25 Gruesome Real-Life Stories About Encountering A Corpse
Found on AskReddit.
1. “I learned about death that day.”
She was an elderly lady, doubled over in her flowerbed.
I didn’t do anything because I was 6, but my dad jumped out of the Van and ran over to her to give her CPR. He was a volunteer firefighter. Wasn’t able to save her, it had been a few hours I guess.
Brain aneurysm if I remember correctly.
I learned about death that day.
2. “You haven’t had a bad day until you’ve performed CPR on a corpse.”
In the course of my job I’ve found several. The worst was when the asshole 911 dispatcher told me that since he couldn’t confirm that the lady was dead (she had obviously been dead for at least 12 hours) that I had to start doing CPR on her until the EMT’s arrived. I knew the call was being recorded so I had to comply. You haven’t had a bad day until you’ve performed CPR on a corpse.
3. “Christmas morning 2011 I woke up with my fiancé dead, his arms still wrapped around me.”
Christmas morning 2011 I woke up with my fiancé dead, his arms still wrapped around me. He had passed away in his sleep. What woke me up was the blood he had coughed up in the middle of the night all over my back. I sat up and tried to wake him up and noticed his lips were blue. I leaned down and tried to listen for a heartbeat and there was nothing.
4. “Bugs had started eating away at him.”
I found my uncle a few years back. He was an alcoholic and smoked two packs of Marlboro Reds a day, so I guess it really wasn’t much of a surprise in hindsight. I went to visit him at his trailer and walked in after nobody answered the door. It was unlocked so I figured he was sleeping. He was nowhere to be found inside and this is when I began to worry. He had a detached shed where he would do his laundry. I didn’t notice when I pulled into the driveway but a laundry basket with clothes still in it was sitting outside the door of the shed. The door was slightly propped open but I couldn’t see inside. I stood in front of the door and called out to my uncle. Silence. I was hoping he had walked down to the store to get another handle of whiskey or some smokes but in the back of my mind I knew something wasn’t right. So I opened the door and there he was lying of the ground. … Bugs had started eating away at him, his body was as stiff as a rock, and the smell was unbearable. … It’s hard to come to grips that someday that will be me, just a glob of rotting flesh and ultimately bug food. I hope this post wasn’t too morbid but that’s most of my story. This is too long but if you have any questions or want more detail PM me.
5. “The image of the kid’s feet hanging in the air is forever etched in the memory lane.”
I was 16 years old and studying at a boarding school in India. It was Sunday afternoon and somebody shouted that a kid hanged himself in the showers. I was with the Hostel Supervisor at that time and was with him when he took the kid down. The Hostel supervisor quickly carried him away to the dispensary. He was pronounced dead an hour later on the way to the hospital.
The image of the kid’s feet hanging in the air is forever etched in the memory lane.
6. “I was 4.”
I heard a shot, went inside and found my mom lying next to her bed dead on the floor with a hole in her head.
I was 4. You can remember things that far back because I remember that, and I remember better memories of my mom.
7. “I’d apparently photographed a dead guy in that locked room.”
In the fall of 1998-99, I would spend time with my friends, breaking into abandoned/condemned houses (because we were idiot teens). One day, I was with a buddy of mine and we got into this old farmhouse that looked as if it would collapse in the next harsh rain. We sometimes took disposable cameras for fun and would get them developed later. I went up the stairs to explore and came across a locked door. The house already being a complete mess, I started kicking at it. A small hole a little larger than my foot was all I could manage. I couldn’t see inside, but I had my camera. So I aimed it through the hole, used the flash, and took a picture to develop it later. We left, used the rest of the film on random stuff and turned them in to be developed. A few days later, I came back for the film, and discovered something. I’d apparently photographed a dead guy in that locked room. Clear as day, a black guy looking scruffy, and likely homeless, rotting in my photograph, not 10ft from where I stood. I don’t know if the developer thought it was a Halloween decoration or what. But he was definitely dead. Couple weeks at least. Don’t think I broke in anywhere for a while. And always took a flashlight, ever since that day.
