just 3 loose thoughts guys:
1. the date - being an European I look at the date in a little bit different way. My always put the day first, then followed by the month so 06.01.2005 would make 6th Jan 2005 so sth quite recent. maybe sth important happened on that day - tsunami? cant recall.
2. there was a quation some time ago "all ya that enter here abandon hope" - sth like this. This comes from Dante Allighieri (i am not sure about the last name) brilliant work of the enlightment period "The Divine Comedy". This work is divided into parts - heaven, this place between heaven and hell (dont know the English word) and Hell. The main hero accompanied by a great philisopher (I believe Plato) visits those places. The quote is a sign that has been put at the gates of hell. Some more connections: this quote was recently used in David's Fincher's masterpiece movie "Seven" - said by Morgan Freeman.
As the movie is about a serial killer the conspiration theory lives on
3. Some connection between this "one-hand skeleton" and "dance dance dance". In Enlighment period (or maybe medieval times) there was a poetry and literature concept in Europe called "dance macabre" (latin) which means "the dance of death". In many books skeletons would come to social gatherings, kill people and than perform a wicked dance - "dance macabre". As I am positive that this was an influential motive in the same time when Dante wrote his book so that may be a connection.
Just some loose thoughts - I stumbled into this forum today, read it and this is what i Came up with.
Amazing work so far ! Good luck !