• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

A Real Life Corpse Bride?

Mighty_Emperor

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 18, 2002
Messages
19,408
Riddle of "corpse bride" draws crowds

Mon Dec 19, 2005 2:21 PM ET

By Tim Gaynor

CHIHUAHUA, Mexico (Reuters) - Peering through the glass at a mannequin's veined hands, sparkling eyes and eerie smile, the small crowd gathered outside a store in northern Mexico tries to settle a macabre riddle beguiling many.

Is the tall, slender bridal figure in the window a richly detailed shop's dummy or, as a local legend says, the decades-old embalmed corpse of the former store owner's daughter?.

The haunting figure known as 'La Pascualita,' or 'Little Pascuala' first appeared 75 years ago in the window of the bridal gown store in the city of Chihuahua.

Since then, the striking realism of the dummy has spawned supernatural tales and reports of a miracle, and even inspired a foot-stomping accordion ballad played on local radio.

The figure has drawn a stream of people from across the desert state of Chihuahua over the past eight decades, and is now attracting curious visitors from South America, the United States and Europe, the owners of the La Popular store say.

As cars and trucks rumble by the shop on a busy city street, the entranced visitors smudge their noses up against the store window and try to decide for themselves if it's a corpse.

"She looks good for all the years that she's been here," Yolanda Robles, who trekked to the shop out of curiosity from Phoenix, Arizona, said as she studied the rosary-clutching figurine.

"There are just so many details, like her hair and the nails on her hand, that it just has to be true," she added.

CORPSE BRIDE

Through the years the story has bloomed into a tale with all the rich characteristics of magic realist fiction. It all began on March 25, 1930, when the dummy was first placed in the store front window.

Dressed in a spring-season bridal gown, the figure immediately gripped the attention of passers by with its disquieting, wide-set glass eyes, real hair and blushing skin tones. Pascualita is unique among other shop mannequins in the sleepy backwater state capital.

Rapt locals soon began to notice a striking resemblance to the shop's then owner, Pascuala Esparza. A rumor quickly spread that the figure was not a dummy, but her daughter who, it was said, died from the bite of a Black Widow spider on her wedding day.

"She started to receive abusive phone calls from angry citizens who accused her of embalming her daughter," the store's present owner Mario Gonzalez said in his office above the wood-paneled shop floor.

"She decided to issue a formal denial through a public notary in the city, but by then it was too late. Nobody believed her and the name 'Pascualita' stuck," he added.

The name of the daughter, if Esparza ever had one, became lost in time.

Down the years, the tale has been embellished with claims of supernatural happenings, including visits by a love-sick French magician who is said to bring the dummy magically to life at night, and take her out on the town.

Others say that her gaze follows them around the store, or that she shifts positions at night in the darkened shop window to the surprise of passers by.

Spooked by the tales, several jittery shop workers say they dread being the last to leave the store in the evening, and some of them refuse to change the dummy's outfits.

Indeed, twice a week her outfits are changed, always using the more classic bridal styles that Gonzalez and his staff consider more appropriate and dignified. The changing is done -- perhaps a bit theatrically -- behind curtains put up in the shop window to preserve the dummy's modesty.

"Every time I go near Pascualita my hands break out in a sweat," shopworker Sonia Burciaga said.

"Her hands are very realistic and she even has varicose veins on her legs. I believe she's a real person."

MIRACLES AND SUGAR SKULLS

While Pascualita is more of a curio than a religious draw in devoutly Catholic Mexico, a few people have left votive candles outside the shop and even attribute a miracle to her.

"One woman was having a violent argument with her boyfriend close to the store. As she turned to walk away from her lover, he pulled out a pistol and shot her," Gonzalez said.

"As she fell she looked up and saw the figure in the shop window and said, 'Save me Pascualita, save me!' And you know what? She survived," he adds.

Other tributes to the mannequin have included an altar of sugar skulls, flowers and candles left by local school children each year on November 2 -- Mexico's Day of the Dead -- and a ballad by popular Tex-Mex combo 'Los Archies.'

Among those to visit the bride have been popular television figures such as Mario Kreutzberger, better known as 'Don Francisco', whose syndicated show has stirred up interest in the figure throughout Latin America.

As more visitors come to the shop each year, Gonzalez says he is thinking of getting a visitors' book and even opening a small museum to Pascualita.

But asked to settle once and for all whether she is a dummy or a corpse, he just smiles and shakes his head. "Is it true? A lot of people believe it is, but I really couldn't say."

---------------
© Reuters 2005.

Source
 
It's hard to say just looking at the pictures but facially, I think it looks very dummy like.

saying that, the picture of her hands looked pretty realistic. Surely there is an easy way of checking??? Or has no one dared to lift her skirts up?
 
New page with pics... however the text mostly repeats what was said 9 years ago!

Visit the bridal shop where an embalmed corpse models the dresses

For the past 75 years, a tiny bridal shop in Mexico has been the subject of some pretty crazy rumors. Tales of supernatural fiddling abound, with whispers of disembodied voices, mysterious cold spots, and even the occasional darting shadow seen from the corner of a visitor's eye. But the creepiest rumor centers around a bridal mannequin sitting in the window; a highly detailed dummy that many say is a perfectly preserved corpse.

The tale begins on March 25th in 1930, when the odd-looking mannequin was first placed in the windows of La Popular, one of the most well-known bridal shops in Chihuahua, Mexico. Almost immediately, the locals knew that something just wasn't quite right with the figure. Before long, tales of the stunning mannequin began to spread far and wide, and visitors trekked from all over just to see the intricate details in the doll. From the individual wrinkles in the hands, to the real human hair, to the mesermizing gaze of her glass eyes, it was almost as if the figure was a real person frozen in time.

