sexy. Oh, God.

I have not. I guess I'm not into digit kink, or whatever it might be called. Carl continued, as the needle struck, the hand twitched a little, and it was then that from my kneeling position I raised my head for the first time to say, I'm very sorry to have caused you pain. Forgive me, please. Her face had been hidden by her hand, so that I had hardly seen it as I first entered the room, but now she withdrew her hand to answer me,

and I looked into a face of unearthly beauty, the face of the bride, which had been promised to me, by my ancestor 40 years before. I was so thunderstruck. I hardly heard her saying, it didn't hurt much. Excuse my nervousness. Her voice was soft and sweet and childlike.

It reminded me of a mockingbird song in spring. Okay, so are we hearing a hopeless romantic here? Or fucking lunatic? Lunatic for me. Ding, ding, ding, lunatic. Elena had no idea that the technician was so attracted to her. She had other things in her mind, you know, whether or not she was going to fucking die soon.

But Carl Tanzler, he couldn't stop thinking about her. Back in his office, he sat around feeling that he had finally met the one. So he was shocked when the nurse came in and gave him her file, which had said that she was married. In Carl's words, she belonged to someone else. Still, this didn't really matter to Tanzler. I mean, I mean, he was also married. And clearly did not give a shit about that.

This was the woman from his visions, the one promised to him. And his promising visions trumped all else. Carl resolved to make the best impression he could when Elena came back the next day for a chest x-ray. On his way to the hospital next morning, his clothes were ironed to perfection. The sun was shining. He was still beady-eyed and fucking weird-looking, in my opinion. But the lush tropical foliage was glisting, which was nice. When Lena entered for her x-ray, he said, good morning, Miss Hoyos.

And apparently, he then bowed. Kind of weird. She sat on an oak chair, told him that she had slept better than I before, and her cough didn't seem as bad. He replied that that was good. And he held her hand to take her pulse, trying to hide the flutter of his own pulse, as he touched her skin for the second time and maybe came a little. Then he instructed her to unbutton the top button of her blouse. Oh, fuck yeah, bra.

So he could hear her heartbeat. Mm-hmm, totally, for that reason, sure. She did so. And he pressed his stethoscope to the smooth skin below her collarbone, first on her right side, then the left, and now. Now he definitely came if he hadn't already. Meanwhile, Elena's heart was beating fast. She was nervous.

Not only because the visit might confirm she had an incurable disease, but because a weird fucking German dude was touching her nervously, looking at her in his creepy way, and the crotch of his pants may be freshly wet with come. Tanzler's heart was, of course, beating quickly as well. He next guided her over to the x-ray machine and instructed her to take a deep breath and hold it while he took the image. Also, he said, she would have to take off her blouse.

Oh, and the rest of her undergarments. Of course that creeped it. She asked what that was really necessary, and he said it was. even though it definitely was not that fucking creep. Then he did agree to turn off the lights as she requested while she undressed. Still, there was a dim red bulb that was part of the equipment so he could see as she undid the remaining buttons and pulled down her slips so her young perky breasts were fully exposed,

then sweating profusely, maybe jerking out quietly inside his pants. Creepy Tanzler took the x-rays. Afterwards, he reassured her that he would do everything in his power to make sure she got healthy. He would see her the next day, he said, to give her the diagnosis. When she left, he looked at the images, and his excited mood vanished. Elena did have tuberculosis. He would confirm her the next day and somehow managed to wrangle an invitation from Elena's mother to come to the family home to talk about the prognosis further. He went that evening, returned a few days later to take a blood test.

Every time he saw her, he fell more deeply in love. And I imagine, tried to get her naked again. Okay, it is time to draw some blood. Would you mind taking your clothes off? All right. I need to take your temperature. So just go ahead and fully undress if you want. Hey, I need to check your pulse.

Please fully undress, slip into this lingerie. You know, just dance around, sexy like, for a few minutes. Meanwhile, Elena was suffering. Not long after diagnosis, her beloved husband, Louise, abandoned her. For another woman left Key West for Tampa before making his way to Miami, where he would become a waiter. He would later claim that Elena's illness had nothing to do with his decision to leave, but did it. I mean, it was highly likely. He might have thought it was highly likely that he would catch it and then die if he

made. News of the breakup made its way, of course, back to the one person who saw all this as amazing Carl Tanzler. Soon he offered to send Elena at his own expense, even though again, he was supposed to be supporting his wife and two kids, which he was not, to a famous tuberculosis institute abroad. But Elena refused. She didn't think her condition was that serious. So Tanzer wrote a couple of, you know, medical equipment manufacturers, see if he could get the right equipment to treat her right there in Florida Keys. while he waited for that, he used the hospital's equipment to give her free radiation therapy, it sounds. And in his free time, he jerked off so frequently,

he whittled his dick down to a little more than a toothpick, and then refusing to follow his own doctor's orders to slow down. He jerked off even more furiously, and he broke it off, and he did use it as a toothpick until he threw it away. And now, now he could only come

by punching himself in the balls. But soon, he had punched those poor balls completely flat. So now, now he could only come by poking a hole in his scrote, and blown up his balls like a balloon, like he would a beach ball with a pump, and then he punched it flat again, and again, and again,

until one day he blew too much air into his scrote, and he fucking popped it like a balloon, and then, well, then he couldn't come anymore, could he? But you knew that, we all did, because that's how balls work, obviously. That's science. You can't use him anymore once they're fucking popped. Ignore all that.

Uh, forgive me. What I meant to say was that in his free time, he started building an airplane. Yeah, sure. In all likelihood, he bought a very small wrecked plane, part of one, hauled it to the lawn behind the hospital where he was allowed to keep it, and he started restoring it. Why?

Well, in Tandro's own crazy words, once Elena had regained her health, this plane was to take the two of us to the South Sea Island, which I had discovered for myself doing one of my fishing expeditions in Australia. This was a little paradise. And my dream was that Elena and I should spend our honeymoon there. Every time she came to the hospital for treatment, she took time out, or we took time out, to inspect the plane together. Those moments were of great delight for both of us.

When we sat side by side in the little pilot's cabin and imagined how it would be when it carried us into the air and across the ocean. Was Elena actually into this plan or him, or was she just being polite to the weird fucking man who had promised that he was going to cure her disease and keep her life? I am strongly assuming that second one. Indeed, that was exactly what Tanzer had promised. Promised Elena, promised her parents. they were of course deeply worried about being able to afford

Elena's medical treatment Tanzer told him don't even worry about it, I got it Around this time he did stop sending any and all money Back to his fucking family in Zephyr Hills That creepy piece of shit We can all truly hate him now If we didn't already, right? I'm gonna say we can't, let's for sure do

Some of that money he spent on our treatments He had other plans for the money as well though On Elena's 21st birthday He bought a ring and hit it in a bouquet of roses As they celebrated with cake and wine he told her he could give her so much more than someone her own age. But alas, Elena turned him down. She reminded him that she was still a married woman,

that even if her husband had left her, she had made a commitment in the eyes of God. Clearly she took marriage a wee bit more seriously than he did. Tans were trying to sway her, describing how he still intended to get her, get her well, and then fly her to the South Seas. But she laughed, you're going to fly me in your plane with no wings? Okay, did I mention the plane had no wings? It had no wings.

More of a cockpit, really, like just a cockpit, maybe with some wheels, than a proper plane. Why did he call it a plane? Well, because he was a delusional psychopath. When he kept pressing her, she then told him plainly, Carl, I think I'm dying. She did not want to spend her last days in some weird romance with a weird doctor, who wasn't even a doctor.

He's a fucking technician. She wanted to spend it with her family, but he would refer to himself as a doctor. Still, Elena did not want to be unkind. She thought he had done a lot for her, so she did invite him to her sister's wedding. But when he got there, or I guess and when he got there, she introduced him to the groom. And then she kept, you know, serving drinks and talking to other guests.

And by the end of the night, he was fucking annoyed. So annoyed, he turned to her and said that she was too sick to host parties. Excuse me. She needed to rest, recuperate, and marry him. Let's get married and let's get away from this, he told her. Before Elena could respond, her mother declared that no daughter of hers was ever going to marry an American. Right. Or fucking weird German guy.

and that if Elena did get married again, her husband would be Cuban. And that was that. Or it should have been. But Tanzler's stalker ass didn't quit. The next time he saw her, he brought her a pearl necklace. Probably not the kind of pearl necklace he wanted to give her. And he sent over his radio so she could listen to music.

He wrote her letters sprinkled equally with declarations of love and medical advice. Here is one of those. My darling Elena, please don't deceive yourself that all is well. even if you feel that way, don't throw caution into the wind. Your enemy is an invisible one. He can only be seen by a trained scientific eye,

and he can only be fought in a scientific manner. Please, darling, do not listen to irresponsible advice. I know there are quacks around who are suggesting all kinds of magic cures which have their common source in ignorance. Please, take the medicine I am sending, and do come back to the hospital for a new check-up. Dr. Lombord, too.

He wants to see you. I am working on our airplane in my spare time. It is now nearly completed, and the next time you come I will give you the key for the cabin. And we shall officially accrucinate. And then, too, I am already collecting all the things we are going to need on our wedding trip. Silk dresses for you in a bridal gown which is all white silk. And ale the rest of your trousseau, even lingerie, and silver slippers. And last but not least, all of your medicines,

like kinnasol, and adrenaline, glucose, beef extract, and all the rest of it, forever yours. Carl. So that's cool. This dude is a real fucking creep. Christian it, lingerie. Dude, she's 21, 22 this point. He's 53 or 54.

She is literally dying. The only reason she ever fucking saw him with medical treatment, right? He was just her radiology. technologists given her free treatment. Soon Elena was missing appointments, though, at the Marine Hospital and making excuses to no longer go. One excuse was that her father's car wasn't working. So, Tanzor sent over a taxi.

Then Elena said, well, she didn't trust a taxi company. He still didn't get the hint. So he drove over in his own car to get her, but she hid from him. She wanted nothing to do with him. Of course she didn't. Right? I'm sure he scared the shit out of her. She's dying.

She had just lost her baby nothing longer. Her husband had fucking deserted her. She didn't have long left. to live. She wanted to spend it with her family, not this weird motherfucker. Elena wrote him a short letter, though, apologizing and saying that she would be happy to see him at her house if he wanted to swing by later. She was too

nice. That never works, that approach with these cannot take a hint, delusional motherfuckers. When he did stop by, Tanzer was frustrated by the numerous other people around. All the people preventing him from having Elena to himself. Now, with Elena getting sicker and sicker, refusing treatment. Tanzer

soon worried his time with her was running out. He was making her death all about him. By the beginning of 1931, he was routinely having dreams that he had discovered Elena dead and brought her back to his laboratory to see if he could bring her back to life. So that's fun. Then Elena's family moved to a new house, possibly to get the fuck away from him, you know, now he couldn't find him. For some reason, they didn't tell him where they'd gone. Apparently night after night, he now went around looking into people's windows like the ghoul he truly was, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Finally he did. Poor Elena lay in her bed on the brink of death. This

out in the bushes, watching her through a window, probably hard as a rock. At this point, Tanzer did not care if her parents wanted him around or not. He felt like he had to see her. So he just let himself into the house. He walked inside. As Elena's mother tried to get him to leave. He took her blood pressure. Her pulse was weak.

