Don't.

[dragonlady7]

Here's some advice.
When your office manager starts talking about the Black Dahlia, don't Google her. If you do, and you find out that she was the victim in a gruesome unsolved murder, don't read more.
But if you do, don't then keep reading the awful websites that come up. Don't go on to read about the Zodiac killer and the Cleveland Torso Murders, and numerous other serial killer mysteries, solved and unsolved. And DO NOT LOOK AT THE PICTURES. Seriously.

Even if you do get sucked in and do that, don't then click the link to the online missing persons database and read the sad pathetic little descriptions of found people. Many of them have no info, but some of them have tantalizing little gaps of non-stories. ("Tattoo on right ankle reading either Louis or Louisa", "Initials 'J.D.' written in laundry marker on underwear", "had given birth at least twice", "recent and excellent dental restoration work", "Found in pieces in several suitcases with full-term female fetus".) Some have more of a story. Odd little details of jewelry, of clothing. Sometimes you wonder how they knew what little they know-- one "missing person" consisted of a small skeletal arm that they somehow knew belonged to a "white female". Another was described as most-likely black because of the style of her gold dental work.
Don't spend the whole evening reading about these things.
Do not EVER scroll down when it says "Warning: photo is of real dead person". Stick to the oddly awful reconstructed heads.

If you do, when you go to bed and realize that you're too creeped out to sleep because it's windy and how many of these people were killed in their beds...

Don't pick up Martha Wells' Death of the Necromancer to read yourself to sleep. (Great book, but the title isn't just made up out of nowhere, you know.)

That was my evening yesterday. Seriously. What the hell is wrong with me??!!?!

Comments

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I've spent evenings like that. And sadly, my reaction was "I missed the three months pregnant?!??!?!"

The thing that really pisses me off is that the Black Dahlia detectives defamed her character -- she was physically incapable of intercourse -- just to make the investigation more promising, and they never, ever cleared her name.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Oh, the three months pregnant was someone else.

Actually there has been lots of speculation as to whether she was actually capable of intercourse. Many sources parrot that she was deformed, but others say no.

But what they did to her family was absolutely horrible, there's no doubt about that.