Free story #1

Batesville Day

 

Where do many mortuaries source the caskets they offer to the public? From none other than Batesville Casket Company. Founded in 1884 in Batesville, Indiana, the company began as the Batesville Coffin Company before adopting its more familiar name. Once a month, rain or shine, their truck arrived at Pierce Brothers Central Services in Los Angeles, a quiet ritual I came to think of as Batesville Day.

The early 1990s. The driver always backed his truck discreetly to the rear loading dock at 720 Central Services, careful not to startle the mortuary’s neighbors. Inside, six to eight of us, young, strong, and half competitive, waited for the heavy work. That crew usually meant Tony, Jeff, and me, the first call drivers, along with Mario and Bob from casket deliveries. Between us, we could move just about anything.

Each casket could weigh up to three hundred pounds, and the unloading was part choreography, part endurance test. Inside the Batesville truck, three levels of aluminum rollers held ten to fifteen caskets apiece. A built-in forklift-like device, mounted to the truck walls, allowed the driver to lower the middle and top levels down to the hydraulic platform at the rear.

When a casket hovered just above the platform, one of us would roll a wheeled aluminum cart, our casket mover, beneath it. The driver lowered the casket onto the cart, and the platform descended smoothly to the ground. From there, the work became ours.

Tony usually called out the rhythm—“Watch your fingers!”—as Jeff and I guided each casket off the platform and into position. Mario, methodical as ever, would already be stripping away the outer layers of bubble wrap and Styrofoam, while Bob stacked the plywood crates to the side for disposal. The rest of us followed in sequence, unwrapping, inspecting, and checking for flaws.

Each new Batesville casket came wrapped in layers of protective materials: bubble wrap, plastic sheeting, and thick Styrofoam corners, all secured inside a snug plywood crate. The casket key, taped to the casket lid, came off first. Using it, we unlocked the two lids, one for the head, one for the foot, and tested them twice, listening for the smooth movement of the hinges. We checked the lining… the polish… the metal finish. And no, despite the temptation, none of us ever climbed inside. Our boss, Mr. Pickett, was watching carefully.

Once inspected, the casket was locked, covered, and wheeled into the aluminum storage rack, thirty-five slots wide, gleaming under fluorescent lights. Our goal was always the same: to clear the truck quickly and send the Batesville driver back on the road. From start to finish, the process took thirty to forty-five minutes, a small but mighty act of precision and muscle.

In the early 1990s, the average Batesville casket cost between $1,100 and $2,700—a significant investment for a family, and often the single most expensive part of a funeral. Today, that range runs closer to $2,000 to $5,000, with custom models reaching much higher. Protecting these products wasn’t just company policy; it was respect for the people and the purpose they would one day serve.

I remember looking forward to Batesville Day. It broke up the rhythm of mortuary driving, those long hours spent collecting the deceased or staffing funerals, and gave us a rare chance for camaraderie. Tony and Jeff would tease each other about who could move faster without a scrape, while Mario and Bob turned unpacking into a well-choreographed dance. Amid the clang of aluminum rollers and the hiss of hydraulics, there was laughter, machismo, and a quiet pride in doing the job right. We all wanted to impress Mr. Pickett.

It’s a funny kind of intimacy, the kind that comes from handling something both industrial and sacred. A casket, after all, is the vessel for someone’s final appearance on this Earth.

 

Caskets and Coffins: A Brief History

A casket has four sides; a coffin has six. The six-sided coffin—diamond-shaped at the shoulders—was favored in the 1700s for keeping the body snug and easier to transport, especially during wartime. By the early 1900s, the rectangular casket had largely replaced the old form, seen as more dignified and easier to produce. The word coffin itself comes from the Old French cofin, meaning “basket,” and entered English around 1380.

Beneath the earth, a casket often rests within a burial vault, a concrete or reinforced concrete box designed to protect it from collapse or intrusion. Vaults first emerged to deter grave robbers, who once prized the valuables, clothing, and even the bodies themselves. Over time, they became symbols of preservation rather than protection.

When I think back on those mornings at 720 Central Services—the rhythmic clatter of rollers, the scent of new metal and oil, Tony’s sharp whistle cutting through the air—I realize that Batesville Day wasn’t just about restocking inventory. It was a quiet ritual of care, a moment when strength and reverence met.

Every month, the truck came. Every month, we unloaded, inspected, and stored. And every time, as the Batesville driver pulled away and the echo of the loading dock faded, I felt the same small satisfaction: in the work, in the teamwork, and in the knowledge that even the routine tasks can hold meaning.

