Buzz
Who would choose to lie beside a deceased individual? Surprisingly, many have. Sometimes it was due to age, while other times, alcohol played a part. There were instances of deliberate necrophilia, as well as chilling cases involving cold-blooded murder.
In each of the following tales, a living person found themselves resting next to someone who had long passed their prime. Truly bizarre companions in bed.
10. Wellman’s Arctic Expedition
Stranded in a stone cabin on Franz Josef Land, Bernt Bentsen and Paul Bjorvik made a solemn vow. If one of them perished, the other would keep the body safe inside the hut to guard it from polar bears until it could be properly buried.
As fate would have it, stationed on the isolated archipelago in the dead of winter in 1898, Bentsen passed away. With little food and no fuel, Bjorvik kept his promise. He placed his friend's body in a sleeping bag and shared the cramped hut with him.
To lift his spirits during the agonizing wait for the rest of the expedition to return, Bjorvik would read poetry by Henrik Ibsen to his frozen companion.
At last, after two months, the remaining members of the expedition arrived, and Bentsen was given a shallow burial beneath a pile of stones.
9. All The Houses Looked Alike
Late one night, a young man from Philadelphia was simply trying to find his boarding house. He was exhausted and, admittedly, a little tipsy. His only problem was that every boarding house along the street looked identical.
After a brief moment of confusion, he selected a house, walked inside, and made his way upstairs to his second-floor room. Inside, he searched for matches but quickly gave up when he couldn’t find them where he expected. He undressed, crawled into bed, and fell into a deep sleep.
At first, he didn’t notice the hard bed or the absence of covers, but in the middle of the night, he rolled over and found something cold beside him.
His eyes snapped open, and in the dim moonlight, he saw a well-dressed corpse lying next to him on what he soon realized was a table. The young man sprang out of bed, hastily dressed, and fled the building in a panic.
It was soon revealed that not only had he entered the wrong house, but a death had occurred in the neighboring house. The body he had unknowingly slept beside was prepared for viewing the following day. This happened in 1860.
8. The Perils of Sleeping Homeless
There was a time when it was not uncommon for homeless individuals to seek shelter in barns, sneaking in after dark to escape the harsh elements. For example, during the winter of 1901, a man named Steerson, described as a wanderer, slipped into a barn in Ohio, only to find that someone else was already inside.
However, Steerson didn’t mind and settled in close to the other man, quickly falling asleep. It wasn’t until the first light of morning filtered into the barn that Steerson awoke to realize he had spent the night next to a dead body. The authorities were notified, and it turned out the body belonged to a burglar who had been fatally wounded while fleeing a crime scene.
A similar event occurred in 1921 in Yarrawonga, Australia. One evening, James Kinno entered a small caretaker’s hut and found another man curled up on the floor. James greeted the man, but received no response. Assuming the man was just drunk, James made himself a spot on the floor and fell asleep.
When James awoke the next morning, he noticed the other man had not moved during the night. Reluctant to touch him with his hands, James cautiously reached out with his foot and nudged the man’s leg. To his horror, he discovered that his hut companion was completely stiff.
The authorities were called in, and it was concluded that the body had been lying there for about three days. The smell must have been horrific, but perhaps it was no worse than the stench of some of the other places James had stayed, and as a result, it didn’t immediately raise any alarms.
7. One of the Survivors
Henry Hughes was born in 1825 in North Wales. By the time he was 11, he was already working in the coal mines, just like many other boys of his age.
One day, a cave-in occurred, trapping Henry and 30 other miners deep underground without food or water. Within three days, 12 people succumbed to suffocation.
Henry found himself trapped in a small space, just 1.2 meters (4 ft) high and wide, with only about 15 centimeters (6 in) of mud beneath him. Being so young, Henry was fortunate that another trapped boy, John Jones, took him in his arms and kept him out of the mud.
As time went on, gases filled the tomb, causing the men to lose consciousness. Nine men drowned in the mud, while the rest suffocated, but Henry remained in the arms of young John. When help finally arrived and Henry was roused, he found that his friend had died, holding him safely away from the suffocating mud.
Henry was the sole survivor of the mining disaster.
6. She Searched His Pockets
In 1947, a tragic tale of spousal abuse emerged from Perth.
John Johnstone maintained it wasn’t murder. He was simply furious after finding his wife going through his pockets when he returned home drunk. Her invasion of his privacy triggered his rage, leading him to strike her. His wife collapsed, unconscious, on the floor, but he claimed to be sober enough to pick her up and place her on the bed. He then lay beside her and, in his drunken stupor, passed out.
