People who’s work involves death (e.g Paramedics, Hospice Carers, Morgue Attendants, etc.) – what is the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen?

Question

Kerttu-Liisa · Accepted Answer

Part of my job is retrieving bodies and transferring them to the morgue. People don't realize how quickly bodies decompose. The second you die, it starts and it doesn't look like you think it will. Eyes and mouths tend to hang open.  I've collected people who were found weeks or months after they died, mostly in that case it's because they committed suicide somewhere remote and it was hard to find them. But A memory that sticks in particular is the first time I saw someone who had died at home and because he kept to himself he wasn't found for months. I remember my first thought was how amazing people who do make up and props on horror films are because it looked just that. Face fixed in a scream, flesh hanging off like melted wax, some mummified, some green, hands curled with bones showing. The only thing the films don't show is the amount of flies and maggots. For a brief can make the person look alive because of the movement

Latashia · Answer

"Hospice nurse Weirdest or I guess most unusual was the first body I pronounced. I was a bit nervous and the family was all around just staring at me and waiting for me to say their loved one was officially dead. I hadn't heard a heartbeat and he hadn't breathed for about a minute. Pupils were fixed and dilated. All the signs were there: dead as dead could be. I tell the family and right after I say "he is gone" the guy gives one last gasp. Freaked the family out and I had to explain it was normal and yes, he was absolutely dead. I wait two minutes now.  "

Ulpu · Answer

Long bone donor.  Went to move the person from the table onto the stretcher and he was like a deflated Gumby . . . . . . did not expect that.

Verda · Answer

Not mine story but one of my family friends is a nurse and he told us about this time these people stumbled upon some random dead guy in a parking lot. No one knew who he was or where he was from. They took him in and when they pumped his stomach, it was full of dead flies and they were all going up the tube as he was being pumped.

Benetta · Answer

What's weird for me is how normal suicides are now to go on. It's not talked about ever on the news or in the papers but a lot of people commit suicide. I've been on multiple suicides by train. I work in the suburbs of Chicago and its a very popular option. Mostly it's just walking the tracks making sure you find as many body parts as possible before the public get their phones out. I don't necessarily agree with suicide but you have to have huge balls to jump in front of a train going 50mph. Swear to God while writing this we were dispatched on a psychiatric call where are cops had to talk a lady off the tracks with a train coming.. talked her off and now safe at the hospital. I know that wasn't really the question but weird is relative and we see out of the normal stuff everyday that is normal to us in the career. So it's kind of a loaded question. But a good one!

Mandy Lang · Answer

Not super weird but it's odd if you don't know it. We have to clean the bodies before we send them off. When you roll a dead body sometimes they sigh. It's just air coming out of the lungs but it's creepy when they do that.

Oosa · Answer

Perforated bowel gave way..... cleaning up her body, every roll from side to side bowel movement coming through her nose and mouth flowing like a dark green sludge with no stopping in sight.... really bothered me poor woman.

Bartolemo · Answer

This guy died while watching porn. When I got on scene, the home screen of the DVD was blasting. He also died with his hands behind his head. When the medical examiner came to get the body, they had trouble keeping his arms down because of rigor mortis.

Ortensia · Answer

I have a friend who used to work in a morgue to help clean up the bodies. He told me that the creepiest case he'd ever seen was a murder victim. The guy was involved in a drug deal gone bad on the 12th story of a building. He was stabbed in the eye with a screwdriver and while he was stumbling in pain, was pushed off the balcony of the building. My friend told me that the body and face were terribly mangled.

Riitta · Answer

"30ish y/o Male, with a very vascular and mucosal tumour protruding from his throat right at the Adam's apple. It was the size of a grapefruit (not a sphere though) Multiple episodes of syncope where he injured the growth and it began oozing blood, pus and mucus. This was maybe 1996 and I remember like yesterday. Also not the "worst or weirdest" but memorable.  "

Helena · Answer

A surprising amount of people have stuff up the butt.

mikka · Answer

I was an emt back in college. Got a call for a suicide. Get to the location and could hear Christian rock music just blaring. Walked into the barn where the wife had hung herself. She had her family pictures all up. No idea why she did it.

