25 Gruesome Real-Life Stories About Encountering A Corpse

24. “I’m almost certain the cat started to get at some parts of his body for food.”

I used to work for a city, and I went on a 12-hour ride-along shift with a cop buddy of mine one night (immediately after finishing my 8-hour shift at work). First call we got was this guy that called and got into his friend’s house after not hearing from him for a few days. He said he knew something was off and didn’t want to walk in any further after it felt eerie to him (This was winter and so it was basically dark at 6pm).

We go inside and find the decomposing body of the guy, he had drank himself to death and had been there for a few days. The smell that penetrated my nostril is still to this day the single worst odor I’ve ever smelled. A few days of gasses building up will do that to you. Anyway, he had a cat and I’m almost certain the cat started to get at some parts of his body for food.

25. “I miss you, Tom.”

There was a park worker named Tom who used to always smile at me and say hello when I was a little kid. Sometimes he would have candy or a small toy for me. Fast-forward 20 years, and I’m an adult.

Walking back from work one day I saw Tom in the park and stopped to talk to him. At this point he was close to 70 years old, but still working 50 hours a week. During our conversation he was still working, and he needed to go into the maintenance shed for something. I followed along with him, continuing the conversation. When he opened the door, I saw a bed. He had been living in the maintenance shed with no running water or electricity. I decided to let him move into my spare room, and things were going great.

I spent 4th of July weekend at my girlfriend’s house, leaving Tom by himself in the apartment. He refused to turn on the air conditioning because he didn’t want to “waste” my money. It was over 100 degrees that weekend, and we lived in a top-floor apartment in a shitty wooden building, so it had to hit 120+ inside. The heat killed him. He died drinking his morning coffee. He fell out of his chair halfway through the cup.

When I found him he had been dead for a couple days. He was discolored and slightly bloated. The smell was horrible; it took me weeks to get it out of the apartment. I called 911 (in hindsight, it wasn’t much of an emergency, but I wasn’t thinking clearly) and they came and took the body. They didn’t clean up all the bodily fluids, though, which I was not expecting. I had to do it. It was rough.

I wish he hadn’t been so concerned with wasting my money. I wish he would have turned the AC on. I miss you, Tom.

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