Stories to Tell in the Dark

I Wouldn't Have My Loved Ones Cremated

I started my first job when I was a ripe 12 years old. I worked for my father and he payed me a dollar an hour. All that I had to do was sit in the receiving area of the funeral home to make sure no one went into the room where the body being prepared for its funeral was laying.

You may think that most little girls would be too creeped out to want to do this job, but my father had owned this funeral home for years before I was even born. This was just.. normal for me. I would sit in the receiving area and work on homework or read.

No one ever came into that room or tried to go into the back room, with the exception of a worker named Eddie. I was never quite sure what, exactly, Eddie did there but he had a uniform like my dad's so I never questioned his being there.

This was a fine first job for me, I made enough money to save up and buy the things I wanted. Plus it was so easy, all I ever had to do was sit.

When I was 14, my dad told me he had to close his business because a cheaper funeral home had opened and he was losing all of his business to it and he didn't get enough business to make a profit. We actually ended up moving , too. Just one state over, because he needed to find work somewhere else.

Within the year, he got a job at a bank. This job didn't pay as much of course and so my mom also got a job as a waitress. She also got me my second job, a hostess at the restaurant she worked at.

Now I'm 22 years old. I recently was reunited with my best childhood friend on Facebook and I decided to visit him for his birthday. He never left our small town, most of the kids there didn't. My first night there, we went out to dinner and caught up. Somehow we got on the topic of my family moving.

"Honestly, though, if I were in your dad's place I would move too. I mean, imagine how angry people must have been," I was pretty confused when he said that. Why would people be angry about a rivaling company stealing my dad's business?

"Angry?" I asked. He shot me a weird look.

"Well I know it wasn't his fault exactly but it happened at his company..." he said.

Now I was really confused. "Wait a minute, what happened?" Suddenly he got this shocked look on his face. "Oh my god, he didn't tell you." He put his hand on his chin as if he was considering whether or not to tell me what the hell he was talking about.

"Your dad had to shut down his business because bodies were.. stolen from it. The guy who was in charge of cremating the bodies for cremation just kind of.. took them home with him instead and put ashes of animals or something in the urns."

I was so shocked. I didn't know how to respond. "What did he do with the bodies?"

He shook his head and told me he didn't want to get into it. "I don't know how you never found out, it was all over the news. You should look up the name of the funeral home on the internet and you can read all about it."

So that is what I did. When I got into my hotel room, I did a search on Google of "Maple Lakes Funeral Home." The first link that came up was "Maple Lakes Funeral Home to be closed," I clicked it.

The article said "Following the arrest of worker Edward Kramer, the local funeral home is to be shut down." Beneath that read "On April 16, 2007, over a dozen bodies were found in the home of Edward "Eddie" Kramer. Primarily women, the corpses were dressed in expensive dresses and stockings and wore dramatic makeup and had ribbons in their hair. The mostly skeletal bodies were found with music boxes in their rib cages. Supposedly Edward had taken the bodies that were to be cremated to his home and filled their urns with ashes of animals, coffee grounds, or dirt. The bodies were discovered when the neighbors complained to the police of a terrible stench coming from his home after having repeatedly asked him to do something about it. Edward was arrested and faces multiple charges."

I clicked a different link that contained photos that, well, scared the daylights out of me. Blue bodies with peeling skin and milky eyes and tongues hanging out of their mouths.. skeletons with bits of skin still attached to their bones.. bodies with mutilated faces.. all wearing these frilly dresses and stockings and some even wearing lipstick. I suddenly felt sick. I have no intention of ever going back to my home town ever again.

If I were you, I wouldn't have your loved ones cremated.