What kind's of WEIRD stuff have you had to research for your WIP? (Come check out mine)

Enjoy the scenic landscape picture because it's going to get weird from this point on.

Because I'm writing about zombies, the old west, and cowboys, I find myself researching some very odd things. Things so bizarre that should I ever commit a crime (I really don't think I would, but you never know when I just might snap) and the police raid my house and view my activity on my laptop, I will have no way to defend myself:

"But I'm an author, your honor. All that stuff about stabbing someone through the jaw and then eating their brains was for a project. I swear. It wasn't me! It wasn't me!"

For my latest WIP, I research a lot about guns, rifles, and swords. I need to know the style and names of those kinds of weapons back in the wild west days, and how many bullets such a weapon can hold before needing to reload. I've researched this a lot. Sometime my research takes me to websites that I'm fairly certain are run by white supremacy groups or run by government haters. It's happened. BUT, I quickly get out of there as fast as I can. EXCEPT, now those sites are logged in my history. (You can delete your history, but the police always have a way. They do!).

Then add on top of that the research I did to learn how to skin and gut a rabbit (it wasn't nearly as bloody as I imagined it would be. As long as it doesn't stink, I think I could do it) AND add to that the research I did to find out if it was at all possible to kill a man by jamming a 6 inch knife up through the bottom of their jaw and into the roof of the mouth. Would it touch brain? Could a person survive? This little piece of research took me to many, many sites--some very helpful, others, as you can imagine, not so much (very scary).

I've had to research the rate in which a body decomposes, what a dead body smells like under normal circumstances, what it smells like when it is burned, and whether an arrow can pierce a skull. All good stuff to know, by the way.

So yep. I'm in a heap of trouble.

And this is only for the current WIP. Let's not even go into the research I had to do to find out if a veterinarian had the tools to amputate a human hand. 

It's bizarre the things authors are forced to research due to the direction our WIP takes us. I've researched things I NEVER thought I would have to.

So I'm curious, what bizarre things have you had to research for your novel/novels? I'd love to know I'm not the only one perusing strange sites that can land me jail :)

Just to make things even more interesting, as I researched a picture of something WEIRD to add to this blog, here are a few pictures that came up when I did so. See? Even searching for a weird picture is going to get me in trouble. Enjoy.

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This is so wrong. So very wrong. Who came up with this slide design? Seriously?

OUCH! OUCH! OUCH! OUCH! (I don't like this picture. It hurts my tummy).

Ummm . . . I have no idea what is going on here. I think I'll hold it, thanks anyway.

I'm sorry, my French friends, but this is really gross. This kid looks like she's bathing in blood. This is a real product you can buy called Gelli Baff