31 Incredibly Strange Yet Totally Plausible Causes of Death Seen by Medical Examiners

‘A billboard that didn’t meet building code fell over on top of them’
31 Incredibly Strange Yet Totally Plausible Causes of Death Seen by Medical Examiners

The difference in meaning between “weird” and “unexpected” is perfectly illustrated in one tragic instance: the cause of someone’s death. For example, getting crushed by a falling piano? Generally considered a weird cause of death. If the deceased is either a professional piano mover or an animated character, however, it’s not that unexpected.

In what has to be a very confusing sort of HIPAA situation, Reddit’s medical examiners were happy to share some of the weirdest, but completely unsurprising causes of death they’ve witnessed. Keep reading to hear about people who were always destined to die in highly unusual ways.

FergusThePride 5y ago I'm not a medical examiner but | work at a cemetery and one of the strangest deaths was a 37 year old woman that was cooking over the stove. She tripped over her dog while in the middle of boiling water and somehow the back of her head hit the kitchen towel holder on the oven and part of her long ponytail was laying on the stove burner. Her hair caught on fire while she was unconscious and basically she burned to death in her kitchen.
slorig G 5y ago Work in a pharmacy. Some guy came in to refill his blood pressure meds, told him it would be 20 minutes. Не then starts saying he feels funny and is really short of breath. A со worker walks with him to a chair in the waiting room, the guy puts his head back, pees/poops himself, then dies within five minutes.
Antyok A 5y ago Former 911 operator. Had a guy go into his garage, lay down, and drop a running circular saw on his throat. Had another, when I worked Search and Rescue, who took an entire bottle of Ambien, took off his pants, then wandered off into the woods. In January.
thequejos . 5y ago Old people are often found dead on the toilet. Apparently straining makes their blood pressure do bad things. Then the family has an icky story to tell about grandpa but they usually edit it to 'died peacefully in his sleep'.
schance1 O 5y ago a Edited 5y ago Detective who has gone to a number of autopsies. 1. A Guy had a part of his skull removed to relive pressure to the skull from a head injury. They placed the circular piece of skull back and attached it with a few screws and over time it would fuse. A year later the guy tripped in his study and hit that exact spot on the edge of a chair causing it to shunt the skull piece onto his brain.
meowhahaha 5y ago Guy died having sex on a piano at a strip club. It was a specially engineered piano that could be lowered from the second floor with the strippers posed on it. This guy and his gal accidentally triggered the lift mechanism. Не was crushed to death by the ceiling. She was trapped under his dead body for hours.
slreagan 5y ago When I worked in the ER, we had a guy come in with a gangrenous foreskin. Died a few hours later. I guess actual cause of death would be sepsis, but the gangrenous foreskin sounds way cooler.
dickbutt_md . 5y ago BU Edited 5y ago Not a medical examiner but my chem lab prof had this story about why you tie your hair up in lab. Girl in chem lab with long hair leaned over a centrifuge. This was in the 1970s before they had tops that close while they're running.
5y ago Im not one but my mom is an EMT and i had her spill the beans, she said a few had stuck out. 1.) She had showed up to a house after a neighbor called 911 cause of a super loud scream, but long story short the scream came from a dude who got his um nether regions bitten by his snake, the dude was dead and the snake was still holding on to him when they found him. 2.) A lady was once scalped cause her hair got stuck in a paper shredder my mom said
5y ago This kid didn't die, but easily the wildest fucking thing I've ever seen at the hospital. 6 year old kid was sledding. Не veered off the path and hit a tree. Sticking out of that tree was an arrow that someone had shot in there. Somehow, some way, he ended up oriented in a position where the arrow (keep in mind the point of the arrow was IN the tree, thus the end sticking out was the blunt, feathered end) impaled him right above the his right collar bone, passed down through his neck, and stopped less
Blood clot - a man was found dead in his home, completely naked, with water all over the floor and no signs of blunt force trauma to the head or anywhere else for that matter. The only other weird thing was there were water balloons in his freezer and defrosted on the kitchen table as well as an open bottle of hot sauce and tea tree. Не was already bloating when found. Turns out, he enjoyed stuffing these up his rectum coated in the sauce or oil. Well, he ended up causing a tear in his colon lining and threw a clot
Lastly, wife was accused of murder and no where to be found when her husband's body was found in their back yard with a gun shot wound to the head at an odd angle, gun still in hand, and a scratch on his head. Initially it was thought she hit him with something, shot him and took off. When found, she told them he shot himself. Claims they had a fight, he took out his gun and went out back to blow off steam. Не was scratching his head with the pistol and the gun went off. Sure enough, tissue
Amraff 5y ago How about the two workers that were baked to death in a bread oven at work. They had to go into the oven to do repairs and it should have been allowed to cool for 12 hours before they entered, but the boss was peeved about the down time and only allotted 2 hours. They removed a few of the bins and rode the conveyer in. 5 minutes later they got radioed and told it was too hot. They had no way out. Temp inside was at 212°f (100°c).
ReReMac17 ... 5y ago There was a guy next town over growing up that got severely constipated, but refused to go to the doctor or do anything about it. Didn't shit for like 3 weeks. Eventually the toxins built up in his body to a level that was deadly and he well....crapped out.
