Are You Dying to Know?

by Trish and Tracy

Accuracy in death scenes is something many writers struggle with, given a lack of exposure to the topic, and if your research consists of reruns of CSI and a one-off Hollywood blockbuster, you could be getting it wrong.

The list of common inaccuracies is long, and, for anyone with a medical, forensic or deathcare background, these faux pas are immediately obvious and mildly insulting, robbing the writer of their credibility. Researching forensic and mortuary procedures can be difficult with many industry secrets guarded and the subject of death still considered taboo for discussion.

As prolific crime writer Sheila Lowe recently found, YouTube is a valuable source of accurate information – but you must know where to look. Sheila credited Australian YouTube presenters Tracy and Trish from Are You Dying To Know? in the acknowledgements of her latest page-turner, Maximum Pressure, after gaining valuable insights for several mortuary scenes from the Channel.

Tracy, a mortician /embalmer with 15 years in deathcare, and her best friend Trish, a former newspaper journalist, created a safe space on their channel where people from across the globe can ask questions relating to death and deathcare, without embarrassment or judgement.

Topics covered range from the quintessential “Do bodies sit up?” (hint: the answer is no, but sometimes they can make small movements because of gas buildup, cellular degradation or gravity), to “What happens to a body that dies in water?” (it will decompose faster, often resulting in skin slip and bloating).

The channel offers videos explaining where the blood goes during embalming (generally into the sewer), how a mortician cares for someone with facial trauma, and simple, less confronting quandaries like the difference between a casket and coffin or what happens to unclaimed bodies.

For six years, T&T, as they are known by almost 100,000 viewers, have been shining a light on deathcare in a way that is neither dramatized nor watered down – there is no sugar coating, but somehow they manage to deliver information that could be upsetting and gruesome, in a way that is far less confronting than you would expect.

Recently, they helped on a Sisters In Crime webinar to set the record straight on death-related myths and misconceptions that tarnish otherwise engaging novels.

“Mortuaries are often thought of as these scary, dark places with dim lighting and dirty equipment. Really, they are generally light, bright, and quite clinical,” Tracy said. “People also get it wrong when writing about the type of work we actually do. I am a mortician who works in a funeral home. People always ask me about autopsies, but that is the work of a medical pathologist, usually in a government-run facility which comes under the coroner's jurisdiction.”

She said a mortician’s role is to care for the deceased with dignity and respect, on behalf of the family, and to prepare the body for a visitation, a funeral, or a service.

“Most of the people I care for are little old people who die naturally in nursing homes and hospitals,” Tracy said.

A defibrillator removed from the deceased with the aid of a surgical magnet.

“Also, here in Australia, we don’t embalm everyone – another common misconception. Embalming is only used when the body is being taken home for a few days, if it is repatriated to another country, or interred in an above-ground vault or crypt.”

After a few years of producing two videos a week on YouTube, Tracy and Trish recognised a disturbing pattern emerging in their viewer comments.

“We got a real sense people did not feel comfortable asking all the questions at the time of their loved one’s death,” Tracy said. “In other cases, people had asked questions of the funeral director but were told they ‘Didn’t need to know’, and hearing the details of injuries or procedures carried out in the mortuary would be ‘too upsetting’.”

“All that does is give your imagination room to run wild with assumptions, which can be worse than the reality,” she said. “For example, it may surprise people to know that gunshot victims and people who fall from a height sometimes have very little visible trauma.”

Trish added that even something as simple as the way a dead body looked was often misconstrued. “Often, there is no discoloration of the skin, no deathly white pallor or waxy complexion – these things come later, often as the result of embalming or cosmetization,” she said. “Authors often write it this way because that’s what they’ve come to know from TV or movies.”

Anyone curious about the girls on YouTube can rest easy, knowing they don’t show graphic procedures on the channel. At times, they are criticized for not showing enough of the procedures discussed, but they are not here to show gore or glorify death.

“We just want to inform people, so they know what actually happens and know their options when the time comes,” Tracy said. “Unfortunately, most of us will have to deal with a funeral director at some stage in our lives.”

“Our aim is to get people to talk about death. When they have those conversations, we hope they are based on fact, not fear,” added Trish.