Stranger Shows Up at Funeral, Hits Dead Man

Laurens County (The Greenville News) - Tammy Fausel said that she and her family were shocked at what happened during her uncle's funeral in Gray Court.

A Candler, N.C., woman danced in front of the service, waved a wand around the casket, opened the lid, laid her hands on the deceased's head and struck the body with a wand, according to an incident report from the Laurens County Sheriff's Office.

Nicole Marie Loretta Leonard, 25, has been charged with disturbing a funeral and public disorderly conduct in Tuesday's incident, according to tickets.

Fausel said she had never before seen the woman and had no idea why she would've been at funeral at Church of God on State 14.

"Everybody was just kind of flabbergasted," she said. "They didn't know what was going on."

The woman took flowers from the top of the casket and threw them at the family before leaving in a burgundy Toyota, according to the report.
<snip>
When deputies asked the woman why she acted the way she did, the woman said "she felt that it was the right thing to do at the time," according to the report. The woman told deputies she knew no one at the church, according to the report.
http://www.wltx.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=71172&catid=2

Okaaaaaaaaaaay! My state is getting weirder by the minute.

:crazy:

There has to be an element of denial to trussing up the deceased like Weekend at Bernie's for one last hurrah, and tapping a corpse with a wand shouldn't really evoke that much consternation among people praying to an unseen deity for a luxurious afterlife, so the story is really the sheriff getting involved not the act itself, which would probably go unremarked upon in most of California ("oh, that was Galadriel.") unless trespassing is news.

The dead go through eternity with a backless suit and no pants....

It would be just as weird if someone crashed a 'flower-throwing-and-wand-waving' funeral in her family and dressed the corpse in a suit...

Maybe I watched "Harold and Maude" at an impressionable age but it doesn't strike me as that odd to take solace or even secondhand despair in the tribulations of others.

or even alter the proceedings.

Sitting quietly in the back (for whatever reason) wouldn't strike me as particularly strange or disruptive...

I thought suiting up the recently deceased was a show of respect rather than an illustration of denial... unless of course one believes that sucker-punching a corpse is also an illustration of denial. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, right?

I don't necessarily approve of itinerant priests or whatever, much less vandalizing the dead, but it seems like the "story" in a journalistic sense isn't about a boring police blotter item, (wo)man crashes event and breaks taboo with mysterious scepter, the controversy producing "dog bites man" angle is the spiritual leaning of the vandal/performance artist/uninvited mourner and the contrast with the community's expectations, and possibly the involvement of an attractive white woman given the media's history of saturation coverage thereof.

My overall curiosity remains (regardless of sucker-punch v. struck with wand, although both seem apt descriptors in this case)... I was under the impression that suiting up a corpse was a show of respect rather than a sign of denial. On what premise does one base the idea that it is indeed merely a form of denial?

I think "respect" and "denial" aren't mutually exclusive, especially where mortality is concerned; I don't perceive the suiting up as disrespectful since it's culturally normative (as would be a funeral pyre in other parts of the world), but this particular Western tradition, broadly speaking, doesn't strike me as a rite that signifies wholehearted acceptance of the deceased's new status, again IMO.

Ok. Respect and denial may not be necessarily exclusive. However I'm still wondering why one would think that suiting up a corpse is a form of denial-- unless the corollary is also true, i.e., burying a corpse naked is a form of acceptance.

I mean, the corpse is not expecting it. We probably need not delve into other values of "sucker," for dignity's sake.

Don't knock it if you've never tried it... :evilgrin:




Texas-- Cow tipping, Pie Chucking, and Corpse Punching... we've got it all! :)

and laid her hands on the body and then used her wand to strike him and then took flowers and threw at the family and nobody stopped her? She got in her car and left.

:shrug:

to do something like that, or have a serious grudge against some one in the family and figured this was your last chance to get back at them!

:yoiks: :silly:

could have easily paralyzed them for a few mins while she did her thing and escaped...

Maybe it was a Wicca-Gram.

Don't mean to swagger, but I'd like to BELIEVE that if some strange woman would have hit/struck my father's body, I would have "laid her out" right beside him. :shrug:

Perhaps everyone was "in shock?"

Who knows for sure?

For some reason I feel like quoting Mr. Hand from the flick "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."

