Morticians Reveal The Strangest And Most Mysterious Cases They’ve Ever Worked On
Morticians have one of the eeriest jobs ever. They interact with corpses on a debatably intimate level that many of us could hardly fathom. Some might find a sort of beauty in their work; they eternalize an individual's last earthly moments before burial. Certain people have even captured peaceful portraits of corpses in the morgue, proving that when viewed through a very specific lens, death can be beautiful.
Redditors asked undertakers, embalmers, and funeral directors to compile the worst cases they've ever worked on and the results are puzzling to say the least. Some are inexplicable cases, some are quite sad, but all of them will make you be extra careful whether you're driving, running a bath, or using a bench vise for whatever purpose one uses a bench vise.
That Nursing Home Ought To Be Shut Down
From Redditor /u/PastelPastries:
"[There was] this guy on the autopsy table with his [behind] rotted off to the bone. Turns out he was a paraplegic in a nursing home. The nurses just neglected cleaning his [behind] for so long that it rotted off and he couldn't feel it... It wasn't discovered until he was on the table..."
Her Cause Of Death Was Hardly Magical Even Though A Gargoyle Was Involved
From Redditor /u/Back2Bach:
"The undertaker... had to prepare a woman for viewing at a wake who had been killed by a gargoyle falling from the tower of an old church and making a direct hit.
"Apparently, it did extensive damage - the kind that took him several days of reconstructive preparatory work."
This Case Proves That Vises Should Only Be Used By Professionals That Are Properly Attired
From Redditor /u/Ed98208:
"The weirdest and most puzzling [case] was a man in his late 60s who died of a pulmonary embolism as a result of crushing his own penis in a vise. I've tried to think of ways it could have happened accidentally (naked woodworking?) or what his thought process could possibly have been..."
Smoking May Have Worse Results Than You Ever Imagined
From Redditor /u/TooMuchPretzels:
"We once had a lady that came in looking like she had died in a war. Burn marks, lacerations, what I imagine it looks like if you get hit by a grenade or a mine...
"Apparently she had been discharged from the hospital earlier that day for a hip replacement. They had given her a bottle of oxygen and strict orders to not smoke.
"Well ole Mrs Joe Camel sits right down on her sofa on her porch at home, plops the oxygen tank down next to her, and [with] oxygen tubes still in her nose, lights up her very last cigarette..."
Cake Frosting Can Be Dangerous, Too
From Redditor /u/TheModernMortician:
"A lady ate herself to death on five containers of Duncan Hines frosting...
"Neighbors saw her for two days sitting in her fave chair... Then finally someone checked on her. [She was] dead with a container of frosting in her lap and four empties on the floor around her chair. Her chin had frosting on it, too...
"Her mother revealed she had gastric bypass five months prior."
This Was Certainly Not A Relaxing Soak
From Redditor /u/Ephialtis:
"One such instance, a large apartment complex started smelling something terrible coming from a particular room. [The] landlord found the old lady that lived there dead in the bathtub...
"Apparently she was getting in the tub to take a bath and had a heart attack. The water was running, already hot, and she accidentally knocked loose the drain with her foot. So what happened for the next two weeks... is she lay there marinating in hot water. Now, you'd think the water would eventually cool, right? Nope. They had those industrial hot water heaters since it was shared by the apartment complex and it easily kept up with the hot water demand.
"So she had been sitting in this hot water for a couple of weeks basically cooking... When they went to try and move the body it was similar to picking up a marinated chicken... The meat fell right off the bone."