[SPEAKER_00]: Warning, this episode contains details that some listeners may find disturbing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Death is the one certainty that unites all life.
[SPEAKER_00]: We devote our time to understanding the logical and the expected.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet the universe opt in surprises us with bizarre coincidence and twists of fate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today we look at five of the strangest deaths in history.
[SPEAKER_00]: These true accounts confront our greatest fear, the persistent, unpredictable darkness that awaits us all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of these stories qualify as gallows humor, others are deeply disturbing, but all are undeniably strange.
[SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of which, this is a study of strange.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the show, and happy 2026.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's our first episode of the new year after a little break for the holidays.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am your host, Michael May.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you enjoyed today's episode, we have more true strange deaths, by the way, saying strange and strange just deaths.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very hard to do, but we have more true stories like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: published on our sub-stack, which you can find through the support tab on our website astudyofstrange.com, and I'll be releasing video shorts with some additional strange deaths as well on social media, so find us primarily on Instagram a study of strange.
[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine being at a local baseball field, in the early 1900s when baseball was the most popular sport in America.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're at a field watching a game, there's the smell of cracker jacks and autumn leaves, and the buzz of a small town crowd.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our first story takes us to Morris Town, Ohio in the autumn of 1902, and amateur baseball game is underway in 20-year-old Stanton Walker, is sitting on a fence at the ballpark between two friends, Frank Hyde on one side, and Lee Roy Wilson on the other.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hyde is keeping score in tracking stats and asks Wilson for a knife to sharpen his pencil.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wilson opens up his pinknife and reaches across Walker to pass the knife to Hyde.
[SPEAKER_00]: At that very moment, a batter sends a foul ball, screaming into the crowd.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ball strikes Wilson's hand, driving the open blade deep into Stanton Walker's chest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Witnesses said that it pierced him right near the heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: He staggered and bled to death within moments.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I will point out as I like to do on this show that a lot of reports describe this differently.
[SPEAKER_00]: They say that Walker himself asked for the knife.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was holding it when the ball hit his own hand and he stabbed himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: As an example, here is a quote from the Times Tribune in 1902.
[SPEAKER_00]: A tragedy without a parallel is reported for Morris Town, a Hamlet and Belmont County.
[SPEAKER_00]: During a ball game near the village Sunday, Stanton Walker with others was seated on a fence watching the contest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Walker had asked a companion for a knife, which had just been handed him with the blade pointing toward his body when a bad-ad ball struck Walker's hand, and the end of the knife handle was such forced the blade was driven into the young man's heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: he fell from the fence and died without a word or a ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: Regardless of which account is true, I personally believe that he was sitting with two friends and the knife was being reached across his body, but regardless of the fact, this was a freak accident.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ball didn't hit his chest, where his head, as you might expect if you hear someone died at a ball game, but a hand, precisely at the wrong time, which turned a harmless pocket knife into a deadly weapon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Walker's death is one of the strangest recorded fatalities at his sporting event.
[SPEAKER_00]: This one shows how a mundane, innocent ask, hey, and may that knife so I can sharpen my pencil, can lead to death, which reminds me of the final destination movies.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's worth pointing out that there have actually been dozens of deaths at baseball games, both amateur and college and professional, and from when I gather, Stanton Walker is the first, or at least the first documented death at a baseball game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next, we leap a decade across the Atlantic to Paris, where Austrian-born Taylor-Franz Reichelt dreamed of revolutionizing aviation by creating a trustworthy parachute.
[SPEAKER_00]: Parachutes were unreliable in the early 1900s, which isn't hard to imagine since flight was in its infancy.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were heavy and cumbersome and usually failed to open.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know exactly when this fascination of Rykelts began, but in the first few years of flight, there were of course many accidents.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he began tinkering with designs around 1910, seven years after the ripe brothers made history.
[SPEAKER_00]: His initial designs were successfully tested.
[SPEAKER_00]: From only about four or five stories up, and they were not yet designed to be wearable.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was his goal.
[SPEAKER_00]: He ended up making several prototypes of a wearable parachute, but they were incredibly heavy at first.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think his first prototype was around 150 pounds, and then he was able to reduce it to about 20 pounds.
[SPEAKER_00]: The initial testing of this type of parachute did not go so well.
[SPEAKER_00]: That dummies he would drop from a roof would plummet like stones.
[SPEAKER_00]: But right count believed that the parachute would deploy and would work but from a greater height.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in 1911, he petitioned the authorities for permission to conduct a test from the ifle tower, and officials agreed on the condition that he would drop a dummy and not himself or another living person.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, on 4 February 1912, he showed up at the tower without a dummy, and he was wearing his own parachute.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unlookers were expecting a mannequin, of course, and they were stunned when Ryekeld announced that he would jump himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Friends begged him to attach some kind of safety rope or harness, but he refused, insisting that he wanted to prove his inventions merits, quote, without trickery at 8.22 a.m.
[SPEAKER_00]: right out climbed onto the first deck railing, which is about 187 feet above ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was filmed, which I will provide links to that video in the show notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: His parachute looks like a thick comforter, wrapped around his back.
[SPEAKER_00]: He props it up, puts it on, stands on the railing, and it looks like he hesitates for about 40 seconds before leaping.
