A story made for thunderstorms…..
There have been few times that I have actually witnessed
something remarkable in the funeral business. Over the decades
I would be questioned by so so many people who would inquire
to such things as…“have you ever seen a body sit up?”… or
“have you ever seen a ghost in the funeral home while at work
or during an overnight thunderstorm?” The simple answer is
from generation to generation, and are subjects made into
third rate or less TV movies. Funeral homes have always been
the subject of potential scary movies made for kids, it’s
just natural I suppose… you have some caskets, many times
a body in a preparation room and always, always, the wind
blowing, maybe a little thunder and lightning thrown in, all a
recipe for some good late night TV.
But one day, in broad daylight, I did experience an event
which I would deem to be just a bit out of the ordinary.
It was late afternoon at the funeral home, a gal in her forties
dressed smartly in a business suit entered the funeral home
un-announced and walked to my cherry desk to where I was
seated. She placed in front of me a box I assumed to be
cardboard, wrapped in brown paper with a string surrounding
its’ perimeter.
“These are my mothers’ ashes” she blurted, “they are in a vase
which broke by itself, allowing her to seep out onto the shelf
where I had the vase sitting.”
pleasantries for a moment, she giving me the details of her
Mothers passing several years ago, and how it was decided to keep the
urn, not vase, at home instead of being buried.
She went on to tell me that as she sat in silence one day at home
reading a book, she heard what she described as something close to
someone running a fingernail over a chalkboard… she said it was
very unordinary as there was no one else in the room and there was
no electronic media turned on in the room.
Turning around to where the sound came from, she looked up and
saw her Mothers urn in it’s usual place, but something around it
seemed to suggest movement of some type. She arose from her chair,
approached the urn and when she came within a foot or two in
distance noticed a crack from the midline to the top of the urn,
and more disturbing, a small stream of ash was seeping out of the
crack and onto the shelf itself. As she told me the story, I was
trying to diagnose her comments and look for anything in her
demeanor that would give me reason to doubt her narrative.
“I wanted you to examine the vase if you would and give me
your impressions of what could have caused this to happen” she
said.
“And has anything unusual happened since that day?” I asked her,
and she shook her head with a negative response.
I reached over to the box, undid the string which seemed quite
yellow, indicating it had some age to it, and undid the outer
paper wrapping, it giving way to a brown box, which also showed
some age. Standing up, I undid the flaps of the box, reached
down and extracted the urn, which was dark violet in color and
sporting a swirl of some design which was not painted on, but
rather part of the glass blowing process I assumed.
Sitting it on the table squarely in front of her and only
Twenty inches or so from my vantage point, I did see some
paper tape of some sort had been adhered to the glass from
the midpoint to the top. She pointed to the tape with a
well manicured nail and said “I taped it to keep from any
more ash coming out.”
“What would have caused that?” she queried. It was an older
urn I explained, not purchased from us, and after some questioning
discovered her Mom had died more than fifteen years ago, and it had
sat in the same place since her death. “I only dust around it”
she said, “but really haven’t moved it in years, I was always
afraid I’d break it and that would be horrible.”
I had no answers for her. The urn looked pretty normal, there was
no indication that it had been mis-handled in any way, I really
couldn’t explain why it had happened to her.
I questioned her if she wanted to purchase a new urn to which I
could transfer the cremains into, but she declined.
“No, I’ll take her home with me, and think about maybe scattering
The ashes in the next year or so… she has been with me a long time
now.”
At that moment the phone rang and I had to excuse myself into the
next room to take the call. When I returned, the gal was now standing
and had retreated a couple of feet from her chair. As I approached
her I observed her right hand was raised over her mouth, a startled
look on her face. I looked at the urn, still in its same position
in which I had placed it. There were very delicate traces of ash now
seeping out from the tape mask and onto the top of the cherry table.
“Mother was an avid traveler during her life” the woman remarked,
“maybe she just doesn’t have it out of her system.”
I wrapped the urn in plastic, placed it back in the box and the
lady retreated out the door as quickly as she had entered.
I never heard from her or saw her again. Was her story true?
I had no reason to doubt her. Some things you just can’t explain,
you just have to put them in the column of –stories to be
told during a late night thunderstorm–
Short Stories