16 Coroners Describe the Gnarliest Bodies They've Ever Seen

This one is from Redditor whoatethekidsthen:

[Taking one's life] by pills and alcohol.

That in itself isn't that shocking. The individual took an entire bottle of sleeping pills, drank a half bottle of alcohol, and got into their hot tub.

The individual [perished], but the body remained in the hot tub until the smell of the decomp alerted neighbors.

If you could imagine a body decomposing then liquefying in a hot tub, it still really doesn't do the actual sight of it justice.

The smell was so intense that many of us vomited (including the guys from Aftermath Inc. hired by the family to clean up.)

Best I can describe it is, the individual [perished] in a hot tub which then became a giant crock pot of [corpse] stew.

From Redditor cstoli:

My very first case was an elderly male who [perished] in a house fire. The firemen were unable to extract him until after the fire was put out, so he was completely cooked. What struck me was how similar the smell is to a pig roast. When I opened the rib cage, it looked just like cooked ribs without sauce. The skin was crackling and oil and juices pooled in the crease between the skin and exposed rib cage.

I was off pork for about three months.

Shared by SparkleSpectre:

Trainee anatomical pathology technician here (AKA mortician, I guess). Th[e] most interesting and creepiest thing I have seen so far was a facial dissection of a [slain person]. Basically the face is peeled off the skull from the chin upwards, but is left attached at the nose to help re-orientate it back into it's original position (even though it can never be perfectly placed back to where it was)... Was very strange to see the inside of someone's mouth folded up over the rest of their face.

A tale from Redditor muklan:

My ex-wife worked in a funeral home. She said they once had [someone take their own life]... with a jigsaw... through the forehead. It was still in when the body arrived, apparently they had to turn it on for a split second to free it from her skull.

From Kabukikitsune:

I've seen a few in my life, though not being the part of the ME [medical examiner], or coroner. In the past I worked as a deputy, so every so often we'd have to do calls where inevitably we ran across deceased persons.

A couple that stick in my mind as being the most bizarre:

Responded to a house after a man's wife called to report her husband had been attacked and [sexually accosted]. We arrive to find the man [perished], with no pants on, in the barn. Best we could ever figure out was the man had been having relations with a small pony, and ended up being mounted by a stallion. Perforated his intestines and he bled [out].

We had another that took the better part of two years to solve. In that case, a young boy (about fifteen) was found wrapped around a pine tree, wearing only his boxers. By wrapped around, I mean in the sense of every bone in his body broken. His friends weren't talking on what happened, and while yes, foul play was suspected, we couldn't exactly arrest on suspicions. Eventually, about two years later, after one of his buddies had been picked up on a somewhat minor trespassing charge, he came clean. Apparently the boys had this game they would play where they would get drunk, then catch one of the passing freight trains. As the train neared the usual swimming hole, the boys would jump off the train down into the water. Supposedly when the train neared the usual bridge, the boy in question mis-timed his jump and ended up wrapping himself around the tree. The other boys were just to[o] scared to admit they had been involved.

One that was NEVER solved involved a set of remains that were found inside an old brick smokestack during the stack's demolition. What gets weird about it was the man had apparently [starved], so that ruled out him as having fallen inside the stack. There wasn't a ladder on the outside of the stack, nor a door to access that area. The smokestack was tied to an old school and had last been used some time in the mid 1950s. The remains were dressed in clothing typical of the 1970s, which just made things even stranger. We identified the body as being a young man who had gone missing sometime in 1974, though beyond that the trail went cold. Never figured out how he had gotten himself in there in the first place.

Shared by ZaphodBbox:

Only second hand, but I've seen evidence without asking for it. A guy fell in the bathroom and stuck the toilet brush handle through his eye-socket into his brain. Was barely alive when he arrived at the hospital and didn't make it. If this had been in a movie, I would have thought it was far too ridiculous. By far the weirdest of very few.