8. “His eyes looked into nothing and his mouth was full of sand.”
I was in Goa, India, and was sat on a beach relaxing. I saw a boat in the distance driving erratically and then drive off behind an outcrop of land. A while later I saw a European woman on beach looking ‘puzzled’ so I thought I’d go and see what was going on.
She had seen something floating into sea. I ended up pulling out of the sea, with the American woman (not European) a dead body of an Indian man who had his arms and legs tied. …
He was obviously dead when we grabbed him in the water and was very heavy as we pulled him out of the sea. The image that I can still see today, and it’s been 14 years, is the look on his face as his eyes looked into nothing and his mouth was full of sand.
This was the first time I had ever seen a dead body before and for weeks afterwards I would dream about this person and wake in a sweat. Terrible sight.
9. “I always used to think that dead bodies look horrific, but they look surprisingly normal to me.”
I once found my neighbor dead in his yard. He looked quite normal as if alive, but he wasn’t. He had a fatal heart attack. His body still had color in it. Before that I always used to think that dead bodies look horrific, but they look surprisingly normal to me.
10. “The sound of her bones grinding together is something I won’t ever forget.”
Used to work as a nurse aid in an Alzheimer’s ward.
I went to wake this lady up and she didn’t respond. I felt for pulses and couldn’t find one. She was still warm and limp. I paged the nurse, who instructed me to start CPR while she called EMS. She was tiny, barely a hundred pounds. I got her into the floor easily and began compressions. After my second good compression I felt her sternum break off and every time I pushed down I felt her ribs grinding together.
She was 92 and didn’t have a DNR so it was mandatory to try and resuscitate her. I worked on her for a good 10 minutes, which was exhausting until the ambulance arrived. They took over and carted her out. Obviously, she didn’t make it. …
Afterwards I was very sad. I liked her, and the sound of her bones grinding together is something I won’t ever forget.
11. “Spent the following half hour picking up pieces of bone and brain from the road.”
Found a corpse at night in Mozambique, drove to a nearby town to find a policeman to accompany me in finding and informing the family, spent the following half hour picking up pieces of bone and brain from the road, as part of an effort to treat the body with dignity.
12. “He was sitting in an odd position with his head resting on his shoulder.”
When I was 9 years old coming back from a dentist’s appointment. My mom and I stopped at a service station to get gas. There was a red truck in front of us facing our car at the other pump and the man inside was wearing sunglasses. He was sitting in an odd position with his head resting on his shoulder. I walked into the station to get a Coke and when I came back I saw he hadn’t moved and noticed chewed-up food in his mouth. I poked his shoulder to see if he was just sleeping but he didn’t move so I took his glasses off and saw his eyes wide open. He got hauled off in an ambulance and I asked one of the workers if he was all right but he was said he dead for at least thirty minutes. I cried the rest of the day. That mess is scary! I wanted to be a brain surgeon prior to that incident but that changed my mind. I can’t deal with the traumatic stuff.
13. “The guy was laying facedown with viscous purple stuff oozing out of his head.”
Was working with some others in my office across from a cemetery when we all heard a loud crash. We went outside and saw a car… partly still on the road… partly on the curb… and partly on the sidewalk. A couple of us jogged up to the wreck. It looked like the car had hit someone on the sidewalk. The guy was laying facedown with viscous purple stuff oozing out of his head. I looked at the car’s windshield and realized the guy had gone right through it. I am trained in first aid (former lifeguard) but knew his head injuries were too bad for anyone to move him. Someone called 911. Wear your seat belts, people.
14. “Stuff dripping from the ceiling is extra disheartening.”
My father, my reaction: “I can’t fix this”, the story: typical WWII vintage rifle pressed muzzle to roof of mouth for suicide, blood shooting in two solid streams from where the upper part of his head had been clear across the rest of the bed onto the chair against the wall. Muzzle blast is EFFECTIVE! Stuff dripping from the ceiling is extra disheartening.
