5 Bizarre Ways People Caused Their Own Death
Any sane person knows that death isn’t funny. Unless it’s the death scene in Dark Phoenix, which is apparently hilarious. But sometimes in real life, people have caused their own demise in such bizarre ways, it makes you wonder if the universe is controlled by a supernatural troll. For instance ...
Death Row Murderer Avoids The Electric Chair ... Then Accidentally Electrocutes Himself
In 1989, Michael Anderson Godwin was sitting in his prison cell, having just avoided the electric chair via a well-timed appeal. He was doing what any other typical death row inmate does to pass the time (watching TV) when his headphones crapped out. So he decided to fix them.
He sat down on the only chair in the room, which was his metal toilet, and pulled over a length of the only wire in the room, which was the power cord on his TV. Since he didn’t have tools (murderers aren’t allowed to have those sorts of things), he decided to strip off the casing with his teeth. The problem was that his TV was still plugged in.
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We suppose there aren’t any OSHA regulations for DIY prison hacks.
He bit into the wire and sent all that voltage directly into his brain. Combined with the fact that he was sitting on a metal commode, he had effectively DIY’d his own electric chair. So not only did the universe exact some pretty in-your-face karma, but it added an extra middle finger in the form of him being found naked on the toilet.
A Scientist Overdoses On Vitamin A And Carrot Juice
In 1974, scientist Basil Brown had an addiction. It wasn’t drugs or alcohol; it was carrot juice. We’re assuming he drank nothing but carrot juice, because he was putting away a gallon per day. Wait; let’s back up. Is Vitamin A considered a drug? If so, we can say that he had a drug addiction, because he also downed 70 million units of the stuff in just 10 days.
The irony is that he was taking all of this in order to prevent disease. He was a huge health nut, obviously, but it’s hard to imagine that a scientist wouldn’t know that too much of anything can be bad for you. It just goes to show that even really smart humans are still humans.
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Imagine that.
It was reported that his skin was bright yellow when he died, and many people assumed that the carrot juice had stained his skin pigment. What they didn’t realize is that Vitamin A toxicity does the same thing as alcohol poisoning: it destroys your liver. In other words, he was jaundiced.
One of the reasons we bring this up is because some people hear about “megavitamin therapy” and think it’s fine to dive headfirst into it without a doctor’s supervision. They think that because vitamins are over the counter and typically healthy, it can’t hurt them. The next thing they know, they’re losing their hair, getting mouth ulcers, kidney problems, and in Brown’s case, death.
A Hunter Gets His Head Stuck In A Rabbit Hole And Suffocates
If you Google hard enough, you can spend an entire day reading about strange and ironic hunting related deaths. But this one is especially weird, because the hunter wasn’t attacked by his prey. His dog didn’t shoot him, he didn’t accidentally shoot himself, or fall off of a cliff either — he got his head stuck in a rabbit hole.
On New Year’s Day, Stephen Whinfrey went rabbit hunting. He gathered up some knives, a net and his dog, and told his family that he’d be back for lunch. Lunchtime eventually rolled around, but Stephen did not. After a few hours, the family started getting worried that something was wrong. They were right.
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And it wasn’t the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.
The next day, his body was found by a random hiker, his head wedged into a rabbit hole at a 45 degree angle. A British police officer said, “There was a hand coming out of the hole in between the male’s legs. I couldn’t see the other hand, and there were scratch marks on the ground. It became obvious that the man was deceased. He was wedged in the hole with hardly any room at all.”
It seriously sounds like a high school dare: “Bet you can’t put your whole head in there.” But since he was hunting alone, it’s impossible to know why he did it. Was he looking for a rabbit? Did he drop something in there? Who knows. It’s as tragic as it is bizarre.
A Doctor Tries To Catch An Elevator At The Last Second And Gets Decapitated
Have you ever seen that TV or movie cliche where an elevator is just about to close, when suddenly someone’s arm pops through to reopen the door? Of course you have. If an elevator is in the scene, it's almost guaranteed to happen. Well, it turns out that you probably shouldn’t try that, because sometimes those safety mechanisms fail, and the results can be horrifying.
