urine

Everybody Poops: The Post-Mortem Edition

October 1, 2015 — 28 Comments

After a person has been declared clinically dead and biological death occurs, long after our sentient personality has left this world, certain bodily functions just keep on keepin’ on. Old habits die hard, and in the case of the human body, some habits won’t die just because you do.

1. Brain Activity & Our Five Senses
You may have heard at one point in your life that after death, brain activity continues for a period of time. This is true to some extent, though most of the postmortem brain activity is actually the brain making one last attempt to keep itself alive by using all the oxygen left inside the deceased body. In doing this, brain cells cause irreparable damage to themselves. consciousness can be retained for approximately 15-20 seconds following death- this is true even in the case of people who are decapitated. This short period of consciousness following death is most likely when your “life flashes before your eyes”. Although it is difficult to understand how a person may feel they are literally reliving their entire life in a matter of seconds, it’s very similar to how we perceive time in a dream. Have you ever fallen asleep and had a bizarre dream that felt like it lasted forever, only to realize you’d been sleeping for just a few minutes? That is most likely what is experienced by people who are dying, or having a near death experience. With brain activity continuing after death, our five senses slowly fade after death, as well. The first sense to go is sight, followed by taste, smell, touch and finally, hearing. That means even if you didn’t get a chance to say goodbye before your loved one passed, if you told them something shortly afterwards, they probably still heard it.

2. Post-Mortem Movement and Breathing
Just because your brain has died and all activity has ceased, that doesn’t mean your nervous system has stopped functioning entirely. Often corpses will retain reflex action, causing muscle twitches, spasms, even what appears to be shallow breathing (which is sure to turn anyone’s Wake into an exciting event). These movements are caused when nerves send signals to the spinal cord, but you might want to keep that to yourself and see if you can convince everyone at the Wake that your grandmother is turning into a zombie.

3. Skin
Skin cells do not need constant circulation to survive, which means they’ll outlive you by several days. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to grow and new skin cells, so any wounds you previously have or acquire during death will not heal. That means any tattoos, piercings, plastic surgery, microdermabrasion etc. that you were considering having don postmortem to look good for your last hoorah probably wont look as great as you may have imagined.

4. Hair and Nails Appear to Grow
…they don’t really, but it certainly looks that way. Same as your skin, no new hair or nail tissue will grow. A body begins to lose all its moisture following death. When all that water weight starts dropping off, you get a postmortem face lift. The pulling back and tightening of your skin from lack of moisture gives the appearance of hair and nail growth, when in actuality you are just shriveling up and shrinking.

5. Vocal Chords
When you die, the bacteria in your body that once digested your food begins eating you from the inside out. This causes a tremendous build-up of gasses inside your body which has to escape somehow. There are many ways in which these gasses evacuate the corpse, one of the less disturbing methods being through your windpipe… And yes, that is one of the less disturbing ways. It causes moans, groans, even squeaks to come from the deceased.

6. Pee/Poo/Farts
There is a common misconception that some people urinate when they die. Luckily, we’re here to dispel those kind of rumors; The truth is, almost everyone pees themselves when they die. The urinary sphincter is held shut by a part of your brain, so when your brain stops functioning, your sphincter opens up and everything left in your bladder at the time of death is released. After you die, if you gotta go well… You really gotta go because your brain is no longer able to “hold it”. If it helps ease your mind, you won’t necessarily “pee your pants”. Assuming you live a long life and die a natural death, this postmortem urine could very easily be collected by a catheter. Another misconception is that some people defecate one last time at the moment of death- this is just a flat out lie… Due to the fact that the bacteria in your body that digests food won’t begin eating you until all the food is gone, almost everyone poops for days following their death. Remember when I said there were many more disturbing ways built-up gas can escape a corpse? Pooping is one of them. Excess gasses often expel themselves through the anus, taking with them whatever is in their path… which is usually human waste. More commonly refered to as “poop”. The expulsion of gasses through the anus can also cause lots of postmortem farting. I think the disgusting child in all of us can appreciate the fact that even in death, we can (and will) fart up a storm in the coroner’s office.

