Weird stories are with us.
It seems most people like to hear a true weird story. We have the legends of Bigfoot and the Yeti. The Loch Ness Monster. The Amityville Horror and the Haunted Insane Asylums. On and on it goes.
One of these stories may account for the writing of The Beauty and the Beast. It came about a long time ago, in the mid-1500s.
A man, born and raised on the Canary Islands (just off the coast of northern Africa, near Morocco), was born with a rare condition. His name was Petrus Gonsalves, and the state was “hypertrichosis” or “werewolf syndrome.” People with this condition produce excessive hair growth all over the body, including the face.
In Petrus’ case, hair completely covered him, from head to toe. His eyes could be seen and his mouth. But all else was furry. Because of this, people treated him like an animal. They even kept him in a cage and fed him raw meat.
A miserable existence for this boy. When he was ten years old, he was presented as a gift to the new King of France, Henry II. Upon receiving this hairy kid, King Henry decided he would tame the little beast. He would give the boy a proper education.
Well, furry Petrus was highly intelligent. With that, Henry became very fond of him. Instead of treating him like an animal, Henry II made Petrus a noble. It wasn’t long before love entered the scene. Petrus married a beautiful woman of the court, and they had children together.
Apparently, the genetic condition can be passed down, and some of his children had hypertrichosis. Regardless, many people point to this true-life story as the basis for Beauty and the Beast. Singing teapots and all.
That’s a pretty good weird story, really.
Here’s another.
If ever you’ve gone on a “ghost tour” anywhere (try Charleston, SC, as they are a dime a dozen down there), you’ve heard of those rare cases when people, being mistaken for dead, were accidentally buried alive. Wouldn’t that be quite a thing?
But it has happened. Of course, the tales give the elaborate details of supposed corpses heard screaming from underground. When they finally unearth the coffin, much to their horror, they find scratch marks on the inside of the casket. And such. That buried person had tried desperately to get out.
This whole “terror” of being buried alive was so strong in Victorian times that they installed bells above ground that were attached to the dead body in the coffin below. If the person was alive and woke up, they could just ring that little bell of life. Some historians believe the phrase ‘saved by the bell’ comes from this practice.
In truth? These bell-ringing, full-proof coffins never had any success stories. There are no records of anyone actually being saved this way.
Regardless. Being buried alive has happened. Even scarier is that these incidents have been reported in modern times. The most recent case of a mistaken death occurred in 2020.
It happened to Peter Kigen. He was a 32-year-old Kenyan man who was declared dead. But. He wasn’t. Peter woke up in a morgue where he saw the staff standing around him, getting ready to embalm and drain the blood from his body. Peter regained total consciousness after someone had sliced his leg open. He started screaming. I’m guessing the staff might have started screaming too. At any rate, hospital negligence was held responsible for this shocking incident.
So. A couple of weird stories about life being found.
Coming to life in different ways.
It reminds me of all people, really. Though our personal stories may not be this dramatic, we all have had times in our lives when we found new life.
A new idea. An unknown path. A different way. Even, perhaps, a strange chance or a second wind.
Whatever the case, we should notice these stories and cherish every moment of life they have given us.
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“The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide you’re not going to stay where you are.”
— J.P. Morgan
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“Celebrate endings—for they precede new beginnings.”
— Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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“No matter how hard the past is, you can always begin again.”
— Buddha
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The weird stories in life. Beastly.
