'Bus beheading similar to Windigo phenomenon'

[Jeff]

A couple of weeks old, but I hadn't seen this before

Bus beheading similar to Windigo phenomenon

Aug 12
By ANDREW HANON -- Sun Media

Nathan Carlson has barely slept since July 30.

"Ever since it happened, I haven't been able to get it out of my head," Carlson says haltingly. "I just don't know what to think of it, quite frankly."

The Edmonton ethno-historian is one of the world's leading experts on Windigo phenomenon, and the recent horrific beheading and alleged cannibalism on a Greyhound bus bound for Winnipeg from Edmonton rocked him to his very core.

As the grisly details of Tim McLean's last moments on Earth came to light in the following days, Carlson sank deeper and deeper into a fog of horror and revulsion.

Vince Weiguang Li is accused of abruptly attacking McLean, who by all accounts he didn't even know -- while McLean slept on the bus.

Up until a few days before the killing, Li held a part- time job delivering newspapers in Edmonton. He was well thought-of by his boss and considered a nice guy, if a bit quiet and shy.

On July 20 -- just 10 days before the killing -- Li delivered copies of the Sun that contained an extensive interview with Carlson about his research into the Windigo, a terrifying creature in native mythology that has a ravenous appetite for human flesh. It could take possession of people and turn them into cannibalistic monsters.

The two-page feature talked about how, in the late 1800s and into the 20th century, Windigo "encounters" haunted communities across northern Alberta and resulted in dozens of gruesome deaths.

In one case, a Cree trapper named Swift Runner was hanged after admitting to killing and eating his wife, children, brother and mother in the woods northeast of Edmonton in the winter of 1878-79.

Prior to being charged with murder, he had suffered screaming fits and nightmares, which he attributed to being possessed by a Windigo.

In several other cases, people banded together and killed individuals they feared were possessed by a Windigo. Often, they would decapitate the corpse and bury the head separate from the body in order to keep it from rising from the dead.

Carlson documented several cases in northern Alberta communities where people believing they were "turning Windigo" would go into convulsions, make terrifying animal sounds and beg their captors to kill them before they started eating people.

In last month's bus case, Li allegedly butchered McLean's body, brandishing the victim's severed head at the men who trapped him on the bus until police could arrive.

He was later accused of eating McLean's flesh.

When he appeared in a Portage La Prairie courthouse on charges of second-degree murder, the only words Li reportedly uttered were pleas for someone to kill him.

A lot of his reported behaviour eerily mirrors the Windigo cases recounted in the newspaper feature that Li helped deliver to Edmonton homes just days before McLean was killed, one of the most gruesome slayings in modern Canadian history.

Several media reports called McLean's killing unprecedented - an unspeakable, random attack the likes of which has never been seen in Canada.

But Carlson knows better.

"There are just too many parallels," he says.

"I can't say there's definite connection, but there are just too many coincidences.

"It's beyond eerie."

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Features/20 ... 13481.html

[Wilbur Whatley]

Whoah! Now that's news of the WEIRD. Damn.

[brainpanhandler]

One of the more famous cases of Windigo psychosis involved a Plains Cree trapper from Alberta, named Swift Runner.[18][19] During the winter of 1878, Swift Runner and his family were starving, and his eldest son died. Within just 25 miles of emergency food supplies at a Hudson's Bay Company post, Swift Runner butchered and ate his wife and five remaining children.[20] Given that he resorted to cannibalism so near to food supplies, and that he killed and consumed the remains of all those present, it was revealed that Swift Runner's was not a case of pure cannibalism as a last resort to avoid starvation, but rather of a man suffering from Windigo psychosis.[20] He eventually confessed and was executed by authorities at Fort Saskatchewan.[21] Another well-known case involving Windigo psychosis was that of Jack Fiddler, an Oji-Cree chief and shaman known for his powers at defeating Wendigos. In some cases this entailed euthanizing people suffering from Windigo psychosis; as a result, in 1907, Fiddler and his brother Joseph were arrested by the Canadian authorities for murder. Jack committed suicide, but Joseph was tried and put to death.[22]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windigo_(legend)

[Uncle $cam]

What if this Windigo phenomenon were sudden disease (virus, bacteria, prion, or parasite infection or toxin? That can target certain parts of the brain
or nervous system? That's the first thing that comes to mind...

[Pierre d'Achoppement]

Power of suggestion? Killer is described as a bit quiet and shy.

[thurnundtaxis]

[DrVolin]

That is certainly an interesting synchronicity. But I keep coming back to the fact that he told his boss he needed to be away for a few days for a job interview in another town. Perhaps a meeting with a handler? Maybe things didn't go as planned? Maybe the conditioning broke down?

[elfismiles]

A couple of weeks old, but I hadn't seen this before

Bus beheading similar to Windigo phenomenon

Aug 12
By ANDREW HANON -- Sun Media

...

"There are just too many parallels," he says.

"I can't say there's definite connection, but there are just too many coincidences.

"It's beyond eerie."

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Features/20 ... 13481.html

I didn't post this before in the bus bigfoot beheading joker batman thread but Loren's already covered this...

Windigo Decapitation and Cannibalism
Monday, August 11, 2008

Windigo can be the hairy hominoid, the cannibal giant, and the psychosis. The three are merging and swirling around in the recent story of the beheading and eating of flesh on the Canadian Greyhound bus.

The Windigo (also known as the Wendigo, Windago, Windiga, Witiko, Wihtikow, and numerous other variants) is an unknown hairy hominoid tied to the legends and folklore of First Nations people linked by the Algonquin languages.

The Windigo is a bipedal hairy creature, equal to the Eastern Bigfoot, Stone Giant, or Marked Hominid in some classification systems, which is often said to have aggressive behaviors and a malevolent cannibalistic spirit into which humans could transform, or which could possess humans. Those who indulged in cannibalism were at particular risk, and the legend appears to have reinforced this practice as taboo.

Windigo Psychosis is a culture-bound disorder which involves an intense craving for human flesh and the fear that one will turn into a cannibal. Some ethnographers said this once occurred frequently among Algonquian cultures, though there is some sense that the psychological disorder may have been overstated and/or it has declined with Native American urbanization.

entire aritcle here:
http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2008/ ... alism.html

[Jeff]

I didn't post this before in the bus bigfoot beheading joker batman thread but Loren's already covered this...

Thanks, I figured he'd be on top of it.

[anothershamus]

Very Eerie! What are the links to Zombies? Raving and craving!

loren wrote:

Windigo Psychosis is a culture-bound disorder which involves an intense craving for human flesh and the fear that one will turn into a cannibal.

The bigfoot tie in is pretty interesting as well.

Aslo what are the chances that the guy read the article and it gave his psychosis a direction.....

[JD]

http://ago.mobile.globeandmail.com/generated/archive/RTGAM/html/20080902/wtruckerbus0902.html

Trucker urged RCMP to shoot man in bus beheading

LISA ARROWSMITH
Canadian Press

MORDEN, MAN. — Long-haul trucker Christopher Alguire admits there was a point, as he faced a man with a knife who was hacking at the body of a Greyhound bus passenger, when he considered whether he might be able to kill the man with a metre-long metal rod he'd grabbed from his truck.

It was the end of July and Mr. Alguire, 28, had been hauling a load of metal pipe from Alberta to Manitoba when he saw the bus, which had veered off the road west of Winnipeg.

Passengers were streaming out and running away.

Someone yelled to him through his window as he slowly passed that a man was stabbing someone on board. Mr. Alguire pulled over and grabbed the metal bar, a tool used to secure loads on his truck, and sprinted for the bus. Mr. Alguire said the driver of the bus was in shock, so a second Greyhound driver who had stopped to help was guarding the door.

Mr. Alguire, who said he is familiar with weapons and martial arts, saw the driver holding the door closed and together they shoved their bodies against it to keep it closed.

Soon afterward, the driver boarded the bus to see if any passengers were trapped, and Mr. Alguire, his metal rod at the ready, followed him inside.

He said he saw a man leaning over a passenger's body, hacking at a body with a knife. The dead passenger was later identified as Tim McLean, 22, a carnival worker heading home to Manitoba after a stint in Edmonton.

Then the man stood up with Mr. McLean's severed head in his hand, Mr. Alguire recalled, leaving the truck driver with a split-second decision to make. He said he is also experienced with knife throwing, he didn't think his piece of metal was a match for that knife.

“At 10 feet away, it's a deadly weapon because you can throw it [the knife] so fast and so hard. If the guy had any experience in throwing, he could stick it into my chest very quickly, or into my throat or head,” he said In an interview yesterday from the trucking facility in Morden, Man., where he works, Mr. Alguire said the second bus driver left him alone on the bus with the attacker. He thought if the man seriously injured or even killed him, there would be no one else who could defend the rest of the passengers.

