We all have our favorite pastimes. Mine happens to be falling down internet k-holes. One minute, I’m investigating the whereabouts of Anastasia and, two hours and many mouse clicks later, I’m somehow reading all about how Henry VIII had his butt wiped by people called the “Grooms of Stool.” That’s around the time I ask myself, Wait, how did I get here? What day is it?A Bay Area Man’s 1953 ‘Prophecy’ Predicted Smartphones, Video Calls and Apple Watches
Recently, my cyber explorations took a creepy turn. Did you know there’s an American serial killer known as the Butcher of Plainfield, who crafted a belt made out of his victims’ nipples?! Or that disembodied feet keep washing ashore in one area of the Pacific Northwest?? I sure didn’t, and now I have to live with that knowledge for years to come. But there’s one story that will stick with me forevermore, and it goes a little something like this:
Once there was a German dude named Carl von Cosel. In his early childhood, he said he would regularly be visited by one of his dead ancestors, who kept showing him the face of his one true love, an exotic dark-haired woman. Somehow, that’s the most mundane detail of this story.
Fast forward to adulthood. It’s the 1930s, and Carl is working as a doctor in Key West, Florida. One day at the hospital, a Cuban-American woman named Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos walks in. He immediately recognizes her as the girl from his dead ancestor visions! But, before you get too excited about this meet-cute, this story is less of a Julia Roberts rom-com and more Mandy Moore’s A Walk to Remember. Instead of saying “I have leukemia!” like Mandy Moore does in that movie, Elena says, “I have tuberculosis!”
