And Anastasia Screamed In Vain...
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Jason Murphy is a novelist, screenwriter, and content creator. He stuck around St. Petersburg when he saw it was a time for a change.
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Below is this week’s most popular short Strangerous story. Check it out for more information on the mysterious truth of Anna Anderson and let me know what you think.
Did Anastasia Survive?
I’m not well-versed in Russian history, but the whole world knows about the Romanovs, Rasputin, and the family’s execution at the hands of the Bolsheviks in 1917. Lenin’s group of revolutionaries had decided Tsar Nicholas II needed to go. They lead his family down to a basement and murdered the lot of them - wife and children, along with a number of doctors and servants. Immediately after the massacre, rumors began that one of the Romanovs had survived - Tsar Nicholas’ 17-year-old daughter, Anastasia. And three years later, in Berlin, Anna Anderson appeared.
Onlookers in Berlin fished a distressed woman from a canal. The woman at first admitted she had thrown herself into the canal, but then revealed her identity; she was Anastasia Romanov. Her story seemed unbelievable, yet her remarkable resemblance to Anastasia sparked curiosity.
She insisted that she had survived the execution of her family and had been saved by sympathetic guards. Her account was filled with details about her life in the Russian imperial family and her subsequent struggles, which seemed almost too accurate to be fabricated.
Supporters of Anderson argued that her knowledge of intimate Romanov family details and her familiarity with the Russian language and culture indicated that she was indeed Anastasia. Skeptics, however, pointed out inconsistencies in her story and questioned her mental stability, suggesting that she was an imposter seeking attention or perhaps suffering from a delusional disorder.
The controversy surrounding Anna Anderson's identity led to numerous legal battles. She spent several years in mental institutions and sanatoriums, often undergoing psychiatric evaluations. Despite these assessments, she continued to insist on her royal heritage.
One of the most famous legal cases involved the Grand Duchess Anastasia's surviving relatives, who sought to prove or disprove Anderson's claims. It was only in 1970, after her death, that DNA testing became available. In 1994, forensic analysis finally confirmed that Anna Anderson was not related to the Romanovs. She was a mentally ill factory worker from Poland. The scars she bore were not from the hail of bullets that killed her family, but from a factory explosion when she was a child.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/anna-anderson
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/anastasia-arrives-in-the-united-states
Everyone’s life is a story. Some of them aren’t very good, of course. Mine has a lot of junk food and XBox. It’s not going to light up the box office, but hopefully it will come together in the third act. What if you steal someone else’s story and make it your own? It happens all the time. The easiest way to create a fake identity is to steal a deceased person’s. Others, like Frank Abagnale or TE Lawrence, create their own mythologies. They take little bits of the truth, dress them up in lots of flourishes that are difficult to disprove, and voila, you’re a legend. I would say that this lifestyle has fallen by the wayside because of the information age, but I don’t know that that’s true. Maybe the internet and our hyper-connected society has made it easier to craft an outrageous story about your life.
Suffragitsu - Edwardian Women’s Martial Arts
Suffragitsu came to prominence during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, coinciding with the zenith of the women's suffrage movement. Women who were fervently demanding their right to vote encountered resistance that occasionally escalated to violence. Men hellbent on being shitheads were showing up at Suffrage protests to beat up women. Sometimes, the cops helped.
At the forefront of Suffragitsu's development was Edith Garrud, a remarkable figure in the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Garrud and her husband William introduced a form of self-defense tailored explicitly for women. Drawing inspiration from various martial arts, namely jiu-jitsu, they designed Suffragitsu to equip women with the skills necessary to fend off physical threats.
Suffragitsu techniques were crafted to be both effective and non-lethal. They emphasized self-defense, control, and restraint, underscoring the suffrage movement's commitment to nonviolence. Suffragettes were trained in a repertoire of strikes, holds, and escapes designed to subdue aggressors without causing lasting harm.
One of the signature moves of Suffragitsu was the "suffragette twist," a joint lock capable of immobilizing an opponent without causing permanent injury. These techniques not only cultivated physical prowess but also instilled confidence and assertiveness in women, enabling them to navigate their battle for equal rights.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34425615
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/suffrajitsu
https://malevus.com/women-martial-arts-suffrage-suffrajitsu/
Suffragitsu is such a niche system, and that’s what interests me. It’s so specific to a certain time and place. You’ve got styles like Abir, which sounds like Old Testament kung fu. Reading about it makes me want a Biblical martial arts epic. I’m imagining Moses parting the sea with a bad ass knife hand strike. Over in Ireland there’s the art of Bataireacht, which means ‘stick fighting’. Irish gangs under English rule weren’t allowed to carry any weapons, so they became proficient in fighting with their walking sticks. But what if you got more granular? Something so hyperlocal it was absurd? What if there was a small town in Oklahoma that had developed a fighting style specifically to deal with feral hogs? Or a technique only known among the people who live in the tunnels beneath Las Vegas?