There was a nasty looking abscess on her leg. He didn't want to overexcite her then, or so he would claim, and now he left. Or maybe his mom kicked him out. But then the next day, he came back with fruit and cakes for Elena. So, I don't know. What the fuck's going on? She would only eat a little bit, though. Then the day after that, he had a huge bed delivered,

along with a large mosquito net, silk sheets and cushions and a dresser. Apparently, he talked his way again into being around the family, talked to her family and explain that he was going to save her. And then he wanted to shock her, literally. Tanzer thought he could cure her with a primitive form of electroshock electroshock therapy now, which Lena understandably hated, but did endure. She did allow him to perform treatments on her anyway. And this is the guy who was warning her about quacks.

with magic cures. During one of these treatments, she supposedly again, according to Tanzer, asked him something, saying, if I must die, all I can leave you is my body.

For I'm only a sick girl, so I can't marry you while I'm sick. But you will take care of my body after I'm dead, won't you? But did she say that? I'm going to literally bet my life that never happened.

May I be struck dead right now if that happened, God? Satan, Muhammad, Hindu God, with fucking lots of weird arms. creepy rapies. Who's got anyone? Anyone listening? All right. Still alive.

Guess never happened. According to Tansler, he promised her that he would take care of her body and death now. And it was the most sacred promise he'd ever made in his life. It was what he considered their marriage vow. He was so bad shit. With that, crazy Carl decided it was time to get a ring for.

Again, another ring. On October 11th, 1931, he bought another ring, headed over to Elena's with it, but to his horror. He found Elena was out. Her dad had decided to take her for a walk. then a few days later October 16th when he came over again He was furious to learn

Elena's dad had taken her out of the house Another time this time for a drive It's almost like they were trying to get away from him By Friday October 23rd Elena was exhausted and drifting in and out of consciousness And then on Sunday October 25th She passed away at the age of just 22

Tanzer had just finished his paperwork At the hospital when Mario Elena's brother-in-law rushed over And told him the news Clearly as fucking weird as he was Because he had done so much to try and keep for alive there were those in Elena's family who appreciated him more than I wish they did. At around 5 p.m., Tanzer reached Elena's house.

You could hear people moaning and screaming from a block away. The lawn was crowded with a bunch of people inside. Elena lay in her bed, a distant, faraway look in her dead eyes. Tanzer is devastated. He would claim that he paid for the funeral, and it seems as if he probably did. And if he did, it likely was not motivated out of generosity for her family. It was selfish, you know, part of his obsession. It meant that now he got to pick the rose-colored silk line,

casket, the flowers, he got to make decisions about how she would be displayed. Likely, he probably changed her outfit himself. Gross. And again, remember, he is doing all of this while sending zero money to his wife and two kids that he had dragged across the Atlantic fucking narcissist. Her funeral would be October 26. I drew hundreds of mourners throughout it. Carl was remarkably weirdly calm.

Even as he sat beside her coffin, there was still a part of him that, you know, told him Elena wasn't really dead. This feeling was reinforced by the procession of cars that drove from the funeral home to the cemetery. It felt to Carl, more like a wedding than a funeral. Before the coffin slid shut, he slipped a letter inside that read, My love for you is greater than ever. You are now free from all your fetus, and you are free to go where you wish. Elena, please come to me, sweetheart. I long so much for you. Tell me, what shall I do as I cannot live without you? Will you have me, darling? Then take me. Or you come to me and start. Or you come to me, and Stay with me until I can go with you, my sweetheart. Elena! He wasn't just a creep.

He was deeply unwell. Elena was buried at the Star of the Sea, Catholic Church of Small Cemetery. Afterwards, Tanzler went right back to Elena's house. He asked her parents if he could rent her old room. And they agreed, because they badly needed the $5 a month that he would pay them. My God. That's so insane. How many times do you think he buried his nose in her sheet to sniff her scent while also jerking up?

How many times a night? Anyone else thinking at least twice? Such a Cretan. Or hopeless romantic. Adoring, loyal, up to and beyond death suitor! No, Cretan. As he lay in the lavish bed, he had bought her. His mind returned to the promise he had made her to take care of her body.

Carl took this to mean he had to keep her in a state of perfection. But as we all know, body's decay. And in the floor to heat, you know, she was going to decay faster than, many. So how was he disposed to take care of her body? In a moment of inspiration, he realized that it was his duty to erect a grand mausoleum both as a testament of his love for her

and as a way to remove her from the grave. So he bought a large plot around Elena's grave, big enough for a family tomb, and hired a mason to help him bring his vision to life. And he would pay that mason with money that should have gone to his kids. But there was a problem with his plan. I mean, there were actually so many

problems. But there was one main problem I'd like to talk about next. because Tanzler planned to build the ornate crypt over the plot where Elena was currently buried, he had to get a disinterment permit to remove her body from her underground grave. So with the Hoyos family in the state of Florida's permission, Elena now made her second trip to a funeral home. She will wait there for three months while construction took place. When completed, the final version looked more like a family house than a tomb,

with a sloping roof held up by ornate Greek pillars and a door with a triangular window. He had also decided that he would have Elena re-bedded, put in another casket into this other more expensive casket. He put new sheets, pillows, sterile cotton, gauze, more chemicals and sprays to preserve her. He also put in the jewelry, he had given Elena while she was still alive. And now, now was time to open the old casket. Working with the mortician, Tanzler eased the casket open, and he would later write. As the first step, I spray diluted formulin all over the shrouded body in ample quantities.

This was for disinfection, and also to harden the body tissues before. where we undertook to detach from the skin, the drapery, which had become glued to it. Decay had set in, in a most disheartening manner. Only with the greatest care, I was able to peel the pieces of textile from the body. This took hours. We then lifted the body out of the coffin and laid it on a table on a clean sheet. Having sprayed the body all over again, I now proceeded to sponge her face with a specially prepared solution, and also her hands and feet.

With dismay, I discovered that in view of the damage already done, much more cleaning was required than we could do in one night. I had at the morgue at my disposal. When morning came, my sweet bride was free from all outward signs of decay and from that of odor. When the mortician came to work, we placed her on thick layers of cotton. After I sprayed her form all over with odicologne, we now covered it all around with similar layers. They then lifted her into the new coffin. But if the mortician thought that her task was over now, Tanzor would surprise him with a follow-up request.

He needed another night, alone, in the embalming room. Uh-huh. And he'd apparently get this night alone in the morgue a few days later. On that night, he took Elena out of her coffin again, probably jerked off, maybe molester corpse, almost certainly did not pull out and tried to make a zombie baby. And he definitely put her in something called an incubator tank. Then he poured a, quote, nourishing body cell solution into the top of the tank until it was completely full. Not sure what the solution was, some recipe of his own mad scientist making.

And with that, he was satisfied that Elena's process of decomposition had been fully halted. the next day he had her transported into his special vault outside an custom-made headstone it read Elena Milagro Hoyos Born July 31st 1908 died October 25th 1931 RIP and then Count D. Kossel Which is what he was calling himself now

Yes this motherfucker put his own fake name on her gravestone He signed her fucking mausoleum Like her corpse was his art piece And now he has a new problem If Elena's body was perfectly preserved And her mausoleum was built What was Tanzer supposed to do with his free time

Support his kids? Yeah, right What would he get out of that? Possibly their love? Possibly the adoration of two people He didn't even want to fuck? No, thank you. For the next 18 months,

he would simply spend most of his free time Sitting next to her tomb. Yep. Totally normal. Tanger would say he had some interesting experiences During that time, yeah, I bet he did. One evening, as he was sitting there in the floor to heat. He said he heard a loud crash from inside the tomb. He said he then went inside

and saw that the locks that held the metal casket closed had sprung open. And this to Tanzer was evidence that Elena was playing a practical joke on him. And when you heard a tapping come from inside of the coffin, well, that seemed to confirm that. Uh, interesting conclusion to jump to first. What is she doing while dead? Uh, not coming back to visit her parents, not checking in on her sisters. Oh, no, no, no, no, she's coming back to play a practical joke on her weird stalker. a dancer immediately opened the coffin which was actually two boxes an inner box and an outer box

and as soon as he opened the inner box he smelled a pleasant perfume-like fragrance like a young woman's skin and a warm summer's day he said after that he started talking to Elena and one day when he put his ear against the valve of the inner coffin he could have sworn he heard her talking back to him

he was losing what little was left of his mind that was all Carl said he needed to spring back into action now he would spend his days buying Elena presents. Oh, delivery them back to our tomb. Handkerchiefs, a Spanish shawl, comb, cases of makeup. You know how it be. The usual shit that zombies crave. Then soon he would see something else.

This very stable-minded, you know, man, wrote, I changed my visiting hours further into the night. It was the time of the full moon, and the cemetery was almost as brightly lit as in daytime. So it could not have been that my eyes deceived me when on my next visit I saw a veiled white figure at the entrance to the tomb. as he moved closer to this figure he started he said it started moving closer to him

and then when he was just a few feet away the figure disappeared oh ha ha more practical jokes oh just a jokester now that you're dead he said he could hear Elena's voice still though singing to him after this apparition disappeared calling to him telling him she wanted to be with him

and so now Carl made a new plan on Easter weekend 1933 April 15th or 16th Carl waited for the sun to set and then he put on a fresh iron tuxedo. This is so fucking crazy. Next, he double-checked

everything he'd assembled before taking a wagon, blanket, cushions, and rope into the cemetery. Then he went into the mausoleum. What he did next was pretty difficult because the coffins, you know, were very heavy, so Carl pushed, shoved, pulled, finally maneuvered, the inner coffin onto the grass outside

of the tomb. He then loaded Elena's corpse onto the little wagon he had brought, before departed, and he put the blanket and the crucifix on the top of the casket and then he was off. In his memoirs, written in Zephyr Hills, Florida, after he would leave Key West,

he would write about how he felt that very night. Oh, I was hard that night, dear God, I was so hard. Throbbing, felt like it was going to pop. We then went at it, like animals,

or rather like one animal, fiercely humping a dead and rotting carcass. A dead and rotting, perfect, super sexy carcass. I'm pretty sure I came into her brain that night And then 60 or so seconds later A small creature crawled out From betwixt her legs

A baby, a zombie baby And it called out for me Father And I took it into my arms And I held it as I walked to the nearest sewer grate I set it down I pressed it into the opening I kicked it until I kicked it through the grate

And now I know not What has become of it since Okay, here's what he really wrote A wonderfully elated feeling took complete possession of my entire being As though a second spirit had entered my soul It seemed that a bodyguard of veiled angels Had formed on both sides

And were coming along with us and a great inspiration filled me then It made me feel like a victor Holding the triumphal entry in a world forgotten and buried I felt secure, protected and invulnerable No matter what was coming against us now Nothing could harm either one of us anymore There was no place for the living here on this blackest of nights All of the cemetery was alive with souls

which came out of the graves from all sides moving and thronging all around us. They were everywhere, none blocking our way, but all of them melting out of our way. It was as if we were delighted and desirous to help us, or they were. The little cart for all its weight seemed almost to run by itself. Oh, what a jolly little festival thing happening here. It responded to the slightest touch of my hand

which gave me the impression of being aided on by friendly hands reaching out of the ground. Oh, all the corpses are helping him get his corpse bride. It's like a fucking weird Tim Burton animation. When he'd almost gotten her body out of the cemetery, disaster struck. As Carl struggled to get the coffin over the cemetery fence, he sank into the mud, and then the whole load fell on top of him and a foul-smelling liquid dripped all over him. Most men would have vomited here.

