28 Funeral Directors On The Craziest Thing To Happen To Them At Work
December 31st, 2013
Now that 2013 is officially ending , it’s time to think about your most memorable moments this year.
And let’s face it, when you work at a funeral home, weird stuff happens. All the time. That’s why we asked funeral professionals “What’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened to you at your funeral home?” on Facebook recently.
The answers were hilarious to say the least. So hilarious that we want to share them with you. Check out the craziest stories we’ve heard so far, then tell us about your own crazy experience in the comments below!
1. A not-so-deceased husband
“I’ve had a reverend talk about the deceased woman finally being with her dead husband who was actually alive and well and in the front row [at the service].”
– Marika M.
2. Funeral directors on the run
“When the funeral we were conducting decided to follow a hearse from another funeral. We had to chase them all the way to the church to retrieve them!”
– Andy P.
3. Cat lady
“A cat laying on its owner in the casket.”
– Debi I.
4. The circle of life
“One woman went into labor and gave birth at the funeral home!”
– Donice H.
5. Hidden cell phone
“Dropping my cell phone from my pocket into the casket while transferring the deceased. We didn’t even notice. I was on call that night, so I went out and got a new phone because I couldn’t find mine. Right before they closed the casket, the funeral director nonchalantly checked under the deceased person’s legs and… THERE IT WAS! Can you imagine if I didn’t get a new phone… it could have started ringing during the viewing! GASP!”
– Kimberly P.
6. Put up your dukes
“A fist fight…. but thankfully the law was there at the request of the family….whew!”
– Theresa W.
7. One tiny mix-up
“I went to the wrong viewing and didn’t know a single person there. I acted like I did though… I expressed my condolences, signed the guest book, even gave hugs! Then I shot outta there!”
– LaMona F.
8. Need an arm?
“While I was doing the hair on a body, alone, in a very old house that had been turned into a funeral home, an arm slipped off the gurney.”
-Janis R.
9. Ring around the Rosie
“A doll that sang “Ring around the Rosie” started singing inside the casket after we closed it for the funeral service. The deceased (whose name was Rosie) was a 45-year-old woman with Down’s Syndrome and it was her favorite doll. It went off randomly throughout the funeral service at least four or five times.”
– Pat F.
10. Angry walker
“My boss at the funeral home was caught in the crossfire of an angry grandmother throwing her walker.”
– Marika M.
11. One tiny mix-up
“Myself and one other lady were working the evening shift at the funeral home processing insurance claims, death certificates, etc. We were the only people in the building and could see each other’s desks across the room (this was before cell phones too). There was a knock on the door, and it was the police saying someone had dialed 911 from the funeral home…”
– Nancy M.
12. Sorry about your luck
“Most embarrassing moment… just last night, my husband, speaking with the widow says “sorry about your luck”. I called him out on it, he SHOULD of said ‘sorry for your loss’”.
– Tonyai E.
13. UFC breakout
“A professional UFC fighter passed away and I had to break up a fight out in front of the chapel between his sister and his ex-girlfriend. That was a fun one!”
– Taryn C.
14. Talk about bad timing
“Not while i was working, but when my father passed away, I was making his arrangements at another funeral home and the funeral director asked me out on a date. Just wasn’t the appropriate time.”
– Rachel K.
15. The wrong procession
“My husband was carrying the casket to the grave and I was trying to tell him that we didn’t know those people. We were following the wrong procession from the funeral home! Luckily, the right cemetery was just across the street.”
– Elsie G.
16. When tragedy strikes
“I was directing a funeral for an elderly man, and his wife died during the service. Right in the front row. No words could ever describe how I felt that day…”
– Julian J.
17. Strange traditions
“There was a Hmong service where they butchered a cow and gave everyone a piece of meat for luck.”
– Louana L.
18. Breaking and entering
“The craziest thing that ever happened to me at a funeral home was when someone tried to break into the funeral home in the middle of the night. I lived in the apartment right upstairs. People should really be more afraid of the living than the dead!”
