Play this record if you’re having trouble sleeping at night. In the mid-1980’s Belgian puppeteer Michel Dejeneffe and his terrifying creation named Tatayet were an enormous sensation in Europe. The Tatayet Show was broadcast on RTBF (the public channel for the French-speaking part of Belgium) every Sunday evening and as result of their success, an entire discography of Tatayet LP’s and 45’s were released to widespread acclaim. The 1986 dance single “At the Graveyard” which received much radio airplay featured a memorable chorus that anybody could sing along to: “At the graveyard, stiff and ten feet underground. In a pine box, like potatoes, with a ton of earth on top of the pine box.”
 

 
More fun with Tatayet after the jump…

 
Remember Ronald William Brown of Largo, Florida, the 58-year-old proprietor of “Puppets Plus” who was charged last year with the possession of child pornography and of conspiring with another man to kidnap and then eat a child? Brown was a regular on a Christian Television Network kids program with his ventriloquist dummy “Marty” and would warn kids about the dangers of things like… pornography.

Earlier this week Ronald Brown was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a federal judge for possession of child pornography. Brown was an active member of the Gulf Coast Church in Largo and had a Sunday school puppet ministry to entertain rambunctious children while their parents listened to the sermon. He and an accomplice, Michael Arnett, were planning to abduct a specific child who was a member of the church and who took part in Brown’s “Puppet Ministry Kidz Zone” program.

Homeland Security agents who searched Brown’s mobile home and tool shed discovered images of bound and gagged kids, photographs of dead children and a flier for a missing child.

According to a Tampa Bay Examiner blogger:

Brown and Arnett chatted about murdering children as young as two. In one chat, Arnett described to Brown what it is like to drown a little girl and what different body parts taste like if roasted or fried in a pan.

Brown revealed to Arnett in another chat regarding the little boy at Gulf Coast Church that he would enjoy strangling the child to death.

Imagine how stunned members of this church were. The very guy who they trusted to entertain their kids during the sermon was fantasizing about killing and graphically dismembering one of them in online chat-rooms!

Then again, I’d probably think twice about leaving children with a creepy 57-year-old single guy living in a trailer park with only his puppet friend for company, you know? (Watch the video below, would you trust your kid with this guy? Yikes!)

One of the statements Brown allegedly made during a chat session with Arnett was released by police:

“I imagine him wiggling and then going still.”

Brown—who told investigators that this was all just a fantasy (Of course!) and that he’d never think of hurting someone—admitted that he had discussed killing, cooking and eating a specific child in online chats with Arnett.

Below, Brown and “Marty” talk porn:

 
I’m not so sure I would have clipped my cable line if American TV carried the German television show, Wetten, Dass..? (Wanna Bet..?), a show that attracts up to 50% (!) of Europe’s German-speaking viewers whenever it airs.  I mean, could you see these amazing dinosaur puppets (an animatronic extravaganza spun off from from the BBC’s Walking With Dinosaurs) popping up on Jay Leno?  The below clip features a dinosaur trio stomping their way into the studio, shocking and delighting the Wetten, Dass..? audience.  Is some of it due to the blue jeans on that ‘raptor?  I think so!

 
Bonus video: T-Rex Fight!

(via Coilhouse)