Eventually, people began to notice the similaries between the mannequin, nicknamed La Pascualita, and the daughter of La Popular's proprietor, Pascuala Esparza. According to legend, Esparza's daughter had tragically passed away on her wedding day, victim of a Black Widow spider bite. Locals whispered that the beautiful figure in the window was, in fact, the embalmed body of Esparza's daughter. More and more, the details began to make sense, and the townspeople became outraged. Of course, Pascuala Esparza formally denied the allegations, but by that point, it was too late - the legend was set in stone.

Today, La Pascualita still sits in the window of La Popula, and the rumors have only become more pervasive. Of all the employees who work at the popular bridal shop, only two are allowed to change her clothing, and only behind closed doors. It's a practice that makes some of the employees pretty uncomfortable.

“Every time I go near Pascualita my hands break out in a sweat," said one shop worker. "Her hands are very realistic and she even has varicose veins on her legs. I believe she’s a real person.”

Other workers say they've come to the shop in the morning only to find Pascualita has changed positions on her own, or complained that she would "watch" them with an unsettling gaze as they tended to the store.

75 years later, some have come to revere La Pascualita as a saint, leaving candles and offering prayers in front of the window. Some ask for good fortune, but most come to her seeking guidance in matters of love. Many brides even let Pascualita decide on their gowns for them, simply choosing whatever dress she's wearing at the time they visit.

So, is the strange mannequin really the preserved corpse of an ill-fated bride? Skeptics say no, pointing to the difficult upkeep when it comes to stopping a corpse from decaying, but those who have seen La Pascualita in person walk away believers... and very creeped out believers at that. After all, how strange is it for a store to keep the same mannequin for nearly eight decades, and shroud its undressing in secrecy?

To pay your respects to La Pascualita yourself, you need only head to La Popular in Chihauhau, Mexico, where the famous shop welcomes visitors to take a closer look at their strange model, so long as you don't touch.

https://roadtrippers.com/blog/at-this-m ... he-dresses
 
This reminds me of a similar story from Pitsburgh ... after George Romero's Dawn of the Dead completed shooting, somehow one of Make-Up F/X artist Tom Savini's skeletal dummys ended up on display in a local shop window. The police were called.a newspaper clipping from the situation can be viewed in Savini's book, Grande illusions ... it was a full skeleton with tissue paper skin that had been dipped in liquid latex to create the wrinkled corpse skin effect then painted accordingly 8)
 
Those hands do look real, don't they?

I've seen a lot of mummys, and about the only process I can think of that might yield such results for so long would be 'plastination', the Fragonard process.

That's been around for quite a while, Lennin, Stalin, Eva Peron and a few others have been preserved in this manner, not to mention the Fragonard corpses and the bodies in that obscene Chinese exhibit called 'Bodyworks'.
Those are prisoners executed by the Chinese government, or so I've been told.

The preservation and display of the dead has a long history in Latin America. From monastary crypts, to displays of corpses exhumed from rented graves-a roadside attraction-to the wealthy in glass coffins and such cases as the Brazilian brigand, daSilva, known as Lampaio-his severed head, along with the heads of his mistress and several well known members of his gang was displayed in the courthouse for generations, until the family won a lawsuit to see it buried.

Could it be an actual corpse? Hard to say.

Looks artificial to me, might be a waxwork?
 
Real life corpse bride:

Carl Tanzler, or sometimes Count Carl von Cosel (February 8, 1877 – July 3, 1952), was a German-born radiologic technologist at the United States Marine Hospital in Key West, Florida who developed a morbid obsession for a young Cuban-American tuberculosis patient, Elena Milagro "Helen" de Hoyos (July 31, 1909 – October 25, 1931), that carried on well after the disease had caused her death.[1] In 1933, almost two years after her death, Tanzler removed Hoyos's body from its tomb, and lived with the corpse at his home for seven years until its discovery by Hoyos's relatives and authorities in 1940.[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Tanzler
 
I've seen pictures of that body-looks good and dead. Seems the no-count count had been patching the corpse with mortician's wax as it shrank. The effect was what looked like a very crude doll

He had also fitted the corpse with an 'accessory' we'll not mention, in the interests of common decency. What a horrid little man!

The case is well known, but really nasty.

A few years ago, the body of a girl(and her casket) was stolen from the grave in Lancaster Co.,PA As far as I know, the case is unsolved, and there have been some others like it.

Necrophilia, the love that cannot speak its name!
 
Some more great (and ghastly) photos here, including some shots of the docs examining Helen:

http://suchbeautifulgardens.blogspot.com/2009/10/shes-so-cold.html

I wonder though, was the necrophilia just a charge to make the story seem more shocking, or was it so shocking at the time that the news was suppressed and it only came out later?
I would go with the second, otherwise why go to all that trouble?
I remembered this story from the Cabinet of Wonders and have been wanting to find it again for years but didn't know how to ask so thank you (I think!) Mr RING
 
I would go with the second, otherwise why go to all that trouble?
I remembered this story from the Cabinet of Wonders and have been wanting to find it again for years but didn't know how to ask so thank you (I think!) Mr RING

So THAT'S why I couldn't find it! I coulda swore that we had the thread here, but it turns out that it disappeared in the Wunderkabineting!
 
Back
Top