– Danielle W.
19. A private chicken dinner
“The funeral home I worked for didn’t allow food. One night I was working a visitation and I walked into the men’s room to check on cleanliness and re-stock it. Suddenly I realized there was a guy sitting on the corner of the sink eating a chicken dinner. He looked at me and quickly said ‘I’ll put this away’. I just looked at him and said ‘if you have enough guts to eat in the bathroom, be my guest’.”
– Thomas L.
20. A funeral war zone
“When gunfire erupted at the committal service. I took cover behind a big black granite monument!!”
– Ralph T.
21. Impatient widower
“Having a widower ask me out while we were doing the committal service for his wife.”
– Vicki K.
22. Mistress at a funeral
“I picked up the mistress in the limo… instead of the widow.”
– Thomas S.
23. A mysterious limousine
“We had a funeral for a man who was a blue collar worker. He always said he never wanted fancy cars (i.e. limousines) in his funeral because he could never afford such cars. When he died, he left behind his wife and unmarried daughter. They said they would be too upset to drive themselves, so they asked for a small limousine. We led the procession to church and when we left the church, the limo would not start. The battery was completely dead. I apologized profusely, and secured a ride for them with the cousins behind the limo in the procession. When we returned from the cemetery after the funeral, the limo started right up.”
– Stephen H.
24. Slick move
“I got a brand new pair of tights (the really slick kind). I realized I forgot my underwear, so I just slipped them on over the tights. When I got to work, I started walking towards the backdoor where an older father-type co-worker was standing. When I got to the door, I felt something funny around my ankles and I looked down in horror to find my underwear around my ankles. The co-worker covered his eyes, I gasped, and I quickly slid them off my feet and in my pocket. We both started laughing so hard and swore to keep it a secret. Hey, if you can’t laugh at yourself…”
-Kimberly P.
25. Wrong time for a crash
“We had a car crash through the funeral home while leaving with a funeral!”
– Chuck T.
26. Angel lust
“Duck taping down ‘angel lust’. I looked at my co worker and said, ‘how much can they pay someone to do this?’ LOL.”
– Jeffrey J.
27. One pricey funeral
“Had a family member pull a pistol on me during arrangements because he thought the cost was too high on the casket he had chosen!!”
– Clay H.
28. Amazing grace
“I had a woman preach the funeral of her own son. After calling him a litany of derogatory names, she proceeded to call her boyfriend (who was younger than her deceased son) to the front podium, then asked me to ‘play that song’, and as I played Amazing Grace, she and her man slow danced in front of her son’s casket. No lie.”
– Dylan S.
What’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened to you at work? Tell us in the comments below!
These are pretty funny!
Minister finished the committal service at the grave, the wife stood up to leave and said, “I always did hate that son of bitch”
My first week of mortuary school I had to pick up an old deceased lady in the middle of the night. Not being familar with unexpected sounds the bodies can make, I went to put her on the gurney and she let out this loud “aaahhhh” sound…..I think I wet my pants…and don’t think I ever moved so fast in my life!
Thanks, a great collection of stories, here is my favourite.
Sid is a window cleaner who owns a rusty white van on which he carries his ladders with a grubby white rag flying on the overhang. Sid also drives our hearse and acts as bearer when required. One morning he delivered a coffin to the crematorium early, then on to do a collection many miles away. Sue, the funeral director and the celebrant prepared to leave for the funeral but her car refused to start. The only option left as time was tight was to grab the keys to Sid’s van and head poste-haste for the crematorium. Half way up the drive they met a cortege consisting of the smartest horse-drawn hearse imaginable. Sue yelled to her colleague ‘duck’ as they passed and proceeded to find a parking space well hidden behind the bins, rags still flying! Jean F
I think I was 19 or 20 at the time it happened. Was at the committal and the family and friends had gotten in their cars to leave and I was helping the grave diggers pick of the grass and chairs. We were on a slight downward angle on a hill and I was walking the boards on the edge of the grave and I fell in on top of the casket. Brand new suit pants ripped to shreds so I was in all my glory and covered in red clay mud. Well one of the sons had stopped at another grave and evidently seen me fall in and came running after me. I was so embrassed and the only concern I had at the moment was did I cave the casket in. I appoligized to the son and all he could say was that had to be dad that pushed you in. That was his sense of humor. Well the son helped me out and I finshed watching the grave diggers finish up. Then proceeded to make my way back to the funeral home. We had another visitation going. I had to sneak my way into the garage and strip down and shower and change.
