A new BBC Sounds podcast, mortem, is tackling the ethical dilemmas around our love of true crime, by having presenter, Carla Valentine, 'investigate' fictional crimes, but with a real forensic scientist. Here Carla, a mortician with two decades of experience, reveals why she thinks it's so important we continue to demystify stories around death
When I’d been studying forensic and biological sciences at university for a couple of terms, I trotted down to the local mortuary and asked if I could intern there. I was surprisingly warmly welcomed. At the time forensics wasn’t such a popular topic as it is now, and presumably young students offering to mop up blood and empty bins full of hazardous waste were few and far between.
When I returned home after my first shift there, my mother - who’d been discussing my new volunteer role with work colleagues - had a story to tell me. She said someone there told her that they ‘knew someone who knew someone’s boyfriend who’d been to the doctor with a rash on his penis, and it turned out the rash was caused by a “germ” which you could only catch from dead bodies.’ She ended the sentence with a knowing nod, her eyes wide with the salacious shock drawn from that disgusting conclusion.
I facepalmed myself at this titbit of knowledge, knowing it’s an urban legend. The truth is, there isn’t a specific bacteria or fungi you can only find on dead bodies but I didn’t want to tell my enthusiastic mother, for the millionth time, that the ‘facts’ she kept gifting me with were nonsense. I nodded and patted her shoulder, while silently vowing to do something about it another day. Fast forward 20 years and I recently saw this exact same story as a ‘Tinder fail’ which went viral after a girl posted this had happened to her with someone she’d met using the app. Nothing really changes.
Today, I’m a Senior Anatomical Pathology Technologist (APT) and much of my adult life has been spent assisting pathologists at autopsy (by day) then answering questions about death and the post-mortem process (by night) like some sort of death-oracle.
I’ve always been popular at cocktail parties.
But it’s only natural that people are curious about death, when most information on the topic comes from fictional media and the internet. Lots of death-related changes - or ‘post-mortem artefacts’ as we refer to them - don’t happen in the ways they’re often portrayed in the media, or via urban legend.
Demystifying death can be fun at a dinner party, particularly because I’m asked about penises with alarming regularity (hey, it says more about you guys than it does about me).
With that in mind I’ve put together a list of questions I’m most often asked, along with the answers, so that going forward I can drink my cocktails in peace...
“Do hair and fingernails continue to grow after death?”
No they don’t, but there are a couple of reasons why they may appear to do so. For one, when a person dies they begin to dehydrate. If there’s stubble on a man’s chin and he begins to lose moisture from his cells, the skin shrinks closer to the hair’s root, making the hair appear more prominent. The same happens to the pads of the fingers and the cuticles as they too begin to dry out and the skin pulls away from the nails, making them look longer.
Rigor mortis - the process in which the deceased stiffens due to a lack of energy in the cells - is fairly well known, and this phenomenon includes absolutely all the muscles of the body. This means that miniscule arrector pili muscles that control the roots of the hair, and are usually responsible for creating ‘goosebumps’, also stiffen, causing the hairs to stand on end: another reason they appear to continue to grow.
“Do post-mortem erection or ejaculations happen?”
No: post-mortem erection or death erection - also called ‘Angel Lust’ - can occur in swift deaths and is a result of muscular spasms rather than sexual stimulation. It’s said that men who die by hanging have a higher chance of this occurring and this is due to the position they’re in. Blood pools in the penis due to simple gravity as they’re hanging vertically. What’s more common is apparent ejaculation; which is more of a slow seepage of semen from the prostate gland. The muscles that hold these various fluids in simply stop working at death, and they are released.
“Do dead bodies burp, fart and groan”?
Yes, although not to the terrifying extent sometimes described in the media. If medical resuscitation has occurred, air will have been pumped into the lungs and abdomen of the dying patient. Alternatively, during decomposition, gases are created by bacteria as they consume the flesh, causing the deceased to bloat. That gas and air has to escape somehow and will often come out as a groan if it flows past the vocal cords. It’s disconcerting to say the least, but natural. However, if it’s accompanied by the corpse sitting up, I’d run.
“Do you pull the deceased out of the fridge to do a viewing like on television?”
No, never. In the UK our body fridges contain several occupied shelves behind one door so next of kin would not only be subject to the awful experience of seeing their loved one in that cold, clinical environment but probably also several pairs of strangers’ feet. In one mortuary I worked at some undertakers took it upon themselves to do a viewing like this in the middle of the night, having ‘seen it on telly.’ They brought a devastated, bereaved couple into the fridge room and pulled the deceased out for them to see, whipping back the plastic of the body bag. They shouldn’t have been put through that.
READ MORE: Are Millennials Running Faster And Harder From Death Than Any Other Generation?
READ MORE: Digital Mourning: Has Social Media Changed The Way We Grieve For Good?