Sort of, you'll have to bear with me
Last year, not too long before Christmas I think, some friends and I were taking another friend home around midnightish. On the way through one of the streets we passed a bloke stood on top of a wall by a lamppost. He just looked like an average pissed bloke who thought it would be a good idea to walk along a wall, but one of my friends noticed that he had a length of something in his hand...

Now, usually we'd go home a different way to which we came but this particular day we decided to go back and check, just to make sure. It was dark but as our eyes adjusted we realised that he had infact hung himself from the lamppost, albeit that his feet were on the floor and he'd just shifted all his weight onto the length of rubber innertube he'd slung around his neck.

It wasn't particularly pleasant. Mucus streaming from his nose and mouth, twitching every so often. I leapt from the car and got straight on the phone to the emergency services. They dispatched police and paramedics and upon my questioning informed me that if I could, either take the weight off his throat or cut him down. He was a big bloke and even with three of us left in the car we couldn't have supported his weight until help arrived (my girlfriend was with us, she's only about eight ounces soaking wet and couldn't take the weight of a butterfly).

Another bit of (rather pointless) advice was to try to talk him out of it. I edged closer (it feels weird to be scared of someone in that position but for some reason I was terrified) and after a few hoarse murmers of "Oi" I gave him a prod. He just swung forward and his head knocked gently against the lamppost.

All in all we could do nothing but stand there and wait for the emergency services. When they finally arrived he'd been without oxygen for a good five minutes and seemed dead to the world for all we knew. Luckilly, though, he was rescusitated and after a breif coma (about two weeks) strolled merrily out of hospital.

Techinically not a dead body as he was successfully rescusitated, but for those long, cold five minutes we had to wait I was certain that brain death had occured and that made him dead. That was scary as hell.

It's an odd sensation. In most ways I'm relieved, even if he'd died later in hospital I'd be able to say that I was lucky enough to never happen upon a dead body. But in other ways that morbid curiosity that we all get sometimes was thinking that it's now something that's still on my list of things to do and see before I die. For now, I shall try to satisfy my curiosity but also be safe in the knowledge that I haven't been scarred too much as I've seen a dead/not dead person (thought not undead, I'm grateful to say).
( shovelboy This is bad - Two minutes to Belgium, Thu 28 Feb 2008, 20:00, Reply)