ouch, can you imagine?

What's weird is that no one noticed the fresh bleeding that comes before the sternum gets cracked!

My Dad worked many jobs to make ends meet when I was young. One was as a driver for a Funeral Director. Because on a full time basis Dad was a fireman, he was not entirely unused to being around dead bodies, so he would help Mr. McG go to the morgues or to the deceased's homes and help "pick up the bodies". Sometimes when business got "busy" there would be several pick-ups using the 3 or 4 hearses Mr. McG owned. The most unsettling experience Dad ever had was when he was bringing a body to the funeral parlor on his own. It had been a busy week and each of the men who worked for Mr. McG were out on their own picking up a deceased body. As Dad was returning to the Funeral Parlor he could not avoid a pothole (Philly is notorious for holes in the streets, especially in winter). As the hearse bounced hard back on the asphalt, the 'dead' body sat up and started screaming! Seems the gentleman wasn't quite dead after all. Dad detoured to a Hospital ER. A few years later the family called Mr. McG and said that this time, for sure, the gentleman was indeed deceased. Dad made sure he had someone else in the hearse with him when they picked up the body that second time!

As unsettling as it sounds in this report from Venezuela, it is not all that rare. Edgar Allen Poe wrote his "Premature Burial" based on fact; and the expression "dead-ringer" relates to the practice of cutting a hole in the coffin and running a string out to a bell in case someone was put into the ground before the "appointed" meeting with his or her Maker!

Lady B

Lady B

I heard this story too. The man's wife was actually called to the morgue to identify the 'body'. When she arrived, she found him siiting in the hall waiting for her.