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The morgue isn’t like you imagine it in the movies. It’s not just a cold, metallic room where “everything ends.” It’s a place where the silence has a different weight, where every footstep sounds distinct, and where those who work there learn to move with respect… and with a caution that can only be understood after experiencing it.
The person telling this story is a healthcare worker who, in addition to supporting patients in difficult situations, specialized in thanatopraxy: the set of procedures for cleaning, preserving, and preparing bodies so that their families can say goodbye. It’s not a profession learned through theory alone. According to his experience, it’s learned through practice, protocols, and, above all, emotional fortitude.
What does an embalmer actually do?
In their daily work, the job includes tasks that the public almost never sees: carefully removing medical elements, cleaning the body, verifying identity, labeling correctly, protecting orifices from which fluids may be released, and leaving everything ready so that a funeral home can proceed with the wake.
She also discusses preservation: the use of preservatives and techniques to prevent accelerated decomposition. In her account, she emphasizes that part of the work is technical, but another part is profoundly human: treating the deceased with dignity and the family with respect, even when grief makes them unpredictable.
The elevator: two bodies and “something” in between
The first incident that marked him occurred during a routine transfer. Two bodies: one to his left, the other to his right. He was in the middle, inside an elevator. Everything normal… until it wasn’t.
He says that, suddenly, he saw two dark shapes, like shadows without defined outlines, but with something impossible to ignore: eyes he described as “red flames.” They weren’t human figures, they weren’t people. They were a presence.
According to the account, those shadows approached, looked at him, passed through him as if he were air… and went to one of the bodies. He claims he saw them “tear something away,” as if they were taking the soul and carrying it off.
What was most disturbing to him was that he couldn’t move or speak. It wasn’t a common feeling of fear: it was total paralysis. Later, he heard a detail about the deceased person that, in his interpretation, “explained” what had happened: that she had been involved in witchcraft.
“Call my mom”: when a voice doesn’t come from the mouth
Another, even more emotional moment occurred with a young man who died in an accident. His body lay there, motionless, but he claims he heard a voice insistently saying, “Call my mom.”
He doesn’t say he heard it with his ears like a normal conversation, but “in his head,” with a clarity he couldn’t mistake for imagination. It was so insistent that he made a decision he rarely makes: he called his mother and let her in.
The distraught mother began to berate him. And then the unexpected happened: the body, according to the account, began to cry.
He maintains that in such cases, one shouldn’t wipe away those tears. He says that some believe doing so “takes you away,” as if the pain opens a dangerous thread between the living and the dead. The mother, in the midst of her shock, ended up changing her tone: she apologized, spoke with love… and the crying stopped.
What hurts the most: pregnant mothers and formless tragedies
Within the morgue, there are scenes that, even for someone accustomed to it, remain unbearable. She mentions the case of deceased pregnant women and the desperate race against time: the possibility (according to her account) of saving the baby within a minimal margin.
It also speaks of bodies arriving in extreme conditions: bagged, dismembered, with unrecognizable faces. There, the task is to identify: tattoos, scars, moles, distinctive marks. It’s not just a forensic procedure; it’s a way of giving a name back to someone who, otherwise, becomes “a case.”