Mummified remains found in dead hoarders home

[cbdo2007]

Mummified remains found in dead hoarder's home


JENNINGS, Mo. | Investigators are trying to determine whether mummified human remains found in a suburban St. Louis home are those of the mother of the home's hoarding elderly occupant, who died nearly three weeks earlier.

Police and a forensic investigator with the St. Louis County medical examiner's office tell the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that it's unknown how long the remains had been in the Jennings home.

The home's occupant, Gladys Bergmeier, was 75 when she was found dead in her bed Feb. 7. A relative found the mummified remains of an elderly woman weeks later.

Neighbor Gussie Harrison called the discovery "just shocking."

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/03/08/2706945/mummified-remains-found-in-dead.html##ixzz1G1I2KJcl

[WatsonT]

1. Ech

I find this behavior deeply disturbing. I don't know why, but hoarders have always creeped me out. Not in the least because it's such a hard mental illness to cure.

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. Hoarding is actually hard-wired in our brains

It was this instinct that helped our species survive in the jungle. It is also a natural instinct for many other species as well.

Cheers!~

[WatsonT]

4. Many disorders

stem from some kind of hardwired or survival instinct that goes way to far in the wrong direction.

[H2O Man]

10. Respectfully disagree.

First, our ancestors primarily inhabit the savanna, not the jungle. Second, they were "scavengers" for hundreds of thousands of years, a life-style that did not allow for collecting much material into their "nests." Third, due to the environment and their technology, there were more reasons to not "hoard" than to collect large quantities of objects that could not be easily transported.

[firehorse]

13. don't believe its hardwired.

Many many people are satisfied living with less and they don't feel deprived doing so, and they don't feel like they are fighting a hardwired impulse to collect.

I feel completely overwhelmed with stuff. Can't even have stuff on the walls as any kind of visual gluttony is discomforting.

[PassingFair]

3. They all seem to have control issues with their families...

I don't mind hoarders that live alone, but the
ones with families and spouses piss me off.

(I say from my junk-filled office...)

[HopeHoops]

5. Sorry - took me a while to respond. I couldn't find my keyboard.

[PassingFair]

11. As long as the keys aren't stuck together with mouse poop...

I think we're OK.

[HopeHoops]

18. I have three cats. We get mice once in a while - but never for long.

[pipi_k]

12. Well, the ones with spouses...

I sometimes see the spouses as being unwitting enablers, probably because they have similar issues.

The ones I really feel sorry for are the children. I saw a show on hoarding some time ago where the family either had to clean up or lose custody of their kids.

[PassingFair]

14. The spouses usually seem afraid to stand up to the hoarders.

If you call that "enabling".

They don't want to fight an obviously losing battle.
The hoarders are the ones "in control".

[cbdo2007]

19. Many times the hoarder sees what they're hoarding as having value....

so it would be just like if my wife told me to throw out a pile of cash.

That's how my grandma's ex-husband was with his hoarding. He would save all this junk because he thought it had value, and they were really short on money, so when they would fight about his hoarding he always acted like she was the one making them poor because he was trying to get a few bucks here and there for his junk.

[pipi_k]

23. Yep...down below someplace...

I said that for a time I was collecting turkey and chicken wishbones.

For some Godforsaken reason, my mind was telling me that they were valuable. Jewelry? Good luck talismans? I don't even remember.

I did throw them out though.

Now I hoard music. And pens. And books.

really useful stuff.

:)

[pipi_k]

20. Actually, in a situation like that...

nobody is in control.

It's much like alcoholism.


The disease is in control.

And it's not all that uncommon for the person without the addiction (gambling, drinking, hoarding, etc) to be even more disturbed than the addict.

People with huge issues themselves bitch and complain about the other person's issues, but the reality is that they get some kind of emotional payback through being a "victim".

[luvspeas]

22. Not sure what my dad was...

He was a nice guy who really didn't care all that much about the stuff. He loved my mom, and he had a room that was his and it had a lot of stuff in it, but it was organized. He served as a buffer for me and my mom when things got too crazy but never said an unkind word about her. He also worked super hard and long hours. I think he had pretty low self-esteem though. He didn't graduate high school, and his work was boring and kind of dangerous. He never felt like he could do better. Through all that though, he was crazy smart and knew a lot of stuff. Neither of my parents drank, did drugs, or gambled.

