Brace yourself before read .
capacity warning : Discussions of end , homicide , and suicide . Some description may be graphic .
On one of my recent late-night scrolls, I came acrossthis threadby Reddit useru/LadyEmry, which asked: “People whose work involves death (e.g., paramedics, hospice carers, morgue attendants, etc.), what is the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen?” Hundreds of people who work around death shared their stories, which ranged from strange to weird to chilling. Here’s everything they wrote:
1.“Sometimes when leftover gas is leaving the body, they’ll sort of groan or fart, which is really unnerving.”
2.“In my early days as a first responder, I was in a rural area, and we were the first on the scene. I responded to a multi-vehicle accident where a man had been decapitated; I got in the passenger side, and 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 recollect I saw something that was n’t right , and inherent aptitude told me , ' This go here . ' The old timers laughed and teased me a few times . One of them get out me aside and told me , ' It ’s not the first sentence someone ’s done that . It wo n’t be the last . ' I have heard of other people doing standardized things but have n’t in person find it . "
— bruisermcstinkfinger
3.“A European bloke came in three weeks after falling off a horse. He didn’t go to hospital when it happened. Instead, he flew to Australia for a holiday and was admitted to our emergency ward a few days later. He had literally shattered two ribs. He was acting normal when I was talking to him, but then five minutes later, his spleen ruptured when someone tried to move him.”
4.“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 brought in to be put down. She was covered in fleas, and so when we put the medicine that euthanized her, 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 hotdog down in the OR because exploratory surgery showed his tumour was inoperable . He had some ticks that all stand out off as soon as the drug was injected . "
— [ deleted ]
5.“My mom was a paramedic for fifteen years and once had to do a body recovery of two teenage girls on a full moon walking through waist-high grass and fog while their wrecked van played ‘Uninvited’ byAlanis Morissette. She says it was one of the most unsettling moments of her career.”
6.“Hangings are pretty horrible, but we ended up attending to a man who had [died by suicide] after killing his girlfriend. He had caved the back of her head in with a blunt object and hung 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 he had. The police on the scene estimated she had been dead for around four or five days before he killed himself.”
— Demaikeru
7.“Paramedic. Hangings are always very eerie scenes. They somehow seem staged, cinematic, and 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 was. Hangings often extend the neck in an inhuman way.”
— IrrelevantPuppy
8.“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.”
9.“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 two compressions, she woke up, grabbed the nurse who was doing the compressions, and went unresponsive again. Everyone in the room was like, ‘What the fuck?!'”
— deficientbread
10.“I had a 100-year-old patient with colonic mass admitted for new compression fractures, likely secondary to metastatic cancer. The family did not want to pursue further workup, and he was placed in comfort care with a plan to discharge him back to home on hospice. He was feeling well on the day of discharge. His sons came by to make sure he got on the ambulance. Medics loaded him onto the gurney; he closed his eyes, took one more breath, and died right there.”
" The sons told us by and by that they were really pretty eased because they did n’t desire their sire to die at home because of how much it would bear on their female parent . I have never had a patient die while in the process of entrust the hospital . It ’s weird for a medico to say , but all-fired , what a good way of life to go . "
— dagayute
11.“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 then I realized he never started to breathe. I checked a pulse. 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, where the doctor puts their hand over the person’s face and closes the eye. We left him in bed peacefully.”
12.“Not really weird, just the only thing that stands out in my mind. I work in a hospital in infection control; occasionally, I am needed down in the morgue when there is a containment issue. On this night, a body was brought in under special circumstances. A body was found in a body of water, so the patient was already swollen from that. It has been at least a few days since the time of death. This patient had no positive results from the lab, so I didn’t understand why I was called in.”
" This is what happened : all leery death autopsy are performed at a undivided location in my United States Department of State . Since their soundbox was found on a Friday , we were to keep the body in warehousing until it could be carry on Monday . This is not abnormal , but our body depot is in reality just an one-time paseo - in freezer from a cafeteria refurbishment years ago . After the physical structure was brought in , the freezer broke down sometime over the weekend , and as the torso warmed up , so did the gases in the bowel , result in the lower body explode onto the cart and floor . It was the most putrid matter I ’ve ever had to be a part of . "
— Weiner_Queefer_9000
13.“I work in a mortuary. We had an older lady, maybe mid-60s, who looked like a beautiful, youthful 40-year-old from the chest up but like Frankenstein’s monster below that. I’m talking about numerous heavy scars all over, misshapen areas of her torso, lots of discoloration, and fluid build-up. She looked like a lawnmower had attacked her and crudely stapled back together.”
