Thinning the Herd: Tales Of The Weirdly Departed

by Cynthia Ceilan

A book about life's only certainty - death - and the various ways in which it comes upon us, from the fitting to the downright ludicrous. It includes chapters on celebrity fatalities, coital catastrophes, sporting ends, and life's (and death's) little ironies.

Genres: Nonfiction, Humor, Death, Comedy, History, Horror, Historical

307 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2007

About the author

Cynthia Ceilán is a native New Yorker who was dragged by the hair kicking and screaming by her otherwise well-intentioned parents to live on a lovely island in the Caribbean when she was in high school and, therefore, too young and obstinate to appreciate that she was in Paradise. The distraught, uprooted teenager argued that, according to all the Catholic literature, flesh-blistering heat and the blinding white-hot glare of the sun were essential characteristics of Hell. The argument fell on deaf ears.

For the next eight years (which will forever be known to her as The Decade of Darkness), she waited for the circus to come to town so she could run away with it.

The Flying Wallendas did, in fact, show up once, but before Cynthia could learn to balance a beach ball on the tip of her nose, Karl Wallenda plummeted to his death with a horrible splat while trying to walk a tightrope between two fancy hotels in the heart of San Juan's tourist district, despite dire warnings from the locals that the trade winds could be quite treacherous. The surviving Wallendas didn't have the heart to replace poor old Karl right away, not even with a pseudo-acrobat willing to work for the price of a plane ticket off the island. So much for seeking asylum with circus folk.

Cynthia added the news clips of the Wallenda tragedy to her collection of weird death stories and got a job right after college, like a regular person. She figured it would take five or six years to save up enough money to finance her move back to the mainland, or a couple of months if she gave up piña coladas and sangria by the pitcher on Friday and Saturday nights. As luck would have it, her employer's home office was in Atlanta, not on another island. She finagled herself an interview, secured a new job, and off to the Bible Belt she went to write mind-numbing technical manuals for imminently obsolete computer products.

Atlanta was very pretty (in a beige, cookie-cutter sort of way), and on occasion presented its share of challenges to the recalcitrant transplant. Sadly, she never acquired a taste for grits or chicken-fried steak, and was utterly unable to twist her mouth in all the right ways to correctly pronounce words like "y'all" and "corndawg." People told her she talked funny, after which they usually asked what church she belonged to. Her un-Christianlike responses sent many of them scurrying to hide the children. On at least two occasions, complete strangers stood on her doorstep and asked if they could pray for her. She replied, "Sure. What the hell," and politely closed the door on them so they could do so in private.

Cynthia spent the next few years in Atlanta searching for liberals, scaring the Baptists, and quietly pushing unsolicited okra to the edges of her plate. Just as she decided that she had reached the end of her Southern Experience, she met a strange and eloquent young man with an easy smile and very little shame. He told her they would leave Atlanta together, "in a another year or two." Three years later they were married, and still living in Atlanta. Four and a half years after that, she left without him, for reasons that had almost nothing to do with okra.

Cynthia finally made her way back to her home town. She bought an apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side and nailed everything down to the floor. She is never leaving again.

Meanwhile, her collection of weird death news stories turned into a couple of books. Thinning the Herd was published in 2007, and Unlucky Stiffs in 2010. In between the publication of the death books, she was inspired to write about psychotic love. Weirdly Beloved was released in 2008.

In something of a departure from her penchant for dark humor, Cynthia returned to her first true love, literary fiction, and penned the novel Myths of a Merciful God. She is currently at work on a second novel.

Reviews

[John Anthony · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF.

I became hopelessly bored with this. Then, one of these jolly death anecdotes was set in a plane, flying over " Zambia, formerly known as Rhodesia" and that made my mind up for me...

Tediously shallow and probably unreliable - if the above is anything to go by!

One to dip into perhaps, rather than read from cover to cover. An index would help in that respect; but it's not that kind of book

[Kirsti · Rating 2 out of 5]

An odd attempt at humor about death, that often falls flat. Some of the tales were interesting, but many of them were poorly written, with a few sentences for each. Some things were just oddities, and not deaths at all. As someone who enjoyed the Darwin Awards books, I thought I would like this too but the repetition was enough for me, I was glad to turn the last page. Two stars, only because some of the stories weren't half bad.

[Jonathan · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you liked Wendy Northcutt's Darwin Awards, then keep reading those and stay away from this pathetic knockoff. Although some of the entries are amusing/offbeat, most are fairly mundane. Most of the entries are short and lacking details.
This book bills itself as "Tales of the Weirdly Departed." Here is one of these weird deaths for you, quoted directly from page 185: "Bob Moose, a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, died in a car accident in 1976. He was on his way to his own birthday Party." Oh my god! How weird! Have you ever heard of someone dying in a car accident? I didn't think so.
If this book was condensed to only the weird deaths and the filler was removed, it would probably be about 200 pages shorter.
Don't bother with this book.