Probably turned Carl on. He maybe used his loop and jerked off. He probably loved it. It was Elena's. smelling liquid. Finally, after whatever he did, Carl was able to get the casket over to a little house. He had rented for this exact purpose, a waypoint. Since it was no running water, it was more of a shed than a house. He had to wash himself in his clothes with a bottle of whiskey he found on a shelf. Then leaving her body there, he headed home, walking the dark streets of Key West and his liquor and

corpse fluid soaked wedding tuxedo on his way to the room. He still rented from Elena's parents. Once inside, he snuck into the bathroom, right jerked off, scrub down. washed their dead daughter's fluids off of him. Next day he left the coffin where it was. But the day after that, he took Elena's corpse from the rented house and loaded her into a large sedan. Come fly with me and be my wife. My heart, thy resting place will be.

An old German song. Carl's mother used to sing to him, played over and over in his mind as he pulled onto the hospital grounds and up next to his small plane, but really just a small part of a small plane, where he loaded Elena's body into the cabin. Around her were all the things that she would need to be, quote, cozy. Her clothes, bridled,

veil, flowers, jewelry, and stockings. After getting her situated, he then started taking her out of the coffin. And how did Elena Hoyos look two years after her death? Not good. Really not fucking good. Very, very rotten. Very malo. Muirte.

Very apistosa. Despite essentially being in a vat of Carl's special solution, she looked like fucking shit. Of course she did. She's been dead, you know, for a long, long fucking time. Ayah, yai. Her eyes were deep, empty black holes. Her lips were dried up. And it was really, I guess, you know,

closer to a year and a half than two years. But still, year and a half is dead for a long time. Her eyes were deep, empty black holes. Her lips were all dried up. Her teeth poked out of her tight and thin-lipped mouth. Her hair glued together and to herself. Maggots. There was maggots literally feet on her head, ears, stomach.

Her clothes were basically slimy sludge. Some of it glued to her skin. He was been days now, painstakingly, removing bits of cloth from her skin, washing her, dumping the fetid sludge into the ocean. When she was finally uncovered, now dead and completely naked, he kissed her lips, and he breathed into

her lungs until her chest inflated, or so he said, claimed, reassuring Elena that he would love her forever, no matter the state of her body. This guy is such a ghoul. This ship might have made Ed Gein squeamish or vomit. He did make some changes now.

He wanted to replace her eyes, which were basically completely on. So he used a catalog from the hospital to order two glass ones. Then he put splints on Elena's nose, kept it in place with bandages since it was at risk of kind of melting into her face. Next, he straightened out one of her arms,

since it had frozen into a cramped up position while she was in the casket. Oh yeah, you're going to be real stiff after this. She wasn't doing any yoga in there. He also wanted to make a permanent, non-perishable record of her face, a death mask. He used oil silk to cover her face, eyes and hairs, glass eyes,

hoping to get a perfect impression of how she looked, well, how she looked after she'd been dead for a long time, but whatever. The solution, though, then stuck to Elena's skin. He felt he had no choice but to put oiled silk all over the rest of her body. Now, since he believed that it would help discourage maggots and other infestations, by this point, Elena's corpse was basically a mummy. For months, he would now tend carefully to his mummy, feeding her vitamins and other solutions that he thought would bring her back to life.

Oh, vitamins, I guess he thought he thought. would turn her glass fucking eyes back into real ones. According to him, she did look more lively after these treatments. In the meantime, some changes at the Marine Hospital were about to unsettle Carl's everyday existence. The commander of the naval station, which the hospital was a part of, died, and his successor was much younger, did not kiss corpses and refused to allow Tanzer to continue storing his partial airplane on government property. But there was an upside to this. it did allow Tanzler to now figure out a place for him and Elena to live together.

After telling Elena's parents goodbye, he moved out of their place into a new house, sort of opened shed on the beach, and he brought his partial airplane with him. In fact, Mario Medina would actually help him move to plane, having no idea that he was helping Carl steal his sister-in-law's remains.

Meanwhile, in Zephyr Hills, one of Carl Tanzer's two daughters, a poor little girl named Crystal suddenly died of diphtheria. Oh, well, not his problem. He's busy enough with one corpse. Doris and her grieving family thought that Carl would surely come back for the funeral, especially after Doris wrote him asking him to do so, asking for his support, but he did not go to the funeral, nor did he send a single dime.

He was entirely devoted to Elena, and he needed to save his money, right, to fucking bring her back to life. So he continued to live in his ghoul shed now with his corpse bride. This goolshed had once been part of the old butcher pens where cattle were slaughtered in the area. their blood flowing directly into the sea. It's perfect. Fucking perfect. At least it was on the beach, though. This ghoul shed and in Carl's half plane is where Carl and Elena would live together for two years.

As Carl renovated this place, built a laboratory that would include a Volt transformer, X-ray machine, operating table, and then he would also, you know, go to work at the hospital. When he wasn't at work or taking in beautiful sights of the Atlantic Ocean, he was naturally working on Elena. He wrote, all work on Elena has been for the perfect. purpose of arresting and delaying further deterioration of the body tissue. Mumification had partially set in. This, however, was not beyond resurrection. The revival of the dried-up cells merely consumes, and I never gave up hope while I have a will. Now I began mixing plasma solutions in sufficient quantities, adjusting, testing, cooling, heating elements. So he still thought he could resurrect her. After giving her body a long bath and this plasma solution, he would take Elena out, put her on his

x-ray table for a five-minute radiation treatment, then return her. to her incubation tank. Truly mad scientist shit. Maybe. He might have just fucking made all the shit up. What's he doing all this? Did he actually have enough electricity in his fucking ghoul shit to run this equipment? I don't know. Either way, Tanzer was convinced

that he was closer than ever to bring her back to life. After all, after all, he said her once-gone body was now plump with fluid, taking her from 60 pounds to around 90 pounds. Oh, yay! She was plump enough to pump out two more zombie babies.

after she and Carl made love on occasions when he did not pull out. And again, he kicked him through sewer grates and they scurried off to do God knows what while he went on with his life. To supplement his treatments, Carl would play Elena music, believing that the vibrating sound waves would help further restore her. But then another problem arose, a new obstacle in Carl's very reasonable resurrection scheme. By 1935, with the end of the Great Depression, still nowhere in sight. Key West trolleys had shut down. 80% of his population was unemployed. Public services like police officers, firemen, sanitation, pretty much nonexistent.

The city's once famous cigar factories had moved to Tampa. And the only other industry, the sponge industry randomly, ended up getting fucking wiped out by marine disease. And that meant, of course, a sharp rising crime. Key West residents, many of them already used to steal in here and there to make ends meet. Now started venturing into people's homes and vehicles. And soon, Tanzer felt it was only a matter of time. before someone came in and discovered Elena in his ghoulshed and took her before he could relive her.

So he dismantled the incubation tank. Took her out, wrapped her again in silk. So, you know, fucking asshole insects would not further desiccate her. Around this time, he also lost his job at the Marine Hospital due to cutbacks. Although he still had some form of income, some mysterious checks kept arriving. Potentially he was getting paid for possible service in the German army during World War I if he didn't actually go to Australia for as long as he said.

But I think he probably did. He was probably getting some form of inheritance. Anyway, some kind of money. And now we cut to Christmas, 1935. It was a quiet one. Tanzler decorated a little Christmas tree with silver tinsle, cotton snow, little candle, little wax candles.

He wrapped up a pile of gifts on Christmas Eve. He'd been feeling festive, so he'd opened a bottle of wine, took a sip, went over to Elena's body and baby birded it into what was left of her mouth. Was she wearing laundry? While he did that, you think? It's not impossible.

He had been with her corpse daily now for over 32 months, over two and a half years. She'd been dead for over four. Then 1936 would bring more changes, more in addition to further decomposition. The peace and solitude, Tanzer enjoyed his home on the beach,

was interrupted further in 1936 by workers from FDR's Works, Project Administration. Damn you bastards! The program they were employed by was designed to give steady paychecks to people who worked for the government, who in turn would spend those paychecks

on consumer goods, which would jumpstart the economy. In theory, and to a large extent, it did. One of the greatest governmental decisions in the history of this country, in my opinion, did so much for our infrastructure, gave so many Americans blue-collar jobs. In Key West, workers were recruited to create, amongst other things, massive public arts projects as well as to clean up the beaches. And all those people on the beach made it impossible for Tanzer to keep up with his experiments on Elena. And to make things even worse, the person in charge seemed to have a grudge against him. He said they dynamited something on the beach that shook the wall.

walls of his gool shed. No longer feeling safe, he decided he had to move. And he found a new place on Flagler Ave, about two miles from old town. Another wooden shack. Another ghoul shed. Goal shed, too. But Tanzer didn't mind. Most important thing was that it was secluded.

Between April 30th and May 28th, 1936, he moved his supplies over there. Once settled into his new gole shed, there wouldn't be enough room for the partial airplane to poke into the structure. I guess he'd been keeping her in the cockpit most of time when she wasn't getting treatments. So he brought Elena into the bedroom now. And in the bedroom, he would sleep with her every night, occasionally discovering that she had leaked, a little bit of a fluid, but he would refill it.

In the mornings, he would play organ music for her, as one does. He would make breakfast, eggs, toast, and tea, which he would leave on her bedside table, but she barely nibbled on it. June 1, 1938, Carl wrote an interesting letter about this time. I've done it. She has given birth to two zombie babies. One I kicked into the sewer The other I keep up here in the cage

In my laboratory in three days' time It has grown as big as its father Fitting only on dead rotting flesh I have found along the beach I am to keep it and use its organs and pieces For my sweet bride Yes Eureka I shall rebuild the mother from the child

The mother from the child I tell you I'll rebuild the mother from the child My bride will yet live again Uh Here's what he really wrote Dear sister Yes he's writing his sister Last night I had a dream

But it seemed more like reality I spent the whole night with father and mother Elena too was with me We were talking quietly and peacefully When Elena who had been in a deathlight coma Woke up suddenly It was wonderful to see her relation in this new world She was wearing a new pink dress

The color of her eyes had changed from dark brown to blue Now as I write this down I have a feeling that I have moved And I am standing right in the threshold of this eternal space. It is as if only a thin veil separates me from it. I'm convinced now that mother and father are living happily together

in that eternal life. And I'm so glad that it has moved so close to me or else I have moved close to it. With love, your brother Carl. What the fuck? Did his sister know he was living with a corpse now? A corpse he romantically loved? It seems as if she might have. How would you handle that if it was your brother? Right? What would you write back?

So would Elena ever really wake up? Of course not. Of course not. That's not how the shit works. She is maximum dead. She's been maximum dead for years. But according to Crazy Carl, yeah. Yeah, she did.

