LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – Curiosity in Lake Mead increased after a human body was discovered in a barrel on the newly exposed shore of Lake Mead several weeks ago. Now a local company is using the headlines to increase sales.
In a small dark shop in the middle of a Las Vegas strip mall, Charlie Hanks casually helps a couple of women look for items related to magic, witchcraft, and other dark topics. One of them stops in front of several small bottles, almost vials, of what looks like dirty water and chuckles. The woman just found the Lake Mead Corpse Water.
“Traditional corpse water is used in different witchcraft practices. However, this is not real corpse water,” Charlie Hanks said. “It’s for fun. It’s a joke. 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,” added Hanks.
Hanks and her husband have been operating her store, Blaspheme Boutique, for almost a year. Hanks opened the shop in the middle of the pandemic, not knowing how it would do. To her surprise, she said it had exceeded her expectations. Hanks said there’s an underserved need for the dark and sometimes morbid things she sells.
The Lake Mead Corpse Water was a product made on a whim to drum up business using social media. Hanks said within hours of advertising on Facebook, she had more than a dozen orders.
When asked what Lake Mead Corpse Water is, Hanks first said what it isn’t.
“It’s not from Lake Mead. 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,”
said Hanks.
She also understands this type of product isn’t for everyone, “I don’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.”
Hanks added she’d never done so when asked if she had swum in Lake Mead and has no plans to jump in now.