 

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Free story #2

MRS. NORWOOD

 

The mood was perfect for something unexpected. Other than the soft music, and Bill’s occasional dirty joke, the room was quiet. 

All of a suddenly, at 10:10 p.m., Bill and I heard the mortuary’s outer back door slowly open and shut. The mortuary’s outer door was three car lengths away from where we stood in the preparation room. The prep room door, and a hallway, separated us from the outer back door. Supposedly, Bill and I were alone in the building. All other employees had gone home for the night. With our eyes wide open, Bill and I looked at one another. Complete silence grabbed hold of the room. I leaned over toward Bill.

"Did you hear that?” I whispered to Bill. 

"Yes,” Bill whispered back, his eyes squinted with suspicion. “Sounded like the back door." 

"Yeah, I heard it too," I acknowledged, still whispering. 

We stood motionless for what seemed like half a minute, waiting to hear footsteps, or any other noise. Moments past before Bill leaned over the still topless plywood casket that separated us and whispered directly into my right ear. 

"It may be manager Sharon. She likes to spy on us at night. She's known for her surprise visits." 

A twinge of anxiety entered my stomach. Bill turned and looked toward the door to the room we were in—the embalming room. Bill then stood up straight, defiantly, and folded his arms, still staring at the embalming room door. Bill’s actions spoke to his being annoyed as he readied himself to let Sharon have it, if in fact it was Sharon at the outer back door. Clearly, he didn’t like the intrusion. 

Moments later, Bill and I, still each staring at the door to the hallway, began to hear footsteps. That of ladies high heel shoe crossing the cement floor. The sound was unmistakable. A faint echoing sound followed each step. I counted the footsteps. One, two, three—all the way to eight distinct steps. Each step slightly louder than the last as they approached the door Bill and I were staring a whole through. Suddenly, Bill turned and tiptoed a few feet to turn off his Mozart CD. The eighth step stopped just behind the hallway door, and then there was quiet. Dead silence.

 

Whomever this was standing behind the hallway door wanted to be unnoticed. Unseen. Dead silence filled the air as we both watched… and waited to see if the door’s doorknob would turn in either direction. But it didn’t turn. From our standing positions yards away, both Bill and I bent and squatted down to look under the door frame, but the light from the hallway behind the door revealed nothing. No shadows to be seen. There was no doubt, Bill smelled a rat.

"Yeah… its gotta be her," Bill whispered from a foot away as a knowing grin came to his face. 

He lifted his right index finger to his lips—"Shhhh!"—making the sound to “be quiet” before he slowly and silently walked to the door. Once there, he positioned himself and reached for the nob. Turning the nob, Bill yanked it open quickly and… no one was there! With wide eyes, Bill looked at me. Then, he walked into the hallway. He looked left and he looked right, but again found no one. He faced me again from the doorway with puzzled eyes. Neither of us knew what to say. Until this moment at Oakdale Mortuary and Cemetery, I was a confirmed disbeliever in ghosts. But that night, I know what I heard and I know what I didn’t see.

Bill stepped fully into the hallway, still scanning both directions, as if someone might materialize if he just stared hard enough. I watched him from the threshold, my hands still resting on the cold edge of the plywood casket.

“Nothing,” he finally muttered, scratching the back of his neck.

“No one could walk off that fast without making more noise,” I said. My voice sounded smaller than I expected.

Bill gave a short nod, not taking his eyes off the hallway. Then, a sound—a single click—echoed faintly down the corridor. It wasn’t loud, but it was unmistakable. Metal on metal. A doorknob? A latch? It came from further down, toward the corridor that led to Viewing Room Three.

He turned back toward me. “You heard that, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, already stepping around the casket to join him. “If Sharon’s trying to scare us, she’s about to get an earful.”

We walked in silence, the soles of our shoes soft against the cement floor, our shadows flickering beneath the harsh overhead fluorescents. The hallway stretched in front of us, too long, too quiet. Bill’s pace slowed as we neared the hallway intersection.

Then, a breeze. A light, cool draft—unnatural, considering we were indoors and the air was still as death just seconds ago. I felt it brush across the side of my neck, like a hand not quite touching. I stopped in my tracks.

“Did you feel—”

“Yeah,” Bill said quickly, glancing around. “There’s no windows open back here.”

We passed the staff lounge and the old supply closet. Both dark. Both empty. Then, as we approached Viewing Room Three, we saw the faintest light shining under the door. Bill looked at me. “That room should be locked.” I swallowed hard, not because I was scared—at least that’s what I told myself—but because something about the hallway felt wrong. Like it had stretched, elongated, like we were being pulled toward something we didn’t want to meet.

Bill reached out and tested the doorknob.

