The Crying Corpse

A Personal Encounter by Dr. Girija Kulkarni (Pune, Maharashtra)

This happened when I was into my second year of Medical School. Usually we had to stay back in the hospitals either to assist the seniors or work over our cases. Let me confess that I, being the first doctor in our family, was never used to seeing so much of blood, pain & death lying around - not to mention the nauseous smell of the medicines & chemicals. Most of my first year went into crying for home, puking during practicals and crying more...

It was somewhere in the month of August that I and my classmate Sheena stayed back in the morgue to complete our case studies. Just the same morning, a critical case had arrived in the hospital wherein a woman of 40-45 was badly hit by a speeding car. The woman breathed her last about an hour after being admitted to the ICU. Her family, including her parents, her two daughters and her relatives were mourning endlessly. Apparently, the woman was a widow - her daughters were crying dreadfully, kneeling before their mother's dead body. Me and Sheena were horrified watching the total chaos. 

It was around 9 pm and we were working over an teenage accident case. Suddenly, we realised that the dead widow was lying just two bodies away. We were overcome with a whist of fear and depression, especially because we had seen that very woman pass away this morning. We started talking about what would happen to her little daughters and her parents. 

All of a sudden, Sheena shrieked and pointed out horrifyingly at the woman. I turned around and saw that tears were trickling down the dead woman's eyes. I was shocked for a moment but then I thought this might be some kind of biological reaction (something like rigor mortis). I told Sheena to calm down - I told her this might be some kind of after-death reaction and we should note it down so that we can ask our professors about it. This calmed Sheena for a while. 

However, after 5 mins, we could hear distinct noises - more of moans coming out of the woman's body. Tears continued to trickle down. It was as if the woman was either alive somewhere and moaning or she dead and repenting it. Either ways, I and Sheena were scared and ran out to call for help. Our seniors came inside and checked the body. Surprisingly, there were no moans - the body was lying as cold as ever. 

Today, even after 8 years, we still have this memory fresh in our mind.