Palmer the Embalmer

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The following is an excerpt from an interview with the bartender at the Newport Pub, Jackson Gilbish -

“so guy this guy Mr. Palmer comes in same as always… frankly we call him Mr. Palmer but I have no idea if Palmer is his first name or his last… anyway, he takes his spot at the bar and as usual, people move away immediately… I mean the guy smells fowl, but he pays his tab and so I just put up with it…”

“anyway this night the Palmer guy, he is more chatty than normal… starts talking about how much he loves his work… how amazing the human body is, when it’s ‘still and cold’… it’s flippin’ creepy I tell you… and he goes on and on and I can’t even repeat it… and the railroaders sitting at a table near by, they start to hear this… and again I ain’t even repeating most of what Palmer says about what he does at that place cause it ain’t godly… but suffice to say these railroaders heard it all, and they grab him… now this guy… Palmer… he was a big guy, I guess from moving those bodies around, and I wasn’t sure he couldn’t take out the whole bar if he wanted to… but he just let’s them pull him off the stool… straight down to the ground… and the railroaders start kicking and beating him… and I grab a shotgun I keep under the bar cause I’m sure this is gonna get bad when he gets up… but he just lays there taking it… taking it… I remember the railroaders breathing heavy from beating him so frantically… but then… then this Palmer, he starts laughing… laughing louder and harder than any laugh I ever heard in my life…. reminds me then and reminds me still of what the devil must laugh like… I’ll tell ya… I thought the things he said he did with the bodies would haunt me forever… but they don’t keep me up at night… what keep me up is the sound of that laugh… just ringing out…”