Kaire · Answer

"Am police. The weirdest is when a dead body gives out their last "breath". They could be dead for hours and all of a sudden release their last breath as their lungs collapse. Scared the fuck out of me the first time I witnessed it before I knew it was a thing.  "

Scott · Answer

"I took care of a woman that had necrotizing fasciitis due to the radiation therapy used during her cancer treatment. I'm at a loss for the name of this condition.  Anyways, she had no skin from her right jaw across her chest and down the left side of her chest. When I embalmed her, I saw the embalming fluid moving through her arterial system. I just kept gawking at it because it was so bizarre. I couldn't believe I could visibly see the embalming process from the "inside out". I've seen a lot of things that made me go "damn, bodies are crazy/weird/cool" but this one took the cake.  "

Lill-Mari · Answer

Oddly not a gore issue, so early in my career, we responded to a vehicle accident. The victim is a young female, trapped in the car with a serious broken femur. As we approach the car, there is a guy with her engaged in a full make-out session. Of course we're assuming this is the patient's boyfriend, and he backs away from the car. Someone starts asking him questions, and he knows nothing, doesn't even know the name of the female. What - your in this full lip-lock with this woman and don't know her?  We go on about our business extricating the woman and taking care of her for transport, sort of forgeting about the guy. Didn't think it was appropriate to ask her about the guy.  After 40 years of EMS, we still think that's the weirdest thing we've ever seen.

aziza · Answer

I was once performing CPR on a 2yo boy with a congenital heart disease. As I was compressing his chest and looking him in the eye ( yes I do that) his lips got bluer and bluer (cyanosis) and then his skin. It was a pretty terrifying scene watching a blue lifeless toddler rattling under your arms. Edit: Typos.

Gertrude · Answer

Found my moms neighbor dead in her home from natural causes, she was naked, which I found odd. So I asked around among my first responder associates, turns out when people die suddenly at home they are very frequently naked and no one knows why for sure.

KASHA · Answer

"We "lost" the body.  I was a student RN at the time in a nursing home. Very old lady died (completely expected) and the stupid young doctor marked her as needing an autopsy. The guy that picks up the bodies and takes them to the pathologist took her to the forensic morgue on the other side of the city. It was all sorted out as a mistake by the new guy but a very worrying 24 hours where no one knew where she was. The family were actually very understanding.  "

Wald · Answer

Our unit (I'm a EMT) gets way too many obese patients. We dropped this 252 kg / 556 lbs woman off in the ER for chest pain. The nurses noticed she had several small lacerations that appeared to be coming from underneath a massive fat roll on her back. When we lifted it up a dead mouse just plopped right out and rolled on to the floor. Poor guy had been trying to scratch his way out for quite awhile apparently.

REVA · Answer

Was working as an EMT, dropping someone off at a hospital, the route back to the ambulance shed goes past the main entrance to the morgue, I was interested so I had a peek Through the slit in the door, and I see a dude, who is luminous green, like looked like a highlighter, never found out why, but I'm sure it had something to do with green dye

LAEL · Answer

And dislike full stops.

Charmine · Answer

"Worked as a Paramedic for a couple of years (student, in training), and attended a call out to a man who had OD'd mildly on heroin. He was slumped on the sofa, his wife watching. As we were administering Glucagon, he yelled, "I'm going to take a shit right here!!" His wife screamed at him not to dare shitting on the new sofa. He did so anyway, a lovey turtle head appearing between his legs, the man wearing nought but a dressing gown. The following couple of days, we're coincidentally the crew that attends another call, called back to the same house. The wife and husband have switched positions .. "

Anke Nussbaum · Answer

Paramedic in a high volume system 1. Had a 350 lb guy hang himself with steel wire  2. Had a lady turn the wrong way on the interstate and was struck by a semi going 70, she was partially ejected, and decapetated by the seatbelt, but the head stayed in place till I attempted to adjust her airway 3. Some kid started a circular saw and just rammed it into his neck 4. Had a guy recently kill his wife, drive to a bridge and jump off, while in the air shooting himself, then drowned  Hangings are eerie calls and accidental suicides and homocides are the worse to deal with I think

Telli · Answer

I once saw a lamb with two heads.

