What do you think?
Rate this book
The Secret of Elena's Tomb: The Confessions of Carl Von Cosel
These are the confessions of Carl Tanzler Von Cosel, who fell in love with a beautiful tuberculosis patient named Elena Hoyos, in 1930's Key West, Florida. After her death in 1931, Von Cosel, moved her body from its resting place in the Key West Cemetery to his secret laboratory. There, for almost eight years, he attempted to resurrect Elena with his many inventions and experimental treatments. He kept her body in a condition eerily close to that which it was in life, and when he was found out in 1938, this macabre story of love's transcendence of death began to unfold on a national stage. This bizarre, twisted tale is his version of what happened and the aftermath, once he was discovered. This story is graphic and recommended for mature audiences only.
- GenresTrue CrimeNonfiction
70 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published May 19, 2008
15 people are currently reading
184 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 2, 2012
A better love story than Twilight, and more erotic than 50 Shades.
February 28, 2022
Dead Waifu Fanfiction - Ramblings of a Mad Lad
Carl von Cosel's insanity captivated me years ago when I first heard about him via a YouTube video concerning strange obsessions. I find this guy's devotion and madness fascinating because it exudes the same kind of energy that someone like Chris-Chan (the megalomaniacal creator of Sonichu) has. Cosel's ramblings in this book are full of delusional and psychotic fantasies of how he not only views himself but the world around him.
I read the original 1947 publication featured in Fantastic Adventures. It's fairly short, but I took a break from it for months then eventually came back to it and finished reading what was left in a few hours. His writing is surprisingly not dry, but the beginning half is a little dull. As his "story" goes on, his insanity and lust for Elena only get worse, and he goes into rather disturbing details on the state of her body and the things he did to it. Needless to say, it's a hilariously entertaining read but for all the wrong reasons.
WARNING: From here on out there will be SPOILERS. So if you value reading this yourself, I implore you to do so before you come back to read this.
Cosel claims that he experienced visions from his ancestor (a countess) that led him to eventually deciding that Elena would be his one and only. Although he barely talks about her, Cosel had a wife, and I later learned he actually had a daughter as well, but he admits that he was never truly in love with his wife.
Cosel fancied himself as an astute intellectual; he may have held some credentials, but none of them qualified him as an actual doctor, at least not by our current standards nor the standards of that time. He was a radiologist, and while he certainly had some expertise in the fields he studied, he definitely did not have one for proper patient care nor embalming. He attempted, in vain, to save Elena's life, but his treatments were experimental at best and ultimately led to her demise regardless. He never blames himself for this, however, and instead puts all the blame on her family who he portrays as ignorant, indignant, and ungrateful. The negative portrayal of her family in addition to the outside claims that Elena never found interest in him while she was still alive (something he seems to disagree with in his own writing) makes me definitely question the validity of his accounts concerning them up until her eventual passing.
While she was still alive, Cosel showered her with gifts, and he claims she seemed dependent and begged him for his medical aid. It might go without saying, but this guy is genuinely one of the most unreliable narrators I have ever read the writing of: he interpreted any ounce of interest or positivity from Elena as a sign of her returning his love. She was also already married at the time, but Cosel claims that her husband was estranged and not present (something I do believe was probably true since he said that her husband did not attend her funeral.) Elena declined his advances, but he considered it as her holding back.
After her passing, Cosel bought the house she died in and slept in her bed because it had her "scent." The downward spiral of Cosel's sanity goes into a freefall from this point forward where he goes so far as to visit her luxurious grave he built for her on a near daily basis. He claimed to have done much to preserve her corpse, but as evident by his account of seeing her state of decay once he exhumed her, he did a terrible job at it, and like he does throughout this entire story, Cosel blames everyone except himself for this.
The worst yet most fascinating parts of this story are his accounts of his attempts to "resurrect her." He "fed" her food via by tube and in some cases by his own mouth with the attempt to make her regain weight and fluids. Based on his descriptions, one would think her body was of a good enough condition to basically appear only dead for a few days, but this is far from the truth since he exhumed her eighteen months after her burial and even lamented on the apparent deterioration such as the fact her eyes had completely sunken in and decayed. This leads to rather confusing and misleading descriptions of her body such as when he described her as being in a "better state" than some living people; this statement alone made me pause and laugh because it's complete hogwash. There was no way in Hell her body could have looked better, and Cosel conveniently left out the other details he did to the body such as the fact he replaced her eyes with glass and strung together her bones with piano wire.
There is no mention of him ever consummating his "love" with her body, but he does go into way too much detail about how he kissed her corpse as if she were still "alive" on multiple occasions, even going so far as to admit he got the "embalming" fluids he put on her stuck on him. Yuck!
He also claimed she had "awakened" for a few moments only to "die" again. So many moments he describes with her are like this, and throughout the entire recollection, he claims she spoke to him constantly and even egged him on to do what he considered to be her wants and desires.
He closes his tale by demonizing Nana, Elena's only living relative at the time, as a greedy woman who only "wanted Elena's jewels." Hilariously enough, the courts at the time ruled him to be sane, but he was put in prison for a short time before being released. In a way, I can understand why people at the time felt the man's obsession was romantic: his devotion was resolute and passionate. Perhaps it also helped that he was an outward gentleman, and his wealthy background and credentials probably softened the blow of the public's opinion on him.