He claimed it soon after that letter to his sister, following the stream, as the two lay together in their marital bed, in their death marital bed, he saw Elena's hands moving. And when he checked her fingers out, her arm supposedly lifted up and pressed firmly against his face. Then when he kissed her hand, she opened her eyes, her glass eyes, mind you,

and looked at him with eyes that could not see, with eyes that could not have lenses, and then attempted to get up, and he pushed her back down gently, tell her, no, no, no, darling, you must get your strength back first. And then he went to get her some tea. But when he came back, she was in that same position, rigid.

Mm, was her reawakening over as soon as it had begun? Apparently not. As he then gave her a bath shortly after this, went to wrap her in another layer of silk and wax. She spoke. She said, take my bridal dress. it is soiled anyhow. Tanzer agreed.

He thought this was a good idea. He cut off the soiled parts, wrapped her body in the rest of the dress, which he then sealed with wax and balsam. Then Elena, who can now speak German, apparently, began to sing in that language. One particular song was a favorite of his. In English, his title translates to,

How can I part from thee? How can I leave thee? Oh, he for sure did not hallucinate all of that, did he? No way, Jose. He definitely wasn't super fucking insane. not everything was going super well though there was some troubling signs that Carl couldn't ignore without the incubator

desiccation had said it Elena was drying out going from 90 down to 70 pounds and down to 60 well then 50 and then maybe a little under 40 getting real skinny and this worried him and distracted him and on March 2nd 1940 recently turned a 63 year old

corpse fucker Carl Tanzler slipped and fell to the deck frames of a boat he was working on. Yeah, he also had a boat, okay? This crazy fuck had a ghoul shed, a second one, a part of a plane, a corpse bride, and a whole boat. Do you even have one of those things? No? Then what the fuck you do with your life? Huh? Wasting it, that's what? Now, stuck in the boat, and with several broken ribs now, Tanzer was paralyzed with fear. What would happen to Elena? If he couldn't make it back, would she die? Finally, he was able to crawl out and hobble back to the shack. God, she's still there.

Elena's condition and his injury. Depressed him greatly, though. Then in September of 1940, some good news. Tanzler heard Elena's voice calling out to him again. Hide me. Hide me somewhere, she said. He was confused. What?

She was in bed with him, like always. What place could be safer than their bed? And then he thought, no, no, she's right. My wife is right again. I do need to hide her. Ah, I've gotten sloppy. I've been buying too much soap, so much soap. and jewelry and other presents for a young woman in town,

even though, for all anybody knew, I wasn't dating anybody. But how would he keep Elena uncomfortable? How would he keep her comfortable and maintain a low profile at the same time? Well, some more bad news comes. September 28, 1940, Tansa received an unexpected visitor. It was Mario. Not Super Mario, not a fun Mario. Mario Medina, Elena's brother-in-law.

Luckily, he didn't go into Carl's bedroom, didn't find Elena, but he was there because of Elena. He told Carl, uh-oh, Elena's tomb had been broken into. And her coffin seems to have been tampered with. They finally figured this out, seven and a half years after it happened. Tandler now went with Mario to the cemetery, where he found Elena's sister, Nata, Mr. Bethel, the sexton, and Mr. Pritchard, the undertaker. Elena's sister immediately said she wanted the coffin to be opened. Thankfully, the two cemetery workers on duty did not seem want to get into it, pun intended.

And they said that things were probably fine. Indeed, nobody, except for secretly, Tansler, wanted to see a body that had been dead for roughly nine years now. However, Elena's sister was suspicious. Her suspicion would not go away, and three days later, October 1st, 1940, Nana went to the graveside again, demanded the coffin be opened. Like her sister, Nana also had tuberculosis. The disease had actually claimed the lives of Elena's parents already. She wanted to make sure that her sister was at peace before she died. This time, a crowd gathered, and Tansler rushed over.

The sexton, Mr. Bethel. handed Tanzer a piece of rusty iron and a pair of rusty scissors, but Tanzer couldn't do it. He couldn't open it. Instead, he pulled Nana aside and told her, okay, you can see Elena. She's over at my house in bed. Mm-hmm.

Now he told her that as if she might understand. Oh, ha! Well, why didn't you say that? A few days ago, you silly old necrophiliate goose? Oh, my heck, gosh, dang, that's great news. I just didn't want her body to have been lost. Glad she's being put to good use. Nana and Mario followed him home

They walked into the bedroom Where Tanzar announced that Elena was at peace Resting in her silk clothes with all her jewelry Then he pulled back the curtain around the bed And there she was And Nana was thrilled She immediately cried tears of joy And hugged called

Gracias! Eres an oombre maravarioso! No, Nana was fucking shocked She could not believe her eyes Her sister's corpse was less than a corpse More of a patchwork Frankenstein monster reconstruct with wax and cosmetics. She turned to Tanzler, asked her, or asked him how long her sister had been there.

And he was like, seven years. Nana still unable to process what was going on. Said, no, no, this is not Elena. Uh-uh. Nope, uh-uh. She now demanded to go back to the cemetery and open the coffin. But then Mario said, what's the use? You know she's here.

Or maybe it happened that way. Again, this is tonsors retelling. And tonsors' version, Nana calmly asked him to put Elena back in her coffin now But later both she and Mario would recall being Fucking horrified But what they'd seen when they spoke to authorities They immediately left and tons are because he's crazy Carl

Seemingly believed that everything was gonna be fine now That he'd shown Nana and Mario You know how well he had taken care of Elena You're welcome And they obviously would now let him keep her body Until he too died at which point They would do the right thing And put the both of them in the mausoleum

for five days Tonzer just went on with his life totally oblivious just thinking everything's gonna be great feeding his zombie son in this fucking cage thankfully no one had seen him and fucking his corpse bride but then October 5th

1940 a motorcade headed by two sheriffs the then justice of the peace and a funeral car stopped in front of Tanzer Shack I know I could tonsler Tanzler the sheriff had a warrant charging Tanzler with being in possession

of a dead body what? Oh come on fascists I thought this was the land of the free, home of the brave. You know, a place for those free and brave enough to take a corpse home and care for it and make love to it for over in seven years, but I guess we live in China. As Tanzer was sadly taken into custody, not sure if authorities found a zombie son in the cage or not, and if any charges were filed against him for being a zombie, two funeral attendants went into the house and carried Elaine's remains out on a wicker basket.

I guess in one. Tanzer had no idea That it would be the last time he would see Elena's body At the courthouse Tanger would tell his story How Elena had died, her burial and disinterment Reinterment in the tube

The incubation tank He had made for her at his expense, thank you He would be held on $1,000 bail But she could not afford For quote, wanton and maliciously demolishing Disfiguring and Destroying a grave Boo! Let the man live! Who was he hurting?

Who was he hurting that was still alive? No one. Well, no one until her sister found out, at least. Then I guess he's maybe kind of hurting her, and probably some other people. This news would spread like wildfire through southern Florida, drawing crowds of journalists and photographers who all wanted the scoop on this strange story. Of course it did. On October 7, 1940, the edition of the Key West Citizen, the front page headline read, Hold von Kossel on malicious and wanton charges. Warrant served this afternoon. Case attracts interest throughout nation.

Eh, not the best title. Kind of weak, actually. The article that followed read, At a late hour this afternoon, county officials were investigating the process of law to follow in the case of Carl Van Kossel, who has been formerly charged with malicious and wanted disfigurement of a burial vault in the city cemetery when he removed the body

of Elaine Hoyomesa to his home and defiance of state health laws. Elaine, it's Elena. What kind of crackpot journalism is this? Key West was a buzz with talk today concerning one of the most interesting stories ever to break in this or any other city of the nation, and according to observance, the rest of the nation is going to hear of the story, too,

for two leading news services have placed it on their wire and telephoto releases to subscribing members. Carl Tanzer von Kossel, a resident of Key West for the past ten years, is the center of attention here today. According to the scientist, he had come to the end of a long trail, which started with a dream he had back in Germany, which had compelled him to search the world over for the beautiful lady pictured in that vision. He found her in Key West, only to lose her, at least temporarily, when she died at the hospital, and was buried in the city cemetery. I wish a better journalist would have written that.

Better than nothing, though. Scientists. Did go on to describe how he had moved her and lived with her for seven years. But nobody knew exactly what was going on there. Was Tanzer insane, an extreme romantic, a mad scientist, all three? I think mostly the first one. Weirdly enough, a lot of people seemed to have a fair amount of sympathy for him. After all, this was the era of doomed love.

In two years, Casablanca would come out to critic acclaim would go on to become one of the most enduring romance stories of all time. Some women thought that what Tanzer had done was marvelously romantic, and a crowd of women even came from Tampa to meet him. Oh yeah, of course. I mean, Ted fucking Bundy had a bunch of fawning admirers, right? Like attracts, like, sick attracts sick. Many of these women likely believe that Tanzer was the person he had advertised himself

to be a high-born, multi-degree genius on the cusp of a scientific breakthrough, the most important at all time, someone who'd figured out how to stop decay, maybe perhaps even death. And this, you know, being the beginning of World War II, many people were eager for some news that had nothing to do with bombings, Nazis, or global chaos. The general consensus seemed to be that Tanzer should be freed

and Elena's body should be returned to her family's custody. Lewis A. Harris, a local attorney, would defend Crazy Carl in court. He would fight for Tanzer on October 8th during a hearing at the county courthouse that was presided over by peace justice, Enrique Esquinaldo, Jr., there were three legal aspects that needed to be figured out.

The charge of destroying a grave, Tanzer's sanity, and another law that forbade, quote, the unauthorized disinterring of a body of a deceased human being. At the hearing, Elena's sister, Florinda, Nana, Medina, would speak describing how she became suspicious that something was not right with her sister's grave. The courtroom shivered as she described what she'd seen at Tanzer's cool shed. Your Honor, it was the most grotesque thing,

I've ever seen in my life. Her hair was still on her head. She had glass eyes. Her arms and legs were like sticks with stockings. It was a monster. It was horrible. What I saw will haunt me for the rest of my life. Tanzor immediately stood up and protested, shouting, how dare you? Don't talk about my sexy bride like that. May I remind you that I was happily sleeping with that glass-eyed, stick-limbed monster? For God's sake, our son can hear this. Any number of our kids can hear this right now. They've probably escaped from the sewer. They could be anywhere. No, of course, that never happened. Next, Nana said that she wanted to know

what had Tanzer been doing with Elena's body. Had he just been sleeping next to it or something else? Esquinaldo asked Tando the same question. Tanzer vehemently denied that he had molested her corpse. Then when it was Tanzer's time to share his side of the story in full, he painted a story of doomed love, how he had met Elena when she had gotten sick, what he had done for her,

how he had known that she was the woman of his dreams. The first time he saw her, I brought her back to life, Your Honor, he said. There was always life left in the body, he added, that could be resurrected, even if the physical body was asleep. For some wild reason, the justice of the peace did not seem to buy that. Esquinaldo announced that what was left of Elena would be buried, that she was definitely unquestionably very dead, and that the court would convene to decide whether or not to bring Tanzer to trial. Then Tanzer asked, now may I have Elena's body back?

and the justice snapped, no, no, you may not. You may not have the body back. You are no relative to Mrs. Hoyos. You have no claim to the body. And with that, and with that, Tansler snapped. He said this was not justice, that he had done everything for Elena, everything, and that meant that she was his.

