I am one, of the three technicians operating the morgue in our small town’s hospital. It has been five years now since I first started this job. You may find it weird or creepy but it is a job that needs doing and its easier than you might think. Weirdly enough it’s stable, it pays well and it is very boring. At least for the most part. You do see gruesome injuries from time to time, but you get used to it. And yes in time this job will give you nerves of steel and a cast iron stomach. That said there is one particular incident that still gives me horrible nightmares to this day. I was still new at the job, at the beginning of my tenure. I was well aware that working 12 hours shifts in a morgue is going to be difficult and draining. When I first started they would only assign me the day shift hours.
Then one day my supervisor told me the guy who used to work the night shifts had quit, so they needed someone to cover for him until a new hire could come aboard. Long story short, I accepted the shift change and I started working 6 pm to 6 am. My first couple of weeks with the new schedule went as you would expect, but I must say the night felt really spooky. The passage of time was slow and I often found myself taking walks around the morgue to clear my head. Sometimes I would visit the emergency ward, which was right above us. But I would not leave the hospital mostly because I didn’t want to deal with security. I didn’t want to be a bother to anyone.
One night, I was sitting in my desk and drafting a report for a Jane Doe that had od’ed, when I was suddenly called to the emergency ward to pick up a body. I came to find out that there was a terrible accident and they brought a man in to try and resuscitate him. But his injuries were too great and their efforts could not revive him. I saw three doctors coming out of the intensive care unit. Their medical scrubs were drenched in blood. I got instructions to take the dead body to the morgue. And told me that they had a post-mortem scheduled for the next morning.
My line of work is such that seeing dead bodies is routine for me. But this was one of the most heavily mutilated corpses of my career. When I first stepped into the room, my heart stopped. I got light-headed before my vision started shaking, this pure guy’s body looked like it had passed through a shredder. There was blood all over the operating table. Ripped flesh was gushing out of the cuts on his legs and hands, skin peeled back, muscle torn out and bone fractured to shards. But none of it was the disturbing part that gave me nightmares.
When I finally looked at the man’s face, a chill went down my spine that froze me in place. He was looking at me. His head was facing me with eyes open, gazing at my soul. His mouth was frozen in an expression of pure agony. It sounds silly but this man was staring right at me. His eyes were cold and dead still. But for a moment, I thought he blinked. Leaving a deceased patient in this state is not a normal procedure. You were meant to close the person’s eyes after passing. I can’t imagine all three of them would forget about this. Especially when he looks like these. I was so lost in the moment that I did not hear my colleague talking to me. And I nearly jumped out of my lab coat as soon as he patted me on the back.
“Come on man… It’s not the time, nor the place for daydreaming. They will need to use the room soon”
I turned around and looked at the corpse one more time before I zipped his bag up and started pushing the stretcher to the elevator to get him down to the morgue. I got onto the lift. And for the first time since childhood, I was feeling uncomfortable inside an empty lift with a dead body. After reaching the morgue, I unzipped the body bag, and once again, that horrific face came out. I put the body inside the mortuary cabinet and came back to my desk. I sat down and started to go through my paperwork again.
After a while, I put one headphone in my ear and looped the other one around my neck. Listening to music is not really permitted but I could often get away with it. I figured that If I had an ear out and I didn’t cause any issues it would be fine. Generally, the morgue is shrouded in silence, and tonight was no different. But this time around the stillness of the morgue made my skin crawl. Ever since I laid eyes on this guy, I had this eerie feeling that I couldn’t shake off.
I got absorbed into my work with the help of the music and I lost track of time for a while. I looked up from my work, staring down the door of my office very intensely. Did I hear something? I took the headphones out of my ear. “Hello”. I heard the distinct sound of footsteps outside as if someone was walking in the corridor. Perhaps a doctor or a nurse wanted something and did not want to call it in through the intercom system. I got up and came out of the office, but I saw nothing. I glanced at the end of the corridor where our mortuary’s cold room was.
The doors were closed and the corridor was completely empty. I started walking towards it when suddenly I felt that someone was walking behind me. I turned around with a snapping motion of my head. But the room was empty. That’s it, I thought. This job finally got to me, I am starting to lose it.
I opened the door to the cold room and everything was in its place, only the door of the third mortuary cabinet was wide open. This is the same cabinet where I placed the man’s dead body a few hours back. A sense of fear enveloped me. But I had to make sure. I reached in and pulled out the stretcher, half expecting the worst. The man’s body was still lying on it, but this time, his mouth was no longer frozen in that horrific expression. It was closed. Did I imagine it? It almost seems like he is grinning at me. I am getting this weird feeling that he is looking at me with his dead eyes and smirking at me. “You know what screw this, I am going home,” I said out loud.
I immediately pushed the stretcher back inside and closed the door. Thoughts and emotions raced through my head like a storm. “That’s it. It’s decided I am leaving for home. I am going to call my supervisor and make up a story about feeling sick, or something. I don’t think they will fire me over this”. I walked through the room as fast as I could. I reached and grabbed the door knob and I instantly froze when I heard a sound coming from behind me.
Almost instantly my neck snapped back, eyes pinned on the source of the sound. My mind went numb trying to process the macabre spectacle that was unfolding in front of me. I saw the man crawling out of that mortuary cabinet like a creature straight out of my most feverish nightmares. His entire body was covered in blood and gore. His eyes were even wider now, as though they could pop out of their sockets at any moment.
I closed my eyes and opened them again hoping this nightmare would go away. Hoping against hope that I will wake up in my bed. But he was still there. The man came out and stood in front of me. Blood dripped from his body onto the floor. The entire floor beneath his feet turned red with blood. “You… you are supposed to be dead”, I said with a trembling voice full of panic. He laughed in a very low voice accompanied by a concerto filled with bubbling blood, hissing, and guttural noises. “You know what’s the best part about being dead? You don’t feel anything anymore.”
The absurdity of my situation was not lost on me. Even with my heart pounding my chest like a jackhammer from the inside, I couldn’t believe that I was In front of a living dead person. I opened my mouth and kept the conversation going when the man moved to within a couple of inches away from my face in a flash. I can’t explain how he did that. My brain did not register his movements, but it was like he swept his way like wind and stopped right at my face. He rushed me as if he was sliding on ice. And there we were, face-to-face looking at each other, eye-to-decomposing eye.
I didn’t know what to do, but our staring contest was unbearable. I had to do something. And I did the only thing I could think of. I asked him, “What do you want? Please, let me help you”. The man now looked up with eyes fogged by rigor mortis, “I was poisoned… Tell them… You must tell them… She must face justice.” I was about to ask him who had poisoned him, but suddenly the lift door opened and I turned back. I saw my colleague coming towards the main room, along with the chief medical examiner and a doctor. “You still here?” He said. “Your shift finished an hour ago.” I looked back at the mortuary cabinet and everything appeared normal, like nothing happened here. As if everything was a bad dream I just woke up from.
They must have sensed that something was off. “Go home and get some rest. We got to do this all over again tomorrow”. He said. I started to walk to the office to pick up my things, but before going inside, I turned around and told them, “I don’t know why, but I felt like there was some other reason behind this man’s death. He didn’t just die because of the accident.” They all gave me a surprised look, but I got inside, took my bag, and left for home. The next morning, I got a phone call from my colleague. Before I could even finish saying hello, he asked me, “How did you know?”
“I mean, it anyway would have come out in the post-mortem report, but how come you were so sure?” At first, I failed to understand what he meant, so I asked, “What are you talking about?” My colleague replied, “That man, the dead body recovered from the road accident last night. Traces of poison have been found in his stomach. Doctors are saying he was poisoned before he got into the car. This is now a criminal case. Cops are all over the hospital”. I started to sweat like hell. That means it all actually happened. The man’s ghost was there in front of my eyes. I sat down on the chair nearby. It took me time to deal with the fact that I have not only experienced a supernatural occurrence but also talked to the haunting spirit of a dead man.
The policemen arrested his girlfriend for poisoning him. I realized that by “She”, the man’s spirit meant her. That woman’s court case continued for a while. I would read updates in the local press. It took weeks of proceedings with the lawyers having to go back and forth several times. Apparently, she claimed she was abused and then she was proven to have lied about it. A number of audio files were found on that guy’s cellphone painting her as the definitive abuser of the relationship and him as the victim of abuse and murder by poison. She tried to disguise it as a tragic accident and then again as self-defense or a retaliation for abuse.
I thought about quitting. But I decided against it. I didn’t leave my job after this incident. As I was working on another night shift. I was working another night shift on the day this woman got sentenced for first-degree murder charges. On that date, the ghost of that man visited me for one last time. I just finished placing another corpse inside a refrigerated cabinet. As I turned to go to my office, I saw that man standing in front of the lift. This time, his eyes were serene and peaceful, with a smile on his face.
His body was disfigured like before, but his face did not appear as fearful as before. I just stood there dumbfounded. I never expected that he would visit me again. I secretly hoped that I had hallucinated all of this. He was just looking at me unmoving and then he was gone. He had vanished. And almost instantly an ice-cold breeze blew through the basement of the hospital carrying the whispered words.
“Thank you”