I have been really busy the past few months taking photos for requests from findagrave.com, and haven't had an opportunity to write more of my experiences from my role as a funeral director and embalmer, particularly in the latter role. Those who are familiar with my previous stories know that I have been in that role for well over 30 years and have become a little passive to events of the supernatural nature within the walls of funeral homes and or even cemeteries. Occasionally an event will occur that causes one of those "hmmm" moments.
One such event occurred about 8 years ago. I had taken into the funeral home's care an elderly lady, I'd say somewhere around mid eighty. I had received permission from the family when I picked her up from her place of death to proceed with embalming. Now, to help with a little better understanding of an embalming oddity, if a decedent has been placed in refrigeration for any length of time, the cold causes a compromise of the cellular structure in such a way that regardless of how thorough the embalming process, the decedent will not firm up, but will remain flacid, even though thoroughly embalmed. Embalming shortly after death, without refrigeration causes the decedent to become very firm to the point that it is difficult to move their limbs very much. My usual practice is to place the left hand over the right so as to allow the wedding band to show if they were married. Anyway, The next afternoon I was preparing the lady to be dressed and casketed. As was my usual practice I placed a towel over her hands and used them as a resting place to steady my elbow while I placed lipstick on her with a small brush. To say that I was startled when she switched her right hand to the top position directly beneath my elbow is an understatement. I removed the towel to confirm that she had indeed switched her hands, but how, I still cannot discern, and she had been embalmed for over 24 hours.
A day or so later there was another embalmer with me in the prep room and we both were embalming new cases. The discussion turned to me sharing with him about the lady switching her hands. As he shared his thoughts about the hand switch, and mentioned a few odd experiences of his own, a pack of unopened plastic trays was literally thrown across the room from atop a storage locker. We both stopped our tasks to investigate and looked at each other like "WTF?" There was absolutely no other person in the prep room and the plastic trays didn't just fall, they were thrown from the top of the locker in a straight line trajectory and landed a good 20 feet from the locker. A minute or so later we retrieved the trays, placed them back on the locker and returned to our tasks. We never mentioned the event again. The trays remained there for months, until they were opened and used.
Thanks for reading.
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