The Mind Is A Scary Place

I think I am going to start a semi-regular tag called Strange Delaware. In this tag I will discuss some strange things about the First State and some brief commentary on these events. Below is the first:

Today in Delaware History
December 29, 1983 After complaints of foul odors from neighbors, authorities entered the house of a Millsboro man whose body was found propped up in his bed. His 77 year old blind wife and 59 year old daughter denied that he was dead but said he was only under a spirit's spell. A medical exam found that he had been dead since 1980.


It never surprises me to hear about people that do strange things. Mental illness exists in this broken world and mentally ill people do weird and crazy things. What I find more interesting are the odd things groups of people are found to do. Lets look at the event above. Two grown women live with a decomposing man for three years insisting that he is alive. It is obvious that mental illness was involved here, but who was mentally ill? The easy answer is that both were. What a fascinating dynamic. How did they both come to this conclusion? Was one the leader and the other a follower? The human brain can be a very scary and strange place, and it shows that under the right circumstances and with the right stressors we can convince our of just about anything. Could these women have both been fully functional members of society until the father died? It is scary to think that at some point in your life, things could take such a dramatic twist.