Morgue Lights , Horror Story…
Short Story : Morgue Lights.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark ( Horror Story)
By Prabir Rai Chaudhuri . All Copyright Reserved 2018
People generally find it peculiar when I tell them what I do. I guess
it's not very popular to want to work in a morgue, and they always think of
forensic doctors, but little of those of us who are dedicated to preparing
those who have died so that their families and loved ones can say goodbye to
them for the last time.
I am mainly dedicated to mortuary aesthetics, which means that I am the
one in charge of preparing the person before their wake . I like to think that
in some way my work helps the relatives of the deceased. I always try to do my
best work and treat the deceased with respect.
Horror stories
It's not that I had planned to work in this for years, I suppose it was
more a series of coincidences, my older sister had started working in a funeral
home, but in the administrative area, however, she began to be interested in
the work that was done directly in the morgue, the cold room and somehow she
dissuaded me from starting my studies in Thanatoesthetics, although she abandoned
this idea after the first period of study, I ended up liking it and it seemed
like a decent and adequate job.
I am not a person who is easily impressed and I also feel a certain
peace of mind knowing that at some point someone will also prepare me for my
farewell to this world.
After finishing my studies, I started working in the morgue of a
well-known funeral home. I quickly gained experience and worked there for many
years. I have many memories of that place. There are relatives who make special
requests. For example, I remember that once a family asked us to put cut lemons
between the socks of one of the deceased. Of course we did, but the truth is
that I never knew what they were for.
The fact is that I was fine working there, but they offered me a better
salary somewhere else and although today I regret my decision, I accepted this
new job.
It was also in a funeral home, on my first day I discovered that the
person they had hired before me had only lasted a couple of months and my
coworkers had also been working there for a short time, they showed me around
the place, everything seemed completely normal until they showed me the morgue,
my workplace, I admit that sometimes you feel energies in this job but I have
always thought that it is like a mark that the soul left on the body before
leaving, it is something that in my opinion is normal, but in this new place,
the energy was particularly heavy.
Maybe many of my colleagues don't believe in these things, but I
consider myself a very spiritual person and I'm sure that the energy in that
place was not normal.
The first person I hired at my new job was an elderly lady who had died
of natural causes.
Usually when we receive a deceased person, they give us a kind of
report with some information about the deceased. They also give us clothes that
are chosen by the closest relatives and one or two photographs, which are the
most important for my work, since this way I can have a clear image of how to
dress the deceased for his funeral.
When the lady's body had been prepared, after dressing her in a
grape-colored suit, I set about fixing her hair and makeup just as it was in
the photo. To finish, I put color on her lips and turned around to organize my
work materials. I turned to look at the lady once again and noticed that her
lips were pale. I didn't understand why if I had just finished putting makeup
on them.
I reapplied the color and this time I stayed watching her, at that
moment my partner, who was in charge of the process of arranging and preserving
the body, came in and asked me if I was going to finish, I answered yes and I
looked at the woman's face again, again her lips were pale, my partner noticed
my reaction and asked if everything was okay and although I thought about
telling him, I decided not to because it was my first day and I didn't want to
make a bad impression so once again I put makeup on the deceased's lips, I
waited and this time the color didn't fade.
I decided not to tell anyone about that event, I had almost forgotten
about it after a month when something even stranger happened to me at that
morgue, but this time I was not the only one to witness it.
We were with the last deceased of our work day, he was a man of about
fifty years old who had died due to an accident, the work had been a bit
extensive because, as I explained previously in this office, the most important
thing is that the relatives of the people we receive can see their loved one
just as they remembered them in life.
We were almost finished when there was a power outage, the lights went off and on for just a second, my
partner and I looked at each other strangely, we thought that maybe the light had gone out in that area but the
power plant had to keep working, because for obvious reasons the morgue could
not be left without electricity because when preserving bodies of deceased
people, it must have a special temperature.
We had already finished preparing the deceased when the light suddenly
went out again, but this time we were left in the dark, we could not see
absolutely anything, I tried to look for my phone under the suit I was wearing
for work, then my partner told me that there seemed to be light outside, we
left the morgue and indeed there was light in the corridor.
My partner decided to go talk to the security guard to see what was
going on. I stayed there at the door waiting for him. I remember that on my
cell phone I tried to search the Internet for some news about the light, but
there was nothing. After a few minutes my partner came back and said that the
security guard had already gone to check the power plant. We just had to wait a
little while to finish our job.
So we were there for a few minutes until the security guard who was on
duty that night came to tell us that he had to call maintenance and we had to
wait longer, surely they wouldn't take long because as I said before it is
essential that a place like this have power.
Not more than a few minutes had passed when we noticed that the light
had returned, although the maintenance staff had not yet arrived, so we went
back into the morgue and prepared to end the work day. What was our surprise
when we entered and saw that the man's body was no longer on the table we used
to work.
I looked at my partner who was as surprised as I was, we stood there
for a second not knowing what to do, then someone knocked on the door, it was
the security guard, he told us that the maintenance people were going to take
longer than expected, but that they had insisted on going to see that there was
no major damage, he was talking to us about this when suddenly I couldn't help
but tell him that the body was not there, the words just came out of my mouth.
We were all silent for a moment, until I suggested that we should look
carefully inside the morgue. I knew that at that moment the drawers in the
refrigerator where the bodies were kept were empty, since we usually only used
them when two bodies arrived in a row in one day or on very rare occasions when
there was work left for the next day, but that is not common, so I approached
the drawers.
Never before in my years of work had I felt fear, but I must confess
that at that moment I felt a chill, my hands were sweating and every time I
opened one of the doors I expected to find the body that minutes before had
been lying on the work table. I went to open the last one and there was
nothing. We didn't know how it had happened but the body was no longer in the
morgue.
After looking for him there, we went to the guard's post where the
security cameras were. We watched the videos, first the one from the hallway
where we could see the moment when my partner and I had left. Then we watched
the videos from inside the morgue. Everything seemed normal. We could see the
moment when the light had gone out for
just a second and a few minutes later it went out completely.
At that moment the camera took a second to adjust to night vision, then
the body was no longer there, we returned the video because we could not
believe what we had just seen, out of nowhere when there was light the body was there but as soon as the
light went out the table was empty.
We were left without knowing what to do, there was no explanation for
what we were seeing, so the security guard suggested that we look at the
recordings from the other cameras, that's when we discovered that there was
only one place where the power had also completely gone out, it was the coffin
storage room, at that moment the entrance bell rang, it was the maintenance
staff, so the security guard went to open the door for them while my partner
and I went to the storage room.
We started looking inside the coffins, it seemed crazy that we were
doing this, at one point my partner called me, he had found a coffin that
looked half open, he lifted the lid, there was the body and we had no logical
explanation for this.
My coworker changed jobs a month after this event, the security guard who was on duty that night also left after a couple of months, I guess he told some of his coworkers because on several occasions the people sent by the security company asked us if we had ever seen anything strange, there was even one who told me that sometimes he heard noises coming from the morgue , I was working there for almost two years, I never saw anything like what happened to us that night again, but I always felt that there was a different energy in that place.
Copyright © 2018 Prabir Rai Chaudhuri
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