There are dark corners of the internet where fact and fiction blend seamlessly into an amalgam of stories that simultaneously fascinate and horrify us. One such tale, hailing from the shadowy crevices of a satirical website known as Dead Serious News, rocked the virtual landscape back in November 2010.
The narrative unfolded around a character named Felicity Marmaduke, a 38-year-old mortuary worker stationed at the Mourning Glory Mortuary, a fictitious establishment on the outskirts of Lexington, Missouri. Marmaduke, as the story goes, became pregnant in the most unlikely of circumstances.
The grisly tale detailed Marmaduke’s encounter with a male client who, though deceased, reportedly experienced a post-mortem erection while being bathed. In a bizarre twist, Marmaduke, purportedly alone and driven by an unnamed compulsion, engaged in a sexual act with the cadaver. The narrative took an even more shocking turn when it claimed that the dead man achieved an orgasm and Marmaduke consequently found herself expecting a child, weeks later, confirmed by a routine medical examination.
As morbidly captivating as it sounds, the narrative snowballed across the digital landscape, grabbing eyeballs and evoking gasps of disbelief. However, behind this outrageous tale lay a web of fabrications, cleverly woven to ensnare the gullible. As we crawl deeper into this twisted tale, we start to unravel a more significant phenomenon: the startling prevalence of online hoaxes and their unsettling impact on public perception.
This is not a conventional true crime story but a tale of deception that is a crime against truth itself.
The Return of the Dead: A Ghost Story Reborn
Our saga of fabricated tales did not end with the silence of Felicity Marmaduke and the closing doors of the Mourning Glory Mortuary. A mere six years later, in 2016, this morbid narrative clawed its way back from the depths of obscurity, reincarnated by the World News Daily Report, another infamous beacon of internet hoaxes.
The story emerged anew, much like a phoenix from the ashes, repackaged with a fresh face and a modified narrative. The protagonist of this macabre encore was Jennifer Burrows, an assistant pathologist allegedly with the Jackson County medical examiner services. Burrows, the narrative claimed, was embroiled in a similar yet equally shocking scandal to Marmaduke.
In this new iteration, Burrows was not only implicated in a solitary case of necrophilia but accused of having a sexual encounter with dozens of corpses over a two-year span. This pattern of behavior was claimed to have led to the birth of a baby boy on January 7, presumably the same year.
According to the tale spun by the World News Daily Report, the police linked Burrows’s baby to a man who died in a car accident back in March 2015. A DNA test, they claimed, had confirmed the connection. They further accused Burrows of sexually abusing more than 60 other deceased bodies, their ages ranging from 17 to 71.
As the story spread, it echoed the earlier narrative’s macabre allure, once again seizing the public’s fascination and, in some cases, horror. Yet, as with the Marmaduke story, the reality behind this tale was much less sensational, and indeed, far from accurate.
The Puppet Masters
Who are the puppet masters behind the spectacle? Dead Serious News and the World News Daily Report. Both platforms, operating under the pretense of news outlets, knowingly publish fictitious narratives. They are part of an online culture that revels in creating sensational yet fallacious stories, misleading audiences under the guise of satire.
Dead Serious News, the original source of the Felicity Marmaduke tale, is unabashed in its declaration as a satirical website, updating its content sporadically and often with a touch of dark humor. Their disclaimer openly admits to creating fictional narratives, with the exception of public figures’ names, demonstrating their lack of intention to maintain any semblance of factual accuracy.
Similarly, the World News Daily Report, responsible for resurrecting the narrative with a new protagonist, Jennifer Burrows, is also a recognized perpetrator of fake news. Run by Canadians Janick Murray-Hall and Olivier Legault, the site embraces the tabloid-style faux-journalism reminiscent of notorious publications like the Weekly World News. Their stories blend religious and scientific falsehoods, political conspiracy theories, and sprinkle in just enough truth to lend their tales a deceptive veneer of credibility.
However, their intention, as indicated in various interviews, is not to mislead but rather to highlight the public’s propensity to believe sensational narratives. They aim to stimulate self-criticism and critical thinking, albeit in a rather unconventional way. Still, the question remains: at what cost does this form of satire come?
The existence and proliferation of such sites bring forth significant controversy: the erosion of media credibility and the distortion of public perception. With the boundaries between fact and fiction becoming increasingly blurry, it is no surprise that trust in the media is at an all-time low.
The Woman Behind the Mask
As we pull back the final curtain of this sordid tale, a real woman emerges from the shadows. The face that was irresponsibly plastered across the web, linked with these outrageous stories, belongs to a woman named Kayla Schumaker, not Felicity Marmaduke or Jennifer Burrows.
In a startling misappropriation of identity, Schumaker’s photographs, originally sourced from local news reports dating back to 2013, were hijacked to lend authenticity to the fabricated narratives. The real story behind these images paints a starkly different picture. Schumaker, a resident of Fayette, Missouri, was indeed involved with the law, but her offense was far removed from the heinous acts attributed to her online avatar.
Schumaker was arrested in Boone County, Missouri, for the possession of prescription drugs not prescribed to her and some drug paraphernalia. This arrest, made in January 2013, was a world away from the perverse tales spun by Dead Serious News and the World News Daily Report. Yet, due to the manipulative practices of these hoax sites, Schumaker’s face became synonymous with these grim and groundless narratives.
As we conclude this journey through the labyrinth of online deception, we are left with a powerful lesson on the importance of fact-checking and critical thinking. In this digital era, where news travels faster than light and misinformation can spread like wildfire, it’s more crucial than ever to question the authenticity of what we read online.
Deep Lore 