In 2002, a 30-year-old Thai woman acquired the services of a gentleman for the evening, with desires of a sexual encounter. They went to the Hotel Saville, located in Victoria, NSW, Australia, where the encounter turned strange. The gigolo, whose name was Shane Chartres-Abbott, proceeded to have sex with the woman but became violent during the encounter. Later, Chartres-Abbott told …
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Imagine you’re a child, running around outside and playing with your friends, only to sit down on a mound of dirty on a hillside and accidentally discover a human skull? As was the scene in Griswold, Connecticut in 1990, when several children led police to a gruesome site. As investigators probed the area for clues, they initially placed blame on …
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I didn’t want to just corner Jenna after practice, so it was a couple weeks before I could talk to her about Nick. Meanwhile, more practices ended with full darkness outside, and as I walked from the Club to my bus stop, Nick would be there, just a shadow across the street at the edge of the sodium lights. Didn’t …
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No one mentioned Nick after he was gone. Everyone understood what had happened. Grappling doesn’t mix with sex or… whatever Nick had been doing. Yes, Pete came down hard on Nick, but if he had erred on the other side and let Nick keep on harassing Jenna, it would poison the Club culture fast. It wouldn’t just have driven the …
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Nick showed up at the Thursday 8:00 p.m. practice. Right away he was quiet, a bit off. We didn’t judge him too harshly for that—the mat is a foreign country with its own customs and culture, and I felt like an alien my first day, too. With Nick, though, it wasn’t just the usual white-belt confusion. He was youngish, pale …
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Skeptics routinely dismiss people claiming to be werewolves as merely suffering from an acute mental illness, such as schizophrenia. Lycanthropy, the term of choice from the skeptic playbook, has only just within the last hundred years been viewed as a mental disorder. Several hundred years ago, though, it was a sure death sentence for anyone suspected of being a werewolf. …
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I may not have another chance to explain myself, so I have to try now. To start with, Nick was a vampire. I’ll explain that before I’m done, but trust me for now. Obviously I didn’t know that from the beginning. But Nick was a vampire, and that’s what this story is about. That and the Club, anyway. You see, …
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Canada, a country famous for its vast expanse of wilderness, wildlife, and seemingly endless stretches of highway, including endless side roads leading into the northern backcountry. Among those highways and byways in British Columbia lies the infamous Highway of Tears. This five-hundred mile stretch of desolate road is home to more wildlife than vehicles. Unfortunately, it’s also home to many …
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In Borneo, there’s a legend about a carnivorous creature so vicious it’s been known to rip apart and consume an entire deer. Until recently, the description of this beast was limited to eyewitness reports. No one had successfully captured any proof of its existence (or at least survived to share it). Now, that’s all changed. We now have the SQUIRREL …
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The world’s a very dangerous place, especially for those unfamiliar with the terrors that possibly await as we venture forth from the safety of our homes. It’s every parent’s duty to warn their children of the creepers, stalkers, and downright unsavory people walking amongst us every day. However, the awareness of this danger shouldn’t be limited to naive children, but …
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Monstrum Athenaeum Tearing open the cryptid world of werewolves, vampires & zombies.