6 Strange and Horrific Things I Found on Resale Sites
There are a lot of classic stories that start as a re-selling of something. An object that passes hands from one sorry soul to the next, the new victim unwitting of the danger they’ve just accepted with a few quick bucks. We have legends like the killer prom dress and movies about evil prom dresses. There’s been movies/stories about cool boxes bought and houses are a very common theme. And don’t buy dolls from creepy, weird dudes off the street.
So, recently, I’ve taken up a new hobby while looking for some used furniture/reporting asshole price gougers on some local community apps and websites for selling/buying: being absolutely terrified by what people are slinging online. There’s a plethora of killer kitsch, abnormal antiques, and just plain weird shit that people are positive that you’ll want haunting up your place.
Whether it’s odd, old, gross, or weird, here’s six horrific things that could be in my house right now if I gave up the cash:
6) Ouija Coffee table – Price $60
Has this ever happened to you?
Trying to settle down with some coffee AND chat with your dead buds is sometimes just a headache!!! But not anymore with Ouija coffee table:
Hell, you don’t need to fork over extra cash for a three-in-one state-of-the-art device like this. For those of you with visual disabilities, the letters are larger than your normal Ouija board, so even grandma can join the fun and still complain to grandpa about the neighbors and their noisy dog! For those who need to keep a few extra spirits for your spirits, there’s a great drawer under the table. And you don’t even need a planchette when you’ve got a clear coffee cup after you’ve drained it.
Get your dark roast with ghosts with this little beauty!
How much I’d actually want it: 3.5/5
How obliging my glorious spouse would be to have this in our home: 2/5
5) Ashtray of Death – Price $5
Ever had to put out your $100 hand-roll Cuban cigar in absolute normative trash? Me neither, but we shouldn’t have to! And for just a fiver, we never have to worry about that again. Someone has created this…art…ashtray for us. Sure, it looks like Sub-Zero has been hitting the clay lately after an inspirational kill. That’s what gives it character.
Apart from the spine, feel free to gaze into the flesh-colored bowl and enjoy what looks to be bodily fluids found at a crime scene, pooling and clotting at the bottom. That sickening disgust from the visceral reaction of this thing is what adds to the beauty of art and expression in…ceramic ashtrays, right?
How much I’d want it 1/5
How obliging 4/5 (it’s small)
4) “Primitive” Doll – Price $75
Yes, dolls are on this list. They will always be on the list. I think you also have an idea about #1, too, deep in your dark heart.
Well, take a look at this doozy of a doll. Any little girl or progressive little boy would love to be haunted by this thing, always watching quietly from the corner…until the night comes.
It has no hands. Fine. I can get over that. It has disjointed, broken feet. Whatever. But…it’s the, well…
I mean, to be fair, this doll has more going on than some creature designs in movies today. The strange hair, twisted in all directions…The X stitched mouth…The long, flat nose…And those eyes…lifeless eyes. Black eyes…like a shark’s eyes.
How much I’d want it: 1.5/5
How obliging: 2/5
3) I want you to take a guess – Price $80
So, this is very pink and purple. Perfect for anyone who likes those colors and…rounded shapes?
Know what it is yet? Here’s the description: “No longer in use, can be used for plants/pots or whatever creative desire you may think of. I just have no use for it. Sparkly purple cover was put on it.”
Yes, you’re absolutely correct. It’s a prosthetic limb, apparently no longer needed. But you could have the most interesting planter in the neighborhood for the low price of $80!
Now, I’m not saying that prosthetic are weird or creepy or anything like that, I’m just saying the people who have them are – zing! I kid, my amputee friends. What I’m saying is strange about this situation is: trying to sell basically a body part (I know it’s not an actual, but this is still a pretty intimate piece of someone’s life), trying to sell it as a freaking arts and craft project, trying to sell it for $80, and…so pink…
You put that alllll together and it’s just a very interesting story.
How much I’d want it 2.5/5
How obliging: 0/5 (no way in hell)
2) Whisky Decanter – Price $15
In sunken overall’s and hands limply to his side, this jolly little monstrosity welcomes you to rip off his head and take a drink from him.
But that’s the least of our worries.
Along with charming red bow tie and luscious mustache, he’s sporting another set of baby blues.
Yes, that’s right, he’s got a Twilight Zone-esque extra set of eyes. But the description clearly states that this is “a great bar item from the past”. The past of what? Or where? Or whom? I don’t even know what kind of person or place could envision such a strange and grotesque-…let’s just get to the joke:
How much I’d want it: 3.5/5
How obliging: 3/5
1) Yeah, Clowns – Price $90
Have you ever thought, “Boy, I just have this $90 and absolutely nothing to constantly put me in mortal terror…and I want that”? No, of course not, you’re poor like me. We’d rather spend that on pizza, streaming services, and toys for our cats that they’ll never play with.
But if I were so inclined, I would buy this painting.
Yes, that’s correct. It’s a picture of a sad, tattered clown fart-summoning other demon clowns to him. It has to be. Look at their faces. Those are not “lost comrade” faces. Those are…
I’m not a huge fan of clowns, regardless, but this is a special kind of clown that even Gacy might skootch away from. That’s not a dig at the creator; it’s painted well, it’s just…you know…
Clowns, man.
How much I’d want it: 0/5
How obliging: 1/5
Bottom-line:
Oh, I haven’t even scratched the surface yet…We haven’t gotten to tickle couch, honey-addicted bear, dollception, and the sarcophagus.
