Coffin Conversations - by dementia

A British Airways passenger has told of his shock after he woke up to find he was sitting next to a corpse.


Paul Trinder, 54, a businessman from Brackley, Northamptonshire, awoke during the flight to Delhi to find cabin staff propping up a dead woman in his row.



He was refused compensation and told by the airline to "get over it", reports the Independent.


Mr Trinder, who had spent more than £3,000 on his first-class ticket, complained: "The stewards just plonked down this body without saying a thing.



"I remember looking at this thin, sparrow-like woman and thinking she was very ill.

"She kept slipping under the seat belt and moving about with the motion of the plane. When I asked what was going on, I was shocked to hear she was dead."


"I just kept thinking to myself: "I've paid more than £3,000 for this"."


The woman had been in economy class when she died soon after the plane left Delhi.

British Airways says the dead woman was taken into first class because the rest of the plane was full.


"When a customer passes away on board it is always difficult and we apologise for any distress caused," a BA spokesperson said.

“I paid a lot of money to get a fake death certificate and bribe undertakers to deliver an empty coffin … I really thought a lot more of you, my so-called friends, would turn up to pay their last respects. It just goes to show who you can really count on.”

An animal heart riddled with pins, a hollowed gourd and a mysterious photo of a smiling man in a suit were all part of a macabre discovery at an old city burial ground.

A half-dozen gravestones also were toppled and adorned with more than 15 candles, some containing strips of paper with names and dates scribbled on them.

Yonkers police are now probing the eerie Tuesday night incident at St. John's Cemetery on Saw Mill River Road, trying to determine if it was all a "sick prank" or some kind of black magic ritual.

"Right now we are exploring all possibilities in this admittedly strange matter," Police Commissioner Edmund Hartnett said during a news conference yesterday afternoon.

A German journalist has been fined 100 euros ($131) after he filmed three artists stealing water from Pope Benedict's garden hose in Bavaria to sell on Internet auction site EBay.

The three men, clad in overalls and wearing masks, broke into the garden of the Pope's house in Pentling, a suburb of Regensburg, in August armed with as many as 20 old lemonade bottles, the journalist's lawyer, Jan Bockemuehl, told Reuters.

They were filmed in the act by freelance journalist Hubertus Wiendl, who was caught when the caretaker noted down his car registration number, he said. Wiendl denied any knowledge of the plan to enter the garden. The artists have not been tracked down.

"They barely managed to fill one bottle before being challenged by passers-by and driving off," Bockemuehl said.

He had wanted to call the Pope as a witness but this was denied by the presiding judge.

"I was sure the Pope wouldn't have wanted my client to be punished," he said.

The large, 150-year-old tree has been attacked by a fungus and is in danger of falling down.

An Indian woman, despairing over her lover's accidental death when he fell down a well soon after their engagement, insisted on ceremonially marrying his corpse just minutes before the cremation.

"It was for just few minutes the girl was dressed as a bride and then as a widow," K.M. Kapadia, a police officer in the town of Anand in western Gujarat state, said on Saturday.

"We already had naked swimming ... but a gym, that's unique," said one white-haired bespectacled man, who gave only his first name, Henk.

An inmate at an El Salvador jail was caught with a hand grenade stuffed up his backside -- a novel attempt to disguise his apparent escape plans.

Guards at the San Francisco Gotera prison outside the capital San Salvador found the V40 grenade, about the size of a golf ball, lodged up the man's rectum during a security clampdown, a prison spokesman said on Thursday.

ZURICH, Switzerland - What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

An attorney challenging the authority of the city's police chief wants the department's police dog to appear in court as an exhibit, because he says the dog and the chief have criminal justice degrees from the same online school.

The issue gives "one pause, if not paws, for concern" about what it takes to get the degrees from the school based in the Virgin Islands, Gene Murray wrote in a court document filed Monday.

Nathaniel Anderson, a former Louisville funeral director stripped of his state license, was arrested this afternoon after police found human remains at his residence and at Anderson Funeral Service.

Searches turned up the remains of 18 people — most of them cremated, said Alicia Smiley, a Louisville Metro Police spokeswoman.

SPRING HILL, Fla. (UPI) -- A Florida woman ticketed for reckless driving said she hit 19 mailboxes because she couldn't stop crying over the death of her cat that morning.

Tracy Chadwell said the cat, Monty, had helped her get through some difficult times in recent years. The only thing she could think to do was go to work, hoping that would take her mind off the loss, the St. Petersburg Times reported.

Two clowns were shot and killed by an unidentified gunman during their performance at a traveling circus in the eastern Colombian town of Cucuta, police said Wednesday.

The gunman burst into the Circo del Sol de Cali Monday night and shot the clowns in front of an audience of 20 to 50 people, local police chief Jose Humberto Henao told Reuters. One of the clowns was killed instantly and the second died the next day in hospital.

The aristocratic owner of a gay dog aims to cash in on lucrative same-sex weddings by offering his pet pooch as best man at the ceremonies.

Sir Benjamin Slade, 51, is advertising his 13-year-old Labrador-Doberman cross Jasper – who inherited a £100,000 trust fund – for ceremonies at his 13th century manor in Somerset.