Johanna Schmid · Answer

I worked at a funeral home for 4 years and i saw many things. Dead babies, People who want their relatives teeth or hair, people in accidents or even suicides. The wierdest thing ive iver seen is what the human body does when it decays. i once saw a man who wasnt found until a few weeks after he died. we was wearing a wrist watch. the weight of his watch made the watch head fall to the other side of his arm and it brought the skin it was attached to with it. There are also such things as butt plugs that get super glued in for people who never stop leaking poo. some sights and smells never leave you...

Anne-Sisko · Answer

I read a story once about a paramedic who was called to a home where a woman had literally cooked herself in her bathtub. Her skin fell off her body as they tried to get her out.

Saara · Answer

One time I removed a woman from a split-level trailer. Not an RV, a trailer home. Thing had two or three steps between the living room and bedroom

Allah · Answer

Baghdad, dead guy was burned and bloated. Looked like a burst hotdog that was burnt on the grill.

Teberh · Answer

It was horrific:(

Jennifer Wulf · Answer

I do not but I looked out of a car window on a major Thoroughfare and saw a dead woman sprawled across someone's front steps.

Stefan · Answer

Saw a garbage bag in an empty morgue with a toe tag on the top and a set of dentures on an exam table. I don't know any further...

anne-lene · Answer

why am I reading this thread?

WILLETTE · Answer

Someone's head has physically come off in my hands when I tried to manoeuvre it.

Kailey · Answer

"The other weird experience is when you have to patch up dead bodies. First time I even said "sorry" when I teared the skin with the needle (it gets pretty tense after death). "

Kija · Answer

So, it's not my job, but my wife is a doctor and we spent a couple of years in Indonesia where she worked with rabies. Essentially, I watched a six or seven yo kid die horribly from the virus. I watched this kid go from crying and scared to convulsing and screaming. Five whole nights of this kid screaming. Then silence. The silence afterward is the worst part.

Manuela Duerr · Answer

I had an elderly patient call for chest pain. Massive depression in II, III, aVf, massive elevation in V1-4. Guy's having the big one. Arrests to v-fib as we transfer him to the bed. CPR starts. About two minutes in his eyes open and he reaches up and grabs my arm in a desperate, grasping for anything type movement. He was still in v-fib. Never came out of it, until he went asystolic.  I wouldn't have believed it if I wasn't there.  That's the weirdest thing. The rest of my stories are just sad.

Lottie · Answer

"Hospice nurse here. I'm now the Administrator of the locations.  The oddest thing.....hum.  Dying people see and talk to already-dead folks routinely.  In this instance I was the nurse for the family and we were having an "end of life education meeting" so all family knew what to expect and what to do etc... The guy to my left, sitting on the sofa, was quiet. He was older and had a hat.  After talking and answering questions I turned to see if he had any questions. He was gone from the seat...restroom maybe? Anyway before I left I asked them if that guy in the hat had any concerns. All the family present said there wasn't a man next to me in a hat.  It was creepy to say the least.  Paranormal shit happens all the time.  "

Mareen · Answer

Licensed funeral director here. A young man who was walking on railroad tracks with earbuds in. Train came up behind him and broke him in half at the pelvis. Lower portion found beside the tracks upper portion found way down the tracks. Looked like something you'd buy in a Halloween store. The really weird part is a guy in his car at a stop sign watching, continued to honk his horn trying to get the kids attention but to no avail. He never heard the train's horn. When he felt the rumbling he turned around and got clipped right at that moment. Sad part is the guy who was honking his horn didn't realize it at the time, but the kid was his cousin who lived with him.

JANEE · Answer

Recovering a body. He drowned and washed up on a patch of rocks in the middle of the river. The body had stiffened up and the team lead broke his limbs so as to fold them into the raft.

HenryKing · Answer

Probably an essentially barbecued dude.  I was an autopsy tech and we had a guy who committed suicide by driving into a retaining wall on the highway.  His brain looked like a boiled egg, and his flesh was too. Oddly enough he smelled like a burned pork chop.  When we removed his lower jaw (to confirm identity via dental records) the scalpel got stuck in the masseter muscle and when yanking it out the jaw chattered. We all lost it laughing because it was weird and hilarious.

hayriye · Answer

My stepmum used to respond to people committing suicide by jumping in front of trains. She had a copy of the case file at home and I made the mistake of looking through it. It was unsettling, and really just made me so angry that people would end it this way. They negatively effect so many people with that final act.

BARBERA · Answer

I have no stories. I just want to thank all of you first responders. I can't count the number of times my dad was transported (mostly heart or stroke). We always had great responders who helped ease crappy situations.

Lisa Frueh · Answer

Definitely a baby coming out of a vagina. the worst part is when it gets to the stomach.

Paulina · Answer

I have a morbid family. My godmother is a mortician, grandpa was a fireman/EMT amd worked for a funeral home, my dad was asst. fire chief/lead EMT and he and his wife are medical examiners. Godmom has some great stories of weird shit people put in caskets. The worst is golf balls. They make so much noise during transport.  Dad showed up to a body pickup one time. Adult daughter's mother had died in the bathroom and daughter had just left her there, dead on the toilet, for 4 days. Never said why, but my dad thinks it was something to do with making sure the will was approved by the court prior to the death certificate.

Torry · Answer

Hangings are pretty horrible, but we ended up attending a man who had committed suicide after killing his girlfriend. He had caved the back of her head in with a blunt object and hanged her in a spare room, before hanging himself.  The weirdest part of it is that he didn't kill himself straight away. Her body had decomposed more than his has, and the police on scene estimated she had been dead for around 4 or 5 days before he killed himself.

Ulrike Zweig · Answer

Sometimes when leftover gas is leaving the body they'll sort of groan or fart which is really unnerving

Laura Reinhardt · Answer

I saw a person's body spread all over a highway, they got hit by a semi. I was transporting a man with liver disease and diabetes. I grabbed his arm gently to help him and the top layer of skin slid off, like a pudding. I wore my fucking gloves after that. Picked up a lady having a stroke, it was terrible to watch her go from normal conversation to gibberish to silence. She died. Massive stroke.

Sirkka-Leena · Answer

I had a pt die in ICU that was in his 60's or so. He was a missionary that came back early from some South American country due to abdominal pain. His bowel had perforated due to parasitic worms. When he dies, the abdomen was still wiggling. I cleaned him up and bagged him and prayed that the worms didn't come thru. Hope the morgue freezer killed those things. That was the most gross thing I have ever witnessed in many deaths I have seen.

Lettie · Answer

"Did not happen to me but my coworker in the morgue. When bodies are fresh there is a lot of gas build up which makes them groan, sigh, fart, burp and even move. So this body jerked just as he passed it and slapped him on the ass. "Well I guess even dead people want me"  Also it sometimes sound like they are knocking from the inside of the fridges which is pretty creepy when you are not used to it. Edited because I can't spell today  "

Ferne · Answer

my mom was a paramedic for fifteen years and once had to do a body recovery for two teenage girls on a full moon walking through waist high grass and fog while their wrecked van played uninvited by Alanis Morrisette when she was a paramedic. she says it was one of the most unsettling moments of her career

Cilka · Answer

The first time I touched a dead body, I went with a fellow healthcare assistant to perform last offices (washing the body, putting them in a shroud and moving them into a body bag). The family had stayed for quite a long time after death and nobody had thought to lower the head of the bed. So when we went to put the bed flat, the body stayed in a propped up position despite the lack of support. Having to roll someone around who was stuck in a V shape wasn't the best introduction to handling dead bodies and the porters gave us a funny look when they came to pick the body up.