[Brina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Schaut man sich den Titel an, glaubt man, dass man mit "Dumm gelaufen: 600 Missgeschicke mit Todesfolge" eine recht humorvolle Auflistung von Unfällen bekommt, die allesamt mit dem Tode etwas zu tun haben. Schon allein der lachende Totenkopf hat mir den Eindruck vermittelt, dass man das Buch mit einem Augenzwinkern sehen sollte.

Je mehr ich jedoch in dem Buch gelesen habe, desto häufiger habe ich mich dabei erwischt, wie ich mit dem Kopf schütteln musste. Nach welchen Kriterien die Autorin die Todesfälle ausgesucht hat und warum es letztendlich genau diese wurden, wird man wohl nie erfahren. Allerdings muss ich sagen, dass ich einiges als sehr geschmacklos empfand. Selbst unverschuldete Unfälle von Kindern und Jugendliche werden hier auf die Schippe genommen, was ich alles andere als nachvollziehen konnte, da dies eher zum Weinen als zum Lachen ist.

Genauso wird das Wort "Unfall" oftmals missbraucht, denn einige Todesfälle sind alles andere als zum Schmunzeln, denn auch Morde und Amokläufe werden hier auf die Schippe genommen, was mir persönlich viel zu weit ging.
So wird sich u.a. darüber lustig gemacht, dass jemand gleich dreißig Frauen getötet hat, weil diese allesamt seiner Mutter ähnlich sahen und auch andere Mordfälle werden hier versucht, irgendwie lustig rüber gebracht zu werden. Das dies extrem in die Hose geht, scheint der Autorin egal zu sein, denn sonst hätte man solche geschmacklosen Vorfälle nicht einfach so in einem Buch veröffentlicht, dass dem Genre Humor angehört.

Es ist natürlich jedem Menschen selbst überlassen, wie er den Tod verarbeitet und wie er sich mit Unfällen auseinandersetzt, allerdings traf dieses Buch meinen Geschmack überhaupt nicht, da ich mit dem Tod etwas anders umgehe.

Insgesamt ist "Dumm gelaufen: 600 Missgeschicke mit Todesfolge" ein Buch, das man nicht unbedingt gelesen haben muss. Die Todesfälle sind mir allesamt zu makaber geschildert und konnten mich alles andere als unterhalten. Wer jedoch Auflistungen von Todesfällen oder skurile Vorfälle mag, wird an diesem Buch seinen Spaß haben.

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has it all funny,creepy, and some really sad stories.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely marvellous and fun book about the last moments and words of the famous and infamous. I enjoyed it hugely. I bought my copy in a charity shop and it was one of the best £1 I have ever spent. I usually hate this type of anthology because they usually witless scissor and paste cut up jobs but this one reads as the compiler had as much fun creating the book as you will have reading it.

[Jeannie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This got to be boring and redundant very quickly for me. The TALES were very short, just a few sentences and hardly any detail. I also don't find much humor in death itself so I have no idea why I even picked this one up (beats my head into wall). I'd pass it up if I were you.

[Bellis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, it was ok, it made me grin several times, but there was also much that just felt like filler. If they had cut that out and added more detail to some of the better stories, I would probably have liked the result more.

[Dani · Rating 2 out of 5]

Einige der Fälle waren ganz amüsant, der Großteil eher belanglos - nette Klolektüre, mehr nicht.

[Aleesha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been quietly plugging away at this book on and off for years. And honestly? I sort of think that's the best way to enjoy this sort of 'bathroom reading material'.

These short-short stories (or anecdotes?) cover just about every bizarre, ridiculous, unbelievable, sad, macabre, and hilarious way one can become the dearly departed. It's really not any deeper than that--we're reading short little snippets about the crazy circumstances around the deaths of famous (and not so famous) people.

I don't think I (or anyone) could sit down and read through this book in one sitting. I don't think it's designed for that. But a few pages at a time makes for good time-wasting.

That is, if this sort of thing interests you at all.

[Mark McTague · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the vein of the Darwin Awards, this book tells true tales of all the odd, stupid, sad, hilarious, and bizarre ways one can snuff it, check out, buy the farm, kick the bucket or drop off the twig. And in the spirit of this book, one can reflect that all these stories are now, for most of the world, merely amusing tales to pass the time. But amuse they do. If death can ever be a fun read, this is it.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun read, and satisfying my taste for little tidbits of knowledge. Only minor issue I had was with the two men from Wilder, KY and the beheading for a satanic ritual. This was the Pearl Bryant murder, and that was simply rumor. Being from the area, of course I'm going to be a stickler for things like that.

