Cienna, Andrew - You're both toast. The gross out award goes to Brad. Centipedes and Snakes now seem adorable. Pardon me while I turn on the tellie to drown out my wretching.

The woman's skeleton sat surrounded by Christmas presents for three years, and yet not one of the gift givers happened to check on her the whole time? Not to mention that three years passed without the woman paying her heat or electric (TV) bills and neither service gets turned off.

Yeah, right, that sounds plausible. No need for more investigation.

It seems possible. I think the so-called council estates (public housing) in Great Britain don’t collect utility bills monthly, I could be mistaken, but I think that’s how the limeys do it.

The article says they were trying to collect back rent, so Im sure they served eviction notices or Writs that probably didn’t require her signature. You have a point about the presents, that makes no sense, but maybe she was a loner, painfully shy or anti social.

It sounds like a lonely and sad way to die , but there is something poetic about dying like that. The whole, “we come alone into the world and we leave alone, thing.”

It seemed like an ending for a good Jorge Luis Borges short story, however, if she had died in North Philly, the rats would have munched on her, which would have been a wee morbid.

brad, do not let this happen to me.

How did her neighbors not smell the stench of her rotting corpse? I've never experienced that smell, thank God, but I've heard it's overwhelming.

If someone ever writes play about her death, the woman's skeleton will be dressed in a long white gown and all of the wrapped boxes will be unopened wedding gifts. What the dickens.