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I’ve never seen a dead body, even at a funeral, so I think it would be pretty horrible and disturbing to just come across one in the middle of my day. Some of the Redditors on this AskReddit thread absolutely agree with me:
1. RA’s Worst Nightmare
“I was an RA in college. I got a call that one of my students didn’t go home for Easter. We found him hanging in the closet in his dorm room. I was upset about it because he seemed okay and never showed any signs of depression. Having to talk to his parents afterward was beyond hard.”
2. Absolutely Devastating
“I found my mom’s dead body on the floor of her bedroom in March of this year. I called 911 and then my father, who was out of town on business. Hardest phone call I’ve ever had to make. Apparently my mom had a kidney infection from kidney reflux disease as well as pneumonia. It caught her in the middle of the night and she passed away.”
3. All a Blur
“I was 14 and babysitting for my baby 2nd cousin. He died from SIDS and I found him when checking on him in the morning. I frantically tried baby CPR but knew it was useless. I had to go and tell his mother who had been out late and was sleeping in the next room. Then it was all just a blur of crying, ambulance, calling my auntie and uncle and then being questioned by police.”
4. Delayed Reaction
“I must have been in total shock, because I was completely calm (detached). Saw something weird in the bushes, found the body, called the cops, talked to the cops, went on about my day. Two days later had a panic attack when walking down same path.”
5. “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 girlfriends 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.”
6. Not Suspicious At All
“My dad and I found a body in the middle of the road in Ohio. It was on the 5th of July at 5:30 A.M. He was just in the road, one leg almost severed. We blocked the road and called the sheriff. I guess he was either drunk and fell asleep in the road or someone just hit him and bailed. They never did find out who did it. There was a couple that supposedly discovered him shortly before us, and for some odd reason they went 10 miles home and switched vehicles before the sheriff showed up. We told the sheriff about it but he didn’t see anything unusual about that.”
7. Landlord
“I’m a landlord. I got a call from the father of one of our tenants. He hadn’t heard from his son for a few days and he didn’t live in town. I said I would go by and check on him. No one answered the door and I just felt something was wrong. I used a master key to enter and could see that he was laying on the couch. I thought he looked dead and went back out the door, but then I realized I had to be sure. I went back in and stared at him for about 15 seconds to really be sure. I don’t recall how he died, but I know he was a very heavy drinker. The worst part was that, after I called the police, I had to call the father back. Not an easy phone call to make, but I felt he should know.”
8. 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 towards 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.”
9. Missing Girl
“My brothers and I were playing around in the woods at a park up the street from my house, and had been playing near a pile of leaves picking bits up, throwing them at each other, when my brother noticed a purse laying on the ground. He picked it up, and he looked through it, he found a wallet, there was money in it, credit cards…We took it home, and showed my mom, who thinking it strange that it had been abandoned called the police. The I.D. in the wallet belonged to a woman who had been missing for three days, the police searched the park, and found the woman’s body. She had been hidden in a pile of leaves, the one we had been playing around (luckily not jumping in). To make matters worse, the woman was murdered by her estranged boyfriend, whom she agreed to meet the morning she died only a few days before she was due to testify against him in court for domestic violence.”
10. Desensitized
“I was driving home at about 2 a.m. and I was going around a turn at about 50 MPH but I noticed something off and slowed down it was a car in a ditch. And there was something in the road I hadn’t slowed down quickly enough and narrowly swerved around the object. As I passed it realized it was a human body. I pulled into the nearby driveway. Ran over to them and tried to get them to wake up or show some sign of life. I think I had leaned on their chest and it sounded like they may have breathed a bit but I think it was just wishful thinking. Called the cops and told them I thought he was breathing so they would hurry. Took an ambulance about 10 minutes to get there and as soon as the guy stepped out the ambulance he said “oh yeah he’s dead.” I was struck by his callousness. It happened to be a guy a few years older than me that grew up in my neighborhood. I didn’t even realize it until I got home and then I finally cried myself to sleep.”
11. Med Student
“Was coming back home from school. Back then I was in my first year of med school and had not seen any dead bodies yet. I hear one of my neighbors scream and call for her husband. I walk over to see what was going on and turns out another neighbor fell down a set of stairs just outside her apartment and hit her head. She had a very faint pulse, her pupils were fixed and she wasn’t breathing anymore, I also suspect she had fluid in her lungs cause she had froth at the mouth. We called an ambulance but all they could do was confirm her death. I was truly shocked at the time because I had never ever seen a dead person before that day. She was a single lady, no kids and I felt really bad that there was no one around to help her while there was still hope.”
12. Surprisingly Normal
“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.”
13. Not Suitable For Children
“I was eleven years old and a friend of mine and I were playing near my friend’s house which was near a lake. We say a dog barking by a small jetty in the lake. He stood there barking for a long time and tried to get our attention so went walked over to see what it was. We saw the legs of an old woman sticking out from under the jetty. She had been there for a long time. We told my friend’s parents and they called the police. It was a little scary but I felt pretty detached from the whole situation. The thing I remember the most was when she was picked up and I wanted to see what was going on, the cops yelled at us to get lost.”
14. Career Change
“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 a 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 alright 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.”
15. Terrifying Find
“My friend’s mum was going for an early morning jog on some boardwalk that ran through a creek (which is usually a pretty fucking scary place at the best of times). She was on a long straight stretch and saw a white figure at the end; on closer inspection, it was some guy who hung himself off a tree.”
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