SHARDA · Answer

FF/EMT. Not really too wierd, but really creepy. A semi truck carrying beef laid over and slid off the side of the road into the trees. When we arrived it was dark, the tires were still hot and the radio was still functioning and playing some old country music. So I'm wading through all kinds of different cuts of beef as I approach the cab and the passenger side of the cab is crushed. At first we can't find the guy, we thought he may have been ejected so we start hiking through the trees and we dont find anything. So we go back to the cab and since I'm new I have to crawl in and see if he's in there. Start digging through debris and a few still cold empty bud light cans and I see the guys hand sticking through the mangled mess of the passenger side of the cab. Guy was dead. The whole scene was really eerie.

VENITA · Answer

I work at a vet's office, and one day when I was fairly new we had a woman bring in a dead puppy. After the kids left for school, their puppy had gotten out the front door and ran into the road, got hit by a car. One of the vet techs was tasked with bathing the dead puppy and sewing it back together. The owner wanted to take it home, so she could explain to the kids what had happened, but didn't want them to see so much gore. Probably not gonna forget that one any time soon.

anaya · Answer

I went to a car accident where a man had a watch embedded in his head. He was driving one handed when he collided and the air bag forced the watch into his skull.

Andrea Wolf · Answer

"Medical student here, been in the hospitals all this year: we had a patient I'd been following since her admission who had alcoholic liver cirrhosis, and it was horrible to watch. She went from cheerful and talkative to a shaky, catatonic mess within a week. When she died her skin was a neon-yellow  I've seen plenty of dead bodies in my time, but I've never seen anything like that. Her skin looked like that yellow construction paper from elementary school.  (When I left the hospital the day she died from essentially what amounts to chronic alcoholism all I could think was "Fuck I need a drink")  "

Merissa · Answer

Not super interesting but I've dissected a lot of cadavers and one time this guys brain was completely necrosed. Idk why the brain didn't preserve but my guess was it was part of his cause of death. BTW the brain turns to liquid when it dies (liquifactive necrosis). We scooped out handfuls of watery gray refried bean brains and had to just leave it in his tub with him until he got cremated.  Also one time a lady had chronic lung problems that caused her heart to essentially work in overdrive to compensate. Over a long period of time the heart grew (just like any other muscle that is worked) and this 110 pound lady ended up with a heart the size of a cantaloupe. But organs always have weird anomalies.

Uta Meier · Answer

Paramedic. Hangings are always very eerie scenes. They somehow seem staged, cinematic, unreal. And it's odd what sticks in your memory. Like how neatly they placed their slippers beside the ladder, or how rough the knot is. Hangings often extend the neck in an inhuman way.

ROLANDA · Answer

Not sure if this is what you were after but it's weird and involves death. 80+ year old lady passes away on the ward and has haematuria (blood in urine) and a catheter. She was palliative an expected to pass away so the catheter is to be removed on performing last offices. When I did so a crazy amount of urine that pretty much looked like blood gushed out. I was not prepared. I brushed it off and carried on but my word it was like something out of a horror movie. I assumed he catheter had blocked with a clot and the urine just stayed in her bladder, pretty wild and weird anyway.

Kellsie · Answer

"In my early days as a first responder, rural area and we were the first on scene. I responded to a multi vehicle accident where a man had been decapitated, I got in the passenger side, his head was hanging on by a few tendons on the right side, without thinking i grabbed his head and tried to "put it back on". I don't know why. In retrospect I think I saw something that wasn't right and instinct told me "this goes here". The old timers laughed and teased me a few times. One of them pulled me aside and told me "it's not the first time someone's done that. It won't be the last". I have heard of other people doing similar things but haven't personally witnessed it. "

ingrida · Answer

Weirdest thing is the first time I worked on a dead person. CPR on a woman who was too fat for the thumper. Ribs broke and everything. Just kept pumping till my paramedic shot her full of soda and got her heart pumping long enough to load her up and get her to the hospital. She was declared dead after the docs worked on her for a bit.  I didn't make it in that field. Props to the pros.