So stick around for the next edition because I got a whole house to buy for now and the assholes are still price gouging…
This time on Nightmarish Nature, in honor of Thanksgiving, we’re exploring scads of scat! And not just because of the aftermath of all that eating we’re going to be doing, given that everything that goes in must come out eventually. But because turkeys are weird.
But, how weird?
Apparently, the shape and size of a turkey’s poop can tell you the sex and age of the bird. Male and female birds poop different shaped turds, and bigger ones with age. Your poop can’t do that, we’re pretty sure. And no, we don’t want to check, even if it does come in a whole host of rainbow colors with all the dyes in our food nowadays. Keep your weird quirks to yourself.
Fecal Fetishes
Vultures have very acidic scat that helps to keep their feet and food clean of bacteria from hopping in and around dead things. Somehow, this doesn’t seem like a step up to us, but I guess if you’re a carrion crawler you take what you can get. At least you’d know where it’s been I suppose, and that’s more than you can say for some of your long dead food sources…
Rabbits must process their food twice in order to break down the grassy matter they digest (like cows chewing cud). And so they eat their own partially digested matter, the cecotropes they produce after the first digestion. This isn’t true poop per se, that fecal matter comes after second digestion, but it does work its way through the same way.
And that brings us to koalas. They are one of only a few mammals that can eat eucalyptus leaves (and are closely related to wombats, one of the other two). Koala offspring eat their mother’s pap, which is a specialized form of poop that allows the baby to transition from nursing milk to eating solid leaves. It is green, smeary, mushy, and can get everywhere. Just like you’d expect.
We aren’t exempt.
For all that we have learned to be poop averse, a lot of animals eat others’ scat and glean a lot of nutritional value from their detritus. It’s not just your dog raiding the cat litter box and then licking you in the face. And we humans have even fought wars over rights to seabird guano, which was used as a form of fertilizer in the late 1800s.
Anyway, that’s the scoop on poop for now. Maybe we’ll revisit this load later on, seeing as how there’s still plenty of content here.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
Yeah yeah, the insects tend to get ALL the attention here on Nightmarish Nature. But honestly, this one takes the beefcake. It’s the New World Screwworm Fly, and it’s as terrifying as the name suggests. And they aren’t limited to the Americas, there is an Old World version as well, as they can be found pretty much anywhere tropical or seasonably suited.
Revolting Little Buggers
The Screwworm Fly is a parasitic fly larvae that burrows into its host to feed, named because it seems to screw deeper and deeper into the flesh over time. This process is called myiasis and do NOT look it up online, you WILL regret it. They blur those images out for very valid reasons, trust me (and not because of pornographic content). And these maggots will continue to burrow en masse, rather than staying put as a botfly larvae would.
Do Not Do an Image Search on Screwworm Myiasis, Like Seriously – You Will NEVER Unsee That
The female Screwworm fly lays her eggs on an open wound or orifice of her chosen host… And not just one egg or a couple of eggs, no – hundreds, even thousands of them. Let’s let that sink in a bit, shall we? Or screw in as it were. Although any warm-blooded animal is a prime target, cattle are a fly favorite, costing millions of head of cattle to this sick and disgusting horror annually. And if beef isn’t on the menu, Fido or even yourself might be.
The Great American Worm Wall
In fact, this particular feature here on Nightmarish Nature is so terrifying that the United States has made agreements with all of Central America, even including countries that do not generally share its interests, in order to create a “Great American Worm Wall” to prevent them from spreading back into the United States. I’m not going to go into all of the creepy and juicy details of this bizarre science fiction freak fact, you’ll just have to watch it here on Half As Interesting’s YouTube channel.
Essentially, the Worm Wall is a complicated byproduct of scientists studying radioactivity on the flies’ maturity as well as the flies’ sexual lives and using this information against them to nearly eradicate the species and banish it from much of its former range. So, Peter Parker, if you thought everyone was messing with your love life before, be glad you weren’t bitten by a radioactive Screwworm.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
You’ve almost made it to the end of the finger spiders here at Haunted MTL! Because I made A LOT of unfulfilled requests for a spider out of fingers, I will continue this snarky little AI art series with NightCafe and Canva through the month of September… In case you missed out, here are the other parts of this series:
Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: hand that is a spider; spider legs as fingers; fingers becoming spider; spider all fingers.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders Keep Trying! Yeah, I’m sure you don’t remember being bitten. Because of the ways they warp time and space, and the natural chemical reactions involved, the AI art generated finger spiders’ bite isn’t typically felt. They are still attached to you, feeding… You have to get them off… Keep trying!
Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: spider leg fingers; spider made out of hand fingers; hand spider picking banjo; fingers as spider playing banjo.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders That’s All Folks! Well, I guess that’s that then. It’s been nice knowing you. Enjoy your new form. Nothing left for it but to play the banjo…
All of the AI art images used in this series were generated on Thursday, June 13, 2024. If you want to see more freaky spiderness in art here on Haunted MTL, check out Bitten and Soul Catcher. More AI art graphic narratives from Jennifer Weigel have explored Little Red Riding Hood and Into the Deep Woods. Oh, and the Tiny Brain Computers exploration. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.
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Nicole Luttrell
May 3, 2020 at 4:19 pm
Alright, well these will be haunting my nightmares tonight. Thanks, I hate it.
Kristin Cleaves
August 15, 2020 at 8:41 pm
The coffee table is pretty sweet