How Did This Man Make 35 Calls From The Afterlife?

In 2008 a viral news story circulated about a making 35 calls to his loved ones after passing away. In today's video we will take a critical look at the final moments of Charles Peck.

[SlightlySociable]

Update: I just received the coroner's report for this case, months later.

No where in the report does it use any explicit use of the term, "died on impact", however his overall condition detailed by the report is very much rough around the edges.

It does however specify various injuries and fractures from the resulting impact, leading to blood loss and even details some injuries occuring post mortem. It doesn't look like you have a case here where the guy immediately just had something go through his heart, but a variety of injuries that are attributed as his over all condition was pretty rough.

To which any one of them could potentially be fatal in a short period of time, but I wouldn't state "instantly"

I've included a link on patreon if you'd like to check it out.

[doctorthirteen]

Normal human beings: What a tragic death.
News media:Their heights though, isn't that weird?!

[DenpaKei]

Man, why'd they burn the couples height difference like that lol

[capstone-entertainment]

My Dad got a call from my dead brother years after he died. Regardless of how logical you are, if you see your dead son's phone number pop up on the caller ID a little piece of you is going to get excited and believe that they are somehow alive, or at least still able to call and talk to you. When he answered, it was a scammer from an Indian call center who was using one of those programs that redirects the original call through a phone number from your local area, so you are more likely to answer, just so happened that their machine chose the number of his dead son. I have never seen him so upset, I can't imagine how bad that must have felt.

[Knate]

I’ve been a firefighter for over 10 years, and I have a guess as to what this whole story is about.
They missed him.
Initial search crews failed to locate this man, who was still alive. After repeated phone calls to family, dispatch pings the man’s phone to near the first passenger car. Crews RE-ENTER to search ONE LAST TIME. They find him, with his phone. Now to ease the pain to the family, and possibly avoid lawsuit, they say he died on impact and can’t find his phone. They know he was most likely alive up until that last phone call. I guarantee if this happened, no one feels worse than the guys who missed him. It happens, firemen are humans and make mistakes. And no one will ever really know. He could have died instantly. Time of death is hard to pin down, and immediate death is generally only assigned to injuries incompatible with life like decapitation. But who knows. Maybe it did happen the way they claim. All I know is even the news said crews re-entered one last time. They’d searched it before. They just missed him. Sad deal all around.

[neptune_wolf-]

Usually when they say the victim died on impact, it's because their body was found with devastating injuries. Like decapitation or they were ripped in half.

[skyty]

"A man who tragically died a horrible death is so fucking short, it's a wonder how he even got engaged. Any way, here's some news about his ghost."

[exquizitinedillwad]

Rest in peace Charles Peck. While this case is unique and interesting, this man deserves to be remembered for the life he lived and the love he shared, not just for the circumstances of his death.

[TrialzGTAS]

As a first responder, when we respond to MCIs (Mass Casualty Incidents) we carry Triage tags and spend a minute assessing the patient and judge whether they can be saved or not. It was possibly likely that that they tagged him as a red or a black on the triage tag. My friend who was on that scene in particular said that it was the worst day of his career there hauling bodies. He may have been still alive in the train car making the calls but first responders bypassed to give the patients who had better chance of survival the way out. That’s my guess

[blitzkrieg]

They were so jelous on the height difference they had to focus on it so much
Absolute chad had an amazon Rip Charles .

[namebrandmason]

I've never worked in search & rescue, but I'd rather tell a family "he died on impact" than "he bled out over several hours, it was a terrible way to die."

[NoCandyForU]

In regards to the "butt dialing" idea, on those older phones it was common to map family members and close friends to certain numbers for speed dialing, on some phone models it's enough to just press a single button for a short period and that immediately places a call. Regarding the calls happening only during the rescue operation it's possible to assume that the rescue crew was moving parts of the wreckage in their efforts to locate survivors potentially shifting any parts of debris that could have been resting on the phone. That would explain why only close family members were being called and why only in that time frame.

[DTPoe]

Well, I am a Legal medicine specialist, I've practiced my fair share of autopsies and corpse recognitions, and to be honest, age determination is never accurate, that why we sometime use intervals like "from 40 to 45 years of age", giving an exact number like in movies or series is not realistic, the same goes for time of death, it's not "he died at 11:45", normally is an interval like "2 to 6 hours ago" based on the cadaveric phenomena (rigor, livor, temperature, etc) so that comment on "not even getting the age right and having to correct" is not really a parameter to say the coroner was bad. It happens more often than you think.

[BarelySociable]

Will keep you all updated once I get the coroner report, clearly some details missing.

I looked all around and couldn’t find a single explanation of the state of the body anywhere so it’s worth checking.

[Comrade_Nils]

I mean, I don't know the exact state of Peck's body when the rescuers found him, but I think a plausible explanation would this: Peck did survive the initial impact and clung to life for a few hours more than the coroners estimated. During that time, he might have tried to call his loved ones to ask for help or say goodbye to them, but damage from his phone (e.g. the microphone) was too severe and prevented them from hearing his voice.

Whatever the case, my condolences to the many people affected by this tragic event.

[Wackaz]

Whatever happened, if he didn't die instantly, I can't imagine how painful and horrible both physically and mentally those many last hours of that man's life would have been. God rest his soul, man...

[jayeverette]

Ok crazy theory here:
I’m thinking it’s a “candybar” style phone and he had all of the contacts in speed dial under the physical number buttons. After the accident it *could* have been lodged somewhere and possibly the pressure of crews walking on it caused it to phantomly dial.

[wendygo]

If they tracked his phone calls, it wouldn't have been precise enough to lead them to a specific train car. That part is BS for sure.

[dhara]

I can't believe you would go so far to get the report from the coroner. Your video on a topic is more researched than some actual investigations. Keep up the amazing work.

[Aaaaaaaalonika]

Sadly, I think the guy was alive for longer than they thought. That’s really scary and sad. I hope he found peace from hearing his relatives before he passed. It’s a shame people either didn’t get to him fast enough or overlooked him in all the chaos. Well, it’s beyond a shame actually, and likely was covered up.