Redditor /c/space_manatee:

“This isn’t mine, but I took a criminal justice course back in college and the professor was a sheriff or something in Kansas back in his earlier days… in any case, this still sticks with me today over 15 years later… He responded to a call someone had made about a really bad smell. As it goes with these things, he got there and it was the worst smell he ever smelled. It had been a particularly humid summer and this was obviously something that had died. He goes in, inevitably sees the body in the bedroom, extremely obese woman, empty bottles of Jack Daniels and food wrappers all around her, and bugs just covering the body. All on top of the worst smell ever.

Seemed pretty clear what the cause of death was, probably a combination of drink and poor health with a lack of ability to move. As he gets closer, he realizes that she is moving, not just moving but breathing. They eventually get her out and into the ER (I want to say some specialized equipment was needed because of her obesity) and there are bugs living in her mouth and throat. She died from complications from the whole ordeal, but the idea of being eaten alive by bugs and them essentially colonizing your body while you are still alive sounded pretty terrible.”

Redditor /c/muklan:

“My ex worked at a funeral home, they had a…customer, I guess, who committed suicide with a reciprocal saw. Like a jigsaw. Through her forehead. It was very clear that it wasn’t easy, as she tried more than once before it was done. My ex said they had to turn the saw on to remove it.”

Redditor /c/Briseadh:

“Not a coroner but in the emergency services. Went to a death once where the guy had suddenly dropped at the side of the road and his co-workers didn’t know what had happened.

He worked for a company cutting grass verges in our town and had a ride on mower which was transported on the back of a trailer. The back of the trailer dropped down to form a ramp but was held under tension by a spring.

It turned out the bolt holding the spring was rusted and on this occasion the tension of the ramp coming down had sheared off the bolt head and fired it at him with huge force from the sudden release… it hit him square on in the carotid artery. Didn’t pierce the skin at all but ruptured it under the skin causing him to die within seconds. Weirdest death I have ever been to. Poor guy was only in his 40s/50s and had kids and a wife who waved him off to work that day. I was glad I didn’t have to go and give them the death message, wouldn’t have known where to begin.

If it had hit him anywhere else he would have had a big bruise and nothing more- there was a square inch or so of an area where it had the ability to be fatal and it got him. Final destination type weirdness.”

Redditor /c/Sega32X:

“Not a coroner but I do transport and preparation for a funeral home and two things comes to mind.

The strangest confirmed cause of death I saw was a drunk guy who fell asleep on his toilet for 13ish hours. He cut off the circulation to his ass and the muscle issue died and he went septic and died. He died from his ass falling asleep.”

Redditor /c/littlelou:

“Not a coroner, but I did recently come into my grandma’s extensive genealogy of our C19 blood relatives in Texas. There were many weird stories, but this one seemed to stand out.

‘I found another grave in Pidcoke Cemetery, Coryell County that is interesting. There is only a metal marker: ‘Lewis, girl / Killed by Jack.’ Hers was the first grave in this Cemetery. I remembered as a child Mama told me about this incident. Erna Mae Griffin told me the same story. They remember this child as being a niece of Laura Lewis and that she was always spoken of as ‘Baby.’

This was a very young child. She had wandered into the yard alone when the donkey attacked her. He would pick her up and toss her into the air taking ‘hunks’ of her body out with his teeth. When her mother was able to get to her, her body was scattered all over the yard. This depressed her mother so that the rest of her life was spent sitting by the window, grieving, and pulling her hair out.’

Tl;dr: donkey rips toddler apart.”

/c/BubblegunDaisies:

“Not a coroner but a case study I analyzed in college (Criminal Justice Major)

A man is feeling a bit under the weather and stays home from work. His wife comes home later to the following scene.

House is trashed, furniture knocked over, all the knicknacks on their fireplace broken on the floor, window broken, blood splatter every where and her husband dead in a puddle of blood in the hallway with a wound to his head. Police start investigating it as a robbery-turned-murder.

Turns out he had the flu and his fever spiked so high he hallucinated and hit his head severely on the corner of the fireplace. He was delusional and stumbled around the house, fell through the window and kept tripping/knocking over things and bled out where he fell.

After that the flu seemed a lot scarier.”

Redditor /c/Quite_Obscene:

“Not a coroner- but wanted to share as I’ve never had a more relevant chance.

My grandfather used to live on a military base in Carolinas in the the 1950s. The gardener on base was cutting the long grass when he runs over a snake. The snake’s head is cut off by the lawnmower, and, mouth open- hits the gardener right in the neck with its fangs.

Gardener ended up dying from the snake’s venom. I’m truly fearful of cutting grass now.”

Redditor /c/Devil_Doge:

“Not a coroner but a cop at the time:

In September of 2015, I was on duty on my 3rd night working patrol after field training. This meant that I was patrolling in my own car without a training deputy with me. Being the new guy, naturally I had the pleasure of working graveyard shift on weekends (Fri-Mon, 11pm-7am). Anyway, I was cruising one night and got a call for a “signal 56, possible 10-7″ (accident with injuries, possibly fatal) and naturally I raced to the scene with lights and sirens. I got to the scene and discovered a motorcycle rider laying face down in a pool of blood. He was riding on a road that has a 5 mile straightaway and was testing out the top speed on his R6. He ended up hitting a large rock doing about 130-140mph and it threw him off his bike. He ended up cartwheeling end over end. He was wearing full gear and a helmet, but the force of the impact knocked his helmet off and when his head hit the pavement again, it ripped the top of his skull open. The force of the cartwheel severed his brain stem and his entire brain was found laying on the road. I’ll never forget that sight.”

Redditor /c/suitology:

“I volunteered at a hospital where a psych patient killed himself by drowning himself in a bed pan he used to collect drips from the air conditioner and piss. I’m not a coroner but I still had to help take him to the morgue.”

Redditor /c/Hypnotoad8616:

“There was a male body brought in with four bullet holes in the anterior side, all of which were in the upper chest. Additionally, there were no exit holes on the posterior side and no evidence of bullet removal. However, after performing an autopsy for over an hour, the coroner could only find two bullets.

After a lot more work, he ended up finding one bullet in the stomach and one in the small intestine. It turns out that these two bullets had actually punctured and entered the esophagus, and as he was dying his body swallowed and began to digest the two bullets.”

Redditor /c/gnommi:

“An electrician who committed suicide by some home-made device rigged to a CRT TV, basically terminals rigged to a belt-type apparatus round his chest. Electrocuted instantly, but the current still flowed so there was a pronounced “cooking” effect with some disintegration, both on-site and once the remains reached us. No info on how the body was recovered safely. The worst thing was that his grand-daughter found him when she let herself in to see him for lunch unexpectedly.”

Redditor /c/Cacachuli:

“Not a coroner. This happened at a hospital I worked at many years ago. Dude was fishing with some buddies and caught a small fish. Decided to swallow it whole on a dare. (Not sure if it was alive.) Fish stuck in his throat in the upper esophagus, and its spines lodged it there like the barb on a fish hook. At the ER, they tried to get the fish out with a scope. Ripped the tail off and the rest of it stayed in place. Ended up having to open him up. He eventually died in the hospital of sepsis.”

Redditor /c/Shloooooosh:

“Two kids from my neighborhood started jumping off of the overpass by our house onto trains. One day they jump but one of them lands on a car that has no roof and and it had a crushed mineral inside like a powder. So he went through a tarp that covered the car and disappeared in the car under the powdered mineral and suffocated trying to dig himself out.”

Redditor /c/Lanna33:

“I know a guy that was driving home from work with his coworker. They stopped at a drive thru to buy hamburgers. My friend was riding as a passenger and he started eating his hamburger. The coworker that was driving ended up traveling around a curve too fast and rolled the truck. My friend had a mouthful of food and ended up choking to death on it. Otherwise than that, he did not suffer any injuries. The driver was fine. I will not eat and ride in a vehicle at all fearing that I will die from choking on my food in accident.

Redditor /c/megkraut:

“I don’t know how true this story is. My father passed away about 10 years ago and he told me this story when I was young – probably too young to hear this story.

We were washing the car one day and he let me use the power washer to wash the suds off. Well he told me how dangerous a power washer is, and that I should never point it at someone. I was a bit clumsy and accidentally sprayed him a few times, you know just across the car. He wasn’t mad but he told me about a story of some guys he knew. My dad worked at warehouses all his life so he knew a lot of guys.

He said his friend was trying to play a prank on another guy with the power washer. He said he snuck behind him, stuck the hose up his butt, and sprayed. And it killed him. I remember thinking like “holy crap well I won’t put it up my/anyone else’s butt”. I don’t know the authenticity of this story but I tell people whenever weird death stories get brought up.”

Redditor /c/LouisevilleSnuggler:

“As a cop, I worked a scene where a dude was flayed to death. No weapon on scene, but defensive wounds on arms, hands, etc.

Blood everywhere, the ceiling, walls, and all over this little one-room migrant workers tarpaper shack.