[Cris · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you think the people you know are dumb, this book will make you feel better...or maybe not! 😂😂

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, fun read. I can only hope I go out in an interesting way one day.

[Adam Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as witty, pithy, or hilarious as The Darwin Awards yet satisfies our collective morbid curiosity with those who meet their maker.

[Anastasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here are a few of the more entertaining deaths mentioned in the book.

"In 1989, a false alarm indicating engine failure prompted the crew to bail out of Soviet MiG-23 fighter jet that had just escaped from Poland. hey put the plane on autopilot, put on their parachutes and jumped out. They forgot to take with them the Belgian teenager they just rescued,"

"When fire consumed a Dutch hospital in 2006, the surgical team had no time to take anything with them when they fled, not even the 69-year-old woman they had just strapped to the operating table. The woman had been given a mild sedative, but was still wide awake when the last of the operating room staff ran screaming from the room."

"Three weeks before she died, Florida newscaster Christine Chubbuck asked the station's news director if she could write a piece on suicide. On the morning of July 15, 1974, she went on the air, read the first few news articles, and made the following announcement: "And now, in keeping with Channel 40's policy of always bringing you the latest in blood and guts, in living color, you're about to see another first: an attempted suicide." She then pulled out a .38-caliber revolver loaded with hollow-point bullets, and shot herself in the head on live TV. The story she had written in longhand three weeks earlier was a faithful account of the events as they actually played out in real life. Of course, the self-inflicted gunshot on live television was more planned than premonition, but the description of the aftermath was eerily accurate, including being taken specifically to Sarasota Memorial Hospital, where she would be listed in critical condition and later pronounced dead."

[Influ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Klappentext:

Irgendwann erwischt es uns alle – Nur wie ist die Frage

Stellen Sie sich vor, Sie haben gerade den besten Sex Ihres Lebens. Sie sterben. Weil Sie sich an der essbaren Unterhose Ihres Partners verschluckt haben.

Stellen Sie sich vor, Ihr Partner hat ein fürchterliches Halsleiden und kann deshalb seinen geliebten Wein nicht mehr trinken. Sie haben die rettende Idee: Sie legen ihm einen Wein-Katheder. Und bringen ihn damit aus versehen um.

Stellen Sie sich vor, Sie sind Flugbegleiter und auf Ihrem Flug bricht Feuer aus. Sie und Ihre Kollegen greifen sich die Feuerlöscher und sprühen, was das Zeug hält. Das Feuer stirbt. Die beiden Piloten auch – an einer Kohlendioxid-Vergiftung.

Gibts nicht? Gibts doch. Und wir versichern Ihnen: Sterben kann so komisch sein!



Leseeindruck:

Dieses Buch ist sein Papier nicht Wert. Ich habe es bereits einmal abgebrochen gehabt, es jetzt aber trotzdem nochmal zur Hand genommen. Im Nachhinein kann ich jedoch sagen das ich definitiv nichts verpasst hätte wenn ichs nicht zuende gelesen hätte. Es werden, Unfälle, Amokläufe, Selbstmorde und brutale Morde auf die Schippe genommen und versucht als Lustig darzustellen. Aber ehrlich, ich ür meinen Teil empfinde es ehr als deprimierend zu lesen wie ein 16 Jähriger Luftgitarre spielend auf seinem Bett hüpft und dabei aus dem Fenster fällt und stirbt.

Dieses Buch bekommt daher mit 1 Stern die schlecht Möglichste Wertung, solltet ihr überlegen dieses Buch zu kaufen, lasst es sein, sowas braucht die Welt wirklich nicht.

[Taaya · Rating 3 out of 5]

600 Missgeschicke mit Todesfolge, schon als ich den Untertitel las, musste ich das Buch kaufen. Und auf den ersten Seiten enttäuscht es nicht. Die ersten Seiten sind unglaublich lustig.
Dann kam allerdings eine Flaute. Tode, bei denen man sich nur 'autsch' denkt, dann welche, die eigentlich eher normal klingen und nicht wirklich etwas besonderes sind. Schließlich kommen wieder interessante Fakten, aber der Humor der ersten Tode zieht sich leider nicht durchs Buch. Klar, Sterben ist im Allgemeinen eh alles andere als komisch, aber dies hier sollte doch die Sammlung der eher spektakulären und witzigen Tode sein. Hmmm...

Nun, im Endeffekt ist das Buch durchaus interessant, gut geschrieben und tatsächlich recherchiert. Und auch außerhalb der humoristischen Kapitel sind interessante Geschichten drin. Und nebenbei gute Zitate:

Geh immer auf die Beerdigungen anderer Leute. Sonst kommen sie nicht zu deiner. - Yogi Berra

Also es hält nicht, was es verspricht, ist aber auch längst kein totaler Fehlkauf. Und es ist spannend, auf wie viele Arten Menschen zu Tode kommen können. Aber vermutlich muss man dafür einen eher makabren Humor und keine Berührungsängste mit dem Thema Tod haben, um das Buch zu genießen.

