Thread by @IhuezeMD

Sometimes the scariest stories aren’t about ghosts or vampires. Often, the scariest stories are the ones that come directly from real life.

Like the story of Carl Tanzler.

A Thread 👇🏽

At the age of twelve he had a dream that his ancestor, Countess Anna Constantia von Cosel, revealed to him the face of the woman he was “destined” to be with.

And when he grew older he decided he would do anything to make that vision come alive.

Even after getting married and fathering two children, Tanzler continued to search for his soulmate, believing it was just a matter of time until their paths crossed.

Born on July 31, 1909, in Florida, Maria Elena was a strikingly attractive girl with luxurious dark hair and an appealing shyness.

She was having the worst time of her life. She had suffered a miscarriage. Shortly after the miscarriage, her husband left her and moved away.

Then she came down with tuberculosis, a disease of the lungs that was killing people all around her.

In desperation, her mother brought her to a local hospital in Key West, Florida in the hopes that some new treatment might save her life.

It was there that she met a man named Carl Tanzler.

He was strange, no doubt about it. From the moment he laid eyes on Elena he was eerily obsessed, claiming that he had seen her exact face in a dream when he was only twelve years old, before she’d even been born.

He had been looking for her ever since. Thinking about every little detail of her face, dreaming about it.

This strange man showered Elena with jewelry & clothes, each time claiming that he was madly in love with her. It didn’t matter that he was 56 years old & she was only 21.

Nothing mattered to him, only his obsession that she was his destiny.

But Elena had bigger things to worry about: trying to survive tuberculosis. She definitely did not feel that Carl Tanzler was her destiny. Yes, the gifts were flattering, but what kept her talking to him were the promises he made about her health.

He said that that he was an experienced submarine captain. He claimed that he had nine university degrees. He said that he knew the medical procedures that would to cure her tuberculosis, and that he could build the machines needed to do them.

He gave her numerous medicines, took x-rays, and showed up with all kinds of so-called medical equipment

Turns out that he didn’t have the knowledge to cure her of tuberculosis after all. Despite all the “treatments”, she died at her parent’s home about a year after meeting him.

But for Carl Tanzler, this was not the end of the story.

Elena’s parents were moved by Carl Tanzler’s efforts to save their daughter. Yes, he was creepy, but at the same time he had done more than even Elena’s own husband ever did to try and save her.

So when he offered to pay for her funeral and to have an above ground tomb be built for her, her parents agreed.

And when he asked for some of her hair, they also agreed.

After the tomb was finished Carl Tanzler was seen visiting it every night. Everyone thought it was sweet how he clung to her, but no one knew that he was the only one who had the key.

No one knew he had a phone installed inside the tomb.

No one knew that he was secretly preserving her.

And no one knew that one quiet night, Carl Tanzler gathered up the corpse of Elena & put her in a red toy wagon. He then dragged the wagon all the way back to the hospital, where he had set up a special place for “Elena”. 🤦🏾‍♂️

Well, it wasn’t exactly IN the hospital. You see, behind the hospital there sat the wingless body of an old airplane. It was here that Carl Tanzler set up his laboratory.

He spent many days reconstructing “Elena” using wires, coat hangers, & plaster.

Then he dressed the new “Elena” in a wedding ress and put her back in the red wagon, this time taking her to his house.

And there she stayed for almost a decade. A freaking decade! 😩😫

At night he would lay her in his bed and sleep next to her. During the day he would set her up in a chair and play love songs for her on a small organ he had made. Or, sometimes, he would just talk endlessly to “her”.

But the hot and humid Florida weather began to take their toll on the corpse. Carl Tanzler had created his own little world inside his house, but reality kept intruding.

He desperately poured disinfectant and perfume all over the place.

And as her skin decomposed, he used silk cloth drenched in wax and plaster to replace it. When her hair fell out, he made a wig from the hair he had asked her family for, and glued it onto her skull. 🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️

You see, Carl Tanzler liked to imagine that he was a scientific genius that was destined for greatness. Even though he had failed to save Elena from tuberculosis, he now convinced himself that he could reclaim her from death itself.

Even when faced with a rapidly rotting corpse lying in his bed, he clung to his fantasy world. The plane, he told himself, was the answer

He would rebuild the plane & take the corpse up into the stratosphere so radiation could penetrate her tissues & restore her to life someday.

But that day never came, people were starting to get suspicious. Over the years rumors had circulated.

At first the family of Elena had brushed them off. Yes, Tanzler was a little creepy, but in the end he turned out to be a sweet old man who had fallen in love with their Elena.

But then one day a boy who was walking by Carl Tanzler’s house happened to glance in the window at just the right time.

He saw Carl Tanzler dancing with what appeared to be a life-sized doll which had an eerie resemblance to Elena.

The rumors began to swirl that Tanzler was sleeping with a corpse. After a heated confrontation with Elena's sister, in October 1940, he was arrested and charged with desecration of the grave site.

Carl Tanzler was examined by a psychiatrist & deemed mentally competent to stand trial.

The trial became a media sensation, and surprisingly the majority of the public, especially women, supported Carl Tanzler, finding him to be an eccentric romantic. 🤡 🤡

But the courts discovered that too much time had passed since he had stolen Elena’s corpse and the charges had to be dropped.

People were generally happy that Carl Tanzler had been set free.

Instead of a creepy graverobber, most people saw him as a romantic old man who was so madly in love he was willing to sleep in the same bed as a corpse.

After the trial was cut short, Elena’s body was put on display at a local funeral home for everyone to come by and gawk at. They then re-buried her in a steel box at a secret location.

Two physicians (Dr. DePoo and Dr. Foraker) who attended the 1940 autopsy of Hoyos' remains recalled in 1972 that a paper tube had been inserted in the vaginal area of the corpse that allowed for intercourse. Tanzler never admitted to committing any necrophiliac acts.

As for Carl Tanzler, he gave tours of his “laboratory” in exchange for money. And when the money stopped coming in he decided it was time for a change of scenery. He then went to Elena’s tomb, blew it up, and proceeded to move to a new town.