The body that wasn’t dead
by Mortuary Transport Expert ~ August 7th, 2008. Filed under: Death In The News, Removal Stories, Stay On Your Toes.Here’s a story about a man who was carried to the morgue en masse with a bunch of other dead bodies, and woke up thirsty.
I was sometimes worried that something like this would happen to me, a body not really being dead when I picked it up and transported it. One of the funeral homes we worked for required some nasty smelling aerosol spray to be applied to the face of the decedent before putting them in the cooler. It was meant to keep the tissues from drying out, etc. I always figured that if someone was faking their death, that stuff would make them move for sure, or kill them.
Early on when I first started mortuary transport, I heard a story from a nurse about something like that happening at a convelescent hospital she worked at about 20 years earlier.
This guy came to pick up a “Mr. Jones” who was sharing a room with his brother, also a “Mr. Jones”. The nurse was getting ready to escort the funeral person to the body when an emergency happened where someone fell and cut their head. The funeral person went about his business, wrapped and loaded the body, and was down the road when the body supposedly moved then sat up. The driver pulled over, got out and ran, abandoning the vehicle.
A few minutes later, highway patrol calls the nurse saying he found their missing patient. Of course, the driver took the wrong body!
What story do you have? Go ahead and share in the comment section.
‘Dead’ Man Awakens Before Autopsy, Shocks Doctors by Asking for Glass of Water
An Indian man who was knocked unconscious during a stampede of thousands of religious pilgrims on a steep Himalayan mountain path woke up as doctors were preparing to perform his autopsy, the Times of India reported.
Mange Ram, 19, lost consciousness in the stampede that killed 150 people and was triggered by rumors of a landslide leading to a Hindu temple devoted to the goddess Naina Devi.
Ram awoke in the hospital morgue Sunday in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.
“When I woke up, I was in the middle of a row of bodies waiting for post mortem,” he told the Times. “My throat was parched and I asked for water. Towering over me the doctors and nursing staff at Anandpur Sahib Civil Hospital looked dazed. They must have been surprised to see a dead man come alive like that.”
Sat Pal Aggarwal, a doctor on the pilgrimage, said little was done to see if victims of the stampede were still alive.
“People were dumped quite haphazardly into trucks without following any procedure or checking if they were alive,” he told the Times.
Despite the huge loss of life, the pilgrimage continued only hours after the corpses had been cleared, according to the newspaper.
Click here to read more on this story from the Times of India.
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