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American History

Queen Victoria’s Chimney Stalker and Other Creepy Moments From History

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex - Buckingham Palace
Queen Victoria's most famous stalker was a begrimed urchin. Iluminasi

9. A Mysterious Disappearance

Albert Dekker. Star Crush

In 1968, Albert Dekker completed filming The Wild Bunch, left the set, and seemingly fell off the map. Family and friends grew concerned after days passed with nobody hearing from him. He was a no-show at a date with his fiancee, fashion model Geraldine Saunders. She tried calling, but got no response, so she went to his apartment and pinned a note on a door already covered by notes from friends and acquaintances.

When she returned later that evening and found things still the same, Saunders convinced the building manager to let her in the apartment. Once in, they found the bathroom door chained from the inside, and had to break it open. There, they discovered Dekker hanging dead from a leather belt. Normally, that would be plenty startling and creepy in itself, but in this case, that was just the start of the creepiness.

Written by

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.

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