None of us have ever been able to figure out why my mom needed to accumulate so much stuff. No one else on either side of my family is like that.

[pipi_k]

27. People with particular anxieties...

have a real attachment to their "stuff".

I think many of them feel it's the only thing in their lives they can control even though, oddly, it gets out of control. I've seen shows where someone with piles and piles of stuff knows exactly where this or that item is. Very weird.

And a lot of those people had never had a problem until something traumatic happened in their lives. It could just as well turned to overeating or drinking or drugging under other circumstances.

They get a "high" from buying or acquiring, but then guilt sets in which makes them feel worse, so then they buy or acquire again to stop the pain, which leads to more bad feelings, and this whole vicious cycle starts.

[PassingFair]

25. Yup...there's usually a trade-off....

somewhere.

[pipi_k]

8. I have mixed feelings...

On one hand, I can understand the hoarding to some extent because I've been known to keep some real worthless items, although not to the point where my home is a dump. I do eventually throw the items out when my mind tells me it's trash and I'll never use it, and that's when I argue with myself that there just might come a day when I'll need my collection of turkey and chicken wishbones (yes, I did have a collection at one time).


On the other hand, when I see people saving up all sorts of trash that they have to sort through one item at a time before they'll get rid of it, I just want to scream and throttle them and send in an army of bucket loaders.

[QC]

6. I live three houses down from a hoarder.

When Code Enforcement finally made him haul away the junk (which took a couple of weeks) I suddenly had rats.

Coincidence? Possibly, but I doubt it.

[MineralMan]

7. Probably not a coincidence. Uff da!

[Renew Deal]

17. Nice post Ghaddafi!

:evilgrin:

[QC]

24. These rats were as big and mean as Ghadaffi!

We have something called tree rats in Florida, which are basically large mice, and no one is much scared of those (palmetto bugs do a lot to raise a person's fright threshold), but the ones that ended up in my garage and attic were full on big ass gopher rats nearly as big as possums.

They came running across the rafters right over my head one night when I was in the garage and it made me flash back to every horror moview I have ever seen.

[Renew Deal]

26. All I know is if I saw rats like that.

I'd lock myself in the car. :scared:

[luvspeas]

9. My mother was a hoarder...

Not of dirty garbage like some on the show, fortunately. It was very traumatic. When I was a kid I had a dream that I had killed someone and hidden a body in the basement. It scared the living hell out of me and I thought I was crazy! Looking back, I'm sure it had more to do with feeling guilty and embarrassed about all the stuff in the house. Today I am proud to say I have a tidy home. Not obsessively so, just right.

[pipi_k]

15. I've known a couple of real-life hoarders...

My grandparents on my mom's side, for one. I loved to visit with them except for their home. It was foul. Absolutely disgusting.

My grandmother...actually my step-grandmother, but anyway...she owned a small yarn shop attached to the house. It was neat as a pin. The rest of the house was a pig sty.

Another one was a friend. Her apartment was shocking. When she ended up moving to a new place, it was almost like she packed up all the trash into boxes and then emptied it right onto the floor. I guess that's one thing I could never (and never will) understand...the mindset of someone who just tosses pizza boxes, paper plates, silverware, soda cans, and god knows what else, all over the floor.

I'm not exactly OCD about cleaning, but geez....I know where the trash can is.

[HughBeaumont]

16. Just like the classics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyer_brothers

[Mz Pip]

21. I rented a room from a hoarder once.

I needed a place to live right away and rented a room from a woman up in the Berkeley Hills. It wasn't after I moved in that I really saw what was going on in the rest of the house. She saved every newspaper with the supposed intention of going through them to cut out articles to send to her relatives in Europe. She never did and the piles kept growing. The refrigerator was full of moldy food that she wouldn't throw out because parts of it might still be good. I caught hell from her for throwing out a rotten tomato because according to her it was only rotton on one side. Then there were the cockroaches... :puke:

She kept the doors closed to the rest of the house so I never saw what was in the other rooms.

I didn't stay there long.