The Russian Grave Robber

In this case, a photo—even a kinda blurry one—says a lot.

This is just one of 29 “dolls” made from mummified female corpses recovered from the home of 45-year-old Anatoly Moskvin, described by the BBC as a “local historian and cemetery explorer” in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod. Each human doll was carefully dressed, with the hands and face covered in cloth. Some were perched on furniture; others on shelves. One body had been made to look like a teddy bear, with a stuffed animal head atop the neck.

The Mirror, which reports that the bodies were of girls ages three to twelve, pilfered from dozens of dug-up graves, claims that Moskvin had a specific purpose in mind while assembling his collection:

Moskvin, who speaks 13 languages and was described by some as ‘a genius’, also gave the mummified corpses names and organised birthday parties for them... Moskvin also compiled up-to-date information about the lives of each girl he had dug up and printed off instructions on a computer for how to produce dolls out of human remains.

His grisly activities were apparently discovered when his parents paid him a surprise visit; though he was arrested in 2011, he was deemed unfit to stand trial.