Las Vegas witchcraft shop starts selling ‘CORPSE WATER’ after body of potential mob victim was found in a barrel at bottom of Lake Mead during historic drought
- Charlie Hanks, owner of Blaspheme Boutique, sells the bottles for $7.99 per unit
- ‘Lake Mead Corpse Water’ actually consists of witch hazel, glass rocks, dirt and green mica
- Hanks said she came up with the marketing idea to boost her shop’s social media presence
- The dirt-looking water does not actually come from the lake, which is also the largest reservoir in the U.S.
- The barrel with human remains was exposed earlier in May as the water levels in Lake Mead have receded to their lowest in fifty years
- Las Vegas police said that the body found inside the barrel is likely a man killed by gunshot in the ’70s or ’80s
A witchcraft store in Las Vegas is selling ‘corpse water,’ just a few weeks after a body in a barrel was found at the bottom of Lake Mead.
Charlie Hanks, the owner of Blaspheme Boutique, came up with the idea as she was inspired by the creepy discoveries that were made earlier in May.
The water, named ‘Lake Mead Corpse Water,’ does not actually come from the lake itself. The shop owner said that she prefers to not take any water from the largest reservoir in the U.S., which has seen its water levels dramatically decrease over the past three decades.
‘I don’t want to steal water from Lake Mead to sell to people, but it’s a nice little concoction of water, some witch hazel, some glass rocks, dirt, and some green mica to give it a little bit of a green tint to it. It’s just for entertainment purposes, do not ingest.’
Hanks further told KTLA that her marketing idea started as a joke and that the water bottles were made to boost the shop’s online presence.
‘Most of us who have lived in Vegas for a long time have been questioning our water quality for years. And that just kind of worked out when we found out that there was a corpse floating in a barrel. So I made this as a joke,’ Hanks said.
She then explained that corpse water is traditionally used in witchcraft, which goes along with the theme of her shop: dark magic and fantasy.
‘Lake Mead Corpse Water,’ sold by Blaspheme Boutique in Las Vegas, consists of water, some witch hazel, glass rocks, dirt, and green mica. A bottle costs $7.99 and is available for purchase online and in-store
Charlie Hanks, the store owner, said she came up with the marketing idea to boost her shop’s online presence on social media and that her idea started off as a joke
A barrel with a skeleton was found embedded in mud along Lake Mead’s receding shoreline. Police say that as water levels continue to drop it is likely that more bodies will be exposed
The skeletal remains of the body were visible through a corroded opening in the rusted metal barrel. The victim’s shirt and belt were still clinging to their bones
More than a dozen orders were placed on the store’s website within hours of displaying the mucky-looking water on Facebook.
Blaspheme Boutique has been open for nearly a year and Hanks said that she’s been pleasantly surprised by the local success it’s been having.
She added that people are often interested in the dark magic and ghoulish accessories that are uniquely found in her shop.
However, Hanks doesn’t want to ‘make light of the fact’ that there are dead bodies in the lake.
‘Those people, their families, and loved ones probably miss them and want to know what happened to them. What I’m making light of is the darker history of Vegas,’ she said.
The shop owner added that she has never swum in Lake Mead and does not have any intentions of jumping in anytime soon.
Hanks said she would never take water from Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S., due to the lake drying up since the 1990s
Blaspheme Boutique, a witch shop that sells dark magic goods, including apparel, candles, jewelry, accessories and mystical goods, has found local success due to its unusual products
Las Vegas police said that the skeletal body found in a metal barrel along Lake Mead’s receding shoreline was a man who had died from a gunshot wound sometime between the mid-1970s or early 80s.
The Las Vegas strip was once notoriously dominated by mob-run casinos from the late ’40s through the ’80s.
Homicide Lt. Ray Spencer of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police told the Las Vegas Review Journal that the barrel could have been dumped into the lake over the side of a boat.
‘The water level has dropped so much over the last 30 to 40 years that, where the person was located, if a person were to drop the barrel in the water and it sinks, you are never going to find it unless the water level drops,’ Spencer said, ‘The water level has dropped and made the barrel visible. The barrel did not move… It was not like the barrel washed up.’
The metal barrel containing the remains was discovered by people strolling along the Lake Mead shore on May 1. They came upon the rusted barrel embedded the in mud along the shoreline, and when they peered into a corroded opening they discovered the skeletal corpse.
The level of the reservoir has varied over the past two decades, standing almost full in 1999 (left) and now at just over 1,055ft (right)
Many of the problems facing Lake Mead come from the ongoing drought in the region, that has caused the Colorado River basin to become extremely low
The water level in Lake Mead have reached their lowest heights since 1971. The reservoir’s water provides drinking water and and electricity for 40million people
The water line in the Lake Mead reservoir provides water and generates electric for 40million people, according to the Journal. It now sits at 1,055ft above sea level, well below the maximum capacity of 1,229 ft, and worryingly close to the 1,050ft limit.
The record low water levels are a result of the worst drought since 1971, with human-caused climate change making it 72 per cent worse, studies have shown.
With weather patterns expected to worsen, experts say the reservoir may never be full again.
Made men, Tommy guns and Al Capone’s bullet-riddled Valentine’s Day massacre wall: Las Vegas’ mob days
Las Vegas has long been enamored by its gangster roots.
Casinos including The Stardust, the El Cortez, the Tropicana, the Desert Inn, the Flamingo and the Dunes Hotel were all backed by the mob at one point.
So the story goes, the mob helped to build out the remote highway that would eventually become the Las Vegas strip.
Gangsters then took over resorts built by front men, skimmed the profits and built nightclubs, country clubs, housing tracts and shopping centers.
It was home to notorious gangsters like Davie ‘the Jew’ Berman and Bugsy Siegal.
Siegel was a New York based mobster who is credited with being one of the founders of the Las Vegas strip, funding the construction and opening of the Flamingo Hotel in 1946 with investments from associates like mobster Meyer Lanksy. When the Flamingo’s profits started going south, Seigel was assassinated by an unknown killer in Beverly Hills.
The story goes that twenty minutes after Siegel was killed in California, his associate, Davie ‘the Jew’ Berman, walked into the Flamingo and announced he was in charge. Lanksy took over the casino after Siegel died, and the Flamingo and the Las Vegas strip began to flourish.
Mob families from Chicago and New York began pouring money into Las Vegas in the 1950s, running the Riviera, Stardust, and Desert Inn, and the Hacienda, Gold Nugget, Sahara and Fremont casinos by the 1960s.
The mob ruled Vegas until the 1980s, when the FBI began cracking down on the corruption and routing out illegitimate business dealings. By the end of the decade, all casinos on the strip had allegedly been sold to legitimate owners.
Vegas doesn’t shy away from its lurid past. Visitors can pay their respects to wise guys from across the country with a visit to The Mob Museum, which among other artifacts features the bloodied and bullet-ridden wall that the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was carried out against.
Bugsy Siegel, a notorious gangster, moved to Las Vegas to supervise the syndicate-funded construction of the Flamingo Hotel but fell out with mob bosses who thought he was becoming uncontrollable and hemorrhaging money. He was killed in 1947 at the Beverly Hills home of his mistress Virginia Hall
View of the El Dorado CLub on Fremont Street in Las Vegas which was owned by Davie Berman, a notorious gangster who ran Las Vegas casinos for Frank Costello, Meyer Lanksy and Lucky Luciano
View of the illuminated sign of casinos and hotels along Fremont Street, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1955
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