7. Death Erections (and Ejaculations)
After all the blood in your system has stopped circulating, it begins to pool. The effects of this are most evident during the 4th stage of decomposition known as “Livor Mortis”, which you can learn all about here on The Post-Mortem Post on Thursday April 9th. All you need to know now is that after death blood pools in the lowest (in relation to the rest of the world) regions of the body. This means if you die standing up or laying face down, one place blood will pool is in the genitalia. When a male’s penis- living or dead fills with blood, it causes an erection. In the days of public hangings, when bodies were not always removed in a prompt and courteous manner, people became very familiar with the phenomenon of “death erections”, sported by many men who were hung to their death. During the 3rd phase of decomposition, Rigor Mortis (come back Wednesday April 8th to learn more) every muscle in the body begins to harden. The hardening causes contraction of the muscles and sometimes all that hardening and contracting can cause a corpse to ejaculate.

8. Coffin Birth
As we all know, pregnancy and childbirth used to be an incredibly dangerous experience for women. In a time before prenatal vitamins, ultrasounds and blood transfusions (with the correct type of blood) it was all too common for a woman to die during some stage of her pregnancy. Unfortunately, in those times, not everyone was able to receive a burial soon after death, or in some cases, ever. Due to this, there were a few rare accounts of women who had given birth, postmortem. These “Coffin Births”, as they became known, were caused by a combination of softening, deceased flesh and a build up of gasses within the cadaver. In some instances, this gas escaped through the vaginal canal of a female corpse, bringing a living, breathing baby out with it. Yes, you guessed it- the expulsion of postmortem gasses through the vaginal canal could also cause corpse queefs.

MYTH: In the late 1800s and early 1900s Optography was all the rage. Used as a plot device in many fictional murder mysteries at the time, it was also utilized in real-life crime solving. After Franz Christian Boll discovered rhodopsin, also known as “visual purple”, a photosensitive pigment in the retina which can be “fixed” similar to a photographic negative, German psychologist William Kuhne set to work researching how this could be helpful in solving crimes.There was a belief that an optogram could capture the last image seen before death on the retina of the deceased. This led investigators to believe they might have a shot at capturing an image of the killer in the eye of their victim. Kuhne did a lot of very mean, sad things to rabbits during his research that we do not condone and we don’t wanna talk about it… So instead we’ll jump to November 16, 1880 when William Kuhne finally got the shot to test this theory on a human eye. Erhard Gustav Reif was executed by guillotine after killing his children in Bruchsal. Immediately following his death, Reif’s eyes were extracted and sent to Kuhne to be analyzed. Kuhne found that on the left eye of Erhard Gustav Reif there was a vague outline of what appeared to be the guillotine blade.

Outline of optograph obtained from subject’s left retina.

This was a huge discovery in forensics… until people began to put two and two together and realized that the position in which Erhard Gustav Reif was placed at the time of his execution would not have made it possible for him to see the blade of the guillotine, not to mention he was blindfolded at the time. Despite the fact that is scientific reasoning to support how this theory would work… it just doesn’t, at least, not now. It is possible optography will be more thoroughly researched and one day, perfected as a method for solving murder.
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If you enjoyed this article (or didn’t and want to know ways to minimize you postmortem farting and corpse queefs) you may like Burying the Dead is Killing the Planet, and Demystifying the Process of Dying.
Find out more about our upcoming Decomposition Week special.
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Imaginary Murders on the Rise