palofdrone 5y ago Not a medical examiner, but I assisted in autopsies while working at a coroners office. Not necessarily weird, but we had a homicide come in once. It was a guy who brought a 2x4 to a gun fight. When he realized he was going to lose he turned to flee. 4 shots were taken. The first grazed his neck. The second shot was a doozy. The guy was facing sideways. The bullet went in his left arm, out his left arm (underneath his armpit), into the side of his chest, passed through his left lung, heart, and
hugh-G-rekshon 5y ago I found a guy in the woods who hung himself, but instead of the cliche hanging from a limb with his feet off the ground he sat down on a slope and kept scooting lower until he died, found out a week later in the newspaper that he was facing charges for being a pedo so he took the easy way out. It was weird though.
. 5y ago . Edited 5y ago As a final year nursing student slippers, fucking slippers cause so manny serious and detrimental falls in our elderly population
skinnerz_pigeon 5y ago My grandfather was a forensic psychologist for years and I always remember this one he told us about: Teenage kids were breaking into a house by removing a sliding glass door. The door somehow busted as one of the kids was lifting it out, he dropped it on his back, and the glass punctured him so bad he bled out before he could make it to the hospital
stan91360 5y ago Family visited a convenience store near Atlanta. It was a windy day. On the way back to the car a billboard that didn't meet building code fell over on top of them. Pretty much just paste to identify.
fluffychonkycat. 5y ago A friend of mine had a teacher who was just driving his car down the road when a bee flew in through the window. The bee stung him causing him to swerve up on to the pavement and he hit a pedestrian and killed her
JCF-95 . 5y ago I'm a pool attendent a a coworker told me that once they had a guy trying to dive through the pool. Underway he found a coin and put it into his mouth so he can swimm the rest normaly. Не inhaled the coin and died.
Hakur3 5y ago Not an ME but I watched this show Curious and Unusual Deaths (I think that's the title) when I was a kid and here's 3 I remember: Some dude came back from working late and had made plans for a girl to come over. Не had a couple of lava lamps and wanted to get them working quickly (they usually take like 2hrs minimum to melt the goo inside). Не put the glass containers onto his stovetop and cranked the heat up, thinking it'll speed up the process so they're ready for his hookup. They ended up
Another one was this guy went out to his garden to do something during snowy weather and slipped on an ice patch, hit his head off of his garage wall as he fell and knocked himself unconscious. Не landed face down in his dogs water bowl in less than 1cm deep of water. His nostrils were apparently at just the right angle where he had no chance of airflow and drowned.
task_scheme_not 5y ago Not a medical examiner, but where I work at a factory we were told about another factory nearby as a lesson for workplace safety. A man had strung wire through his chain necklace to keep it from breaking, and while working his necklace had gotten caught in a machine. The piano wire kept it from just breaking off, and instead tightened and pulled him into the machine, decapitating him. My work got real strict about jewelry afterwards.
QuietlySmirking . 5y ago Not an ME, but my cousin Walter broke his neck trying to suck his own dick.
swami78 . 5y ago Not a medical examiner but worked in an Attorney-General's Department: a worker in a brewery slipped, fell into a vat of beer and drowned. At least he died happy. Sydney, Australia.
p_frota 5y ago I worked in an health insurance company when I was in college. My job was basically audit what was done to the patient vs. what their insurance covered and check documents and invoices for materials used to find mistakes or fraud. One day I get the papers for two patients, trauma care, same last name, one minute of difference in their entrances. Pretty normal, usually family involved in an accident. Happens a lot. They were husband and wife. Man had a compound penis fracture, woman had vaginal detachment. They messed up by trying something like that scene
kindsoberfullydressd 5y ago My wife told me a story her consultant (UK senior Dr) had told her about a confused homeless patient they had on his ward. The patient had syphilis which was causing the confusion and he had a fever, but was still wearing his bobble hat indoors. When the went to remove the hat, they exposed his brain. The syphilis had eaten through his skull (somehow, not a Dr myself) and the only thing keeping his brain in was the hat. The guy died pretty quick after that.
. 5y ago just a fun fact, there's only 2,400 medical examiners + coroners in the US. The ones with the most experience and best stories to share are aged 50+ and likely do not use reddit, unfortunately
Bubba2475 5y ago This happened at my local Mcdonald's over the summer. Guy went through the drive thru. Paid with cash. While getting his change, he dropped a coin on the ground. The guy opened his car door, and stretched to reach the coin. In the process, his foot came off the brake. As the car rolled forward, the door hit a pole and slammed shut - smashing the guy's head between the door and the frame of the car. Was killed instantly over, at most, a quarter.
gunmedic15 5y ago Paramedic. I went to an autopsy of a patient who died, back in the day we were actualy encouraged to go to those whenever we wanted. The guy was going to back out of his driveway, but there was road construction and there was a metal framed sawhorse-style traffic barricade in the way. Не went to move it and apparently slipped, and the aluminum hinge hit him in the armpit. The wound was not even an inch deep, severed an artery and he died right there.

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