“My duty was to make sure that nobody else was exposed to his rage.”

Mr. Alguire decided to jump off the bus and slammed the door closed again.

“He walked up to the door and put the head right up to my face through the glass and waved the knife at me. He turned around and put the head down on the floor in front of me so I could see,” Mr. Alguire said.

It was the man's dark eyes that struck him most. “They were empty. It was like staring into a black hole.”

His adrenalin pumping, and holding his metal bar like a spear, Alguire readied himself for a possible fight.

“I was ready to break every bone in his body. I was not going to let him get past me to the people behind that I was there to try to save.”

The man on the bus turned away, sat in the driver's seat and tried to start the bus, but the driver had disabled the engine.

Then police arrived, including an armed tactical team, Alguire said he urged officers to shoot the suspect, but they dismissed him.

“He had just finished mutilating a guy. He just killed somebody. Put a stop to him, at least shoot out his knee or shoulder or something,” he said.

“If they would have done something like that, Tim McLean's body wouldn't have been desecrated nearly as much as it was.”

The suspect was eventually arrested after trying to jump out a window.

Alguire was also upset that passengers weren't herded farther away, saying they had a clear view of other indignities committed on the body as they stared in horror through the front windshield.

With the police on the scene and passengers out of harm's way, Alguire got back into his rig and got back onto the highway. He managed to drive to nearby Portage la Prairie, Man., before he simply had to stop his rig and sit there for a while, trying to understand what he called a “surreal experience.”

The trucker said he has recurring dreams about what happened, including visions of McLean's severed head, the knife-wielding attacker and the terror in the passengers' eyes as they watched the incident unfold.

“My life has been in shock, things haven't been going so well for me,” said Alguire.

But his friends and family are helping him to cope with what's happened, he said.

Vince Weiguang Li, 40, of Edmonton is expected to make another court appearance Monday on a charge of second-degree murder. He has been ordered by a judge to undergo a psychiatric assessment.

Mr. McLean's family filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Greyhound, the federal government and Mr. Li that claimed they didn't ensure passenger safety.

Jay Prober, a lawyer for Mr. McLean's family, said the family alleges that neither Greyhound nor federal agencies responsible for transportation and public safety took proper precautions. He said the family wants to make sure more security measures are in place for bus passengers.

“There's no security in place,” Mr. Prober said. “This lawsuit is not about money. It's about accountability. It's about responsibility. It's about ensuring that they get answers to questions that they haven't been getting answers to.”

None of the allegations in the lawsuit has been proved in court and a statement of defence has not yet been filed.

A Greyhound spokeswoman, Abby Wambaugh, said from the company's headquarters in Dallas, “We believe this was a very unfortunate and tragic occurrence, but beyond that, I can't address any type of pending litigation.”

[Nordic]

"I was gonna kick his ass, I swear to God, until he held up that bloody severed head in front of me, and then I decided that instead of kicking his ass, which I could have done, and wanted to do, that I'd back off and protect the rest of the people. THEN I waited for him to come at me so I could kick his ass."

It's almost funny.

I feel bad for the guy, really, but his bluster is comical.

How about just admitting "yeah, the knife-weilding maniac held up a bloody severed head at me and his eyes looked dead and it scared the fucking shit out of me so I got the hell out of there."

But no. He's gotta be a tough guy.

[Wilbur Whatley]

Nordic, that's an asshole comment. The trucker took the lead of going into the bus and confronting the killer, armed with a crowbar while the killer had a big knife and major insanity. The report says he came within 10 feet, knowing the killer could kill him with one throw of the knife. He continued to take the lead in blocking the door, knowing the killer could break the glass and kill him with a wild swing.

I say the guy is a hero.

And I say that you, or I, would never in a million years have been so heroic.

So stop being a condescending dick.

[Jeff]

Thanks for that, JD. It's good to see you posting.

[Nordic]

Oh Wilbur, lighten the fuck up.

If you don't get why it's funny (darkly funny but funny) then just STFU.

Obviously you don't get it. But you don't get a LOT of stuff here. You're like the guy at the party who keeps piping up and everybody just stops talking and stares at.

Either have a virtual bong hit and relax, or shut up. Or maybe find another party.