I’ve been a bit behind on my issues of Rue-Morgue lately. Just today I went down to my local shop and picked up the current and previous issue. While I catch up, here are some of those random bits of info that we love so much. These facts are from issue 69 which the feature story is about Monster Squad (pictured above) and the events leading up to it’s 20th anniversary and dvd release. It’s about damn time. Enjoy!

+ Texas State University’s plan to build America’s largest “body farm” -an area where scientist bury corpses in order to study human decomposition- was recently suspended after fears surfaced that buzzards circling the area might become a threat to aircraft.

+ Until 1820, vandalism of Westminster Bridge in London was punishable by death.

+ John Carpenter began making genre films (with titles such as Terror from Space and Revenge of the Colossal Beasts) when he was eight years old with a hand-held 8mm camera.

+ This past May, a seventeen year old boy walked into a Japanese police station holding his mother’s severed head. He confessed to her murder then led the police to the rest of her body.

+ William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist, once considered becoming a priest.

+ Wes Craven rejected Scream twice before finally agreeing to direct it.

+ Police in Tacoma, Washington found themselves baffled after someone dressed a dead fawn in babies clothes and left it at the doorstep of a local theater.

+ William Seabrook’s 1929 travel book The Magic Island, about Haiti, marked the first appearance of the zombie in American and European literature.

+ Between 1882 and 1944 there were 4708 recorded lynchings in America.

+ The Dark Eyes of London (1940) starring Bela Lugosi was the first British horror film to be given a “H” rating. “H” stood for “Horrific” and meant that no one under the age of 16 would be permitted into the theater.

+ In Afghanistan, it is illegal to dissect a corpse, even for medical research purposes. As a result, some medical students in that country have taken to grave-robbing in order to study human anatomy.

+ When The Bad Seed was released theatrically in the US in 1956, officials banned all children from movie houses where the film was screening believing that it might inspire copycat violence.

+ In 16th-century Italy, artists would often assist doctors with the dissection of corpses so they could more accurately portray the nude human for in their works.

Info compiled by Monica S. Kuebler