May 29, 2015 — 3 Comments

On May 12, 2015 a man in Jacksonville, Florida turned himself in to the local Sheriff for the murder of his best friend. Thirty-seven year old Geoff Gaylord stabbed his friend of seven years repeatedly with a kitchen knife before dismembering the body with a hatchet and burying him in the backyard. Geoff Gaylord told police of the murder, “It was an overreaction. I should have listened to the neighbor lady and got us into counseling, but no, I did the unthinkable and killed my best friend. I’m a terrible, terrible person and I need to be punished.”. Despite his gruesome confession for the murder, Mr. Gaylord will not be charged with homicide because the friend he killed happens to be imaginary. Geoff’s imaginary friend, Mr. Happy, was suffering from drug and alcohol addiction at the time of his murder and it became too much for Gaylord to handle. According to the statement given to police, the two friends had not had a “real conversation” in at least a year and had begun to drift apart as Mr. Happy’s addictions intensified. Geoff Gaylord claimed, “His room was a mess all the time with his toys and dolls. He left his empty vodka bottles all over the kitchen… Never picked up his empty cocaine baggies… He messed up my apartment to the point where I just couldn’t get it clean… Before Hap started doing drugs and acting weird he was my BFF… We’d go dancing, play on the children’s park equipment, both huge fans of doom metal- listened to it for hours with the lights turned off.” and that Mr. Happy “left the toilet seat down when he peed.”. The breaking point came when Mr. Happy crashed Gaylord’s Nissan ALTIMA after the two had been out celebrating Mr. Happy’s birthday at a local Hooter’s. Geoff Gaylord was ultimately arrested for the incident despite the fact that his imaginary friend had been the one driving. Gaylord stated, “That drunk driving incident I got unfairly blamed for and just how messy he had become put me over the edge and I murdered him.”. Horrified by his own crime, Mr. Gaylord, who was incredibly intoxicated at the time of his confession, insisted upon the death penalty “right now” and threatened police when they refused to sentence him as he desired; Instead he was arrested for threatening police, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of an illegal machine gun discovered inside his home. Disappointingly, it is more likely than not that this story which was originally published on Moron.com is nothing more than a hoax. Geoff Gaylord’s mug shot is in fact a photo of a man named Billy Southern which appeared in a gallery of “Crying Mugshots” that went viral in 2011.

  Recently, fake stories on imaginary murders have become somewhat popular. According to a fake story published in 2013, Doug Byron, a resident of Bangour, Maine went to his local police station and confessed to the murders of eight people who he claimed had occurred over a span of two years. M. Byron led police to eight shallow graves just outside the town of Milford and turned over journals in which he detailed how he had selected and stalked his victims before murdering them. The descriptions of the killings were so detailed and gruesome police believed him to be a serial killer… Until they dug up the graves of his victims and found nothing but dirt. Police Chief Lou Foster stated, “This is weird even for Maine. I mean, he’s so sure he committed a crime, but he hasn’t. He led us to eight graves in the woods, but all he’d done was dig a big hold and then refilled it. The journals are packed with grisly details, and I probably wont sleep for a week, but they’re just works of fiction.”. Although these stories are just as real as the victims, let’s pretend for a moment Geoff Gaylord and Doug Byron did murder and dismember the bodies of their imaginary friends. As we all know, it is perfectly normal for children to have an imaginary friend or two or ten. During childhood, imaginary friends are used as a device to experiment with early socialization. In the hypothetical case of Geoff Gaylord, it seems Mr. Happy began as a substitute for authentic socialization. As Gaylord recalled, he and Mr. Happy spent a lot of time going out dancing and listening to doom metal music together. While it seems Mr. Gaylord did in fact have some underlying mental and/or addiction issues, many mentally stable adults have imaginary friends to help them cope with loneliness and social anxiety. As Geoff Gaylord’s struggle with addiction and hoarding intensified, it was easier for him to blame Mr. Happy than to face his own problems. In killing his imaginary friend he was, in a way, “killing” the bad habits which he had projected onto Mr. Happy; If Mr. Happy dies, there will be no more DUIs, no more drugs or trash in the apartment. Murdering Mr.Happy may have also been an indirect attempt by Gaylord to punish himself for the bad behavior which he is, at the very least, subconsciously aware he is responsible for. He permanently ended the illusion of Mr. Happy by “murdering” his imaginary (and possibly only) friend. Doug Byron, it seems, had different motives behind the manifestation and murders of his imaginary friends. Despite his confession and remorse for committing the murders, they were all meticulously pre-meditated. Usually, serial killers who get away with their crimes are highly intelligent; Perhaps planning and “getting away with” killing was gratifying for Doug Byron’s ego. He may have begun killing in hopes it would boost his self-confidence. Murders often claim the “god-like” feeling they experience from having control over another human’s life and death is their primary motivation to kill. For Mr. Byron, creating imaginary people to murder  may have been a way to replicate this feeling of total control without actually having to harm anyone. As with any serial killer who turns themselves in, Doug Byron would have only done so after he felt, for whatever reason, he could no longer continue his way of life. The eight innocent, imaginary people Doug Byron created and killed were very likely created based on who he pictured as his ideal “type” to kill. As police stated, his journals detailed how he selected and murdered his victims. For Doug Byron, the journals were a way to document and relive his imaginary fantasies over and over, each time making them just a little better, by his standards; Very similar to an actual killer. Since these stories were just hoaxes, sadly we will never have the opportunity to read the detailed journals of this mind-boggling “murderer”. But it we just close our eyes, we can imagine all the bizarre and unbelievable things it would say…

