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| Just Visiting
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October 29, 2005
By Zukile Majova
My love for horror movies has disappeared completely and two weeks after the most scary experience of my life I'm still having nightmares.
This Jeepers Creepers feeling has been with me since a grand tour of Durban's biggest mortuary cold room - a 210-corpse fridge with a pervasive, strange smell.
The visit was part of The Independent on Saturday's investigation into progress that is being made in regulating the funeral parlour industry.
Rajesh Maharaj, owner of Thekwini Funeral Services in Gale Street, took myself and photo journalist Marilyn Bernard on a tour of his property, including the storage fridges.
"Do you think we should go in here," I asked Marilyn after Maharaj had opened the door to the storage freezer.
"It's a once in-a-lifetime thing so let's get it over and done with so we can live to tell," Marilyn said.
The numerous Hollywood movies I've seen did nothing to prepare me.
In the movies the bodies are stored in big steel drawers which the undertakers roll out whenever someone comes to identify a body which is always covered in plain, white cloth.
In reality, the bodies just lie on their backs on steel shelves. They are naked and there are no drawers or white cloths covering them.
There were columns of steel and bodies of black and white, young and old, male and female, packed on the shelves, from floor to ceiling. The only covered body was one of a very tiny baby and that was what shocked Marilyn the most.
I am not sure what was more haunting, the chilling feeling that maybe one of these 150 bodies would wake up and say "hi" or the stench that seems to hang over you like a ghost.
Don't get me wrong, Maharaj's establishment is clean and I'm sure will pass any health test.
Normally when I have nightmares, I feel cold yet sweat and scream. But when the mortuary scene creeps in, I feel like running because the experience still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
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| More stories from this column | |
| Just Visiting - April 23, 2005 | |  | | Just Visiting - April 16, 2005 | | | | Just Visiting - April 9, 2005 | | | | Just Visiting - April 2, 2005 | | | | Just Visiting - March 26, 2005 | | | | Just Visiting - March 19, 2005 | | | | Just visiting - March 5, 2005 | | | | Just Visiting - February 26, 2005 | | | | Just visiting - February 19, 2005 | | | | Just Visiting - February 12, 2005 | | | | Just Visiting - February 5, 2005 | | | | Just visiting - January 29, 2005 | | | | Just visiting - January 22, 2005 |  | | | Just visiting - January 15, 2005 | | | | Just visiting - January 8, 2005 | | | | Just visiting | | | | Just Visiting - December 18, 2004 | | | | Just visiting - December 11, 2004 | | | | Just visiting | | | | Just Visiting - November 27, 2004 | | |
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