[SPEAKER_00]: He plunged to the ground, the parachute just flapping like a thick cape around him, and he broke his skull and spine and died instantly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Police measured a crater of about 15 cm deep, where he landed afterwards, he earned the nickname, the Flying Tailor.
[SPEAKER_00]: It later emerged that just two days earlier, an American steeplejack had successfully
[SPEAKER_00]: a event that Reichelt may have heard about, and that might have motivated him in influence him to decide to attempt his own job.
[SPEAKER_00]: Parachutes were still novel at this time, and there was genuine interest in developing a device that pilots could wear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Reichelt was just a tailor, not an engineer, but he was part of a broader community of inventors experimenting with aviation safety at that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our third subject is Sherwood Anderson, a celebrated author of the book Winesburg, Ohio.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sherwood was also a business owner and relatively well known in the Cleveland, Ohio area.
[SPEAKER_00]: In early 1941, Anderson set sail for South America to report on labor conditions.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will say a lot of accounts also just mentioned he was on a cruise.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I do like the story I read that he was there to report on labor conditions.
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives it a more official trip.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nevertheless, one day he began to feel abdominal discomfort.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this pain grew worse and worse until he had to disembark the crews in Panama to seek help.
[SPEAKER_00]: Days later in a hospital in Panama, he passed away.
[SPEAKER_00]: The cause of death, a toothpick.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had accidentally swallowed one while eating or derves on the cruise and had no idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doctors surmise that the sliver of toothpick perforated his gastrointestinal tract, leading to infection and sepsis.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was only 64 years old and in the midst of a productive period of his life.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it's strange in and of itself to talk just about Anderson's death because he has a very interesting life.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had successes and failures as a writer.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was one of the first writers to discuss Freudian analysis.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was also a veteran of the Spanish-American War.
[SPEAKER_00]: He also had a nervous breakdown earlier in his life that affected him in such a manner that he forgot who he was.
[SPEAKER_00]: And lastly, he was married and was a business owner.
[SPEAKER_00]: His epitaph on his grave and Marion Virginia reads,
[SPEAKER_00]: toothpick, ingestion, is rare, but there are documented accounts of this happening even today.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's worth noting that in Anderson's time, pre-packaged appetizers often came with these wooden picks in food, and they were slightly different than today's toothpicks, and were more easily splinterable.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a term.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just made up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Silent Film Actress Martha Mansfield began her career as a child actor landing roles on Broadway.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the early 1920s, she hit a big and hollywood with parts and movies like civilian clothes and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde alongside John Barrymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was only 24 when she landed a starring role in the Warrens of Virginia.
[SPEAKER_00]: A civil war drama being filmed in San Antonio's
[SPEAKER_00]: On the 29th of November 1923, she had wrapped her scenes with sitting in a parked car in her elaborate hoops curded costume when a match fell near Martha and her whole wardrobe ignited.
[SPEAKER_00]: She leapt from the car screaming as her costume, which was made of lace, frills, and flammable fabric, lit up, instantaneously.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kostar Wilfred Lightell immediately wrapped his overcoat around her, while her chauffeur burned his hands, trying to tear away the blazing fabric, but not before Mansfield suffered burns, over most of her body.
[SPEAKER_00]: The exact cause of the ignition was never determined.
[SPEAKER_00]: She may have been lighting a cigarette herself, or a passerby might have tossed a match.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also been rumors and speculation of suicide or foul play, but those have never been substantiated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where it gets a little stranger as a doctor is we're very optimistic that she would survive this accident.
[SPEAKER_00]: But overnight her condition deteriorated and she died the very next day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her funeral in New York drew thousands of fans, family and friends, also prominent producers like Samuel Goldwyn and David O. Selzenex served as Paul Paris.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's interesting to me as someone that loves Hollywood history.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is an account that helped contribute to the supposed cursed productions in Hollywood, like the Omen, the Exorcist Superman series, the Wizard of Oz.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Hollywood curses are another story for another episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our final story brings us to Soviet Russia in the 1920s, where physician philosopher and Bolshevik theorist Alexander Bogdenov believed that exchanging blood between people could forjuvenate the body and possibly prolong life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bogdenov founded the Institute for Blood transfusion in 1926, and he argued that cooperative blood exchange would bring not only medical benefits, but also social solidarity, which of course fits into that Soviet ideology.
[SPEAKER_00]: The complete dictionary of scientific biography notes that he...
[SPEAKER_00]: tirelessly propagandized the value of cooperative blood transfusion for rejuvenation and often conducted experiments on himself, Bogdenov claimed to feel healthier after a series of transfusions and even reported improved eyesight and reduced hair loss, though these claims are anecdotal.
[SPEAKER_00]: In April 1928, he attempted an exchange of blood with a young medical student who
[SPEAKER_00]: the experiment was fatal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bogdenov died on April 7, 1928.
[SPEAKER_00]: The student strangely enough recovered, imagined believing so deeply in a scientific utopia that youth throw other science out, and it leads to your own death.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alexander Bogdenov did just that.
[SPEAKER_00]: He saw that exchanging blood
[SPEAKER_00]: These five deaths are more than macabre anecdotes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their odd shocking and tragic ends are fascinating because they show how reality doesn't need help in being strange.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've just listened to a study of strange.
[SPEAKER_00]: Consider helping us keep the lantern lit illuminating the unexplained by subscribing to our sub-stack.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just head to the support tab at a study of strange.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, stay curious and stay strange.