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The robbing of Nosferatu director FW Murnau’s grave may have had occult motives. But as with Goya or Beethoven, it’s probably just extreme autograph hunting
The cemetery workers who discovered this week that the skull of the great film director FW Murnau had gone missing were not the first to stumble on the theft of a famous person’s head, and probably won’t be the last. Murnau, best known for his horror masterpiece Nosferatu and the Academy-award winning Sunrise, has been dead for more than 70 years, but this didn’t stop persons unknown from digging up his remains and making off with his head. It was not, cemetery officials said, the first time his grave has been disturbed.
The police appear to have few clues as to the identity or motives of the thieves, but one tantalising detail – the discovery of wax residue at the site – may suggest “occult motives”. It’s certainly possible; in the autumn of 2014, a cache of 21 skulls were found under a bridge in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, having been stolen from graveyards for use in black magic. But participants in such rituals aren’t usually picky about whose skull gets used, so the fact that the graves next to Murnau’s went undisturbed leaves open the possibility that something else might be going on here.
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