ARE YOU ON DOPE?!?

:hide:

I kid...I kid .......

:)

I know my family will find it amusing when the guy with the trained seal shows up.

He can simply walk by -- in one door and out the other -- like the bird show at the wild animal park.

but then i don't think the family would have been mad about it....

.. at the last funeral I went to which was 60% military/police. I don't think she would have made it out of there.

again say "this sort of thing can never happen."

Sort of like a Singing Telegram or Candy-gram.

:hide:

I haven't heard about this as a tradition. I talked to a friend who lives in the area, and she hasn't heard of such. However, with any particular family, who knows.

no one there recognized her.

Honestly I would love this to happen at my funeral....

Most funerals I have attended have been depressing affairs with an air of sameness about them...

Nothing livens up the afterlife like a strange crazy chick.

jk

what a crazy story.

and said "Glad you are dead and hope you are burning in hell." and then spit on him.
I was gonna piss on his body when others dragged me out of the funeral home.

The guy was a major league asshole and a cowardly bully(he was only a bully when his friends were there to back him up.) that also killed three good friends in the wreck he caused.

His brother thought what I did was funny and that his brother deserved it.

Like I said-The guy was a major asshole.BushRush level assholishness.

Only a handful of people showed up at his funeral.The three friends he killed had hundreds attend.

Not a single person said anything negative to me over what I did.Most people laughed.

Tempting fate? :shrug:

That is one mad cow in need of a Prozac salt lick.

Cue Patsy Cline.........

i wanted to say how proud i am, of the women who have made the top headlines today!! way to go girls...women's history month is off with a bang!! btw...hi MOM!! haven't seen you in a while!! ;)

MENTAL EVALUATION???? HOW ABOUT, ASSAULT WITH INTENT TO KILL AGAIN! !

Maybe she was his dominatrix and wanted to take one last whack at him.

"Nicole Marie Loretta Leonard, 25, has been charged with disturbing a funeral...."
Wait, stop the presses. I just thought about this as James Gregory would. Since the "Disturbing a Funeral" charge was already on the books, that means that at least once, sometime in the past, some nut said to his buddies "Hold my beer, watch this"......

If you see this girl....Run! Do Not lie down and play dead...that only excited her!

excuse me...we have enough nut cases here in south carolina, so if you don't mind, be crazy in your own state!!! we don't dance around coffins and wave car antennas at funerals around here... our troopers wear dresses & drive drunk...if you want even crazier, you may want to try the state of florida...the creme de la creme of crazy states!!

two women spat on the corpse. the Widow was enraged until Both women explained they were the deceased' Victims. he had scammed them both.

where James Coburn stuck a pin into a dead guy in the coffin as his horrified wife, played by the beautiful, Audry Hepburn, looks on.

"To Catch a Thief" is Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.

Both are very good movies.

I saw "Charade" for the first time when I was pretty young so it's always stuck in my head.

That fight scene on top of the roof with the guy with the hook hand (George Kennedy?) is kind of terrifying.

I was pretty young too. I thought the stamps were a neat way to hide the money.

A daughter the family knew nothing about. You never know.

My family probably wouldn't even be surprised...

:evilgrin:

Not that I would care, since I wouldn't exist anymore and all but I'm being cremated. So anyone with some grievances to air might want to punch me NOW.
However, pissing in the ashes of my corpse is a valid and meaningful alternative. Also, my jaw/nose thanks you.

I love cats.

the washer wielder. She was a massage therapist. To wake up one morning, read about a funeral, and then to attend even though you don't know the person is weird enough. To find Gray Court, SC and travel there from NC would mean some serious hunting. Then add to that the other things she did. I have no doubt she was tripping, but that would be some seriously weird stuff.
I know it could happen. I want to know the rest of the story.

Sounds like High Church to me, with fewer smells and bells.

I don't show up and do liturgy at funerals where I wasn't booked by the family. Walking into someone else's church and doing a funeral uninvited is just bad form.

I have tears in my eyes from imaging the incidence... tears of laughter.

Link to police report: http://www.wltx.com/docs/Nicole_Marie_Leonard.pdf

Note to self: disturbing a funeral in SC is a specific violation with a code

NOW I get it!

:crazy: