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This is a question Have you ever seen a dead body?

How did you feel?
Upset? Traumatised? Relieved? Like poking it with a stick?

(, Thu 28 Feb 2008, 9:34)
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Not me guv
But I have a couple of friends who have worked in the ambulance service and also one worked as a clinical pathologist (think Silent Witness, not sure that that's the actual term but you get the point). The delights they have seen over the years include:

A forty year old man who had been submerged in a swimming pool for four months. Someone had whacked him on the head and left him to drown, before pulling the tarpaulin over the top of him. He'd swollen up beyond belief, his eyes had popped out of his socket and his skin was an unsightly green-black colour. There's a similar one on Rotten.com. He was a rather solitary man so no-one had really noticed he'd gone.

An old person who'd melted in their seat. This happens when the person in question is very dirty, lives in squalor and wears thick overcoats indoors (to combat not having heating). They drop a cigarette butt, their coat catches fire, and their armchair acts as an insulate, with the grease and body fat as a candle. All that was left were the legs and the arms, as there's less fat on them.

A man who'd been masturbating with the handle of a mop, and had slipped on the wet patch in his kitchen, impaling himself on the mop handle. The exit wound was in his shoulder. I believe I read somewhere about a similar one where someone had been doing the same with a broom handle and balancing on the bath. You think these people would learn.

Then we have the obligatory maggots. Maggots everywhere. A middle aged man had died of a heart attack, and his elderly (and senile) mother had been living in the same house as him for at least three to four weeks, as he sat and decomposed in front of her. My friend in question who broke down the door with the police, had to wear three layers of overalls, all with vicks and the like rubbed in, and she still had to throw away her clothes to get rid of the smell. Oh, and there were maggots up against the door, they'd escaped and some of the rotting flesh had dropped onto the floor.

Of course there are the countless gunshot deaths, including one man who'd blown his head almost clean off, pretty much all of it was missing, apart from the outer layer of the skull and the brain stem at the base. He was also alive when they found him too, a few hours after he'd pulled the trigger. Died when they moved him, apparently.

I haven't seen a dead body, it's not something I'd like to do. However, all my friends in question who found the bodies were able to hold it together, apart from their first cases, and that was only when they put a name to the remains. Somehow knowing that this person was someone's son/husband/wife etc makes it all the more horrific.

Apologies for lack of humour, but there is a morbid fascination to be had with gruesome deaths.
(, Tue 4 Mar 2008, 13:42, 2 replies)
masturbating with a mop handle
is an urban legend: www.snopes.com/college/risque/broom.asp
(includes several variations)
(, Wed 5 Mar 2008, 2:14, closed)
Sounds like
They were obviously tempting fate when they decided to pleasure themselves in said manner. I've no more reason to believe that what they told me is true or false than the authenticity of their own name, for example.
All urban legends have to start somewhere...
(, Wed 5 Mar 2008, 18:44, closed)

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