Gruesome Things You See Working in A Hospital Morgue

Ciara F. Bates
3 min readFeb 3, 2022

From strange noises to graphic encounters, experiences I had transporting dead bodies in a hospital morgue.

Photo By Dabarti CGI on Shutterstock

When I was in college, I spent some time working in a hospital morgue. I was interested in the medical field, and I had a passion for helping people (mostly LIVING people…but I took what I could get at the time). I soon realized that working with dead bodies could be pretty gruesome, indeed. I’ll never forget the time I was transporting a recently deceased older man from the room where he died, down to the morgue; it was one of my first solo jobs. Alone in the elevator…well, just the corpse and me — when suddenly, I heard a low moan, and a ghastly gurgling sound — in zombie-esque fashion, the dead man sat right up on the stretcher, body bag and all.

I managed to make it off the elevator without having a heart attack and prematurely joining my new friend in the “great beyond”. Of course, they keep the morgue down in the bowels of the hospital — I couldn’t wait to step out of that enclosed, metal box! I remember inquiring of the morgue keeper about the chilling occurrence and apparently, it’s not at all uncommon for dead people to make all sorts of strange sounds. After death, gas in the body can become pressurized and escape through the windpipe causing groans, hisses and gurgling. Even the change in position was not unheard…

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Ciara F. Bates

Children’s Book Author. 📚 Content Writer. Mental Health Advocate. 🧠 Pre-Launch Team Sign Up —— https://linktr.ee/cfbwriting