"Behold, a dead body,
Still as a stone,
Cold as marble,
Light as a spirit,
We lift you in the name of Jesus Christ."
The Craft probably wouldn't have worked as well if all the witches had been devout Christians, but 1665 was a plague year so death certainly would have been on the mind. These girls proceeded to do the same trick with an overweight chef, before presumably turning their heads in unison and staring creepily at the scholar.
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Rumored Celebrity Rib Removals Are Well Over A Century Old
Celebrities ranging from Elizabeth Taylor to Cher have long been rumoured to have removed their lowest pair of ribs to achieve a slimmer waistline. When the rumour took on a lewd twist with Marilyn Manson, who supposedly took out two ribs so he could perform oral sex on himself, it felt like the urban legend had achieved peak '90s xtremeitude. An idea like that could only come from a celebrity obsessed culture, right?
Well, yes, but we've always been obsessed with celebrities. The waist sliming rumour appears to trace back to Broadway star Anna Held, who had a variety of nonsense spread about her to drum up press and ticket sales. If her name's not ringing a bell, that's because the marketing campaign took place in the 1890s.
It didn't take long for the idea to turn dirty. Gabriele D'Annunzio was an Italian war hero and prolific literary celebrity, with his work mostly falling out of favour because he also happened to be a forefather of fascist ideology. But in the 1890s through the 1910s, back when you could be a superstar for writing poetry and plays, D'Annunzio played up his reputation as a decadent lothario by sleeping with every woman in sight, throwing money and gifts around, posing for nude photos, riding around naked on horseback, and claiming to have indulged in cannibalism. Supposedly, his housekeeper was required to sleep with him three times a day. Oh, and he owned shoes with dick tassels and a robe with a hole for his ding dong.
When you're on record saying "The world must be convinced that I am capable of anything," rumours are going to spread, and rib removal for the sake of self-fellatio was chief among them. Again, in his day he was considered an excellent writer, so this is like if it was commonly purported that Haruki Murakami can only achieve an erection by beating a hobo to death. And while Marilyn Manson may have played up his edginess, he was never "invented fascism" edgy.
Jack R. Loun's got a little writing blog that he's been working on here if you want to check it out. Abraham is a Mexican lawyer, and when he isn't doing law stuff he writes comedy! You can say hi to him on twitter here.