Well, as long as the thread has been resurrected (so to speak) anyway, might as well weigh in with our "creepiest dive" story. We were at Stragglers Rocks on St. Thomas with Aqua Marine just before this past Christmas. We were just finishing up a very nice dive, the first of the day. The other divers were already back on the boat, and it was just my wife and I left finishing up our safety stop, with the divemaster using up the last of his air doing a little reef cleanup below us at about 35' right at the mooring pin. We were hanging out at 15', just relaxing, when the divemaster kicked over to what looked like a soggy, collapsed cardboard box sitting on the bottom. He tried to pick it up, but it was very heavy, and just tore apart, leaving him sitting in a little silty cloud of made up of the contents of the box. Just then, a little piece of white paper floated up out of what was left of the box. He caught it, and the expression on his face cannot be described... He waved us down very emphatically, so we dropped back down to see what was going on. He handed the paper to my wife, and her expression pretty much matched his. She handed it to me, and I suspect that my expression was, if anything, even weirder than theirs...
The paper (Tyvek, actually, like the "do not remove" tag from a pillow- they intended it to last!) was a nice little form that read: "Cremated human remains", and gave the decedent's name, date of death, date of cremation, and the name and address of the mortuary that handled the deed. So there we were, hovering in a little cloud of ashes. We replaced the paper (one of about 5 copies) respectfully back into the pile of ashes, and headed off to the boat.
The person had only passed this past September, and was cremated in October, so the remains really hadn't been there very long. They'll be thoroughly dispersed by the current before long, I'm sure. But it appears to me for all the world that somebody in this person's family had sailed out, hit the mooring at Stragglers, and simply dropped the box over the side. We are children of the digital age, so naturally while we were doing our SI before the next dive, we borrowed the boat's Blackberry and Googled the guy. Found his obit, learned a bit about him, and all in all it was quite the surreal experience.
The gear got a really, *really* thorough rinsing after that one.
Moral of the story: be really specific about that whole "scattering" thing, if those are your wishes. And I didn't know that mortuaries put multiple copies of traceable, long-lived documentation in with the remains- and I'll bet that person's family didn't either...
The paper (Tyvek, actually, like the "do not remove" tag from a pillow- they intended it to last!) was a nice little form that read: "Cremated human remains", and gave the decedent's name, date of death, date of cremation, and the name and address of the mortuary that handled the deed. So there we were, hovering in a little cloud of ashes. We replaced the paper (one of about 5 copies) respectfully back into the pile of ashes, and headed off to the boat.
The person had only passed this past September, and was cremated in October, so the remains really hadn't been there very long. They'll be thoroughly dispersed by the current before long, I'm sure. But it appears to me for all the world that somebody in this person's family had sailed out, hit the mooring at Stragglers, and simply dropped the box over the side. We are children of the digital age, so naturally while we were doing our SI before the next dive, we borrowed the boat's Blackberry and Googled the guy. Found his obit, learned a bit about him, and all in all it was quite the surreal experience.
The gear got a really, *really* thorough rinsing after that one.
Moral of the story: be really specific about that whole "scattering" thing, if those are your wishes. And I didn't know that mortuaries put multiple copies of traceable, long-lived documentation in with the remains- and I'll bet that person's family didn't either...
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