Unlocked.

He paused, breathed in, then slowly pushed the door open. The room was lit only by the dim wall sconce over the viewing table. The heavy velvet curtains were drawn, and in the center of the room lay a casket—closed—on a chrome stand. A familiar one.

“That’s Mrs. Norwood’s casket,” I whispered. “We wheeled it into storage this afternoon.”

“I know,” Bill muttered, already stepping inside.

But what made me hesitate wasn’t the casket—it was the faint sound, just beneath the buzzing fluorescent, that caught my ear. A whisper. Too soft to understand. Too steady to ignore. Then it stopped. Bill circled the casket slowly, eyes narrowed. “Why would they bring this back out?” He reached toward the lid. “Wait,” I said, but it was too late. He unlatched the side and opened the top half of the casket.

Empty.

We stood there, barely breathing. The room seemed colder now, like the walls themselves were holding their breath. And then, just as Bill was about to close it again, we both heard it—click-clack… click-clack…

The sound of high heels.

Only this time, it wasn’t outside the room. It was coming from inside the room. Behind us. We turned in unison, but there was nothing there. Nothing we could see. And yet, I swear to you, the next sound we heard was the unmistakable creak of a chair—the chair in the corner of the viewing room, which had just shifted slightly… as if someone had just sat down to watch.

 

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Free story #3

THE SCONSE EFFECT

 

It started in the mid-1980s. Six years after I began work in the mortuary industry. It was subtle at first; a pause at the door, a glance that lingered a bit too long, shoulders slightly angled, as if unsure or even bracing. From where I stood as the first mortuary representative a family meets, whether at a private home, a care facility, or a hospital bedside, the change was unmistakable. 

We were no longer simply professionals arriving to help. In their eyes, we might be something closer to intruders. Vultures, even. Body snatchers. The kind of people whispered about uneasily.

It hadn’t always been that way. Before the mid-‘80s, when a mortuary driver arrived to bring someone into our care, there was a quiet, unspoken respect. You could see it in people’s faces: relief coupled with gratitude. The sentiment was easy to see and feel… “thank God someone is willing to do this work”. We were trusted and respected. Even revered. Then, for several years, something changed.

Inside, around the sofa or dining table of a residence, family members would hover, watching. Judging. It often felt as though they were looking through us rather than at us. Sometimes questions followed. “Are you taking my dad straight to the mortuary?” Or, in a care facility, it could be a sharper edge: “We’ve seen some things on the news about your business… you don’t do that, do you?”

And sometimes, reassuring them wasn’t enough. At any hour, midnight, 2 a.m., even 4 in the morning, a suspicious family member would insist on coming with us. Suspicion doesn’t wear a watch or keep normal hours. Sometimes they wanted to ride in the mortuary wagon. For insurance purposes, that wasn’t allowed. Instead, they’d climb into their car and follow close behind our station wagon, headlights fixed on us the entire way, as if we might vanish if they blinked.

I came to think of it as The Sconse Effect.

Daniel Sconse… that was his name. He owned a crematory in Pasadena, and for a time, he became synonymous with everything that could go wrong in our profession. His parents owned The Ram Funeral Home, also in Pasadena, and it shared the same property as his crematory. His crimes against the dead were not only unethical; they were grotesque. He mishandled remains, mixed them and stole from the dead. The newspaper headlines broke fast, and the damage they did spread even faster. And we encountered it, call by call.

I remember weeks when half a dozen families followed us in a slow, quiet procession, their loved one secured safely on a gurney in our mortuary wagon. We drove carefully, 20, maybe 25 miles per hour, through empty streets, as if driving faster might be mistaken for guilt. Every turn, every stop, task deliberate. Reassuring. At the mortuary, it didn’t always end there. The next of kin would sometimes ask to come inside, to see for themselves. To witness that their loved one was being treated with dignity. And within limits, we let them. Because in those years, trust had to be reestablished one client family at a time. 

The numbers behind Sconce’s cremation scandal were staggering. In the first years, the jump had been sharp—hundreds to thousands in a shockingly short time span.

 

• A reputable crematory might handle 150 to 200 cremations a year.
• In 1985, Sconse reported 1,254.
• By 1987, it was over 8,300.
• At his peak, more than 24,000 in a single year.

 

It was discovered he’d rented a warehouse in Hesperia, a city in San Bernardino county, and was using ceramics ovens (many of them) to do his cremating. A ceramics oven, commonly known as a kiln, is a specialized device used to heat and harden ceramic materials. 

Ceramics ovens are roughly 5 times the size of a cremation chamber or retort. A cremation retort is a furnace used for cremation. A retort is designed to incinerate human remains at high temperatures, effectively reducing the body to bone fragments and ash. 