But the court held firm. Elena would be buried at a secret location now, and Tanzer could fuck off. Meanwhile, hundreds of people from all around swamped the Lopez funeral home to view Elena's infamous remains, which in Orlando newspaper termed, passed all recognition as a human body, modeled by the skillful hands,

oh, of Van Kossel into a wax-like statuette. Okay. In her casket, Elena wore a blue rayon robe and a pair of black house slippers, a square of cheesecloth, covered her chalky face with its glass eyes and matted wig of short, straight, dark brown hair. The manager of the funeral home

would later say that almost 7,000 people came to see the body, and their reaction did not lead to outrage. Weirdly enough, reports about Elena's body cause more people to show their support for Tanzler and support spread across the state. A good reminder that sometimes, oftentimes really the majority people in a situation, in a culture, they actually get shit wrong. Jack Hartman Linton and Mrs. Netus Linton of Deerfield Beach, Florida, and Mrs. M. Selman of New York

City wrote a joint letter to the, quote, proper authorities that read in part, In these times, with the world's lust to kill and destroy, it is no more than expected for the mob to unjustly crucify. but if by miracle a person such as Professor von Kossel, not a professor, could succeed in restoring to life a deceased person, the greatest discovery of all ages would have been made. These fucking idiots. He's not some necromancer.

The letter continued with, even if the chances be a million to one against his chance of success, it was worth a try. What was it? Past history reveals that most of our great scientists have been unjustly labeled by the majority who could neither follow nor comprehend,

which in reality was an inner hidden grudge against anyone who had the courage and intelligence to further the progress of the world. Okay, I mean, they're actually kind of making a good argument, but I still don't like it. We feel that not only should he be liberated with compensation, but also that he should be permitted to carry on with the subject with the permission of the subject's custodians. Wow.

He should get to keep her corpse and be compensated. Really? Tanger Psychiatric Evaluation would take place at the courthouse on Thursday, October 10th. wild how the justice system works so fast back in the day. Members of the so-called sanity board were Dr. William R. Warren, Dr. H. C. Galey, and Mrs. Gilmore Park, secretary to county judge Raymond R. Lord.

Their hearing lasted a little over an hour. The court, interestingly enough, would find Carl perfectly sane. And then he would be released on October 12th after two wealthy Key West citizens offered up his bail. Soon, however, law enforcement would have a little more info about the kind of person Tanzer really was when they got a letter from his estranged wife, Doris, she said she would be happy to testify about his sanity and mentioned that, quote, his mind is troubled on account of many ways. But for some reason, she was never called to testify.

Seemingly, the court believed Tanzer, when he told them that he had separated from Doris back in Germany and later heard that she had moved in with his sister in the U.S. So he got away with being a deadbeat husband, deadbeat dad as well. Tanzer had more lies for the scores of journalists who now wanted to interview him. He said he had a coconut plantation in the South Seas. and that he'd almost died in India one time when he was put in a morgue before he heard a man's voice saying he would be buried at 5 o'clock

and then he woke up. What? Cool story, bro. He claimed he had been originally held at Ellis Island when he'd immigrated and that his sister in Elizabeth, New Jersey put up a $20,000 bond so he'd be let in. He said he stayed in New York for a year,

but that was too darn cold. The press could not get enough of his stories. They loved him. A Havana radio station, CMQ, even began running a nightly soap opera based on this whole fucking thing. The show got such a sensation

that the Cuban government forced it off the air and then sent a delegation aboard SS Cuba to investigate the curious going on in Key West. Not everyone believed Tanzer's tales of doomed romance.

Thank God. The headline of the November 2nd, 1940 edition of Miami Life read, Key Wester used body to gratify sex passion. As the article stated, Tanzer was undoubtedly

criminally insane. The evidence offered by the effigy he manufactured with cloth, wax, hair, and whatnot is damning proof of his perversion, of his unspeakable intentions towards the bones of a girl for whom he professed love. His next step might be murder for the sake of acquiring another body upon which he might satiate his unearthly and abnormal desires. Von Kossel should be put away by American authorities or deported. The latter probably would be the best punishment that could be given him. Hail Nimrod. Finally, someone speak in some sense.

Meanwhile, after docking at the Key West Harbor, October 22nd, 1940, the Cuban delegation learned from reading the Miami Herald, the answer to the question people all over were waiting to find out. Van Kossel will not be punished. According to the paper, the Monroe County grand jury decided Tanzer would not be prosecuted for any more crimes. He was free to go to figure out how to live the rest of his life without his beloved body. Tanzer, who had little money left, began charging a quarter of person for a grand tour of his home, the ghoul shed he had shared with Elena's corpse,

which of course included his own personal commentary. But then Key West would become too much for him to handle. He did not care for the notoriety. Everybody, everywhere he went, people accosted him on the street. Not everybody a fan. Some people understood he was a sick fuck. So he decided to pack it up and head to Zephyr Hills to be with his sister, who was reportedly having health problems.

And I guess to hide from his estranged wife and, you know, his remaining child that he had abandoned since they were all. were still living there. First though, before he left, he had something to do. At 2 o'clock in the morning, 2 a.m. He snuck into the cemetery, slipped inside the mausoleum that he had built for Lena. Was that what you were expecting? He spent a few hours there, reminiscing and resting before he placed a few sticks of dynamite in a timer in a wooden door jam and then headed out. On April 14th, 1941, Carl left Key West, dressed in his black tuxedo, bow tie, and his best fedora. He began his trek up the overseas highway at 9 p.m. A few hours later, there was a massive

explosion, well, not massive, but an explosion, and part of Elena's tomb where she was no longer interred was destroyed. When Carl read about that in the paper, I bet he was satisfied. Actually, he wrote that he was. By the time he got to his sister's house, towing his half-built airplane, can't fucking let go of it behind him. He was in a good mood. But his sister wondered if him living there was maybe not such a good idea. She was horrified by what Tanzra had done, not only to Elena, but to his wife Doris and their teenage daughter, who lived just down the road. and then as Carl took over her house with his fleet of possessions and equipment

never once offering to help, his sister grew angrier and angrier. Meanwhile, unable to work on his memoirs with his sister banging around the house, he retreated out to the yard and got into his airplane to write them. So now he's living in the cockpit of his still not rebuilt small plane,

parked at his sister's yard. As all of this was happening, the war in Europe was heating up and by 1942, the U.S. was in the thick of it because a German in an airplane, even a small unfinished one, looked somewhat suspicious. Tanzer was ordered by the government

to take the wheels off his plane, which then tilted the cabin at an uncomfortable angle. Good. Soon he had an unexpected visitor, Doris, apparently not as mad at him as she could have been. Doris took the initiative

and brought him to the place where his daughter, Crystal, had been buried. She cried softly as he quietly looked down for the first time at their child's burial place. Soon he would make a memorial for her, a simple arch with a cross on top that read, Crystal Tanzler, Our darling.

Not exactly a mausoleum. At the foot of the slab, he placed a handmade cement urn. Tanzer being Tanzer, though, most of his energy would still be devoted to one thing. His memoir about Elena, while he waited for publishers to get back to him, he made watercolors, images of him and Elena flying to heaven. Oh, fun! And portraits of her in the ocean. Then sometime in 1944, Tanzer moved away from his sister's house to a little place of his own

after freeloading there for three fucking years. He moved into a rural residence still in Pascoe County, Florida. Still never did shit to help his remaining daughter, that worthless fuck. This move allowed him to erect a suitable indoor shrine

to Elena now, something his sister refused to allow him to do in her home for some reason. On a long table inside this crude little house, he put Elena's casket, and inside the casket, he put one of his plastered death mask

to top a remake of her body. Fuck! He won't quit. On top of the coffin were pictures of her from when she was alive, her rosary and crucifix hung on the wall. Meanwhile, fantastic adventures, this pulp publication agreed to print the secret of Elena's tomb, his memoir. One of the sources we used for this. In Tanzer's letter requesting money, he said the manuscript was 70,000 words, including illustrations, but only about 37,000 words. And no illustrations would show up in the published version.

It was upsetting for him, but it was the only deal he could get for it. that same year, 1944 in Key West, both Mario and Florinda Nana, Medina died. Mario was electrocuted, accidentally February 12th, trying to rescue a fellow worker when the crane he was operating hit a power line.

Nana, who had been ill for quite some time, succumbed to, oh, Jesus Christ, succumbed to tuberculosis on April 23rd at the age of 40. And with that, the entire Hoyos family was dead. And so where did Elena end up? Three people were entrusted with her burial. Key West Police Chief

Bienvenito Perez Lopez funeral home undertaker Benjamin Sawyer and cemetery Sexton Otto Bethel The three people promise each other that they would never ever reveal where she had been reburied In order to hide the burial further

They dismembered Elena Put what was left of her Into an 18 inch square casket Which was buried more discreetly Some think she was buried Somewhere in the old cemetery Other things she was buried behind One of Key West's oldest homes

Some think she was buried behind the Catholic Church On September 5th 1947, the quirky poll publication featuring Crazy Carl's story hit the newsstands. Once again, he's in the limelight, but what little money he had made didn't last long, and soon he was destitute, unable to afford rent or food. Good. But his estranged wife, Doris, would step in to save him. She would give him $2.50 a week, even though he did not fucking deserve it, $2.50 from her $15 a week salary, and she would keep him alive.

Why? 1950 Carl now 73 years old received his certificate of United States citizenship with a peculiar addendum typed on the back of a citizenship papers was notification of a name change he'd wanted to change his name for years now from Carl Tanzer to Carl Tanzer von Kossel

Count Carl Carl to be precise two years later after Carl had not showed up for his daily walks around town two neighbors checked his home they found mail piling up on the front porch they called the sheriff who found Tanzer's badly decomposing body

lying on the floor next to the casket he was 76, and the sheriff immediately started fucking his corpse. It was what Carl would have wanted. And now a new zombie baby was made, would it grow up and find its half siblings further south? Not sure. The date of death on Carl's certificate would be listed at July, 1952, exact day unknown. And so on August 14th, Tanzer was now buried at the Zephyr Hill Cemetery near his daughter, Crystal. Did not deserve that.

Doris would not pass away until 1977, nearly three decades later. and she would still be buried next to him. She would never remarry. And now let's finally answer the question. You've been asking yourself this whole time, did he actually, did Carl Tanzler? Really? Not kidding. Zombie baby jokes aside.

Did he fuck Elaine his corpse? Well, for a long time, nobody knew. Stories about Tanza circulated for years after his death, after all, pretty wild story. And in the age of pulp magazines, it proved ample fodder for exaggeration and speculation of all sorts. But it was the Tropic Magazine article by John Dorshner that appeared on Sunday, March 5th,

172 that would confirm something that had been whispered about for years. The author of the article interviewed Dr. DePoo who belatedly told what he had found during Elena's autopsy. This one conducted after her body was taken out of Carl's home. Nearly a decade after she'd actually died.

