The Things Women Have Hidden in Their Vaginas

Earlier this week, 21-year-old Dallas Archer was sent to jail after police located a loaded .22 caliber mini-revolver in her vagina. The five-inch handgun was stolen from a car in 2013, and Archer will now serve a three-year prison sentence for introducing contraband into a penal facility. But this isn't the first time that a woman has attempted to smuggle dangerous goods in her genitals. As any local news network fan knows, there have been countless instances of detritus washing up on the inner shores of women's pleasure beaches. Here are just a few.

The earliest known motif of women hiding killer objects in their genitalia comes in the form of the vagina dentata, or the toothed vagina. The late 20th century anthropologist Verrier Elwin notes that the legend known "is known over a wide area of North America; it is a legend in Samoa [in Polynesia] and among the Ainu [of Japan]; the Kiwai [a New Guinea tribe] know it as dream; it has been reported from the Naga of Manipur [in India]." Japan's famed Festival of the Steel Phallus has its origins in an Ainu legend of a toothsome demon who hid in the vagina of a young girl, until it was defeated by an iron phallus.

In one Indian folk tale, a man has sex with an upper-caste girl after he finds her stealing cucumbers from his field. His dick is immediately chewed off by her fanged vagina, though his brother-in-law's wife soon frightens her into re-attaching the penis. The two of them then pull out every single tooth in the attacker's vagina with a piece of string. Shortly afterwards, the farmer and the now-toothless girl fall in love and run off, which just goes to show there is no accounting for taste.

Artists hide objects in their vaginas all the time, and one of the earliest instances can be traced back to Carolee Schneemann's 1975 performance piece Interior Scroll. In front of an audience, Schneemann pulled a thin scroll from her vagina and read aloud from it.

More recently, Australian artist Casey Jenkins knitted for 28 days—the average length of a single menstrual cycle—in an art gallery with wool pulled out of her vagina. (She later dyed the hateful internet comments she received in her own menstrual blood.)

The most outlandish stunt on record involves Voina, the Russian shock art collective that spawned Pussy Riot. In a 2010 action titled How to Snatch a Chicken: A Tale of How One Cunt Fed the Whole of the Group Voina, a performer calling herself Vacuous Cunt walked into a supermarket and calmly stuffed an entire chicken up herself in the frozen foods aisle. In a video recording of the act, she is shown later birthing it onto the pavement.

Archer is not the only American woman to attempt to conceal a weapon in her intimate area. Only two months ago, police in Waco, Texas, found a loaded handgun in 31-year-old Ashley Cecilia Castaneda's vagina. She was also charged with possession of meth, though this was not located in or around her crotch.

In 2013, Christie Harris attempted to hide a loaded five-shot revolver after being stopped by police in a car park in Oklahoma. During the strip search, police officers found a "wooden and metal item sticking out from her vagina area," and located two vaggies of meth lodged between her buttocks. Pontotoc County District Attorney Chris Ross observed of the case: "It would seem to be a very dangerous place to carry a loaded firearm. If it goes off it's only going one place."

In the strangest case on record involves the ex-wife of No Country For Old Men writer Cormac McCarthy, who was arrested in 2014 on an assault charge during a fight with her then-boyfriend (not McCarthy). According to a probable cause statement obtained by The Smoking Gun, Jennifer McCarthy was arguing with her partner about space aliens before leaving the house and changing into "lingerie and a silver handgun in her vagina." She then reportedly began having sex with the gun while asking her boyfriend: "Who is crazy, you or me?" McCarthy later denied the incident.

Shoving things up your vagina can lead to a host of nasty side effects collectively known as foreign object vaginitis. This may include itching, discharge or pain. It is not a condition reserved for adult women; in the 2007 edition of the Pediatric Emergency Care journal, three doctors recount the case of a four-year-old who had shoved half of her missing Bratz doll up there—the lower half, to be specific. Past cases have involved red wax crayons, lead pencils, safety pins, twigs, and splinters of wood. Doctors Joseph A. Hepp and Wilson C. Everhart attempt to explain the phenomenon in a 1950 study: "Apparently these children were motivated by the same curiosity that dictates the insertion of foreign bodies into the ear or nose."

Grown women have somewhat less innocent motivations when it comes to using their snatch as a stash pocket. While female drug runners more commonly smuggle contraband in their stomachs, there have also been cases where women attempted to sneak drugs past security in their vaginas. Case in point: I know one girl whose guy friends got her to smuggle 30 ecstasy pills in a Mooncup so they could get high at a Croatian music festival.

Unfortunately, things can often go badly wrong: A British woman was arrested in 2013 for attempting to smuggle £100,000 (or 850 grams) worth of cocaine in her front pocket. One heroic grandmother tried to smuggle tranquilizers, small packets of cocaine and heroin, and 20 euros to her grandson in jail via concealed Kinder Surprise eggs.

Others have attempted to use their vaginas to hide drugs from the cops, with varying degrees of success. Police have found everything from bong pipes, 17 grams of meth along with a pipe, and hypodermic needles in vaginas. But this all pales in comparison to the case of one remarkable woman in Scranton, Pennsylvania. In 2011, 27-year-old Karin Mackaliunas was pulled over after a car crash and was discovered to be hiding 54 bags of heroin, 31 empty baggies, eight and a half prescription pills, and a total of $51.22 in loose change in her genitals.

Here is a tip: If your male friends ask you to hide drugs, loose change, or Kinder Surprise eggs in your vagina for an Eastern European music festival, point out that the asshole is nature's pocket for men.