Ilgin · Answer

"I worked in a veterinary clinic for a while. I have witnessed the phenomenon of "jumping ship" twice. Once we had a cat who was old and sick be brought in to be put down. She was covered in fleas and so when we put the medicine in that euthanizes them the fleas were able to tell and immediately started leaving the body in huge numbers to the point where the area around the body was black from fleas. The other time I saw it was when we put a dog down in the OR because exploratory surgery showed his tumor was inoperable. He had some ticks that all jumped off as soon as the drug was injected. "

Davidde · Answer

100 year old patient with colonic mass admitted for new compression fractures likely secondary to metastatic cancer. Family does not want to pursue further workup and he is placed on comfort care with a plan to discharge him back to home on hospice. He's feeling well on the day of discharge, his sons come by to make sure he gets on the ambulance. Medics load him onto the gurney, he closes his eyes, takes one more breath and dies right there.  The sons told us later that they were actually pretty relieved because they didn't want their father to die at home because of how much it would affect their mother.  I have never had a patient die while in the process of leaving the hospital. It's weird for a physician to say, but damn, what a good way to go.

zengin o · Answer

"Someone calling "Help!" and banging on the door of the morgue from the inside. The door had been rigged to stay shut from the outside. No zombies, it was a very alive and very terrified woman. The housekeeping staff were hazing a newbie who was terrified of bodies. "

Sabrina Schwarz · Answer

European bloke came in 3 weeks after falling off a horse, he didn't go to hospital when it happened, instead he flew to Australia for holidays and was admitted to our emergency ward a few days later.   He had literally shattered two ribs and he was acting normal when I was talking to him, but then 5 minutes later his spleen ruptured when someone tried to move him.    It's not uncommon for spleens to rupture weeks after trauma, but this dude lasted 3 weeks and only 10 mins after being admitted did it rupture. If it had happened on a plane, he would've been dead.   He lived.

Albane · Answer

A couple of years ago I ran a suicide by shotgun to the head. He's at the far end of a large sized bedroom, there's brain matter on the door we entered in. At least 20-25 feet of travel. Freakiest part was that near the body was a framed picture with the words to Amazing Grace hanging on the wall, blood and brain matter streaked down the front.

Haskell · Answer

When a person is really old, they can look dead when they are actually alive and vice versa. I walked into a room and I could see this guy propped up in bed, his eyes were wide open and he sounded like he was choking on mucus. So I started to suction it out and than I realized he never started to breath. I checked a pulse and he was dead. But his eyes were still open like he was staring at me. I had to do the thing they show on TV a lot where the doctor puts their have over the person's face and closes the eye. We left him in bed peacefully.

Stephanie Klein · Answer

"EMT here. Sometimes when you do CPR the person becomes conscious again and can talk to you while you're doing compressions. I've seen some go into cardiac arrest and after 2 compressions she woke up, grabbed the nurse who was doing the compressions screaming the went unresponsive again. Everyone in the room was like "what the fuck?!" "

Sufia · Answer

We responded to a fairly major intersection at around 3AM. The road was mostly empty, but there was still some traffic. Guy was trying to drag an alligator out of a water-filled ditch by the road. Alligator was strenuously objecting. Garbage truck came down the road, driver not paying full attention. The net result was attempting to sort out what was gator and what was person.

Merja · Answer

Traffic accident investigations.  18 wheeler making a right-hand turn into a 1 lane road, it has to take the turn wide before starightening out into the single lane. Pedestrian on that corner steps off the curve to cross the road while the truck/trailer are mid turn....pedestrian doesn't realize or see that the trailer will be swinging back towards them as the truck straightens out. Pedestrian's body is knocked down and ultimately pinched between the curb and the back set of trailer wheels (fully loaded trailer).  Like a pair of scissors, it pretty much snips the body along the waist almost all the way across. Not a good time.