When he awoke the next morning, he realized that his strike had killed his wife. In a panic, he grabbed her lifeless body and carried it to a wooden shed outside his apartment.
Soon after, he went back to the shed. Hoping to erase the evidence of his crime, he took her body and discarded it in a railway yard, where it was later discovered by the police. Johnstone was arrested, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and was sentenced to ten years of penal servitude.
5. A Distorted Love Story
Numerous books recount the strange events of Key West, Florida, but this twisted love story surpasses them all.
Carl Tanzler, a German bacteriologist and radiologist, worked at a tuberculosis hospital where he met the woman of his dreams, Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos. Tragically, Maria was diagnosed with tuberculosis and passed away under Tanzler's care.
Believing that Maria was his one true love, Tanzler convinced her family to let him build a mausoleum for her. For two years, he visited her resting place, but that was not enough to satisfy his growing obsession with the Cuban beauty.
Without the knowledge of her family, Tanzler stole Maria's body and began conducting experiments to bring her back to life. He coated her remains in beeswax and treated her chemically. As her hair fell out, he gave her a new head of tresses.
For seven years, Tanzler shared his bed with Maria's body until rumors began circulating about his macabre secret—he had her corpse in his home.
In the fall of 1940, the police arrived, and there, on his bed, they found Maria's waxen remains, now resembling a lifeless 'doll.'
Maria’s body was returned to her family, but Tanzler was never prosecuted for his actions since the statute of limitations had run out. He spent the rest of his life in relative obscurity.
4. A Nap In The Park
In 1949, Francis Crotty, 20, was in a fish shop in Western Australia with two friends when an argument with another patron escalated into a fight. Crotty was knocked unconscious, and his friends carried him to a nearby park for safety.
For several hours, his friends waited beside him, one even resting his head on Crotty’s lifeless body, hoping he would wake up. But he never did.
An autopsy later revealed that after being dragged to the park, Crotty had become ill from the punch he received and choked on his own vomit. His friends, though loyal, did not realize that he needed medical attention, not just fresh air in the park.
3. Eastern State Penitentiary
A stay at Eastern State Penitentiary was never a pleasant experience, especially considering it housed infamous criminals such as Al Capone and “Slick Willie” Sutton. However, in 1903, a particularly horrific incident took place.
Cornelius Bush, serving time for assault and battery, and James Pratt, incarcerated for burglary, were confined together in their cell. With little to occupy them, they engaged in a heated argument over religion.
When the argument ended, Pratt lay down to sleep, but Bush remained angry. In a fit of rage, Bush picked up a stool and crushed Pratt’s skull. Then, using a table knife, he decapitated Pratt.
All the excitement must have finally exhausted Bush, as his next action was to climb onto the bed and fall asleep next to his deceased cellmate.
The following morning, after Bush had risen, a guard discovered Pratt’s mutilated body wrapped in the sheets. His severed head was separately wrapped in an old shirt and placed on a table inside the cell.
2. After 50 Years Of Marriage
Old newspaper articles often recount stories of elderly individuals sharing their beds with deceased spouses, but none are as poignant as the tale of Evan Williams, 74 years old in 1929.
Evan and Ellen, 72, had been married for half a century in Fairfield, New South Wales. They had never spent a day apart, but Ellen's health had begun to decline due to heart problems, causing her to sometimes lapse into silence for days during her more serious spells of illness.
In May of that year, Ellen became unresponsive. She would not answer her husband’s questions. Assuming she was simply ill and would recover with rest, Evan continued with his routine and went to bed beside her each night.
This continued for about ten or eleven days. Eventually, Evan had to face the reality that Ellen had passed away, and he made his way to the police. There, he shared, 'After a few days, I finally felt the loneliness, and I came to the conclusion that she had gone. I didn’t think she would leave me...'
When the police entered the home, they found poor Ellen in a horribly deteriorated condition. Her eyes were missing, and much of her nose had decayed. Her body, reduced to skin and bones, was taken to the morgue, while Evan returned to their quiet, desolate home to live the remainder of his life.
1. Beyond Death
In February 1913, a skeleton wrapped in cloth was discovered by police in a bed within a house in Wimborne Minster, England. The bizarre and deeply emotional story that followed was one that would remain in the memories of many.
For three decades, two women shared their home and were said to be 'deeply devoted to one another.' After one of them passed away, the surviving woman was so overwhelmed with grief that she spent two nights lying on top of the deceased, hoping that the love she had would somehow bring her back to life.
As is well known, the deceased did not come back to life. Instead, the heartbroken woman kept her lover’s body in the bed, holding onto the hope that when her time came, they would be buried together forever.
