Strangest Things Around The World - Ripley's Believe It Or Not!

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• published: 08 Sep 2015
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Read the full story here: http://goo.gl/YQM7jH We are at the Ripley’s Believe it or not museum in Key West, Florida. Let’s go inside and I’ll give you complete tour of everything in it. This is the skeleton of the Fiji Island Mermaid, you can see the body of a fish and the skull that looks humanoid. A man by the name of Barnum charged 25 cents per head to view this in 1842. Now, is it real? No, when he was about to die, Barnum revealed the secret; he had fused the skeletons of the upper half of a monkey with the lower half of a fish. This is world’s greatest hoax by the way. This is a human Shrunken Torso: The Jivaro Indians of Ecuador were the only people on earth to have practiced the ancient craft of head shrinking. The heads of slain enemies were carefully preserved in a week long ritual and shrunken to a quarter of their normal size. This shrunken torso was originally purchased in Panama by author Ernest Hemingway. Next is a Naga Mask, the Nagas are a reptilian race who lived underground and their sculptures are found in many Asian countries. This mask was used to help exorcise evil spirits from people who are believed to be possessed. Robert Ripley bought this mask from the island of Sri Lanka in 1936. Here you can see a Native American ritual called Okipa practiced by a tribe called Mandan in North Dakota. There are three stages of self-mutilation in this ritual; warriors were first hung from rafters with ropes attached by pegs inserted under their flesh. Buffalo skulls would be skewered to their legs to weigh them down. Their flesh would tear after a few minutes and they would fall. This is the West African Hate God used as a Voodoo doll to hex the enemies. The Kondes people of West Africa brought this culture into America in 1809 when they came in as black slaves. Nails would be inserted into the doll slowly; day by day which is supposed to inflict painful mental and physical suffering on the enemy who would be tortured by an invisible spirit. Speaking of torture, the medieval Germans used a more direct technique to torture women who were unfaithful. This device called the Iron Maiden has 14 spikes that are aligned to pierce the eyes, the throat and the heart. The victims, who were put inside, were so mutilated by this device, that it was often set on a drawbridge over water. The mangled body could then be released into the water without having to be handled. Here is a coffin with a bell attached to it and you can see it ringing. In the early 19th century, because of medical misdiagnosis, being buried alive by mistake occurred with alarming regularity. To prevent premature burials, coffins were designed with alarm bell attachments. If a “dead” body awoke within the coffin, the attached bell could be rung from inside the coffin to alert gravediggers or other passerby. This is where the phrase “saved by the bell” came from. This is a model of a human unicorn who lived in Manchuria, China. His name was Wang and he had a 13 inch horn growing out the back of his head. He was a normal human being in all other aspects and was photographed by Robert Ripley in 1931. Read the full story here: http://goo.gl/YQM7jH Follow me on pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/phenomenalplace/ Follow me on twitter: https://twitter.com/phenomenalplace