Angels of Mons
On August 23, 1914, in the height of WWI, the British Expeditionary Force found themselves in a dire situation near the Belgian town of Mons. Outnumbered and facing relentless German forces, the exhausted British troops were on the brink of defeat. That night, as they hunkered down in their trenches, something extraordinary happened.
Soldiers reported witnessing a miraculous vision. They described a host of angelic figures descending from the heavens, some on horseback and others on foot, with radiant wings and shining swords. These celestial beings allegedly shielded the British soldiers from harm, providing divine protection during the fierce battle that raged around them. They were accompanied by the ghosts of the Archers of Agincourt, adding a bit of national pride to the supernatural goings-on.
The presence of the Angels of Mons seemed to turn the tide of the conflict. British soldiers, inspired by this otherworldly intervention, fought with renewed vigor. They managed to hold their ground and eventually retreated in an orderly manner, avoiding a complete rout. While the battle was technically a retreat, it was considered a moral victory, as the British army had stood their ground against overwhelming odds.
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/world-war-i-miracle-the-angels-of-mons/
https://historyhub.info/the-angel-of-mons-from-myth-to-fact/
https://americanliterature.com/author/arthur-machen/short-story/the-bowmen
There are countless stories like this - soldiers at their darkest moment, receiving a vision of angels or their ancestors coming to aid them in their valiant fight. The phenomena seems similar to Third Man Syndrome, but on a much larger scale. But at some point in the recollections of this tale, fiction may have collided with fact.
Inspired by the events of that battle, weird fiction author Arthur Machen wrote a story titled “The Bowmen”. Soldiers in desperate flight from enemy forces are aided by the appearance of St. George and the Archers of Agincourt. Just like what really happened, right? Maybe not. Some scholars believe that no one actually believed they saw St. George … at first. Then Machen’s story was released and the elements of ghostly archers from the past started to worm its way into recollections of the event in Mons. Art imitates life imitates art.
UVB-76
UVB-76 was first discovered by radio enthusiasts in the 1970s, with its exact location pinpointed to a remote area near Povarovo, Russia. Initially, the station broadcast a repeating buzzing sound, hence its nickname "The Buzzer." This buzzing occurred at a constant rate of 25 tones per minute, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For years, this was the station's sole transmission, leaving many puzzled about its purpose.
However, the intrigue surrounding UVB-76 deepened when, on occasion, the monotonous buzzing was interrupted by the broadcast of coded messages, often consisting of Russian names, numbers, and occasionally, phonetic alphabets. These messages were cryptic and baffling, adding to the station's mystique.
Over the years, various theories have emerged to explain the purpose of UVB-76, but the station remains shrouded in secrecy. Some of the most prominent theories include:
Military Communication: One of the prevailing theories suggests that UVB-76 is a military communication station used by the Russian military or intelligence agencies to transmit coded messages to field operatives or submarines. The occasional messages could be orders or instructions for covert operations.
Dead Man's Switch: Some speculate that UVB-76 serves as a "dead man's switch" or a signal that, if interrupted or silenced, would trigger a response from authorities or alert them to a crisis situation.
Navigation or Locator Beacon: Another theory posits that UVB-76 may serve as a navigational or locator beacon for submarines or aircraft, helping them determine their positions in remote or hostile environments.
https://www.historicmysteries.com/uvb-76/
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/uvb76-russia-mystery/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76
As a kid, living in the middle of the high desert, I had a stereo that I would listen to late at night. It was one of those ‘boom boxes’, something you would see in a movie or a cartoon, with a young punk walking through an urban neighborhood with it perched on his shoulder, blasting abrasive music. It was a cliché.
Nonetheless, I spent hours, slowly rolling the dial, searching for fuzzy transmissions. You see, this ‘boom box’ had a special feature - it could pick up shortwave. I didn’t know what I was doing at the time. I was just listening for weird stuff. And there, in the small hours of the morning, I would occasionally find a numbers station. I have no idea where it was broadcasting from or if it was even the same one every night. I don’t remember the frequency. But it was mysterious and clearly clandestine. There was no internet then. I couldn’t research it. No one I asked knew what it was, so for years I was left wondering just what those droning messages were about, and I’ll never know.
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As you well know, my past is stained with acts of necromancy and rebellion against the natural order of things. Here’s a story about my shadowed beginnings:
And here’s that scene from the film adaptation! Unfortunately, I did not perform with a James Mason impersonation.