An elevator at a Houston hospital had been closed for a few days, and when the “out of order” sign finally disappeared, a doctor stepped in to use it. Another doctor, Hitoshi Christopher Nikaidoh, was hesitant. He stayed back for a few seconds before asking, “Is it working today?” The other doctor replied, “I hope so,” and Hitoshi moved forward.
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Seems fine.
Just as he stepped in, the doors closed, pinning his shoulders between them. The safety bars failed, and he found himself trapped. Unfortunately, the elevator started moving, and it was too late for him to escape. He was instantly decapitated, his body dropping down the elevator shaft and his head falling into the elevator compartment with the other doctor, who was trapped with it for over an hour.
Further investigation showed that it wasn’t just a freak accident. The person who repaired the elevator forgot to connect one of the wires, which caused the doors to malfunction. If you think this is a one-off anomaly, you should probably read this article from Houston Press. Just don’t do it before bed, because it’ll terrify you, and you’ll probably end up having nightmares about sentient, murderous elevators.
People Die From Weird Sex Accidents All The Time
When you read that title, you might have thought of “autoerotic asphyxiation.” That’s assumed to be the way that David Carradine famously died. But trust us when we tell you that it gets way more bizarre than that.
For instance, here’s the report on a wing failure that led to a 1991 plane crash in Florida (capitalization is theirs ... we’re not yelling at you):
THE PRIVATE PILOT AND A PILOT RATED PASSENGER WERE GOING TO PRACTICE SIMULATED INSTRUMENT FLIGHT. WITNESSES OBSERVED THE AIRPLANE’S RIGHT WING FAIL IN A DIVE AND CRASH. EXAMINATION OF THE WRECKAGE AND BODIES REVEALED THAT BOTH OCCUPANTS WERE PARTIALLY CLOTHED AND THE FRONT RIGHT SEAT WAS IN THE FULL AFT RECLINING POSITION. NEITHER BODY SHOWED EVIDENCE OF SEATBELTS OR SHOULDER HARNESSES BEING WORN. EXAMINATION OF THE INDIVIDUALS’ CLOTHING REVEALED NO EVIDENCE OF RIPPING OR DISTRESS TO THE ZIPPERS AND BELTS.
THE PILOT IN COMMAND’S IMPROPER INFLIGHT DECISION [WAS]TO DIVERT HER ATTENTION TO OTHER ACTIVITIES NOT RELATED TO THE CONDUCT OF THE FLIGHT. CONTRIBUTING TO THE ACCIDENT WAS THE EXCEEDING OF THE DESIGN LIMITS OF THE AIRPLANE LEADING TO A WING FAILURE.
That’s the most sterile and polite way we’ve ever seen someone say, “They were definitely boning.” It appears from the report that since they were both occupying the same seat, it put extra stress on one of the wings, causing it to fail. But wait, it gets weirder.
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Like “whatever laundry doing method this is” weirder.
In 2009, a Russian man made a $4300 bet at an orgy that he could have sex for 12 hours with 2 women. They agreed, because it was an orgy, so why not? He actually pulled it off (heh), but minutes after collecting on the greatest “no way to lose” bet ever, he keeled over. It turns out that he had taken a literal handful of Viagra before the deed, overloading his heart.
In 1983, a place called Condor Club had a piano that could be suspended in the air by cables. One night after closing, a bouncer named Jimmy Ferrozzo decided to get frisky on top of it with his girlfriend. Somehow, as they were going at it, the lift mechanism was kicked on, and the piano began to rise. Unfortunately, it went all the way to the ceiling, pinning the couple together so hard that it asphyxiated Jimmy. Even more frightening, his girlfriend survived. She was trapped under him for 3 hours, until they were found by a janitor at 7:00am.
Look, the way you choose to get busy is entirely your business. However, we do at least recommend a brief cost-benefit analysis when deciding on exactly how crazy you want to get with it.