15. “I woke up beside my boyfriend and he had died while we were sleeping.”
I woke up beside my boyfriend and he had died while we were sleeping. I didn’t try to wake him up immediately but after a while I noticed he was very cold and wouldn’t wake up no matter how hard I moved him. I guess I was just in shock because I definitely didn’t believe/want to believe that was the case, so I would scream, and then talk to him, scream again, shake him, talk to him, scream, etc. … I didn’t cry until the ambulance came. Up until then I just laid on the floor with him and held him a bit before the certainty set it. It was all very bizarre.
16. “My mom had a reoccurring nightmare until she was 20 about stopping for a bleeding man on the side of the road.”
My mom had a reoccurring nightmare until she was 20 about stopping for a bleeding man on the side of the road. Turns out when she was an infant she was in the car when her dad pulled over to help a bleeding man. She didn’t know about it until she was 25, and it terrified her until it stopped happening.
17. “It was disorienting to be in the same room with someone who was alive just a few minutes ago.”
I watched my aunt die last month. I was present for the actual moment of death and I sat in the room with her for a little while afterwards. In a way, it was disorienting to be in the same room with someone who was alive just a few minutes ago. It’s a heavy, empty feeling.
18. “We dug for about a minute and saw two holes where the eye sockets would be.”
One day I was at Willard bay in Ogden, Utah with my uncle, this was during a bad drought year, the lake was really low. I decided to play with some rocks, I decided to bang a rock against a rock in the ground, and for some reason it was really hollow, I told my uncle, and we tried digging it up, we dug for about a minute and saw two holes where the eye sockets would be, that’s when we decided it was a skeleton. We called police, they put a mound of dirt on top of it.
19. “You could see clear through his head.”
I used to live next to a graveyard that would have open caskets all the time, so I saw quite a few, I also had to go to my uncle’s funeral when I was young, it was open casket, he shot himself… You could see clear through his head.
20. “Her 200-pound dog jumped on her and her eye popped out.”
I worked for a real estate company, I would go in the houses for sale, take pictures, draw a floor plan of the house, write a description, etc. I had my real estate license, so I had one of those lockbox keys to get into people’s houses if they weren’t home. I go into a house one day, walk around yelling “hello” as always, there’s a woman in the last bedroom I check not answering me. “Maybe she’s just asleep I thought”, but then her 200-pound dog jumped on her and her eye popped out. Called 911, she was dead.
21. “The interior of the car had a fair amount of smoke just kind of drifting around and his eyes were wide open.”
I was walking around a bad neighborhood at 2 or 3 am. This was in Dorchester, if you’re familiar with the Boston area. An area that’s predominately poor and black if you’re not familiar. My friend and I hear country music blasting from this SUV so we walk over to check it out and see a young black man slumped over the steering wheel with his eyes open. The interior of the car had a fair amount of smoke just kind of drifting around and his eyes were wide open. I stared at him for a good several minutes just to confirm that yes, he wasn’t breathing and he wasn’t blinking. We stood there in silence for a few moments and just silently thought about what to do. Ultimately we decided that it was 3 am and we were really high and we didn’t feel like dealing with the situation at that hour so we just went home. Besides, we felt that it would be really inconsiderate to wake up that family with bad news at this hour of the night.
The thing that sticks with me was how he was blasting country music. I never heard another style of music besides rap or hip-hop while I lived there and here a guy decided to OD while blasting country music. It’s always vaguely intrigued me.
22. “I came home and discovered the bodies of my husband and son from a murder-suicide.”
I came home and discovered the bodies of my husband and son from a murder-suicide.
I knew something was wrong when I opened the apartment door, because usually my son would be greeting me, crawling on the floor (he was 2) and it was totally quiet and I hadn’t had any responses from texts from my husband.