14.(Cont’d) “Second example: A seemingly healthy middle-aged guy had a heart attack and passed away early one morning. His wife and adult kids came in that afternoon to make arrangements. A few hours later, at home, while her family was eating dinner, the wife went to lie down, had a heart attack of her own, and passed away. We ended up picking up both the husband and the wife at the same time. And no, those greedy sons-of-bitches didn’t offer the family a discount on the removals.”
— Haceldama
15.“Paramedic here; this isn’t involving death, but it’s 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 told 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 need my partner what time it was , for the hell of it . Sure enough , she got the fourth dimension right . There was no elbow room on the hand truck for her to make out the exact time ( no alfileria , tint windows ) . Did n’t say a damn word the rest of the drive . I made sure to tell the ER staff that Jesus talks to the patient about meter … "
— shiga110
16.“Medical student here and been in the hospitals all year. We had a patient I’d been following since her admission who had liver cirrhosis due to alcohol, 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 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.”
17.“Not super interesting, but I’ve dissected a lot of cadavers, and one time, this guy’s 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 (liquefactivenecrosis). We scooped out handfuls of watery gray refried bean brains and had to just leave them in his tub with him until he got cremated.”
" Also , one clock time , a lady had continuing lung trouble that caused her heart to ferment in overdrive to pay , essentially . Over a long period , the heart grew ( just like any other muscle that is worked ) , and this 110 - pound madam ended up with a philia the size of a cantaloupe . But variety meat always have eldritch anomalousness . "
— luxunit
18.“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 airbag forced the watch into his skull.”
19.“I had a patient die in ICU that was in his 60s or so. He was a missionary who came back early from a South American country due to abdominal pain. His bowel had perforated due to parasitic worms. When he died, the abdomen was still wiggling. I cleaned him up, bagged him, and prayed that the worms didn’t come through. I hope the morgue freezer killed those things. That was the most gross thing I have ever witnessed in many deaths I have seen.”
20.“I’m a medicolegal death investigator, which is basically a forensic investigator that works at a medical examiner’s office and only investigates death. This week, there was a foot found at a train yard. It turns out it belonged to a homeless guy in another state riding the rails. Somehow, it got cut off; he fell off the train and lived while his little piggies kept going and ended up in my state a few days later.”
— Dth_Invstgtr
21.“My husband worked in the medical field for years. Once, he was in an elevator with someone from a science donation pushing a cart. Another woman on the elevator asked what was in the cart. Without saying anything, the guy opened a drawer, which was just a drawer of torsos that were going to thoracic studies. I didn’t know they cut up the bodies like that.”
— monsters_Cookie
And lastly:
22.“Paramedic here. It was my first ever time working with someone who had a cardiac arrest; I was 19 years old at the time. We get called for a 60-something man, short of breath. We get our stair chair and attempt to get him from his bed into the chair. He collapses, has a syncopal episode, and comes to a few seconds later. We attempt to sit him up so we can lift him onto the chair, and he starts exclaiming, ‘Don’t sit me up; I can’t sit up!’ I say, ‘We have to get you on this chair. We need to get you down the stairs to get you on the stretcher.’ He tells us not to sit him up two more times when I ask him, ‘Why can’t you sit up?’ he says… ‘I’ll show you.’ AND THEN HE FUCKING DIED.”
" I make you not , his last language ( at the time ) were : ' I ’ll show you … ' We terminate up shocking him , catch him back , sire him downstairs where he die again , appall him , get him back . We did this four or five metre before get down him into the resuscitation way in the ER . Every time we shocked him , he would be back almost talking with us , but obviously still out of it since , y’know , he just died and all . I never got to expect him how he knew or what he saw since it was a crazy , dynamical call , but I ’ll never forget him looking directly into my eyes , allege , ' I ’ll show you . ' He ended up walk out of the infirmary five calendar week later . It was so loopy . "
— Neo_Knievel
notice : Some responses have been edit out for duration and/or clearness .
This was a lot — if you’re looking for happier content, here are some wholesome, fuzzy, and funny memes below for ya:
21 Wholesome , Comforting , And Soothing tweet That Will Make All Your trouble A Distant Memory
23 Funny Tweets From The Week Because The People Of Twitter Had gag
TheNational Suicide Prevention Lifelineis 1-800-273-8255. Other international suicide helplines can be found atbefrienders.org.The Trevor Project,which provides help and suicide-prevention resources for LGBTQ youth, is 1-866-488-7386.
TheNational Alliance on Mental Illnesshelpline is 1-888-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services;GoodTherapy.orgis an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.