And the doctor said regarding her lady parts, quote, the breasts really felt real. In the vaginal area, I found a tube wide enough to permit sexual intercourse. At the bottom of the tube was cotton and in an examination of the cotton, I found there was sperm. Then I knew we were dealing with a sexual pervert. Maybe Dr. Dupu would have been forced to disclose the results of the autopsy, had tansor been brought to trial, but he never was, and the doctor didn't volunteer

the information at the time, right? In 1940, a lot more taboo to talk about dude fucking a dead body. Making this less likely to be sensationalism, another doctor would confirm what that article claimed. The romantic necrophilic of Key West, an article written by Dr. Foraker, said the following, I attended this autopsy on the desicated corpse, which had a reconstructed face, breast, arms, legs, trunk, and vaginal tube constructed so that intercourse could be simulated. The doctor finished.

I have searched the 40 to 50 years of accumulation of literature in sex crimes and related problems and have found no case, as yet, similar to this one. So, for years, that sick fuck, was fucking, the corpse of a young woman who had never, ever even wanted to kiss him. Someone who just wanted to live, live without him. Someone whose family

wouldn't have given him the time of day had they not been poor and desperate to keep her alive. But you knew that, right? You knew that he wasn't just having non-sexual sleepovers

without corpse, just like you knew that Michael Jackson wasn't having non-sexual sleepovers with a lot of the kids he groomed. Why is MJ

catching his tray right now? Well, probably just because he's on my mind thanks to that thriller reference. Bum-bam-pana. And with that, let's get out

of the zombie-filled timeline. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. Carl Tanzler, what a creepy fucker. One of the funniest things to me about this episode is that since most of the information about how Tanzer grew up came to America, excuse me, Medalena, lived alongside her corpse,

comes from Tanzer himself. He should have been able to present himself in the best light possible to make it seem like, you know, maybe he was doing kind of a good thing in some way. And yet he still comes across as a completely batched-in-sane creep. Still comes across as an asshole. Why? Because there is no way for this story to not come across as crazy and creepy. Dead bodies are dead, and the fact that they are something to be disposed of safely for health risks and for the mental well-being of those they leave behind is literally encoded into our human functioning. Indeed, the sensation that drives us away from a dead body is an evolutionary survival mechanism called the behavioral immune system,

a suite of various psychological adaptations designed to detect the presence of disease causing parasites and pathogens. pathogens triggering a strong emotional response of disgust. It's that disgust that has prevented us and our ancestors from lingering around corpses largely, therefore minimizing our exposure to whatever killed the person. It's a survival instinct. The way to bury them or otherwise dispose of bodies, the traditions around that process have always varied from culture to culture. And there are some cultures like the Taraja of Indonesia who keep the bodies of their deceased relatives inside their homes for weeks or months or even years. While they save up the money,

the expensive water buffalo required for an elaborate funeral requires. Every few years, families practice a second funeral. They exhumed their ancestors from their stone tombs, clean the mummies, brush the hair, dress them in fresh clothes, sometimes add in accessories like sunglasses, which I've seen in videos on YouTube,

and they walked into the village to take new family photos. And it's fucking creepy. These cultures demonstrate that human culture can clearly, entirely, override biological programming by teaching children from a newborn age that an ancestral corpse is a safe you know a fucking thing to have around

you know the psychological disgust mechanisms or disgust mechanisms are replaced with feelings of comfort duty deep emotional connection but to go against this instinct when you haven't been raised that way living in a culture where people do that regularly and have for you know fucking generations

that requires a deeply different mind than most people have and by all accounts Carl Chanzer had that such mind This in all likelihood Was present from the beginning From the first time he latched on To the story of the white woman That his mom perhaps told him as a child

Rather than feel fear Or disgust or unease Carl felt desire Attraction, maybe even lust for the dead It is possible that no matter what era He had been born into Carl would have done something deeply strange When it came to dead women

But there are a few unique factors That made the time he lived in Particularly aligned to his sensibilities For one, there was a newly booming funeral industry, right? We talked about that during the Civil War as soldiers and their families wanted bodies return home for burial. New techniques emerged to preserve those bodies, including an arsenic-based fluid pumped through the corpses arteries, which resulted in them looking remarkably lifelike, almost like they were sleeping. For many people, the display of bodies, what we now

call an open casket funeral became a key part of the grieving process, allowing families to spend time with their loved ones before the burial. By the time of Jessica Midford's essay on funeral practice, however, that had expanded to making the bodies better. A few years, or homes used specialized products to erase signs of illness that had taken them, plumping their cheeks, giving them what essentially amounted to a tan they may have never had in life. And all of this introduced a new level of psychological complexity. How do you balance your instinct to get away from a dead body with your love for the person who was once encased in that body? And how do you navigate those things when the body looks so remarkably lifelike,

especially in the case of tuberculosis, where beauty standards were literally rearranged around the appearances of those, in fact, with this fatal illness. This experimentation with embalming also may have made it seem, especially to the wider world that didn't know as much about medical or funeral technology

that if you could make the body look like itself or even look better, bringing the body back to life, maybe not that far off. Indeed, many people would come to things that Carl Tanzer may have been on the verge of a scientific breakthrough. If only he had been given more time.

In reality, though, Tanzer was up to something much worse. We know now, thanks to the candor of a few physicians, that he was having sex with Elena's body, which makes him more of a Jeffrey Dahmer-type ghoul than it does some kind of Dr. Frankenstein, corpse-reviver, or Albert Einstein-like genius. Also, which stories about what Carl tried to do with Lena's corpse were even true?

Did he spend as much time trying to bring Elena back as he claimed? Did he really experiment on her that much? Or was he spending most of his time satisfying his own dark, perverse, carnal urges? Did he really think Elena wanted him to protect her body, or did he come up with that when so much the world started to view his story as romantic? Was he a deeply strange, mentally unwell person who had somehow convinced himself

that his love story was one for the ages? Or was he more like all the other dirt bags we've covered here? Did a culture that wanted romance in the wake of the Great Depression and the beginning of World War II simply see what they wanted to see in Tanzer? And Tanzer eagerly took them up on that. And most importantly, did he bring a number of zombie babies to life and kicked most of them into the sewer.

Did he just abandon them? Like he'd abandoned his living human children? Are those zombie babies still somewhere down in the Florida swamps? Should we be looking for them? Are they related to Florida man? We'll probably never know the answers to a lot of these very important questions. In the absence of that, all we can say is rest in peace, Elena Hoyos. Hopefully the rest of her family is resting in peace as well,

together somewhere, getting to enjoy music and family the way they did in life and not having their corpses fucked by some psychotic necrophile ghoul. Time for today's takeaways. Time suck. Top five takeaways. Number one. The mysterious, possibly quite educated,

possibly aristocratic, although possibly none of those things, Carl Tanzler, became obsessed with Elena de Hoyos as soon as he met her, believing her to be the mysterious figure, the white woman entity from his childhood, a spectral ghostly woman,

that was, you know, promised to him. If we can believe that. Number two, Alina de Hoyos was never into Carl at all. Even based on Tanzer's memoir recollections, we still know she didn't like him like he liked her. She might not have liked him at all, not even platonically. Tanzer wrote that she loved the gifts he gave her and enjoyed his company, but did she? Did she actually take the gifts because she liked them or liked him or because, for whatever reason, she felt to be rude not to? He proposed to her many times.

She never accepted. She claimed that that was because, you know, in God's eyes, she was already married. But was that true? I doubt it. I think she was just being nice. She was less than half his age, way out of his league. She looked like a beauty queen truly, and he truly looked like a guy who would rob a grave and fuck a beauty queen's corpse. Number three, Key West. Back in the day, was an interesting place.

While known primarily for being one of the homes of a writer Ernest Hemingway, Key West's unique way of life was embraced by many of its residents, who sometimes held normal jobs, like working in the area's cigar effects. factories but often went without steady work and fished for abundant seafood, you know, just scavenged for food, found of shipwreck supplies that they traded for food, slept outside, made do with whatever they could scrounge around from, you know, what they could find. Very eccentric place. Number four, Carl's infamy stretched far beyond Key West, thanks to press coverage of the wild

story, news of Elena's mummification and how Tanzer had essentially lived alongside a dead body for seven years, spread across the country, and the reception was largely positive. Yeah, most people fell into one or two camps. Either they believe that Carl, given the proper time and equipment, actually could resurrect Elena, or they believe that what Tanzer did was unbelievably romantic. They didn't know about the special equipment, though, that he'd set up with her, so he could have sex with her dead body, to be fair.

On the second issue, some of the blame undoubtedly goes to the cultural iconography, including movies like Casablanca that presented persisting, undying love as the most romantic thing possible. do you think that's what Carl was a hopeless romantic i hope not and number five new info of course many of us have probably heard stories of people who have come back from the dead aka been resuscitated after their heart has stopped beating meaning they've been brought back from cardiac death as doctors call it but that usually has to happen pretty quickly as opposed to you know years after you've died you know after your eyes have rotted out of your head and you know how glass ones and weigh 40 pounds

Generally, spending more than 30 minutes dead and coming back without major brain damage is incredibly rare, but in some specific circumstances, people have been resuscitated after many hours and made a full recovery. This happens in cases where cardiac arrest has been combined with hypothermia. Hypothermia occurs when the core body temperature drops below 95 degrees Fahrenheit, and on its own, it can be very dangerous causing the heart and lungs to fail, which of course eventually leads to death. But if the heart has already stopped on its own, hypothermia can actually actually be. actually have some upside. Cold temperatures slow down the body's metabolism, protecting our delicate brain cells from dying after using up all their oxygen. The longest known reported case of

successful resuscitation after cardiac arrest and accidental hypothermia for a full neurological recovery is of a 31-year-old man identified in sources only as Roberto during an attempt, excuse me, to climb the face of marmalada in the Italian dolomites on August 26, 2017. And the dolomites, by the way, gorgeous mountains. My God. Roberto and his climbing partner identified in sources as Alessandro caught off guard by a freezing summer thunderstorm. When Alessandro clambered to safety, Roberto tried, but then became trapped beneath the freezing waterfall and experienced hypothermic cardiac arrest, plunging his eternal temperature to 79 degrees.

A helicopter rescue team soon winched him from the face of the mountain before beginning resuscitation efforts didn't seem like things were going to go well. Once Roberto was at the hospital, though, he was placed on a life support system that maintained fresh blood flow for five hours, and he was eventually warmed and successfully resuscitated after a whopping eight hours and 42 minutes spent technically dead. That's fucking crazy. He came back after that. Now, nearly all of that time, his heart was being pumped by either CPR efforts or equipment in the helicopter or hospital, but still, after three months, doctors reported that Roberto had completely recovered with no sustained neurological damage, but he did have minor amnesia, which is a bummer because now he can't tell us about what crazy shit he might have seen on the other side.

This story, crazy as it sounds, has been reported on numerous legitimate sites, right, and it's in the Guinness Book of World Records. Not sure if anybody fucked him before he was brought back, by the way, and quickly made another zombie baby. sources surprisingly quiet on that. Time suck. Top five takeaways. Carl Tanzler, romantic necrophiliac, has been sucked. Thanks to the Bad Magic Productions team for help and making time suck. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins, to Logan Keith,

helping to publish this episode and designing merch for the store at badmagicproductions.com. Thank you to Sophie Evans for some excellent research. also thanks to the all seen eyes, moderating the cult of the curious private Facebook page, the mod squad, making sure Discord keeps running smooth and everyone over in the Time Sucks subreddit and Bad Magic Subreddit. And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker updates.

