His Shrunken Head Is On My Wall

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Abstract

for one of these macabre items as a Christmas present. I definitely wanted to impress my friends at school.Fast forward to 1991, the last year of the Cold War and when Bryan Adams was top of the music charts, and we find the shrunken head phenomenon surfacing in the gang culture of the United States. But with a more deadly significance.In that year, the newspaper reports from Atlanta, Georgia, described how juvenile gang members were lopping off rival gang member’s heads, shrinking them down and then displaying them as trophies.This macabre, violent practise apparently began in Los Angeles in 1991 and gradually spread to all the major cities of the USA.They unearthed this freakish activity when police raided a gang’s headquarters and found the walls decorated with fourteen shrunken heads. They assumed these items had originated in South America, but one of the gang members confessed the heads had once been on the necks of his rivals.A high-ranking officer from the Atlanta Police Department stated that they had confiscated thousands of shrunken heads from teenage gang members. The desire for ‘head trophies’ had become something of a cr

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aze.Police reported that gang members learned the actual process of shrinking heads from immigrants who had settled in the US from South America. With some experimentation, they could reduce a full size head to six inches, still showing a recognisable tuft of hair.The police were very concerned, as the practice had spread to juvenile gangs in over eighteen cities throughout the US.An additional disturbing aspect was that the police believed that a growing number of ordinary citizens had fallen to the murderous headhunters. Police stated they had even found shrunken heads of old ladies and young children amongst the head hunter’s collections.Gang culture exists throughout the world and some argue that it originated in the USA. Whether that is true remains to be validated completely, but gladly the shrunken head trophy room appears to have lost its allure in the modern gang culture.Let’s hope it stays that way.NoteFrom an actual report in Weekly World News 1991. I’d be interested to know if any US members of Medium ever came across this story. Was it fact or just journalistic fiction?</article></body>

Fact or Fiction?

Image Credit: Pinterest

I can remember as a boy looking at the advertisements at the back of those glossy American magazines that circulated in the UK. Not the girly magazines I hasten to add.

Alongside the offers for exploding joke cigarettes and the Charles Atlas, body building course, you could order a shrunken head. To grab your attention there was usually a small, black-and-white image of a wizened, crumpled face with a topknot of hair. Send off your $10 and he or she could be yours.

Gruesome, but true.

Whether these heads were real, perhaps from the warring tribes of South America or from some other remote corner of the world, I am uncertain. I never had the funds to buy one and, as a UK youngster, I was unsure how to pay for the item in dollars by post. This was long before the Internet and PayPal.

But my curiosity was aroused, and I contemplated asking my parents for one of these macabre items as a Christmas present. I definitely wanted to impress my friends at school.

Fast forward to 1991, the last year of the Cold War and when Bryan Adams was top of the music charts, and we find the shrunken head phenomenon surfacing in the gang culture of the United States. But with a more deadly significance.

In that year, the newspaper reports from Atlanta, Georgia, described how juvenile gang members were lopping off rival gang member’s heads, shrinking them down and then displaying them as trophies.

This macabre, violent practise apparently began in Los Angeles in 1991 and gradually spread to all the major cities of the USA.

They unearthed this freakish activity when police raided a gang’s headquarters and found the walls decorated with fourteen shrunken heads. They assumed these items had originated in South America, but one of the gang members confessed the heads had once been on the necks of his rivals.

A high-ranking officer from the Atlanta Police Department stated that they had confiscated thousands of shrunken heads from teenage gang members. The desire for ‘head trophies’ had become something of a craze.

Police reported that gang members learned the actual process of shrinking heads from immigrants who had settled in the US from South America. With some experimentation, they could reduce a full size head to six inches, still showing a recognisable tuft of hair.

The police were very concerned, as the practice had spread to juvenile gangs in over eighteen cities throughout the US.

An additional disturbing aspect was that the police believed that a growing number of ordinary citizens had fallen to the murderous headhunters. Police stated they had even found shrunken heads of old ladies and young children amongst the head hunter’s collections.

Gang culture exists throughout the world and some argue that it originated in the USA. Whether that is true remains to be validated completely, but gladly the shrunken head trophy room appears to have lost its allure in the modern gang culture.

Let’s hope it stays that way.

Note

From an actual report in Weekly World News 1991. I’d be interested to know if any US members of Medium ever came across this story. Was it fact or just journalistic fiction?