Monstrum Athenaeum Tearing open the cryptid world of werewolves, vampires & zombies.
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It’s all fun and games until someone gets killed.
Movies and books about soft, cuddly vampires and werewolves may be all the rage these days, but they grossly underestimate the cold, harsh reality of the cruelty these creatures are capable of committing. These super predators are cold and calculating and know more about how to capitalize on our weaknesses then we give them credit.
Americans envision a time of great joy and holiday celebration when they think of that period of the year between mid-December and early January.
However, back in 1956 and early into 1957, the Grimes family of Chicago, Illinois would forget the happiness of the holiday season when Barbara and Patricia Grimes, a pair of teenage sisters, went to see a movie, but never returned home. For several weeks into the new year the girls remained missing until a construction worker discovered their nude bodies near a guard rail; dumped like ordinary garbage.
The autopsy documented bruising, several small puncture wounds, and what was dismissed at the time as “rodent bites”. There was also evidence that one of the girls had been sexually active just prior to her demise, but it was deemed consensual, as no signs of rape were present. The police went through a list of suspects, but eventually cleared each of them of the charges. To this day, the case remains as cold as the winter night when those girls died. So, if all the prime suspects were cleared, the only question that remains is “Who, or what killed those girls”?
The police interviewed thousands of people who were apparently witnesses on the night the two sisters vanished. Conflicting eyewitness reports made it seemingly impossible for the authorities to get a clear picture of the facts. It’s not that these people were outright lying but rather mistaken as to seeing the sisters that night.
After a while, the police were lead so far from the real perpetrator that they had no clue where to look. Then, in a turn for the worse, a frigid snow and ice storm hit Chicago the first week of January in 1957; bringing the search for the lost girls to a complete stand still. It wasn’t until after the storm had passed, and the ice and snow had thawed that the Grimes sisters’ bodies were discovered on January 22, 2015.
The passage of time and the condition in which the bodies were found made it very difficult to determine initially the cause of death. However, the autopsy placed it four hours after they went missing based on the digestion of their last meal. There were also no evident signs of how the girls died, but the autopsy also concluded it was due to exposure to the elements and the marks on the girls were determined to be non-lethal.
The mystery is how two teenage girls were abducted and subsequently found naked, frozen in the snow with small puncture wounds and animal bites. If these girls were forced, there was no sign of it. They were seduced and went willingly, yet unknowingly, to their deaths. So, again, who or what did it?
Could there have been something unnatural lurking in the movie theater that evening? Some dark, soulless thing, waiting in the darkness just beyond the silver screen for the perfect chance to pounce on unsuspecting prey?
According to the investigation, the Grimes sisters were most definitely at the theater, of that there is no question, and they were also accompanied by a pair of friends. However, it’s only afterward that their exact whereabouts became a mind-numbing mystery.
If a vampire were to stalk and kill two girls, then this scenario is a textbook example of its likely modus operandi. Two girls, fifteen and thirteen, were both taken without a trace, murdered in such a way that the only signs of foul play were puncture wounds. And how might a vampire know to try its luck at that theater? Well, they were showing Elvis Presley’s movie “Love Me Tender”, a temptation too hard to resist.
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