Get your Time Sucker updates. All right, Mead Sacks, as promised last week, some follow-up messages. Send in to Bojangles at Timesugpodcast.com that I did not get to, last updates. First up, one from an anonymous sack. is a huge message, uh, even bigger reply. It's like 10 messages in one and 10 replies. I really had to think about it. It is essentially a short, uh, short suck into the updates. It was standing

with the subject line of strong feelings and curiosity. And this anonymous person wrote, and I just feel like it was it was a lot of things they talked about here that showed up in a lot of other emails and parts. And so it's just kind of easier to like, just list them all out in one. They wrote, hey, I want to start this email with, I am truly a meat sack. I haven't always agreed. on some things here, but I have also heard logic and was happy to change my opinion or even beliefs based on listening to you and our fellow meat sacks who have written in. The most recent topic, Stonewall Rights, seem like the time to ask slash, share my frustration, and possibly get eye-opening information. First, I don't see gay or lesbian as the same as transgender.

I know they share the same acronym, but they seem way different to me as someone who is neither. I will be using the word mental illness for transgender because it makes the most sense for me right now. and I'm not going to replace or comment on any of their words as I go through here. I am 100% open to hearing out why I'm wrong or a different way of thinking. I do want love for everyone. You love whomever you want. Stay away from kids and animals. Dress how you want.

Do whatever makes you happy until it affects others. This is where I have issue with the trans community over the gay community. Like you said, if you don't like it, don't look. I find if I don't go to gay clubs or pride parties, it is not pushed into my face or affects my life. letting two people getting married and wanting to live in love together and possibly adopt children to raise with love and care. This is all positive in my heart. Don't care if they're the same sex, what they want to dress or pretend to be the other gender. If you're just trying to live a happy, peaceful life, all good.

I also share the same opinions with the trans community. Do whatever your heart is content. Do whatever makes you feel happy. However, unlike the gay community, the trans community do make me angry and uncomfortable. I will repeat, I am open to hearing the other side. First, as a woman and a mother of girls, the fact that a man can come into my or her bathroom is very uncomfortable for me, even if you are truly just there because your heart says you are a girl and that makes you feel right or happy. I don't want you there unless you're good. I don't, but unfortunately, that has not been my experience.

Twice it was clear, you were a man and it made me uncomfortable. Uncomfortable is one thing, but also you know that creep are going to use anything they can to creep. We shouldn't have to risk mine or my daughter's safety, so other people whose brain says they are the sex, they are not. just because they want to be in there, which also falls in line with the school interactions. Kindergarten through 12th grade students should not be schooled on sex, gender identity, sexual orientation. It should not be a thing. Don't get me wrong if your parents made it clear being gay was not an option, or if you have to be a boy, if you feel like a girl. Yes, you absolutely should see the school counselor, but again, this is not a whole class issue.

Most humans know pretty quickly if they like dick or pussy or both pretty naturally. Don't need a class or a club reaffirming that just support. I was such a tomboy from birth to like ninth grade. Someone could have easily wanted to convince me I was a boy in those formative years. You are really a boy because you like pants and mountain bikes and climbing trees. You're a boy. No, I was just different kind of girl. So give dumb children hormones or hormone blockers classes on who they are. It is so frustrating.

The next thing still really bothers me, but not as much as the sharing of my bathroom is sharing sports. There was a good reason why there was an NBA and a WNBA, not all built the same. Men are physically stronger by nature and that's okay. but it's so fucked for a man to dominate in any woman's sports. I just heard about a change that if a trans win, that runner-up women will share the first place. Fuck that. If a girl worked her butt off to do well in that sport, she should get the spotlight in pride alone.

She and I am thinking of my daughter, my time has passed, will not have a chance up against a male. We are so strong in our own ways. I gave birth to two babies, and I can guarantee you that was not easy. My husband, having seen it from beginning to end, not just giving birth, but caring for months, breastfeeding, post-recovery. It's not easy work. And thankfully, he understands.

which leads me to the last and least offensive thing, but still hits me the wrong way. Being called that a cis woman, I'm a motherfucking woman. I gave birth twice, dealt with hormones and periods and all these things. It chapsed my ass to hear cis women because you have a mental illness.

I have to share my bathroom, my sports, and my women. I know there's a chance I am wrong or not seeing the big picture because I've experienced it before. I also wouldn't be but hurt about hearing the other side. I may not be seeing things because I feel like learning, growing, sometimes changing makes us better meat sacks,

and that is what I want for me and my kids. I don't write this as a way to feed into nasty negative energy, but my honest feelings and frustration. I do that to understand, and I know we have transgender who listen. I don't want them to think I hate them because I was walking in the store. I would smile and greet them

because the fact that they want to live away or exist isn't what bothers me. I'm so grateful for this podcast. I will listen and do my best to learn from all of them. P.S. Sorry for the bad grammar. Anonymous. Okay, anonymous. Lot to unpack here.

A lot to unpack here. First, thank you for taking the time to write all that down, to ask on questions about things that admittedly make you feel uncomfortable. Thank you for being open. Thank you more for being open to hear on the other side. Again, you packed about 10 emails worth the questions to that one there. I'm going to do my best to address it all. So first up, you know, you spoke of transgender as a mental illness, you know, is it?

To begin to answer this, the people who have studied this the most do not think so. No major medical and or psychological organization, including the APA, the American Psychiatric Association, the WHO, the World Health Organization, consider being transgender to be a mental illness. And that does matter. I get very frustrated in our current society about the attack on credibility of experts. It does matter. One of the pillars of an advanced civilization is having citizens able to do specialized work, to be able to gain specialized information, you know, in various fields, and then share that with the rest of society and have society largely trust them. are experts sometimes wrong?

Of course, all humans are. But are they more likely to be correct about their area of expertise than somebody who is not an expert? Yes, that's where a lot of people get wonky currently, in my opinion. I think if we stop believing that, we become the societal equivalent

of a nation of flat earthers, right? An nation of QAnon believing Lizard Illuminati fearing ignorant motherfuckers. And anyone who doesn't believe that, if you don't think expertise matters, well, then how about you start taking your car into a dentist when it doesn't start properly. Maybe try and get your cavities fixed at the muffler place, right?

Expertise, it really does matter a lot. Also, let's say that you're right. Let's just go with this possibility that you're right, and it is a mental illness. How should that affect their rights? And I'll just say, should someone with paranoid schizophrenia not be allowed to marry, not be allowed to have kids, not be allowed to use a public bathroom because they might have an extreme mental health episode that could make people uncomfortable or scared? I doubt you'd want that.

Even if it was a mental illness, why demonize it like we used to demonize people with afflictions like schizophrenia because we did? You know, and it was cruel. Doesn't it seem cruel to do something like that again? Now next, and this is part of that same thing for you, I know, are bathrooms dangerous because of transgender people? You know, we've covered a lot of serial killers over the years, a lot of sexual predators.

How many times have we come across a man dressing up as a woman in order to access women's public bathroom specifically, and then once inside that bathroom, sexually assaults somebody coming in to use that bathroom. To the best of my memory, zero times. And I bring that up to illustrate an important point. A well-lit public bathroom is not the kind of place, if you can look into the stats on this,

it is not the kind of place deranged pervert, sexual predators tend to target. It is not where they tend to do their hunting. Why not? because it is too public, too much risk of being caught, right? We just think about this logically. If someone has a choice between a fucking dark alley, if they can sneak into somebody living alone,

their home late at night, or walk into the fucking, you know, Kroger or Fred Myers bathroom in the middle of the day, what are they going to do? They're going to do the stuff where there's less people around. You know, there's two greater chance that somebody will hear the victim scream or barge in during the act of the assault. I googled the following question, quote, how many times has a man dressed as a woman sexually assaulted a stranger in the women's

public bathroom? This is a summary that came back. Forbatham, there is no specific statistical registry tracking this exact scenario. However, extensive archival research and investigations by legal academic and anti-violence organizations indicate that such incidents are extraordinarily rare and isolated events rather than a systemic phenomenon. Basically, while it is not impossible, it is not nearly as likely, statistically, as say, being raped by a stranger while trying to get into your car at night in a dark parking lot.

It is far, far, far, far, far less statistically likely that then you know you or your daughter being raped by a family member, a family friend, or someone in a position of authority over your child, like a coach, pastor, or babysitter. Also, there are plenty of unisex bathrooms. Just think about this, right? Now, forget about everything I just.

set. There are plenty of unisex bathrooms all over the country that people use all the time without incident. I've used them in hotels, restaurants, concerts, etc. places that have to carry liability insurance, places that would never have unisex bathrooms if that opened them up to, you know, being sued more frequently. If it put their patrons in danger, you know, because of the increased risk at the hotel rent in Missoula, Montana, been there many times. At the lobby floor, lobby level, an extension of the lobby, they have a big multi-stall unisex bathroom. Right? Anybody can walk in. Man, woman, doors open. You walk in. Then you walk into your stall. Close the door. Then you come back out and you wash your hands. And I have used this in a stall next to a little girl. In the stall next to me, we washed our hands in the sink side by side. She didn't seem scared. You know, her parent out there didn't seem scared. My son's dorm in his first two years of college, their entire floor shared a unisex bathroom with not only multiple stalls for going to the bathroom, but also multiple showers. individual showers guarded only by a plastic shower curtain.

Young men, young women, showering in adjacent stalls with no locking doors. Never heard about a single incident of assault or someone peeping on the person in the next all over. And again, if that was really a big problem, the school would not do that just for liability reasons alone. Take political ideologies. Take everything. Just think about fucking money.

They wouldn't do that because they be sued all the time. Never heard about kids complaining, right? They adapted. It was fine. finally I go to a lot of music festivals last couple years music festivals with row after row of porta potties and those are used by everybody

men women boys boys girls it's fine actually I said finally but one more just got back from Germany visiting Kyler Europe it is the norm now to have unisex bathrooms in many places no one seems to fucking care because it's not an issue

this is a I don't want to just discount your fear but this is in my opinion a boogeyman fear in a logical, kind of like we're worried about the witch out in the woods type fear. I don't think it's logical. I think it's a type of fear

that is stoked intentionally by fear mongering, manipulative politicians and political operatives largely. And regarding your anger over this, well, I think I know why it leads you to feel angry, allow me to nerd out, and quote, Star Wars.

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. I know it can sound a little silly, as a movie quote, but I don't think truer words have ever been spoken. Okay, next question. Should people be able to talk about their sexual preference in school?

Yes, because it's not going to be explicit. Straight teachers reference having straight partners all the time. No one seems to have a problem with that. What they don't do is reference how they fuck their partners. Or at least if they do do that, they tend to get in trouble. You know, my kids, yeah, they knew that, you know, this teacher is married to so-and-so. This other teacher is married to this so-and-so. It's not a problem.

Queer teachers talking about being queer does not equate to saying shit like, so my male partner, John and I, man, we sure love sucking each other's dicks, right kids? You boys should try that. You should try it. Go ahead, suck each other's dicks. That's not happening

because that's not happening on the straight side either. All that's happening and all the people want around this issue is to allow queer teachers and staff to just be able to talk about their lives and the same managers, straight teachers and staff can. Just to say like, yeah, a woman can say like, yeah, my wife and I went to all the good.

