Morticians of Reddit, what is the most bizarre /uncomfortable/ creepy etc. case or situation you've had to deal with?

1. A writing professor of mine used to work in small town journalism and decided to interview some folks from the local retirement home to get a close-up view of his town's history. One of his interviews was an ancient, retired mortician who told him a rather interesting story. Shortly before 1920, two teens were going to a school dance in a blizzard. The carriage they had taken got stranded and the boy went for help. The girl unfortunately, froze to death in the carriage, in an upright, seated position. Apparently the mortician had to sit her in a rocking chair in front of the fire to thaw her out before he could go about his usual business.
   — DeathFrisbee2000


2. I was a student at the time but my first ever bloater was brought in and once we “popped” him insides were outsides and everywhere. Would not recommend. On my first night shift I thought staff were fucking with me because I kept hearing what sounded like breathing... fresh body brought in and was releasing gas. I’d never dealt with anyone dying in the hour being brought in so it was scary hearing this body “breathing”. I’ve been there when family members have passed and witness breathing and limbs moving so I know it’s normal but as a student, the staff like the fuck with you. Bizarre one was piecing a guy back together after he committed suicide by gunshot to the face. Family wanted an open casket. Had to try our best then ask one family member in to see if they still wanted open casket because we just didn’t feel like it was right. Dad come in, sees that no matter how we tried we couldn’t make him look the same as before and agrees that family shouldn’t see him this way. The day we delivered him to the funeral parlour, family changes their mind and has open casket anyway... found out rest of family didn’t know he shot himself in the face. We ended up getting a letter of complaint from other members of the family for the open casket. I finished as a student a few days after but Would still love to be in that career though.
   — darkerthanmysoul


3. Heard on the news a friend from my youth had been killed. I was terribly sad for him, he never could escape his demons and it led him down some terrible paths. Came into work a few nights later and there he was face completely bashed in by a rock. This wasn't the first time someone I knew ended up in our morgue, but certainly the saddest.
   — Wackydetective






4. Dad was a coroner, IIRC, before switching to doctor. I can never remember the details correctly for the medical stuff but pretty much the body getting examined was a former birthday clown. There weren't any external wounds so he figured the cause of death was internal. The guy had gastroparesis which to my dad meant, "cool, stomach contents should be in good shape". His team opens the dude up and sees this flurry of fuck. There's partially digested birthday cake, that edible confetti stuff, fucking streamers, and about a dozen pills of xanax next to all of it. Dad sifts through the stomach some more and sees what looks like a sponge of some kind. He pulls one out and it's a fucking sponge-dino that comes in those capsules you drop in water. He finds more, about a small biomes worth. He thought he was getting fucking pranked. The story pieces together as the clown decided to end it with the xanax and booze, he gets a store-bought cake and eats it with everything on it, then chases down some dino-sponges just for the hell of it.
   — ThrowawayFUCKTHEJETS


5. Doesn't exactly fit the criteria but I'm gonna tell the story anyway.... I come from a smallish town. We have one mortician and everyone knows him. His daughter dated my cousin during this period of time. One year, a different cousin got into a bad car accident right outside of the county and died on impact. Of course, they called it in and he was asked to come down to the scene and retrieve the body. He was told the estimated age of the girl, the make of her vehicle and which direction she was driving on the highway. The age and vehicle make matched that of his daughter who was visiting her boyfriend at the time. He couldn't get a hold of his daughter so he showed up at the scene fully prepared to be picking up his own child. Sadly enough, this scared him so badly that this was the last funeral he ever performed. 8 years later and he still visits my deceased cousins parents regularly, just to check in. It's clearly stuck with him.
   — Lonestarmami


6. The most bizarre happened when I was apprenticing. I worked with a senior funeral director on Sundays, just me and him. I’d been working for about 2 years when he passed away suddenly from simultaneous kidney/liver failure. The most surreal thing was transporting his body after the embalming was done, back to the funeral home where we worked.
   — deruvoo






7. My ex inlaws were in the death business. They told me a story once about the county attorney whose wife passed away. The family was very wealthy and she had a mouth full of gold fillings. The attorney demanded that my inlaws retrieve the gold from her mouth. This required using a dental drill to drill down her teeth and dig out the gold. My ex father in law complied with the attorney’s wishes but was physically ill about having to do such a needless step to this lady.
   — aylandgirl


8. Uncomfortable? Being trapped in the morgue alone during a hurricane, our morgue was basically in a basement type situation and the hospital was near a main waterway that flooded...I had to move all the bodies to the highest cabinets, pray the generators would keep everyone cold and was standing on my desk for about 2 hours when someone finally came for me. Bizarre would be drowned guy who was DOA and once locked up in the cabinet a tapping noise started coming from him..it was a crab that had made itself at home inside him and when it got cold he wanted out. Creepy was when we got some people who were doing bath salts and had eaten other people..they looked crazy even in death.
   — Grimcupcake


9. Not a mortician, this comes from my mother back when she was a teenager. Guy she knows takes a job with the local funeral home. He works the graveyard shift, all was well for the first few months. Dude is often weirded out at work, claims that the building is haunted. Earlier in the evening, they get a call from the hospital saying that they have a lady there ready for pickup. They pick her up, guy is freaking out, says he has a bad feeling. Later in the evening, mortician has to step out for a bit, leaving guy there alone with the dead lady. He goes about his work, still a little freaked out. Suddenly he hears this low, soft moan... He swears it is just his mind playing tricks on him, goes about his business. He hears it again, little louder than last time, it is late, he is alone, he is just hearing things, probably just the pipes settling, the plumbing is old after all. Short time passes and it is louder, at this point he is sure he isn't just imaging things, he knows he heard the dead lady moan. His first though was the mortician was fucking with him, he has been shaken all evening and this asshole is pranking him. He marches over, very funny you dick, yanks back the sheet covering the dead lady expecting to find the mortician somewhere around her... Dead lady grabs the guy's wrist... He lets out this scream and bolts for the door. Forgets his car, runs all the way home. Turns out, old lady wasn't dead, hospital got it wrong (hooray 1950s medicine). She had been in a coma or something and they had been sure she had passed on earlier that morning. She woke up at the funeral home and scared the everloving hell out of the assistant. He quit the next day, said he would never set foot there ever again.
   — CylonsInAPolicebox






10. I work with the dead (procure eyes and corneas for transplant). While I was working on one guy at the medical examiner's office, they brought in another guy who's cats had eaten his face clean. Just his face, nothing else. It was a sort of decaying (but still somewhat normal looking) dude, with a bright, Halloween-looking skull picked clean. Lots of murder victims, gunshots, car accidents, even one train accident. A guy who hanged himself in front of his kids with a dog leash, which was still in the bag with his body. High caliber self-inflicted gunshot wound to the face, with teeth and jaw and bits everywhere and a bunch of gauze stuffed into the remaining hole. Let's not forget the guy in the decomp room who was just a pile of bones, hair, and leathery tissue paired with a bucket of goo. Crazy stuff! But never a dull day.
    — batheinsriracha