Have you ever smelled a decaying human body?

Question

Fortunately, I have not. Is it really the worst smell ever?

Answer 1

Yes, I have. The old man across the street had not been seen in a few day's, so I started worrying. I went and knocked, the kids went and knocked. Nothing. Other neighbors said he might have went on a trip. I kept worrying. We kept knocking. Then we noticed flies on the windows, and an awful smell. I called 911. I told them the situation, I told them that I was scared that he may be injured or dead. They never came...... I called again.....They never came.....I went over there, and put a chair by the window, and looked in. He was on the bed,dead.....covered in flies. There was a terrible stench. I went back home and called 911 again. I said, OK....I have called you all several times. Yall did not come. I took it upon myself to look in the window. He is dead, it stinks, and there are flies all over him. Will you come now? Within minutes, they were there. It took a special team of people to remove him. He had been dead for 2 weeks in the middle of July, with no air conditioning. It was the worst smell of my life..........The News Paper read: "Police find dead body" I had bad dreams for a long time.

Answer 2

I know the beginning smell of a dead body. The guy was my friend and landlord. Bad heart caused by a car accident during boot camp some 30+ yrs before, so he was on meds and vitamins. Died styling his hair after a shower. His wife went shopping and came home an hour or so later (she said), and she came screaming to my cottage that she couldn t get the bathroom door open, but she thinks husband had heart attack because she sees him thru the window lying on the floor. Police, ambulance, coroner come eventually. Within a couple hours, I detected something like a vinegar-chemical smell. I didn t say anything to his wife, also my friend. In his case, it only took a couple hrs.

Answer 3

Fortunately I have not, but my husband was a cop for a long time, and he used to have to be around dead bodies a lot. He said that the smell is so bad that is is absolutely impossible to describe.

Answer 4

Unfortunately yes. There had been this little girl in the town I grew up in who had been missing for a few months. They found her body about a mile from our house. She had been crammed inside a ceramics kiln & as the weather got warmer, the smell became noticeable & someone called the cops. Once they opened the kiln you could smell it all the way over to where we lived. It was horrible.

Answer 5

Yes.....I was a Detective for 28 years in a large US City & we exhumed bodies which had been buried for 10 years. Embalming really does preserve the body to some extent. I worked Undercover; but the Homicide Guys really got some pretty ripe bodies . A good buddy of mine who was a Detective in the Medical Examiners Office used to tell me how they would recover bodies from the water & after the bodies were brought to the M.E.'s Office---Crabs would often crawl out of the bodies.

Answer 6

A homicide detective told me - the smell is so bad that they generally put Vicks Vapo Rub up their noses before entering the room where the body is. This is so they can stand it, and do their work. They also said the smell is very hard to get out of their hair, so they try to protect it also. Bad!!

Answer 7

Not yet decaying, but when I was an EMT my VERY FIRST CALL was a dead guy in a tiny little like 8 x 8 room and the room reeked of death and when we asked the family when he took his last breath they said a couple hours ago and then got really pissed off cuz we didn't give him some "oxygen or something". lol.

Answer 8

No, I have not. But I've always been very curious to visit a morgue. I used to work in a hospital and the morgue was downstairs (ironically, next to the cafeteria) but it remains fascinating to me in some bizarre way.

Answer 9

Yuck.. I never smell it but it sounds eeww! Even if you ask people around you it smell really worst ever!

Answer 10

No, I haven't. But I've smelled decaying animals, nasty!