Claim about funeral service worker getting cremated by mistake while sleeping is satire

 

 

Screenshot of the Facebook post.

 

News Brief

A screenshot of the article titled “[Global Pandemic] Funeral service worker accidentally cremated by his colleague while taking a nap | China Press” was shared Jan. 1, 2023, on Facebook.

As of the publication of this report, the Facebook post had been shared 36 times, and had received 20 comments as well as 237 likes and reactions. Similar claims had been circulating on Facebook.

Fact-checking

The link “chinapress.com.my” shown in the screenshot of the article is the website of the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper China Press. Keyword searches have revealed the link of the original article shared on Facebook here. However, the link is no longer valid as it shows the message “Sorry, the page does not exist.” Therefore, the China Press article could have been deleted.

 

Original article published on China Press no longer exists.

 

Having said that, articles with the same image and title are still circulating online. One of the examples is an article published on the content farm website FUN01. The article, written in Chinese, translates in part as, “Michael Jones, an employee of a funeral company in New York was exhausted after working for sixteen hours straight to handle the influx of dead bodies due to rampant COVID-19 cases…Michael Jones’ colleague Jenna said she heard him screaming for 15 seconds after the crematory was activated for the cremation process.”

Following searches with the keywords “Michael Jones,” “16 hours” and “Jenna,”
the article, titled “New York, NY:  Exhausted Funeral Home Employee Cremated by Mistake While Taking a Nap,” has been found. The article was published April 11, 2020, by the website Weekly Inquirer. It has the same details, such as the plot and characters of the story, as in the FUN01 article. It is worth noting that there is a disclaimer message at the bottom of the Weekly Inquirer article: “Disclaimer: This is satire.”

 

The statement “Disclaimer: This is satire” appears at the bottom of the Weekly Inquirer article.

 

Another satirical news website, World News Daily Report, published a similar article in 2017, “Morgue employee cremated by mistake while taking a nap.” The article mentioned a funeral service worker in Texas, Henri Paul Johnson, fell asleep after being exhausted working for sixteen hours straight. One of his colleagues thought he was a dead body and moved him to the crematory. His colleague Jenna said she heard him screaming for 15 seconds as the cremation process began.

 

On the World News Daily Report website, there is also a statement at the bottom, saying its articles are satirical and fictional.

 

Comparing the two articles posted on World News Daily Report and Weekly Inquirer, it is apparent that the incidents mentioned were more or less alike, but with different details.  For example, the victims were Henri Paul Johnson and Michael Jones in the two articles respectively; The place where the incidents happened was changed from Beaumont, Texas to New York. Similar stories appeared on different satirical news sites in 2017. However, during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, the story has been spread again: It has been put in the context of the pandemic, while details including the victim’s names and places have been further changed.

The source of the picture shared in the viral article has been identified with a reverse image search. In the news article published April 10, 2020 by Bloomberg, there is a photo almost identical to the one in the viral article. However, the Bloomberg article did not mention any incidents about a funeral worker cremated by mistake.

 

Comparison between the photo shared in the viral article (top) and the one shared in the Bloomberg article (bottom).

 

Further keyword searches on international news agencies and mainstream media in the United States produced no results related to the claim.