As an former cop, I was typically #2 to see the body. Usually they were elderly that died at home; occassionally suicides; and occassionally traffic crash victims. A few times, murder victims (one case that comes to mind is a gunshot victim found in a ditch by the DOT mowing crew; he had been there about a week).
And once I had to identify a body at a traffic crash site; it was my brother-in-law. A surreal experience, having many times dealt with death in other families.
My wife did, back in 1993. We were living in an apartment complex temporarily (between houses), and she was walking the dog when she saw a guy slumped over the steering wheel of his work truck. I think it was a cable tv truck or PSE&G truck. She called the police and sure enough, the guy had died of a heart attack or something.
My Dad discovered the body of a female murder victim floating in the river behind his apartment. He was quoted in the newspaper and had to testify in court about it.
He didn’t seem particularly traumatized by it. All he really said was, ‘‘One of those once in a lifetime things.’’
This guy didn’t. Maybe back in 1971 fewer Dutchmen were multilingual.
In the sense of the OP – once. Back in college some friends and I went fishing at this remote stretch of river out a dirt trail along some tracks. As we were headed out we passed a car parked in the brush with some dude sleeping inside. By the time we came back down the trail we realized he wasn’t sleeping, he was dead. With at least one gun shot to the head. The trauma wasn’t so much from Dead Dude as from the fact we had been drinking and smoking a fair amount but still felt we needed to report it. And also being basically hippies we had a natural aversion to police. But we did as we had to and the authorities were pretty cool with us all.
(Turned out to be a missing guy who had shot himself. The local community was so glad to have it solved - saving them a lot of wasted search effort - that they could have forgiven us almost anything)
Yes - when I worked in Social Services I went to do a wellness check on a client (a middle-aged man). I went to his apartment and saw his door propped open slightly, and I knew right away that what I was going to find in there wasn’t going to be good. So I went in and there he was - on the floor, dead.
I called my supervisor first, then 911. My supervisor told me to stay there until the authorities arrived, which I did. The police officer who first responded told me that they guy had probably been dead for 12 hours when I found him.
Incidentally, he had about $1500 in cash in his pocket, according to the cop who found him.
Not the original finder, but I’ve pronounced a few people dead, and hauled even more to the morgue.
The most interesting was the guy with the 12 gauge haircut. Yuck.
No, but I’ve lost a couple.
I know it isn’t nice, but I had to laugh, picturing this scene.
Probably died of dysentary.
No, but I always wonder when reading a thread like this if it will jar loose some long repressed, terrible memory.
Never found one, but I do think about it sometimes. It often seems to be a dog walker finding a body, or body parts, and as I’m out wandering around parks and woods and fields with my dogs a lot, I think about the possibility of stumbling on someone dead.
Once when I worked for the bank in Raleigh I came out to my car to leave for the day and found a dead guy laying there between my car and the next. It turned out he’d been crawling in the window of a young lady’s room to steal her TV and she shot him. He crawled a few feet away to our parking lot and died.
During the ruckus that ensued after I called the police someone sneaked in and was successful in stealing the young lady’s television. I guess that’s the main reason I wasn’t traumatized - there some irony to focus on.
Right out of college, first apartment with a good friend of mine. I found his body after I got home from work one day. He had shot himself in the head with a 9mm hollow point bullet. We had just gotten back from a trip to a secluded lake in East Texas over July 4th with two women friends, where we all took turns shooting his gun at stuff and setting off fireworks and having a great time.
It took me a long time to get over the fact that it wasn’t my fault for failing to notice his depression.
I did once but I didn’t know it at the time. There was a homeless guy asleep on the steps of the elementary school near my apartment last summer as I was on my way to work. I didn’t wake him up or tell anyone about him because there was no school or anything so I figured he would wake up in his own time and move along the way most homeless people do. He probably would have too if he hadn’t been dead at the time. On my way home from work (I had a half day that day) I saw he was still there but covered in a sheet and there was a cop car and an ambulance nearby. If I had thought he was dead I would have reported him but I just thought he was asleep.
The only other time I’ve ever seen a corpse I wasn’t the one to discover it, just one of many people to walk by it in a day. A woman jumped from the 26th story of an office building I happened to be taking a class in for a few days and they weren’t able to move her right away. You had to walk around her body to get into the building.
Awesome, just supreme top notch joke! I was going to go with something like,
How much would it suck to be dammed to Oregon!
Maybe.
I used to walk my kid over to the school for afternoon kindergarten. Walked him there at noon. Went past a park, where a lot of people parked on the side to enjoy the view/their lunches. There was a guy napping in a car with the windows up–it was a nice day, but not really hot, so what struck me was that it was only slightly unusual and maybe he didn’t want noise interference.
Three hours later I walked past his car again on the way to pick my kid up. He was parked in the same place, in the same position. I gritted my teeth and tapped on his window–I don’t like confrontations, even when I was only trying to make sure he was okay–and he didn’t respond. Without getting anymore extreme about it (pounding harder, for instance) I got on my cell phone and called 911, gave the location, and picked up my kid. I walked my kid an alternate route home just in case.
I didn’t hear sirens or see flashing lights, but, as I said, I took an alternate route. Never knew what happened. I don’t have a good feeling about it.
Yes, but I don’t think it’s in the sense the OP means…
Once, we stopped for a car that seemed to be broken down on the side of the road. When I hopped down into the median ditch to ask if they needed help, the lady at the wheel was good and dead. Apparently she’d crashed down there, but the body of the car took almost no damage, it looked like she’d just pulled off for some reason. Maybe she was having a heart attack or stroke and did, not sure. She wasn’t really “lost” though, I just happened to be the first to see her.
The second one was visiting my grandmother in the nursing home. I went in to see her and waved at the desk nurses, who told me they’d just been in with her morning meds and coffee. When I got to her room, she was died, but she’d only just passed. She was still slightly warm, and not stiff. So again, she wasn’t lost, but I did find out she was dead first.
Heh I was thinking, no, never happened and I rather hope it doesn’t, then this post reminded me that as an archaeologist I’ve actually found a few… Working in a Roman graveyard I personally uncovered at least half a dozen skeletons but that was only to be expected 
On non graveyard sites it’s not uncommon for the odd skelly to turn up, usually in a ditch, on one occasion me and another guy were the ones who actually came across one. It’s a pleasant diversion from the usual stuff when that happens, about a days worth of careful uncovering, planning and photography.
When I worked as a security guard I once found a body in a car. It was a really messy scene, the guy had been living in the car for some time and had rotting food, bottles of urine and bags of feces. Wasn’t particularly traumatic, though I’ll never forget the smell.