Years later, when he spoke publicly, his words only confirmed what families had feared all along:

“To me, commingling of ash is no big deal. I don’t put value in anyone who is gone and dead… as no one should put value in me when I’m gone and dead. That’s not a person anymore. There’s no difference in anyone’s cremated ash,” the now 68-year-old Sconse said.

Sconse added, “People gotta be more in control of their emotions. That’s not your loved one anymore. Love them while they’re here.”

Sconse’s professional behavior didn’t just raise eyebrows; it shattered confidence. What wouldn’t go away wasn’t just the story of one man’s horrific crimes, but the shadow it cast over all respectable morticians. For a long while, every knock on someone’s door or entrance into a hospital room, filled with surviving family, came with an unspoken question behind it: Can we trust you?

 

Epilogue

Recently, when my mother passed away, the funeral director asked if I wanted to witness her cremation. Upon telling her of the sconce effect, she explained offering the family to witness had become common practice. There will always be bad apples. But because of Sconse, and others like him, the industry was forced to change. Regulations tightened. Transparency increased.

 

Trust… slowly… was rebuilt.

 

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Free Story #4

The Procession Before the Procession

 

One early morning stands out in my memory. At 2:30 a.m., I was awakened to remove a loved one from a residence in Arcadia, California. Since I was the closest on-call employee, I would arrive first and take the lead. Twenty minutes later, bleary-eyed and alone, I pulled up to the suburban Los Angeles home.

My removal partner was still driving from North Hollywood.

As I approached the front door, it flew open. Six family members stood just inside, practically leaning over one another to get a look at the mortician. Two of them seemed especially tense. Was their anger directed at the deceased, themselves, the world—or me?

The others appeared more receptive. After they invited me inside, I introduced myself and asked if someone could answer a few questions. “I will,” one man said. He introduced himself as Manuel, the eldest son. A few minutes into our conversation, a knock at the door announced the arrival of my partner. As he entered, the two anxious family members fixed their attention on us.

“Hey,” Manuel interrupted. “You guys look young. Like trainees or something. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” 

The two family members began circling the kitchen table, studying us with obvious distrust. Drawing on my training, I spoke calmly, maintained eye contact, and explained the care we would take with their loved one. I also described the training required for our work. Gradually, the tension eased. Their expressions softened. The suspicion didn’t disappear entirely, but it loosened its grip.

When the time came, my partner and I retrieved the gurney and completed the removal. Afterward, his duties were finished and he departed. I returned alone to answer any remaining questions and to say goodbye. The mood in the room had shifted once again. The family’s anxiety had returned. I reassured them that after 9 a.m., a mortuary counselor would call to schedule an arrangement conference. Usually that explanation was enough. Not this time.

“We want to follow you to the mortuary,” Manuel announced. His tone was different now. The skepticism was gone. What remained was something more understandable: a son who wasn’t ready to let his father leave his sight.

I immediately understood the misunderstanding. Manuel believed I was taking his father directly to the Pierce Brothers mortuary in San Gabriel, where services would eventually be held. In reality, I first needed to transport him to central services in downtown Los Angeles. I gently asked whether he felt capable of driving. When he said yes, I accepted what was really happening. The family needed reassurance, and they were seeking it the only way they knew how.

After advising them that they would be responsible for obeying all traffic laws, we set out into the darkness. Three family vehicles followed behind my body car. We traveled slowly, like a funeral procession without an escort. I drove to the mortuary in San Gabriel. I couldn’t leave their father there, but I could give them what they needed. When we arrived, I parked and walked over to Manuel. 

 

“You and your family are welcome to watch me take your father through the garage,” I said. “But none of you can enter the mortuary.” 

“Yes,” Manuel replied. “We’d appreciate that. Thank you.”

The distrust that had greeted me at the front door earlier had vanished. In its place was gratitude. After the transfer was complete, I lowered the garage door and prepared to continue my work. It was a delicate balance: caring for a family’s emotions while still accomplishing the practical demands of the job. The procession through the sleeping city wasn’t necessary from a logistical standpoint. Their father still needed to be transported elsewhere before arrangements could begin.

But grief isn’t ruled by logistics.

What the family needed that morning wasn’t transportation. They needed reassurance. They needed to see with their own eyes that their father was being treated with dignity by the young morticians they had doubted only an hour before. The procession may have been symbolic, but it wasn’t meaningless. In the death business, some of the most important work happens long before the funeral. Sometimes your job is not simply to care for the dead, it’s to help the living feel safe enough to trust you.

 

Thanks for reading!🪦