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If you enjoyed this article, you might also like Everybody Poops: The Post-Mortem Edition, How to Drive a Corpse Cross-Country, The Zombie Cat Parasite, Scared to Death: An April Fool’s Day Fatality, Rasputin’s Pickled Penis, Pascualita: How Much is that Corpse Bride in the Window?, The Woman Who Cannot Die and Chrysippus Died Laughing (Literally)

Demystifying the Process of Dying

April 4, 2015 — 11 Comments

As an aging body approaches death and begins slowly shutting down, many changes occur which often frighten those experiencing and witnessing the final days of a human life for the first time. We tend to fear things we don’t understand and because death is considered a “taboo” subject, most people don’t share what they observed after witnessing their loved one pass on. Generally, a person’s first “lesson” in death isn’t received until they are at the side of a spouse or parent who is dying, or until they are dying themselves and do not know what to expect from their final hours. In a person’s last few days, circulation begins to decrease throughout the body as blood flow is reserved for the most vital organs. Circulation having decreased, the dying person may feel increasingly cool to the touch on their hands, arms, feet and eventually legs. The brain, at this point, is no longer considered a “vital organ” and will receive less blood flow, which may lead to mental changes such as confusion and hallucinations. These hallucinations however, may be less of a “mental shift” due to lack of blood flow and more of a spiritual experience as the soul detaches from this Earth. Often times, as people reach their final days they begin having “visions”, claiming to have been visited by or spoken with deceased loved ones. Usually the “visions” are very real for the person experiencing them and comforting in the process of crossing over. Irregular breathing patterns may also be observed in a dying person. Shallow breathing is common, as is no breathing at all for periods of time usually lasting 5-30 seconds, but can last up to one minute. Due to the kidneys and other organs, which have been deemed “not vital”, operating at minimum capacity, someone reaching death may produce less urine than expected that is darker than normal. The “death rattle” can be a particularly disturbing end of life event for most family members and friends who witness a loved one pass. Death rattles can begin 2-3 days prior to death and is caused by build up of fluids (saliva, bronchial secretions) in the upper chest. Dying persons who have difficulty swallowing may also have excess fluids in the back of the throat. The “death rattle” produces a bizarre gurgling sound, which is similar to a rattling, hence the name. Once the heart and lungs stop functioning and brain activity ceases causing a loss of sentient personality, a person is considered to be clinically dead. In clinical death, brain cells begin scrambling to use of the last of the body’s oxygen supply, causing irreversible damage to themselves in the process. Aproximately 4-6 minutes after clinical death occurs, biological death follows. It is after biological death that resucitation becomes impossible.
Come back tomorrow to learn some weird things our bodies continue to do after we die!
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