Eclecticism

Taking a break from election news (since it’s too early for results to start coming in yet), Julie Leung pointed out what has to be one of the most seriously disturbing articles I’ve read in a long time. I kept figuring that it had to be a Halloween prank, and kept waiting for a “gotcha!” moment…but it never came.

If burial or cremation isn’t quite your thing when your loved one dies…why not just keep them around?

“Come on, Timmy, blow out the candles before they melt the cake,” she admonishes the dark-haired lad, who is suddenly full of himself now that he’s entered his teen years.

“Why don’t you get Granny to blow them out?” cracks Tim, gesturing toward the elderly lady seated to his right at the dining room table — Robert’s mother, Esther. She, too, is wearing a party hat, though it’s cocked a tad to the side, making the casual observer think she may be suffering from some sort of paralysis.

“You know that Granny Esther can’t do that,” Gloria admonishes. “If you don’t blow out the candles, then there’ll be no presents for you, young man.”

“Whatever!” spits Tim, ripping off his birthday hat and throwing it to the carpet. “This birthday sucks! I’m too old for this. I’m not a baby anymore. I want to go hang out with my friends.”

Tim shoves past his mother and grandmother, and in the process, knocks Esther Dunlop, age 76, to the floor. Esther lies there unmoving; Tim’s sister, Megan, picks up her grandmother and sets her back in the chair, straightening her hair and closing her mouth, which had popped open in the fall. The ease with which the skinny 14-year-old has righted the older lady is almost startling, given Esther’s seemingly sturdy frame.

No one says anything about the cake or the candles, which have since burned themselves out and are sending up wisps of smoke, like incense at a Mass for the dead. The imagery is appropriate. What is not readily apparent from this scene is that Mrs. Dunlop expired in June because of a massive cerebral hemorrhage; she died instantly as she lay on the couch in the Braswells’ home, where she had lived for several years, watching a rerun of her favorite show: CSI: Miami. What now sits before Timothy Braswell’s melting ice cream cake — blue hair and all — is her lifelike, taxidermied corpse.

Supposedly the company Preserve-A-Life, Inc. specializes in “humidermy” — taxidermy for deceased people.

I checked PAL’s site, and there’s nothing on the page or in the source to indicate that this is a hoax. The article is from the Phoenix New Times, which seems to be a real paper. So far, everything looks legit.

However, doing a whois search on preserve-a-life.com reveals that the preserve-a-life.com domain was registered by NT Media, LLC, and has a contact e-mail address of dom-admin@NEWTIMES.COM. New Times‘ site claims that it is a ‘publisher of alternative newsweeklies’ — and just happens to be the publisher of the Phoenix New Times.

So at the moment, I’m pretty sure that this is a Halloween hoax. Admittedly, a rather sucessfully creepy hoax…

Renee Carson of Mesa didn’t have enough money to have the whole body of her son, Marine Lance Corporal Jefferson Carson, done.

She opted for a head-mounting, and a military burial for the remainder of the corpse paid for by the Corps. Renee confirms that Preserve A Life waived its \$1,700 fee for the war hero. It was a good thing, too, that she chose the limited procedure, since Jeff Carson’s body was mutilated when he stepped on a land mine while attempting to take an Iraqi child and a fellow Marine to safety during the first few days of the invasion. The mine blew him apart as he was holding the little girl in one arm and dragging his buddy with the other. The child was saved, but he and his buddy weren’t so lucky. Both were awarded the Purple Heart posthumously, and Carson received the Medal of Honor. Wearing his camouflage hat and a stern expression, Jeff Carson’s head is displayed on a living room wall next to his framed medals, a signed letter from President George W. Bush, and photos of the 20-year-old in and out of uniform.

In retrospect, I’ve gotta admit I’m impressed. As I said at the beginning, I kept thinking that this couldn’t be real, and kept waiting for the “gotcha” moment, but then it never came. I’m not normally taken in by things like this — the combination of a healthy dose of skepticism and an admittedly sick sense of humor usually helps me ferret things out pretty quickly. This one got me, though, if only for a few minutes.