They were lying side by side on our bed. My initial reaction was “Okay…you don’t know yet.” I started moving toward my son, just enough to see that his chest wasn’t moving. I started shaking, looked around briefly for a note with some sort of explanation, couldn’t find one and decided that I would be better off not touching anything.
I ran out of my apartment and into the hallway and called 911. I sat down on the floor and just wailed into the phone until emergency services showed up. I just sat there, staring ahead of me unable to respond. After I don’t know how long a paramedic came out and asked if I was okay. I asked “Are they gone?” and he nodded, and said, “Yeah…”
There aren’t really words to describe the shock and grief. There was also the big question of, “Now what?”—what do I do with my life? My whole planned future was nulled in the space of about 10 minutes.
23. “In the basement.”
One day I woke up around midday, everything was perfectly normal I knew my mom was gone for the day, I went to the living room expecting to see my dad but he wasn’t home as well. I noticed a note on the dinner table saying: “In the basement”, nothing more was written on that note, I knew my dad wrote that note because I recognized his handwriting. The first few seconds I saw the note I thought it was weird, saying only: “In the basement.” …
I decided to check the basement. I took my keys, went down the elevator, walked down a staircase (the one that brings you to the basement). … I walked to our storage box, opened the door, and a split second I thought my dad was just sitting there, but then I saw the rope around his neck, my heart started pumping like crazy, and the feeling I got is indescribable, the first thing I did was checking his pulse, when I touched his neck I felt that he was cold, that was the real moment I realized he was gone, I started crying and screamed “Why?” I hugged him, closed the door, and called my mom to tell her what happened….
This has happened 1 month ago, I have trouble sleeping, mainly because I keep seeing him hanging there in my head, I get angry very quickly and I feel like I’m not the same as I was before all this happened.
24. “I’m almost certain the cat started to get at some parts of his body for food.”
I used to work for a city, and I went on a 12-hour ride-along shift with a cop buddy of mine one night (immediately after finishing my 8-hour shift at work). First call we got was this guy that called and got into his friend’s house after not hearing from him for a few days. He said he knew something was off and didn’t want to walk in any further after it felt eerie to him (This was winter and so it was basically dark at 6pm).
We go inside and find the decomposing body of the guy, he had drank himself to death and had been there for a few days. The smell that penetrated my nostril is still to this day the single worst odor I’ve ever smelled. A few days of gasses building up will do that to you. Anyway, he had a cat and I’m almost certain the cat started to get at some parts of his body for food.
25. “I miss you, Tom.”
There was a park worker named Tom who used to always smile at me and say hello when I was a little kid. Sometimes he would have candy or a small toy for me. Fast-forward 20 years, and I’m an adult.
Walking back from work one day I saw Tom in the park and stopped to talk to him. At this point he was close to 70 years old, but still working 50 hours a week. During our conversation he was still working, and he needed to go into the maintenance shed for something. I followed along with him, continuing the conversation. When he opened the door, I saw a bed. He had been living in the maintenance shed with no running water or electricity. I decided to let him move into my spare room, and things were going great.
I spent 4th of July weekend at my girlfriend’s house, leaving Tom by himself in the apartment. He refused to turn on the air conditioning because he didn’t want to “waste” my money. It was over 100 degrees that weekend, and we lived in a top-floor apartment in a shitty wooden building, so it had to hit 120+ inside. The heat killed him. He died drinking his morning coffee. He fell out of his chair halfway through the cup.
When I found him he had been dead for a couple days. He was discolored and slightly bloated. The smell was horrible; it took me weeks to get it out of the apartment. I called 911 (in hindsight, it wasn’t much of an emergency, but I wasn’t thinking clearly) and they came and took the body. They didn’t clean up all the bodily fluids, though, which I was not expecting. I had to do it. It was rough.
I wish he hadn’t been so concerned with wasting my money. I wish he would have turned the AC on. I miss you, Tom”
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