the timboucher experience

Also discussed in this article is a “sideshow freak” from Pittsburgh, named Grady Stiles, Jr, who worked under the name “Lobster Boy”. He suffered from an inherited syndrome called ectrodactyly:

His hands were split down the middle and fused to form two-digit “claws”, his feet were small flipper-like appendages and his legs were shortened.

According to all accounts, he was a real bastard and abused his family, and murdered his daughter’s fiancee in cold blood at point blank range. He stood trial, was convicted of the murder, but was set free on account of his condition. He apparently continued being such a plague on his family, that in 1992, they hired one of their neighbors to murder him.

ALSO! According to this, their is an African tribe called the Vadoma among whom some possess this cleft-foot condition:

Some of the Vadoma have a most unusual deformity of the feet and from this comes the tale of a “two-toed tribe”. There is no truth in this as only a few (usually related) individuals suffer from this genetic inheritance, which has deprived them of the middle three toes leaving a foot looking more like that of an ostrich than that of a human. The deformity does not handicap them in any way, and it is said that it assists them in climbing trees.

There’s a picture of the foot on this Ripley’s Believe it or Not page. It looks like Big Bird’s foot, but with only two toes. And here’s another thing about these people, although I don’t really trust the info here:

In Zimbabwe, there is a tribe known as the Ostrich People (aka Vadoma), who speak of an extraterrestrial craft that landed there over 200 years ago. Their population is about 100 and whenever they have children, they are born, (like them), with two-toed feet.

Every year they go to the forest to a silver dome that has been smashed and covered by the forest plants. They undress and coat themselves in a glowing silver paint and dance until the break of day. This is done in remembrance of when their ancestors came in a “large spinning sun that had fallen from the sky.”

• There’s No Such Thing as Humans!
• Joseph Campbell on Secret Societies
• Holy Guacamole
• Booglin’
• MONEY EXPERIMENT. Dwindling Dollar