That's it. Not I, my wife and I were eating each other's pussies. You know, it just gets twisted into these nonsensical scenarios. And again, pushed by fear-mongering political operatives and pundits. You know, doing that, just talking about their lives, that is no more akin to grooming, a word that I hate that gets thrown around in this context, than it is to stray people talking about their lives. Yeah. Actually, one more thing on this issue, I've come across a lot of scandals where teachers have fucked their students.

One of my friends in college was fucked by his teacher when he was a freshman. big deal, she got fired and went to jail. Every time I've ever heard of this kind of thing happening, these sexual impropriety, it's always been with straight people. It's always been with straight teachers. So why are we disproportionately worried about transgender or any queer staff?

Right? Fear. Refer again to my Star Wars quote. Next up, should a transgender or gay student be allowed to have a club at school? You reference these clubs? Yes, because joining them is not mandatory. My kids public high school has more than one, or their former high school now,

had more than one Christian clubs. no one scientifically is born Christian. That's a fact, actually. Being religious of any sort is 100% a choice, hard stop. So not letting people of another belief, people, the scientific community believe, did not make a choice to be queer. When you do let other clubs exist

that are based entirely on choice, that is blatant hypocrisy. You also mentioned that at one point, during your formative years, somebody could have actually convinced you like that you were a boy. But is that true? I would argue that it is not

unless you are actually transgender. You know, when it comes to these things, you can't be talked into anything. And again, this goes back to these notions of grooming. No one's going to talk your straight kid into being gay. That's just not a fucking thing, right? And if you think it is and you're actually straight, try to imagine a scenario where somebody could just fucking sweet talk you

into putting the opposite of the genitals you like in your mouth and suck it on them. No, it doesn't work that way. I could care less about anybody being queer. I love, love, love, hanging out, going on vacation. with a gay friend of mine and his gay partner. I've crashed in the same bed as him when we were young and poor. Could he have ever talked me into sucking his dick?

And I love this guy. Love this man. Could he have talked me to suck his dick while we're there? No. I'm just not interested. No amount of persuasion at any point in my life could make me do that, which is part of why I just don't care about it. I don't think anybody is being talked into being queer again.

And that's backed up by a lot of studies. That's not how it works. So these clubs, they are not a threat. They're just a nice place for these kids to be able to go and, you know, and not feel so alone and maybe have the, you know, suicidal ideation drop somewhat. Two more things. Should transgender women be allowed into women's sports? I don't think so, actually. I don't think so, and this issue makes me sad for transgender athletes.

Someone born with male musculature does have a physical advantage that is oftentimes impossible to overcome. The heaviest all-time raw bench press, no lifting equipment being used by a male. 355 kilograms, which is just over 782 pounds achieved by this guy in 2021. Heaviest all-time raw bench press by a woman, 207.5 kilograms just over 457 pounds in 2016. Huge fucking difference due primarily to anatomical structure. Men have more upper body muscle fibers on average a lot more than women. Fastest ever male time in the mile Three minutes

43 seconds 1300ths of a second Fastest ever mile run by a woman Four minutes six seconds 4,200s of a second That's a big difference between elite athletes

And think about it in terms of MMA If male and female elite fighters Were put in the octagon together Women would start being literally killed Or regularly end up with brain damage Due to the difference in raw explosive violence It's not just the same you know, stat after stat will tell you that if, you know, are you willing to look at it with no emotion,

there is a substantial difference between male and female athletes. I do think we should work towards the creation of special leagues for trans athletes. We should not demonize them. It is such a complex issue because it is different for each sport, way too much to get into here. But I didn't want to duck the question. I definitely don't think it is okay to berate, to send hateful DMs to, to leave hateful comments on trans athletes' accounts. there is no good reason to be cruel about it, right? No need to be a bully.

We can all work to find the most compassionate solution with grace. And finally, is anybody trying to take your title of woman from you? I don't think they are. Your motherhood, your sacrifice, your feminine strength, your beauty can still be celebrated just the same regardless of how this issue unfolds. I look at this like, I've looked at gay marriage versus straight marriage. Gay marriage is not a mockery of straight marriage like some people think.

It is just another marriage. I personally don't give a fuck Who else is married When it comes to how I view my marriage I don't base my marriage On anybody else's marriages I don't care About stuff like that absurd complaint

If we just open it up for everybody What if two dogs get married Even that absurd scenario All right Well fucking good for those dogs I don't fucking care I mean their dog brains can't You know recognize that concept

But I don't fucking care I'm just trying to focus On being married to my wife Hard to stop Don't fucking care What anybody else is doing You know I like being a man

much like I imagine I would enjoy being a woman If I was born that way I don't care if someone born a woman becomes a man It doesn't affect my manhood whatsoever It takes nothing away from my identity It is just a word to me, a social construct I care far more And I wish more people cared far more

About just being a good human. Stop. Just be a good human, stop. Who fucking cares what gender you were born, right? You didn't fucking hit the lottery By doing that. Just how you happen to be born? Just like where you're from doesn't really matter. You didn't fucking do anything, work for anything to get there.

You just ended up there. You know, and you can be proud of it, but to identify that way. Why? Just identify as being a good person. Does anything else fucking matter? Right? Just to be a good meat sack. I don't know. You'll always be a woman. You know, but again, it's more important, I think, to be a good person. Okay. And I know this is fucking turned into a suck of a tonne. Like I said, I hope my thoughts at the very least. I hope they didn't offend you. I hope they didn't push you away, and I just hope they just made you think about this in a different light, right? I'm just sharing my feelings on all this. I think we should all reevaluate from time to time what we are mad about, what we are afraid of.

I do that. And oftentimes I'm like, why the fuck have I cared about that? I am being silly and I let it go and I just feel better. You know, is my anger valid? Or is it the result of me just not understanding something, not looking at it from a different, maybe, you know, very valid, more empathetic perspective? Okay. Next up, another anonymous, and thank you again for asking any no hard questions. Next up, another anonymous. The first one was not anonymous, actually, but I just wanted to protect them from, you know, somebody possibly lashing out who didn't like the way they asked questions. This one was sending with the subject line of Dan, you disgusting motherfucker.

Dear Suckmaster, I will get to the explanation of the subject line momentarily, but I just wanted to say a very big thank you. Thank you for all the knowledge you dump into our ears on a regular basis. Thank you for the recent Stonewall Suck and thank you very much for your honesty and vulnerability. You shared at the end of the episode, I am a queer, trans, non-binary meat sack feel so good to be able to live out and proud.

And I feel very fortunate. As I know that not everyone has that luxury or the love and support I've been fortunate enough to have. There is still so far to go, but progress has been made. That being said, I fear public restrooms in the gym locker room

and the side glances and stairs are just a constant fact I deal with. That being said, using your platform to promote love and acceptance and basic human decency means so much to so many people. On to the subject line, for background, I work in a lab processing human blood and blood products. There are a few coworkers who got me into the time suck. It'd be cool if we could be called your blood suckers. Anyway, dealing with blood and blood products, there are a lot of tasks that involve shaking bags of liquid.

I've been haunted for months since whatever godforsaken episode it was, I don't even want to know which one it was, in which you constantly played the sound clip of a man masturbating. The wet, nasty sound. Too often sounds like a bag of liquid being sloshed around. Now to connect the subject line And my appreciation of the pride sucked As a non-binary meat sack Without a penis, who is not attracted to penises

Every once in a while, I just get so disgusted at work My mind is attacked with thoughts and images of that clip While just trying to get through my day and save lives So thank you for that. Just hoping Lucifina blesses me someday With a nice hoingy boinga oof de girl Anyway, thanks for all you do To fight ignorance and idiocy while providing entertainment

Sorry for the length of the email three to five stars Would not change a thing, thank you, Anonymous. Thank you, Bloodsucker. I so wanted to play that clip again to gross you out, but I won't. It actually obsessed myself, too. I don't, this is too much information, which I always do here. I don't even like to hear myself jerk off. Seriously, I have to play music where I'll just get so discussed.

I'll just give up. Also, so glad that overall you feel things are moving in a good direction, selfishly. I wanted to share your message mostly to hear about the bathroom slash locker room thing from your perspective. All right? I can't imagine how fucking nervous you get going into those places. where people like, what are they doing here? And you're just like, I don't know, just fucking trying to get out of my sweaty clothes

or take a shit. I feel like that perspective needed to be shared. Keep doing good stuff with good blood. And finally, an international sucker has a lovely message. From Dutch sucker, Ilonga. I think I'm saying, thank you for the pronunciation guide

in your name, by the way. Ilanka. Yes, Ilanka. Stand up with a subject line of a lesbian thank you. Hi, Dan, the time-sook team. I love you, but fuck you for making me cry at the end of the stone wall suck you ass wipe the love for minro the story is about your friends and family this little lesbian's heart is full actually when i started this a this little heart of mine i'm gonna uh i live in the netherlands and i have been insanely lucky in that regard my parents told me from a young

age you could love anyone aw so i never felt a need to truly come out even at 13 when i said i was bisexual i was never bullied about that other things yes but not that at 18 i knew i only liked women romantically but again, never a problem. Not at the jobs I've had, not in society. I'm now 33, married to my wife for six years, and we have a fantastic three and a half year old daughter. I truly wish this kind of normalcy for all my LGBTQ plus family all over the world.

Love should be simple. Being who you are should be simple. Thank you for being such an ally and an amazing dad. Stay fierce. Ilanka. Oh, Ilanka, thanks for those kind words. And also the beautiful photo of you and your lovely lady. Yeah, you two are fucking adorable.

Uh, yeah, love between consenting adults should be simple. Life is short, right? And it's often ugly and full of pain. Uh, we should at least be able to seek shelter from the storm with somebody of our own choosing. So many people worried that the pride community is equated with some kind of moral collapse. And yet in the Netherlands, right, there is wide acceptance. Ilanka is free to be who she is. Last I checked, Netherlands, uh, still a great, safe, beautiful place to live.

not full of fucking demons flying around and, you know, monsters in the streets. It's almost like fear over all of this. It's just ignorance, right? It's just confusion. It's just fear, right? Turning into anger, turning into hate. So let's not be ignorant.

Let's be loving. Thanks for all the other messages from people living, you know, out of the closet, people long in the closet, messages from former Christians, current Christians, people who have never been religious from straight listeners, trans listeners,

gay, lesbian listeners, asexual listeners, that are truly so many messages, just keep coming in, so many perspectives, so much love. Hail Nimrod to you all. Next time, suckers,

I needed that. We all did. Well, thank you for listening to another bad magic productions podcast. Be sure in rate and review time suck if you haven't already. And please, just like I said last week, don't have sex with a corpse.

Just don't do it. It's too kinky. It's a bad kink, right? You actually are gross. You should be ashamed of yourself. Just go to a therapist, and keep on sucking. At Magic Productions.

Last thing, can someone please add Ghost Cuck to Urban Dictionary? Please, I don't have time. Do any of you have the time to add Ghost Cuck to Urban Dictionary? Right? Ghost Cuck, defined as a person who gets turned on by either watching someone else have a sexual experience with a spirit or specter, or by watching two ghosts fuck. Ghost Cuck.