[Sagan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I actually despised this book. It's a collection of short accounts of how people have died. It's presented as a humorous book - "can you believe someone died this way?" but it comes across as heartless. Keep in mind I don't mind a grim story; I think the Darwin Awards are brilliant and I can binge read those. But I'm not going to get entertainment pleasure from stories like, say, a man who was shot and killed in the crossfire when an abuser tracked down his ex-wife and attempted to murder her. That's disgusting, and a tragedy.

Keep in mind that I work with women for whom being tracked down and murdered by their ex-partners is a distinct possibility. The thought of someone profiting off their deaths is horrifying to me.

[Mareike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not sure how I feel about this book.
Considering what I expected after borrowing it from my brother it was a bit dissapointing. Not as funny as I hoped and sometimes the stories just made me cringe.
However, the stories are short (sometimes only a few sentences) making it ideal to read while e.g. waiting in line at the pharmacy.
While some stories are bad, some just a bit boring there are many that made me laugh in amusement or smile at the ironies in life. So while it might not have been the most amazing book I ever read it entertained me while making dinner, standing in lines, waiting at the doctors and for that I like it.

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like stories about Darwin Award winners, this book will be right up your alley. Lots of stories of creative and surprising ways that people find to off themselves. We ended up reading this while my daughter was in the hospital recovering from surgery (probably not the wisest choice of reading material, considering the circumstances), but it was ideal in that the stories were all fairly short bites of text, no complicated plot lines or burdensome casts of characters to learn--just quick and interesting little stories to read between reports from doctors and chats with nurses.

[Brittanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book with a paragraph on each person and their death. Some of them don't seem very fact-specific (no last names or dates) but still interesting for those with a leaning towards death and the dying. The chapters are sectioned by types of death and/or people like sports-related, near death experiences, and historical figures with a little background information from the author and their personal relation to the topic. Not the best book of this type (ie. Michael Largo's books) but still worth the time.

[Yanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those ill-fitting books you'd find when you've mistakenly pick a book bec u just got awestruck by its book cover and the title alone makes you curious how strikingly good can this book be⁉️...Apparently, the book is a bit slow-paced to read altho you'll find a lot of fun facts about those unexpected events which you'd never thought would happen to such famous personalities...i admit, it's a bit discouraging the first time but i'd really like to try her 2nd book. I've seen the reviews and it looked far more interesting than the first one.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. Nothing much to distinguish this one from the dozens of others "Tales of Bizarre Deaths!" books I've read. Plus, the author included a couple of the stories twice, and it irritated me that she devoted only three sentences to the fabulous death of Rasputin. The reason I still gave it three stars is because I read this while in a seriously dark mood; I needed a death fix, and this worked well enough.

[Regi Caldart · Rating 3 out of 5]

A average book compiling the various ways people have survived a deadly event, or straight-up died from doing something stupid. Citations aren't attached to each entry, and some don't include names and dates, making it hard to verify or dispute the claims. It's an easy book, light and good for busy times when too much is going on to focus on a proper novel. But I found the Darwin Awards much more humorous than this one.

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ceilan has researched her way into a delightfully entertaining collection of snippets of the last moments of people's lives. Both the rich, famous and powerful and the unknown Who?, the book treats each and every person equally, smartly stating the facts and letting us, the readers, ooohh and ahhh and "What the Heck?" Definitely worth a read.

[Brad Tilbe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Filled with interesting tales of the not-so fortunate, yes my favorite is the woman who was found dead hanging upside down behind a 6 foot bookcase. She'd fallen behind said bookcase while trying to adjust her television. Who puts a TV on top of a 6ft. bookcase anyway??!!...she was discovered by her sister when she noticed a foul odor coming from the living room.

[Katya Kean · Rating 2 out of 5]

I confess I read a hundred pages of this ghastly book before realizing that I was likely to have nightmares from it, and it wasn't particularly interesting. I was expecting something like The Darwin Awards, but this was unhumorously pointless and greusome.
All I can think now is, that's an hour I'm never getting back, and this isn't helping my insomnia.

[Crystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

While some entries were on the mundane side and I wasn't quite sure how some entries tied in to their allotted chapters, I found myself laughing out loud and telling other people about this book. It is morbid but also appeals to that little bit of schaden freude in everyone. A quick, entertaining (if slightly appalling) read.

[Meaghan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. This doesn't really stand out from the many other books on the same topic. Many of the "weird" deaths seemed pretty ordinary to me, and I saw one factual error that, as ever, made me doubt the accuracy of the book as a whole. This was okay, but there are other ones that are better.