Lisa Kuester · Answer

When you become an EMT you observe at a hospital. My first day, this 40-something woman had a blood vessel in her brain burst. She was essentially 'pain responsive' only. The DOC couldn't intubate her mouth, so they strapped her down, and 3 other nurses held her down while the doc jammed the tube up her nose, breaking all the cartilage, and stretching her nostril all out. Blood sprayed everywhere, as the woman screamed. It was really traumatic for me watching all of this and I was like WTF. The doc pulled me aside and said that this woman was essentially dead, and that they were waiting for the family to get there to pull the plug. He said she is only the shell of her former self, and to realize that it is how life is.

Tuckie · Answer

Hospice- some one who lived 3 Entire weeks (full 21 days) since their last meal after they stopped eating. After that they only got moisture from mouth cares. Not weird but now I cant deny that a person CAN live 3 weeks without food - so long as a team of people are there to reposition every 2 hours and provide hygiene cares from not being able to move anymore.

Kalindi · Answer

I work in a path lab at a hospital  we techs dump pediatric autopsy/poc specimens every 6 months. While I was doing this, I came across a mummified 18 week fetus. The formalin must've leaked and evaporated leaving the poor thing. It was stuck on top of a cabinet for about 3 years. It freaked me out bc it didn't look real, it looked like a Halloween skeleton from hobby lobby.

Will · Answer

Post-Mortem and pre-autopsy. We had it happen a few times where the body would get goosebumps. Usually happened after we cleaned them with isopropyl alcohol, but sometimes it was spontaneous.  The medical examiner told us it was the muscles attached to each hair follicle experiencing rigor mortis, or something that we applied to the body was activating the calcium pumps in their cells.  Still freaky the first few times it happened.

Christine Pfaff · Answer

"Weirdest? Getting a guy out from a crumple, like his car was gone. We extract him, are checking what we can and he goes, "I could really go for a coke right now". It hadn't hit him that he was almost compacted into a cube and he was thirsty. When he started having a panic attack in the ambulance he finally figured out what happened. "

Glennie · Answer

Search and Rescue Hangings.  After the subject has been out a few days, in the heat, and has been visited by ravens.  So fucking sad that this god-awful mess was somebody's son or brother or father

Jeromy · Answer

My husband worked in the medical field for years. Once, he was on in elevator with someone from science donation who was pushing a cart. Another woman on the elevator asked what was in the cart. Without saying anything, the guy opened a drawer and it was just a drawer of torsos that were going to thoracic studies. Didn't know they cut up the bodies like that.

Melanie Urner · Answer

As a firefighter I was called out to a crematorium. 3 panicky well dressed people met us at the back door where light smoke was coming out. They were the funeral director and 2 other employees there and had been attempting to load a woman into the crematorium but the thin board they had her on broke and the couldn't get her all the way inside. The oven was set at 1,600 and it had currently about 900 and rising. The body was half in and they couldn't get her in to shut the door. The top half of her was sizzling and charing and smoking a little. We used some pike poles under the broken particle board they apparently use to roll them in with and managed to finish sliding her in and get the door closed.  I expected it to really stink but it smelled like steak just pulled off the grill. Maybe her hair had already burned up before I got there so I was only smelling cooking meat.

Wallace · Answer

EMT: I worked a cardiac arrest on an 86yof. She was in extended care and had been brought in literally 8 hours before she coded (To my medical friends, she was Asystole). We worked her for 20 minutes before medics got pulses back. Once her heart started up again her pacemaker kicked in because her rhythm was back but it was wrong. So it's this old woman sitting on a gurney just shaking every 1-2 seconds as her pacemaker tries to shock her heart back into a normal rhythm. It was very eerie.

Sirvan · Answer

Am a cop. Saw a DOA where I thought the guy was leaning off the back of a small beanbag chair. Upon further investigation, he was actually just sitting on his bed and his nutsack swelled up to the size of a basketball. And it was dark purple / black. Truly mesmerizing.

