NECROPANTS made by Skinning a Dead man supposed to bring Luck

Many people will be planning scary costumes for Halloween, but nothing is likely to compare to this pair of macabre trousers.

In 17th century Iceland, sorcerers wore 'trousers' made of a dead friend's skin that were said to bring them wealth.

According to legend, a morbid deal was struck between two friends to arrange who became the trousers or 'necropants,' which were used for purposes of traditional magic at the time.

The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft in Holmavik, Iceland, houses the only known intact pair of necropants, that were meant to be worn day and night by their owner.

In order to make the necropants (called nábrók in the naive tongue) an individual had to get permission from a living man to use his skin after his death.

The surviving member of the pact had to dig up his dead friend's body and peel off the skin of the corpse from the waist down in one piece without any holes or scratches, to make the magical trousers.

As soon as they stepped into the pants, the skin of the corpse stuck to theirs own, according to the museum, which documents 17th century occult practices.
A spokeman for the museum told MailOnline: 'They would immediately be stuck with your own flesh and be part of your body.'

To make the grim garment, the wearer of the pants had to steal a coin from a poor widow at Christmas, Easter or Whitson and place it in the scrotum of the trousers, along with the magical sign called nábrókarstafur, which is drawn on a piece of paper.

The coin is a 'tool to gather wealth by supernatural means,' according to the spokesman.
It drew money into the scrotum from living people so 'it will never be empty' as long as the original coin is not removed, according to folklore.

The spokesman told the wearing of the necropants was 'unusual behaviour' and reports are 'pure folklore' but the stories say that people could wear them for as long as they lived - but had to pass them on to a willing recipient before they died.

If the sorcerer wearer of the pants did not pass them on before his own death, it was said that his body would be infected with lice as soon as he passed away, but if the trousers were passed on, they could bring wealth to future wearers.

To ensure the transmission of fortune, the future wearer of the pants had to put his leg into the right leg of the necropants before the original owner stepped out of the left one.

According to the legend, the necropants would keep the money-gathering nature for generations and produce an endless flow of coins.

The spokesman said: 'People would be able to use them as long as they lived, but they would have to get rid of them before they die. If they would find someone to take them over the could last forever.'

17th century Iceland was a tough place as it suffered harsh trade restrictions from Denmark as well as natural disasters including a huge volcanic eruption that killed half of the country's livestock in years that followed and led to widespread famine.

Coastal settlements were also raided by pirates, locals sold into slavery in the Arab world, while a giant smallpox epidemic in the 18th century wiped out a third of the struggling population.

17 year old College student hanged herself after parents banned her from Facebook

A 17-year-old Indian girl has hanged herself after her parents banned her from Facebook to make her spend more time concentrating on school.

Aishwarya S. Dahiwal, a second year college student from Parbhani in western India, asked her parents for permission to log onto Facebook but was denied, police told.

She then got into an argument with her mother and father, who said she was paying too much attention to social media and not enough to her studies, a police officer added.

Authorities say Dahiwal was found hanging in her room the next morning and left a note that said her parents’ decision to ban her from Facebook led to her death.

“We still can’t believe it. We are in deep shock,” her father, Sunil, told. “We just wanted her to focus on her studies. We never thought she would ever take such a harsh step.”

An investigation into the death is ongoing.

Azerbaijan releases election results 1 Day before voting even started

Azerbaijan's big presidential election was anticipated to be neither free nor fair.  President Ilham Aliyev, who took over from his father 10 years ago, has stepped up intimidation of activists and journalists. 

Rights groups are complaining about free speech restrictions and one-sided state media coverage. Azerbaijan's election authorities released vote results – a full day before voting had even started.

The vote counts – spoiler alert: Aliyev was shown as winning by a landslide – were pushed out on an official smartphone app run by the Central Election Commission. It showed Aliyev as "winning" with 72.76 percent of the vote. That's on track with his official vote counts in previous elections: he won ("won"?) 76.84 percent of the vote in 2003 and 87 percent in 2008.

All this dying Chinese boy wants is to see his beloved mother one more time

A 7-year-old Chinese boy dying from cancer and abandoned by his mother says he wants to see her one more time before he loses his sight.

Ren Shihao, who has a brain tumour, told a local reporter in China's southwestern Sichuan province that he doesn't blame his mother for leaving the family, but added: 'I want to say I miss her. I want to say I love you mum. And I want her to hug me.'

Ren can only see a few centimeters in front of his face as the growth puts pressure on his optic nerves.
The boy was diagnosed with cancer in September after his father, Cheng Li Ren, 35, took him to hospital when he began to feel ill.

Cheng said: 'I took him to the hospital where they diagnosed him as suffering from a medulloblastoma, a kind of malignant cancer on the brain, in September. 'He had been feeling ill from September and in May he began to stagger. But hospital visits are hard for us to manage, we only took him there in September and the cancer was diagnosed.

Doctor's in the regional capital of Chengdu operated on the growth, but by then it had already spread too far. After the failed operation Ren was sent back to his home in Yangyi village where local hospitals said they couldn't do anything for him and sent him home.

His father added: 'He is starting to lose his sight, he thinks he will go blind, but he does not know he will die eventually. He wants only one thing, to see his mother before he loses his sight.'

Ren's mother, Li Sun, left the household after arguments about money following his birth. Both parents had been forced to leave their village to work in the city, and Ren was raised by his grandmother, Zhao Yonglian.

But the strain that put on the relationship was too much, and eventually Li kissed him goodbye and left. Cheng has since tracked her down, but she is in a new relationship and refuses to come back to see her dying child.

He said: 'I never married her, and I left my son and managed to track her down, and discovered she now has a new life with a new man where she is married, so she has refused to come and see her son that we had.

'I guess her new family do not know of her previous life.'

Man caught driving without steering wheel

An Australian man has been remanded in custody after police found him driving without a steering wheel. 

The 38-year-old was pulled over in the Adelaide suburb of Gilles Plains on Monday morning for dangerous driving with two blown tyres.

On closer inspection police discovered that the white Holden sedan was being controlled with a set of pliers, which had been attached to the steering column.

The driver was charged with this and a string of other violations including driving an uninsured, unregistered vehicle whilst being disqualified and breaching his terms of bail.

In addition to this the Northfield man tested positive for methyl amphetamine and cannabis in a drugs test.

Police have hinted that they believe the same vehicle was also involved in a hit-and-run collision, in which there were no casualties, just moments before it was pulled over.