Story behind mummified remains in Alabama mortuary

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Odd News - Canadian Press


Story behind mummified remains in Alabama mortuary like Halloween tale

Fri Oct 22, 6:47 PM ET


BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - Two mummified bodies found in an abandoned, burned-out Alabama mortuary have a story as eerie as Halloween.



They were known as Pap and Molly and legend had it they stabbed each other to death in the 1930s.


A passer-by spotted the corpses this week in the remains of the Shortridge Funeral Home, reviving memories of the mummies for longtime residents who had seen them at the mortuary decades ago.


Police summoned to the scene Wednesday night initially checked to see if foul play was involved. After roping off the area and waiting for daylight, they removed a coffin containing both bodies and decided no recent crime had occurred.


Residents in the West Birmingham neighbourhood said Pap and Molly were understood to be a husband and wife who supposedly stabbed each other to death during a drunken fight in the 1930s. No one claimed their bodies and they remained at the funeral home - a 100-year-old family business that closed last year and burned in July.


Edward Rogers, 55, said he first saw the mummified bodies when he was 11 and lived nearby. He said the owner showed him the corpses, which were propped against a wall in the back room.


"It scared me the first time," Rogers told the Birmingham News newspaper.


"I didn't go back for about a month. Then I'd go by and wave to them through the window."


"I just got to liking them."


He said the owner at the time, W.E. Shortridge, told him they had been preserved in case someone showed up to bury them and then were used as a teaching tool for future embalmers.


The mortuary closed after its most recent owner, Pinkie Shortridge, died at 79 last year.


Jefferson County deputy coroner Pat Curry said an initial examination found the two were elderly when they died. The grisly story of how the pair died may be untrue: Curry said there was no evidence of any kind of injuries.