by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Patrick Mireault aka Evil. S. Presley

Age: 32

Occupation: Gravedigger

Bio: This fun-lovin’ Verdun resident has been working in a Laval cemetery for the past six years, first in the capacity of crypt keeper and today as a first-rate gravedigger and flower-arranger—horticulture being a field of study he pursued with the express purpose of someday working in a cemetery. “But being crypt keeper was the best. I got to live in the cemetery, lock up the mausoleum and the whole cemetery was all mine every night. Just a few metres away from where I slept were all the dead bodies. It was awesome.”

Was he concerned, alone on his first night of crypt keeping, that the ghoulies were going to come out and get him? “A little. But I did a bit of an exorcism, saying, ‘Okay, I’m here, I’m the new crypt keeper, do whatever you want but I’m here peacefully and I just want to have peace.’ I told them they could visit me if they wanted, but don’t bother wasting my time trying to freak me out.”

Did he ever see any spooks? No.

Has he ever had sex with a corpse? No. “But I’m sure there are people around who do. But probably only with fresh corpses, not the ones I receive at the cemetery. The people we get are really stiff, sometimes blue, sometimes green, and they smell very bad—especially the ones that haven’t been embalmed—and they don’t usually have make-up on them. There’s nothing attractive about the corpses we get.”

Something that makes him very happy: Exhuming bodies. “Sometimes people will discover that their aunt or someone has been buried with all the anonymous John Does and want to have them exhumed, put in a new casket and reburied somewhere else. So it’s my job to dig them up and stick them in their new caskets. It’s creepy, it smells and I still shake when I have to do it, but I love it. The job is never the same. You just don’t know if you’ll find only a skeleton or a whole body.”

Something he did for fun once: Lay down in a grave he had just dug, climbed into one of the cardboard coffins they cremate people in, closed the lid, and had his co-workers shovel dirt onto him. “It was fascinating. I like to try different things, you know.”

Two things that actually do freak him out: Digging up bodies, opening the casket and seeing the clothes of the deceased all wrapped up in a bag beside them. “I don’t know, it just freaks me out. But worse is when they have their dentures lying next to them in the casket. I don’t know, I can see a body without a head but dentures, ugh, no way, that’s gross.”

Something else he does: Sings in his band, local death metal legends The Ghoulunatics.

Last book read: L’homme qui devint Dieu, by Gérald Messadié.

Favourite film of all time: Evil Dead.

Words of wisdom: “Never moon a werewolf.”

Comments? dimwit@openface.ca