Mellissa · Answer

Fire-medic. There was this chemical fire in a medical plant near us so all the fire departments and fire brigades along with the local military CBRN and civil protection CBRN were called and a emergency brodcast was outed for everyone to stay inside and close their windows. What I am trying to say is, it was a big deal. We weren't allowed closer than 45m and any personal closer than 200m to the building had to wear protective clothing (Vapor/Gas protection - Level A hazmat suits in the USA). Somewhere mid fire my fiancee that is a firefigter (not familiar with the female form) told me there was this horrible smell comming out. We spotted a man crawling out thrue a fire exit, his skin was litteraly melting, one guy even puked in his suit. After the fire the civil protection team was drawing straws who would take care of the body. Nobody knew how he survived for so long but it was a really nasty sceen.

Elenita · Answer

I'm a nurse. Dead bodies are just weird in and of themselves. I've been doing this for awhile now and seen plenty of them, but I'll never get over how still they look. Even when someone is asleep there's color and the rise and fall of their chest. But bodies are just eerily still.

Marthe · Answer

"Paramedic here, this isn't involving death, but its the weirdest thing I've seen. We had a psychiatric call and I was in the back with the patient, my partner was driving. The patient looks at me and goes "do you know the time?" I tell the patient I actually don't (my phone was dead). The patient says "it's okay, it is 8:17". Then says "do you know how I know?" I look at her and say "you have a watch?" She then goes "no, jesus told me". I then ask my partner what time it was, for the hell of it. Sure enough, she got the time right. No way on the truck for her to know the exact time (no clocks, tinted windows). Didn't say a damn word the rest of the ride. Made sure to tell ER staff that jesus talks to the patient about time... "

cilla · Answer

I never worked in a job that involved life & death, but when I was in my teens I saw the aftermath of an accident involving a Long Island Rail Road train and a bicyclist trying to beat the gate. His body was literally ripped apart into a dozen or so pieces. There was blood all over the tracks. It was wild.   A second time involving a train happened maybe 5-6 years ago, this time it was the NYC N subway line. The N is an elevated subway line that runs along 31st street for much of it's length in Queens. Anyway, a guy committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a train. Unfortunately, the people walking beneath the subway tracks where he died were literally showered with blood. I can't even imagine how horrifying that must have been. I arrived a bit after it happened, so I only saw a few cars doused with blood.   http://gothamist.com/2013/06/12/the_victim_whose_mangled_body.php

Bebe · Answer

Was a hospice nurse. Visited a guy who then died during my visit. No signs of life, rigor mortis, like it was obvious. I called it in so they can send the mortuary. While I'm filling out some paperwork, I hear a gasp and the dude's chest starting rising again and some color was coming back. I was more worried about what mortuary would've thought of me once they arrived. Anyways, that lasted like 30 seconds and then the dude was gone.

Fremont · Answer

The super sweet Dutch lady was on her way out when I came in for night shift. Was always super nice to every one so we all made sure to do our best for her.  Her call light kept going off over and over but she was unresponsive all night, so we put the call light on a desk near her and it kept going off over and over.this went on all night until she passed. After that it never happened again. I also did post Mortem care on her and when we turned her to her side, this thick green pea soup looking stuff started sliding out of her mouth  And really freaked me out.

Julian · Answer

People coming back to life during CPR solely because of the chest compressions, fighting you because well your crushing they're chest, behave kind of like a zombie. Stop and immediately go back to being dead.

Zeynep · Answer

"When I was a neophyte EMT, we were called to the scene of a diabetic in a coma. Wife said he fell and hit his head. He was laid out on the floor of their bedroom. While the medic started assessing him, and finding no pulse, was setting up the defibrillator, I was told to stabilize his head and neck in case he had damaged it in his fall. As soon as I had my hands in the correct position, I could tell it was no use...my fingers were in his brain.  I told the medic he could stop, as he was getting ready to shock. He said no, we could shock him. I said, no, "Fred, he's dead, my fingers are in his head!" (I was a poet, and didn't know it.) It turned out that he had actually shot himself, swallowing his pistol. His wife had cleaned it up, put the gun away, and then called it in as a fall. It's one scene I will never forget. "

People who’s work involves death (e.g Paramedics, Hospice Carers, Morgue Attendants, etc.) – what is the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen?

Blakelee

Cesya

Chantal

Clare

Jean

Johnette

Lucila

Madelin

Noell

Rayshell