Dateline: IowaA family’s basement was flooded with five inches of blood and animal byproducts. According to WHO-TV in Iowa, Nick Lestina was in the middle of prepping his house in Bagley, Iowa, to go on the market when he found out that his basement had been flooded with five inches of what appeared to be blood. “I was shocked at first,” he told reporters, “but—I mean—I had a pretty good idea where it came from.” The Lestina family has lived next to Dahl’s Custom Meat Locker for 10 years, but this is the first time they’ve ever had any issue with the company. According to specialists, the red liquid that filled the basement was a mixture of animal blood, fat and bones. Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has been investigating the incident and says the meat locker flushed blood down the floor drain after killing a number of hogs. That floor drain likely discharges into a tile, which could connect to the family’s basement drain via a shared pipe. The DNR confirmed that the blood would have continued to rise if Lestina hadn’t used a sump pump. A number of items were ruined by the blood. Lestina said the damages done to his home will cost thousands to repair and says that the meat locker refuses to help pay for it. But the company’s co-owner, Kaitlin Dahl, told reporters that the Dahl family is arguing with their insurance company in an attempt to get it to cover the damages—“otherwise we will financially assist the Lestinas,” she said. Until the mess is cleaned up, the Iowa Department of Health has recommended that the family of seven leave their home to avoid any potential biohazards.Dateline: IrelandA man played a posthumous prank on his loved ones as they attended his funeral. Dublin Live reports that mourners were shocked to hear the voice of the late Shay Bradley projecting from the man’s casket as it was lowered into a grave earlier this month. “Hello,” the voice called, as knocking sounds that seemed to come from the coffin could be heard. “Let me out! Where the f— am I? Hello? Let me out! It’s f— dark in here … Is that the priest I can hear? I’m in the box. Can’t you hear that?” The voice goes on to sing lines from Neil Diamond’s “Hello Again.” The mourners’ confusion quickly turned to mirth when they realized the voice was actually a pre-recorded message from Bradley. In an interview with Irish Post, Bradley’s daughter explained that her late father came up with the idea while spending an afternoon with her and her brother. Bradley was battling cancer at the time, and the future was looking grim. He spontaneously asked his kids to record him with a phone. “And he recorded the message,” she said. “It took just one take because he was just naturally that funny.” Bradley swore the two to secrecy and requested that they play the recording at his funeral. When the big day came, the man’s son played the recording while his daughter filmed the mourners’ reactions. Her footage of people laughing around the grave went viral on social media under the hashtag #shayslastlaugh.Dateline: UgandaA mother of 44 children in Uganda has been banned from having more babies. According to The Sun, Mariam Nabatanzi has had six sets of twins, four sets of triplets and five sets of quadruplets. She was reportedly sold into marriage at the age of 12 and gave birth to her first set of twins one year later. Doctors recently took action to stop the woman from producing more children. She told reporters that the doctor had “cut my uterus from inside.” It is believed that the cause of the woman’s high fertility is hyperovulation—a genetic condition in which multiple eggs are released during a single cycle. She was advised years ago by doctors that she had unusually large ovaries and should not take birth control pills because they might cause health problems. Her husband reportedly abandoned her three years ago, leaving her with the sole responsibility of taking care of the family. She currently works as a tailor, hairdresser, distiller and herbalist to pay for the needs of her 38 surviving children. The family lives in four small houses made of cement blocks and roofed with corrugated iron. “I started taking on adult responsibilities at an early stage,” she reportedly said. “I have not had joy, I think, since I was born.”Dateline: SingaporeEight families in Singapore have discovered that they’ve been paying their respects at the wrong graves for decades. The Straits Times reports that an exhumation of one of the graves revealed the wrong headstone standing over the plot. The Singapore National Environment Agency (NEA) investigated by exhuming two more coffins that were adjacent to the first. These graves were also discovered to be under the wrong headstones. Five more graves were exhumed before authorities understood what had happened. According to an NEA spokesperson, all eight of the deceased had been buried 39 years ago on the same day. The next of kin of one of the grave’s residents did not erect a headstone, causing misalignment of the other graves. One of the headstones was actually “straddling the space over two grave plots.” The NEA says this is the first case of the sort that the agency has ever had to deal with. Since the discovery, the agency says it has verified the remains of all the affected families.
Compiled by Joshua Lee. Email your weird news to josh@alibi.com.