LOL that story sounds pretty epic Eric! Thanks for sharing… definitely a great addition to the conversation!
Hahahha, I’m still laughing Jean, thanks for sharing this wonderful story!
LOL Cortney that’s hilarious! Funeral service is always interesting when you’re first getting started!
Oh my gosh, that’s hilarious. I would have a very difficult time not laughing!
Book limousines during such stressful situations to take care of your guests.
When my father (a retired army soldier and jack-of-all trades) died. We had the nicest service, and at the conclusion, we were supposed to follow the hearse to the cemetery several miles away. Having used this funeral home 9 months previously, we had gotten to know our funeral director well and had shared several laughs during the grieving process when my mother died. Well, all the mourners had left the funeral home and my 5 siblings, all of our spouses and children, and ourselves were getting ready to leave the funeral home when our favorite funeral director approached my husband and I with the news that he had left the headlights on, on the hearse early that morning, and now it had a dead battery and wouldn’t start, with my father already loaded into the back. We had a really good laugh about that. My father had worked as a mechanic as a second job while raising a family with six kids, and he would have gotten a kick out needing to jump start the hearse to get to the cemetery on time for the interment. I have the best photograph of my brother in his suit and my husband wearing his Snap On Tools jacket, jump starting the hearse with my brothers old broken down looking pick up truck. My mother and dad would have been laughing so hard at the site of that happening.
One morning little John made his round and found a customer in the coffin with her nose gnawed off.
Since I was the Embalmer we wheeled the body back to the operation room and I proceeded to boil the wax as a new nose was in order her. This was done and the remains brought back to the parlor for viewing at 2:00 PM that day.
I went out to assist on a funeral and when I came back the nose was gone again so I wheeled the casket back on a church truck and began to restore the nose a second time wondering what the hell happened here, did someone cut the nose off or what? This time removing the body on a dressing table while I applied my restorative arts on the nose (Boiling the wax)
All of a sudden I heard a hell of noise in the car garage next door and to my amazement Robert was holding a Rat in one hand with a 2X4 in the other. There was a Rat in the casket, he killed it with that 2X4.
I wrote a song about the incident on http://www.youtube.com called “There’s a Rat toot toot in the casket”
Someone told the family and Mrs. Sigmund got a free funeral with Pallbearers, hearse, new nose and all.
One time I was driving the hearse at a Jewish funeral and I guess from habit you get used to things.
This time during the stop at the grave and all that’s happening there with the Rabbi and all.
Then with all the commotion going on in the back I understood the casket was out of the hearse so I took off with the hearse to our nearest coffee spot while the burial ceremony was happening at the cemetery (so I thought)
I no sooner got there to the coffee shop when a car pulled up behind the hearse and said the body and the casket was still in the hearse so I quickly turned around and drove back to the cemetery where I was certainly apologetic to the survivors….It was all taken with a little bit of humor..
wow
During a home removal, as we carried the deceased through the living room, her brother stopped us, patted her arm and said, “You boys take good care of her. That’s my baby sister.”
My boss, the owner of the funeral home looked at him and asked, “Does she have any brothers and sisters who are still alive?”
[…] chillar. Incluso se sabe que se pelean a puñetazos en medio de la funeraria, como se relata en el Blog Funeral Uno. Se necesita un tipo de persona bastante especial para convertirse en director de funeraria. Lo […]