Death in the News: Five Weird Stories from the Past Week

1.  Doctors remove a 36-year-old baby skeleton from a woman’s body

Jyoti Kumar went to the doctor after she started experiencing constant abdominal pain—and experts in the Indian city of Nagpur discovered the cause was a baby skeleton that had been inside her for 38 years. Kumar, 62, had an ectopic pregnancy when she was 24, and was told the fetus—growing outside of her womb—would likely not survive, the International Business Timesreports. At some point, “She apparently knew that the baby had died and that she would need an operation,” but she was scared of surgery and fled the hospital, instead opting to get treatment for her abdominal pain at a small clinic, her doctor says, according to the Daily Mail. When the pain came back decades later, however, she allowed doctors to remove the skeleton, which was inside a calcified sac, from her abdomen.  via Newser

2.  Westboro Baptist Church Says It Will Go to Iraq to Protest ISIS

In a move certainly worthy of its status as the fringiest of the far-right fringe hate groups, the Westboro Baptist Church congregation says it’s going to accept an offer by a popular Australian comedian to fly members to Iraq to protest the beheading of Christians by the Islamic terror group ISIS,Addicting Info reports.

After learning that members of the antigay church planned to protest the funeral of Robin Williams, comedian Adam Hills challenged them to really live their stated values and offered them a proposition on his television show, The Last Leg.

“If you really believe in standing up to those threatening the Christian way of life, Westboro Baptist Church, how about putting your money where your mouth is, taking a direct flight to Iraq,” he said this week, also offering to pay for first-class airfare.

Church members took Hills’s offer seriously and announced their acceptance on Twitter  Via ADVOCATE

3.  Man Fakes His Own Death to Avoid Marrying Girlfriend

The girlfriend (Lanchester) said, “I picked up my phone and there was a man saying he was Tucker’s dad. He told me Tucker had been deeply depressed and wanted to die, so had thrown himself in front of a car,” Lanchester, 23, told the Daily Mail. “The man explained that they had been trying to send Tucker off to a psychiatric unit for help. But it was too late. I couldn’t breathe. It was absolutely devastating.”

After hearing the unsettling news, Lanchester phoned Blandford’s mother, and his lie immediately unraveled.

“His parents didn’t even know we were getting married. They thought we had broken up when I left America,” she told the Daily Mirror. “Then it hit me, that voice on the other end of the phone had sounded eerily familiar. I realised it was Tucker pretending to be his dad. My whole world crumbled.”  Via Gawker.

 

4.  ‘Death simulator’ attraction to open in China

Now there’s a game that claims it can fulfill our curiosity, without actually killing us.

“Samadhi — 4D Experience of Death,” is a morbid “escape room” game that uses dramatic special effects to bring players close to what its creators imagine is an experience of death.

When it opens in Shanghai in September 2014, it will invite participants to compete in a series of challenges to avoid “dying.”

Losers get cremated — or are at least made to lie on a conveyor belt that transports them through a fake funeral home incinerator to simulate death rites.

The faux cremator will use hot air and light projections to create what the organizers call “an authentic experience of burning.”

After “cremation,” participants are transferred to a soft, round, womb-like capsule, signifying their “rebirth.”  Via CNN

5.  This video that is FULL of the feels.