Without going into too much more detail, this is a very good read for those curious about just how delusional this guy was. He was, by every sense of the word, a "mad lad." It is hard to characterize this as a true "nonfiction" since so much of it as embellished as a TLC "reality show" given the utter nonsense he claims to have done and the contradictory statements just about Elena and her body alone. His grandiose ideas about himself, the world, and the people around him are really all too familiar with other personalities that fascinate and disgust the public till this day.
Thus I ask: What made him this way? What is the attraction? What keeps us fascinated?
Carl von Cosel's insanity captivated me years ago when I first heard about him via a YouTube video concerning strange obsessions. I find this guy's devotion and madness fascinating because it exudes the same kind of energy that someone like Chris-Chan (the megalomaniacal creator of Sonichu) has. Cosel's ramblings in this book are full of delusional and psychotic fantasies of how he not only views himself but the world around him.
I read the original 1947 publication featured in Fantastic Adventures. It's fairly short, but I took a break from it for months then eventually came back to it and finished reading what was left in a few hours. His writing is surprisingly not dry, but the beginning half is a little dull. As his "story" goes on, his insanity and lust for Elena only get worse, and he goes into rather disturbing details on the state of her body and the things he did to it. Needless to say, it's a hilariously entertaining read but for all the wrong reasons.
WARNING: From here on out there will be SPOILERS. So if you value reading this yourself, I implore you to do so before you come back to read this.
Cosel claims that he experienced visions from his ancestor (a countess) that led him to eventually deciding that Elena would be his one and only. Although he barely talks about her, Cosel had a wife, and I later learned he actually had a daughter as well, but he admits that he was never truly in love with his wife.
Cosel fancied himself as an astute intellectual; he may have held some credentials, but none of them qualified him as an actual doctor, at least not by our current standards nor the standards of that time. He was a radiologist, and while he certainly had some expertise in the fields he studied, he definitely did not have one for proper patient care nor embalming. He attempted, in vain, to save Elena's life, but his treatments were experimental at best and ultimately led to her demise regardless. He never blames himself for this, however, and instead puts all the blame on her family who he portrays as ignorant, indignant, and ungrateful. The negative portrayal of her family in addition to the outside claims that Elena never found interest in him while she was still alive (something he seems to disagree with in his own writing) makes me definitely question the validity of his accounts concerning them up until her eventual passing.
While she was still alive, Cosel showered her with gifts, and he claims she seemed dependent and begged him for his medical aid. It might go without saying, but this guy is genuinely one of the most unreliable narrators I have ever read the writing of: he interpreted any ounce of interest or positivity from Elena as a sign of her returning his love. She was also already married at the time, but Cosel claims that her husband was estranged and not present (something I do believe was probably true since he said that her husband did not attend her funeral.) Elena declined his advances, but he considered it as her holding back.
After her passing, Cosel bought the house she died in and slept in her bed because it had her "scent." The downward spiral of Cosel's sanity goes into a freefall from this point forward where he goes so far as to visit her luxurious grave he built for her on a near daily basis. He claimed to have done much to preserve her corpse, but as evident by his account of seeing her state of decay once he exhumed her, he did a terrible job at it, and like he does throughout this entire story, Cosel blames everyone except himself for this.
The worst yet most fascinating parts of this story are his accounts of his attempts to "resurrect her." He "fed" her food via by tube and in some cases by his own mouth with the attempt to make her regain weight and fluids. Based on his descriptions, one would think her body was of a good enough condition to basically appear only dead for a few days, but this is far from the truth since he exhumed her eighteen months after her burial and even lamented on the apparent deterioration such as the fact her eyes had completely sunken in and decayed. This leads to rather confusing and misleading descriptions of her body such as when he described her as being in a "better state" than some living people; this statement alone made me pause and laugh because it's complete hogwash. There was no way in Hell her body could have looked better, and Cosel conveniently left out the other details he did to the body such as the fact he replaced her eyes with glass and strung together her bones with piano wire.
There is no mention of him ever consummating his "love" with her body, but he does go into way too much detail about how he kissed her corpse as if she were still "alive" on multiple occasions, even going so far as to admit he got the "embalming" fluids he put on her stuck on him. Yuck!
He also claimed she had "awakened" for a few moments only to "die" again. So many moments he describes with her are like this, and throughout the entire recollection, he claims she spoke to him constantly and even egged him on to do what he considered to be her wants and desires.
He closes his tale by demonizing Nana, Elena's only living relative at the time, as a greedy woman who only "wanted Elena's jewels." Hilariously enough, the courts at the time ruled him to be sane, but he was put in prison for a short time before being released. In a way, I can understand why people at the time felt the man's obsession was romantic: his devotion was resolute and passionate. Perhaps it also helped that he was an outward gentleman, and his wealthy background and credentials probably softened the blow of the public's opinion on him.
Without going into too much more detail, this is a very good read for those curious about just how delusional this guy was. He was, by every sense of the word, a "mad lad." It is hard to characterize this as a true "nonfiction" since so much of it as embellished as a TLC "reality show" given the utter nonsense he claims to have done and the contradictory statements just about Elena and her body alone. His grandiose ideas about himself, the world, and the people around him are really all too familiar with other personalities that fascinate and disgust the public till this day.
Thus I ask: What made him this way? What is the attraction? What keeps us fascinated?
September 25, 2023
A Peek into Madness
Tanzler had some strange ideas, serious delusions and is a pathological liar...with those things in mind it can be an interesting read.
Tanzler had some strange ideas, serious delusions and is a pathological liar...with those things in mind it can be an interesting read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews