Urban Legend

Being as I've been around the funeral business for much of my life, I've come across many people who have relatives, or friends of relatives, who have also worked in the funeral business, usually in a menial capacity such as car washer or pall bearer. Inevitably, these people I come in contact with relay a story to me, which has been told to them via an uncle or a friend of their father's. The stories are remarkably similar with very few variations.

They usually begin with originator of the story picking up a body with the funeral director or simply just hanging around the funeral home, because of course, they were good friends of the owner. All of a sudden, without so much as an "excuse me", the body sits straight up, scaring the whits out of the poor worker. At this point of the story, the funeral director usually laughs and tells the person that it happens all the time.

Now, as anyone who has made it past 9th grade biology would know, there is ZERO chance of a dead human body sitting straight up as described in these stories. Zero! Of course, I relay that fact knowing full well that the person telling the story would swear on a stack of Bibles that it actually happened, even though he didn't actually see it and only heard the story second or even third hand.

I apologize to those of you reading this blog who have been told by an uncle or the mailman's cousin that this happened to them, and you believed it. It didn't. Trust me. However, please don't let it prevent you from telling it to the next funeral director you meet.

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