By Scott Stiffler

How far would you go to obtain a slice of burnt toast bearing the image of Jesus, a potato chip with an uncanny resemblance to Elvis, or a Ghost in a Jar? These treasures and more can be yours if you've got Internet access, a PayPal account, and a fondness for the adrenaline rush of competitive bidding.
   
In 1995, computer programmer Pierre Omidyar spent his Labor Day weekend writing code for an auction website that would ultimately become the glorified global yard sale known as eBay. By 2007, it was generating almost $60 billion annually — an empire built on the notion that one person's junk could be another person's treasure.
   
In case you'd forgotten, the BBC has an article about the infamous 1999 auction that offered up a human kidney for sale. Bidding started at $25,000 and quickly surpassed six million (an amount perhaps better spent on a cheaper and more readily available, black market kidney from India — or one bionic man). Ultimately, eBay shut down the auction due to a combination of bad press and bad taste, plus the fact that U.S. law prohibits the sale of organs. Nonetheless, it was a sign of things to come. Having set the bar for the outrageous and macabre, “Fully Functional Kidney For Sale” remains the gold standard for auction items that aspire to an entertainment value and sense of showmanship to rival that of circus huckster P.T. Barnum.
   
Barnum's ominous boast that “There's a sucker born every minute” should be fair warning to those bidding on anything that seems too good to be true. Michael Ford is author of Scams and Scoundrels (a book on how to avoid scams on eBay). He also operates two websites (dontbidonit.com and auctionsafety.org) that offer a multitude of tips and strategies to help one separate whimsy from electronic fraud. To complete his trilogy, this Ralph Nader of the Internet has also created totallyoutrageousauctions.com, which highlights weird eBay items and points out which Mystery Auctions are scams.
   
Mystery Auctions, as defined by Ford, are “where people buy worthless junk items and are promised a gift of high value — but it's always a scam. I saw an auction that offered a 100% empty can of Diet Coke… with lime! that had reached a bid of $172.50.” Ford also recommends checking out Google and YouTube. “Do a search for specific auctions or buzzwords like weird, spooky, and haunted. You'll find people talking about the latest craze or the new website that has the strangest stuff.” As for Ford's own picks, a recent visit to his totallyoutrageousauctions.com site elicited items such as a “Haunted Amulet” with the “power to make you a supreme Djiin Master” ($32) and a “Fortune Cookie — unopened” (a bargain at $472).
   
At Collage, Rob Lee (editor of the free newsletter WeirdZine) lists his Top Ten picks for Weirdest Things Ever Sold on eBay. Making the cut are such doozies as a UFO Detector (final sale price, $135), a Vampire Killing Kit (final bid: $4,550) and the infamous Ghost in a Jar. A combination of spoof auction and urban legend whose origin is charted by Lee, the Ghost in A Jar auction inspired others such as Ghost in a Paper Clip. None of the subsequent imitators have matched the original's combination of savvy and satire, but that hasn't stopped people from shelling out good money for weird but dubious products. Michael Ford seems to know why, “People want to feel like they're part of something important. They see other people bidding and they want to be part of that fun and excitement.” That such questionable products can elicit insanely high bids may be due to the fact that “sellers know how to promote the auction to make it look like it's a contest.”
   
At Everything2.com a guy named Ivan tells the sad tale of “One of my favorite weird (and legit) eBay auctions: for the Russian Boran-5 orbital shuttle that, sadly, never garnered any bids.” Slicksta.com raids the website bayraider.com for its listing of entries such as “Sand That Elvis Walked On” and “Someone's Friendship.” At about.com, blogger and contributor Wendy Boswell offers her own assessment of Bayraider (“a site that is willing to dredge through the dross of eBay”) and offers her own list of celebrity-centric oddities (such as Kurt Cobain's Amp, George Bush “I'm a Lady” Playing Cards and Angelina Jolie's Hairbrush).
   
For more strange auctions, check out weirdauctions.com, bizarrebids.com, verystrangeauctions.com, weirdstrange auctions.blogspot.com, whowouldbuythat.com, strangebids.com, disturbingauctions.com, and Grrl.
   
So long as there's a weird item to be had and someone with enough disposable income to obtain it, eBay will always remain a recession-proof source of fun, entertainment, and future attic clutter.

The name really says it all, doesn't it? From gloryhole fetishes to guys wearing masks during sex and insatiable cum guzzlers, this site full of pictures and discussion threads covers just about everything bizarre and wild. If you've got a fetish so kinky that you dare not even mention it to your closest friends, you're sure to find a few conspirators here to get freaky with.

According to this site, a group of Americans were involved with an alien exchange program during the 70's and the U.S. government has been involved in a long-term (if stunted) dialog with these aliens. According to the site, this gradual disclosure of information has been authorized — and they offer up reams of documentation detailing the exchange program and the alien planet as proof, as well as documents and records relating to government figures (such as Ronald Reagan) who were lucky enough to be briefed on the issue. Mulder and Scully (or Smolder and Sulky as we now call them) watch out!

For most people, the sexualization of infancy is morally and aesthetically repulsive. But some will appreciate this site with galleries of grown men in diapers, sucking on pacifiers, and playing with baby toys. If it's any consolation, you can be sure that all the models are way over 21 years old. No, it didn't make us feel any better either.

Here's a good way to freak out your friends. Sneak onto their computers and set their homepages to this freaky encyclopedia featuring nearly 10,000 articles about Furries and the Furry community. For those of you not familiar with this ever-growing, kinky subculture, it's made up of people who enjoy dressing up in elaborate animal costumes and interacting — often times sexually — with one another. Who knows, they might even get hooked and then find themselves in a chipmunk suit fucking a panda at the next Furry Convention!