A mortician has revealed the most bizarre request she’s ever had to deal with while organising a funeral - and not it’s your standard fare.
In the latest episode of the podcast Tea at Four, hosts Lauren and Billy were joined by mortician Hayleigh, better known as The Mortuary Tech on TikTok.
As The Mortuary Tech, she’s built a huge following by discussing and dissecting her job and everything involved when planning a funeral.
How TikTok mortician Hayleigh dealt with a bizarre funeral request
As for the weirdest request she’s ever dealt with, Hayleigh revealed that one man’s last request was to be dressed up in extravagant make-up in his coffin, whilst also wearing fishnet tights and star-shaped nipple tassels.
“It was…different,” Hayleigh recalled. “I thought the funeral director was taking the mickey out of me.
“He said, 'you’ve got a gentleman here, he wants his eyebrows done, his nails done, extravagantly, and he wants to wear… this.”
Hayleigh had, in fact, been given a dress with fishnet stockings and some star-shaped nipple tassels to put on the body.
Unsure at first, she ended up contacting the dead man’s relatives, who confirmed that this was, indeed, what he had specifically planned on wearing at his funeral.
“He knew he was going to die for about a year and a half,” Hayleigh went on.
“That’s what he wanted. I did scratch my head a lot during that one.
"There were some things to cover up.”
Are there any no-gos for a mortician while preparing a body for a funeral?
Despite that bizarre - yet fabulous - request, Hayleigh has no problem enacting the dead’s wishes to prepare them exactly how they want for their funeral, but she did reveal one tricky scenario that always trips her up.
Namely, elderly women who want to be buried in their wedding dress from their youth.
That is so tricky, Hayleigh said, because it “takes hours. And the last thing I want to do is make an incision in the dress to get it around [the body].”
Apparently, this is one of Hayleigh’s most recurring requests while preparing a body for a funeral, something she does six or seven times a year, and something that’s not just reserved for the elderly.
But sometimes, the trickiest part of the process can be trying to place a whole wedding dress in a coffin.
“You have to think about how narrow a coffin is,” Hayleigh said, “you have to tuck said dress [in] but keep it as floaty as we can.
“That’s a lot of rolling and manoeuvring. The less we handle the deceased, the better. They’re still a person, they’re meant to be at rest.”
For all of you thinking a mortician must have special tools for preparing bodies for funerals, Hayleigh was happy to dispel that myth too.
The make-up she uses to prepare bodies all comes from the UK high-street chain Superdrug.
Check out the full Tea at Four podcast on Spotify or YouTube here.