We cleared the scene and left wondering [what] happened…

The ME later told us the weapon used was a gym sock full of 1.5 inch drywall screws. About a half-pound of spiky, angry metal in a white athletic sock…

edit: was over some cartel payback”

Redditor /c/TamerVirus:

“A friend of mine once did a summer internship at the city medical examiner’s office and she had to deal with this particular case:

So this lady is walking her dog down the sidewalk once upon a time. The dog manages to get loose from its leash and bolts into the street – right underneath a stopped garbage truck. The lady, trying to save her pupper, ducks under the truck. At that moment, the garbage truck driver, oblivious to the what’s happening, backs up and over the poor women’s head.

As my friend described it, there was nothing left above the shoulders. The dog was fine, though.”

Redditor /u/BloodyKitten:

“Strangest pet related story: Crazy cat lady died. Unknown cause of death. They weren’t able to determine anything because her 20 or so cats ate her. All that was left was basically bone and some of the stomach ‘innards’, they’d stripped most of her skin and muscle, and even had been working on the bones. I found out all of the cats were put down as a result.”

Redditor /c/beckoning_cat:

“My grandfather had a friend who died in the city from an icicle falling off a high rise and splitting his head open.”

Redditor /c/krajerino:

“Not a coroner, but this happened at a place I worked at previously…

They were doing major renovations at the building I was working in, tearing out walls and creating a whole new space for some machinery we use. Part of the renovation/demolition was to knock several new doors/passageways in the old foundation to allow access from the new part to the old. Each of these doors was 15 feet across by 12 high. The foundation was 3 to 4 feet thick. They accomplished this by drilling holes along the lines where the doors would be, spaced closely together. Then, using hand tools, they would break the wall down by causing it to crack between the holes, then falling inward.

One of the workers on this crew was behind a section of wall they were drilling the final holes, when, due to an unforeseen weakness in the foundation, then entire piece broke away and fell down on him in one piece, crushing him completely. The piece, from estimates, weighed close to 5 tons. I didn’t see it, but people in the area say he was completely flattened, with every bone in his body pulverized.

tl/dr: Construction worker squished like a grape underneath a cinder block.”

Redditor /c/BSB8728:

“There was a guy in Florida who choked to death during a contest to see who could eat the most mealworms and hissing cockroaches.”

Redditor /c/Imnotmyself125:

“I had to call the coroner one night. One of our employees had to unload a barge load of drill pipe. I understand he was pissed at being called out on a cold night, but that was part of the job. He didn’t take the time to lower the outriggers, he lifted the pipe, swung it around and when the crane started to tip over from the weight he made his second mistake, he tried to jump off the crane. The top of the cab crushed his head like an eggshell, I got there before the EMT’s, within 20 minutes of the accident, his leg was still twitching. The coroner got there and he couldn’t do anything because the body was pinned under the cab of the crane. Using jacks and shovels we lifted the crane off of his body.

I had the unenviable task of going to his home, waking up his wife to tell her what happened. He was late 50’s so at least there were no little children involved.”

Garry Hoy, a 38-year-old corporate and securities lawyer employed by a law firm in Toronto, Ontario, had a peculiar party trick that he delighted in showcasing to office visitors on the 24th floor. To prove the durability of the supposedly unbreakable office windows, Hoy would throw himself at them and rebound.

Tragically, on July 9, 1993, during a tour for young law students, Hoy chose to demonstrate his unusual feat. Regrettably, despite the glass not shattering, the entire window dislodged from its frame, leading to Hoy’s fatal fall.

Born in San Francisco in 1877, Isadora Duncan gained fame as a dancer upon relocating to Europe in her twenties. The media portrayed her life as bohemian and eccentric, with her performances championing themes of independence and self-expression.

Tragically, on September 14, 1927, Duncan found herself in the passenger seat of a newly acquired convertible sports car, attempting to master the art of driving. A mishap occurred when her large red scarf got caught in the rear wheel well on the passenger side. The scarf tightened around her neck, pulling her from the car and onto the cobblestone street.

In June 2016, Colin Scott, a 23-year-old, and his sister were touring Yellowstone National Park. In a risky move, Scott decided to experience a thermal pool by venturing beyond the designated boardwalk area, which was off-limits due to the hazardous geothermal activity.

Upon reaching a pool, Scott tried to test the water by dipping a toe, but he slipped and fell in entirely. After several hours of search and rescue efforts, they were called off when it became evident that, given the water’s acidity and heat, any potential remains were likely dissolved.