EXCLUSIVE: Embalmers Speak Out on Unusual Blood Clots

Vials of embalmed fibrous clots. Courtesy of John O'Looney

Several embalmers and a pathologist in North America and the United Kingdom have reported a rise in irregular, hardened blood clots.

“They’re just not normal blood clots. It’s like a tissue, not a clot,” Alabama-based embalmer Richard Hirschman told The Epoch Times. “Sometimes when people look at the pictures, they think I just cut the blood vessels out of the body, but that’s not the case. The clot is growing and forming within the vein.” 

The embalmers from Ontario, the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Alabama, and the United Kingdom who spoke with The Epoch Times said that since early 2021 they’ve been witnessing white, hardened clots—which are distinct from normal soft and pink blood clots—in the bodies they examine.

Three embalmers provided to The Epoch Times photographs they personally took of the clots.

But Heather Dow, executive director of the Canadian Association of Pathologists, told The Epoch Times that the photos of the fibrous masses are simply “normal postmortem blood clots.” She added that examination and collection of the specimens are “outside the norms for embalmers and funeral directors.”

The embalmers, for their part, say that their observation of the increased blood clots coincided with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. 

While Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) said in October last year that they were aware of and monitoring rare reports of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome following COVID-19 vaccines, they also noted they had “not received any reports of any atypical, hardened, tentacle-like blood clots” found in the bodies of deceased vaccinated people.

“Of the billions of vaccinations administered and safety monitoring worldwide, no such unusual clots have been reported by pathologists in Canada or internationally,” PHAC spokesperson Anna Maddison said in a previous email on Oct. 27, 2022. 

“Pathologists are medical experts who would be the first to notice and report any such unusual events if they were to occur,” she added.

Ms. Maddison also said there has been “misinformation” about the blood clots circulating online. 

“Blood clots formed after death are part of a natural progression and would not be considered an adverse reaction associated with a health product that would normally be reported to Health Canada,” she stated.

The Ontario Forensic Pathology Service saw the pictures and said they showed “normal post-mortem blood clots.”

‘It Should Be Studied’

However, two medical doctors who viewed the photographs of the clots say the embalmers’ concerns cannot be outright dismissed.

“People will criticize and say, ‘Oh, gosh, that’s just blood pooling post-mortem. Now I’ve done a lot of autopsies in my career. The blood post-mortem clots and congeals, but it’s kind of red and jelly. They aren’t white and rubbery [like in the photos],” said Dr. Ryan Cole, a pathologist and CEO and medical director of Idaho-based Cole Diagnostics.

“I’ve worked with some interventional radiologists that have pulled some of these [clots] out of blocked vessels. And they’re identical to the post-mortem ones [shown in the embalmers’ photos].”

Dr. Ryan Cole speaks during a panel discussion on COVID-19 on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 24, 2022. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Dr. Roger Hodkinson, CEO and medical director of Edmonton-based MedMalDoctors, told The Epoch Times that while blood clots could come in various shapes and sizes, he did “respect that what [the embalmers] are describing seems to be abnormal.”

Dr. Hodkinson, whose company provides expert opinions on causation and standard of care regarding potential medical malpractice, said there have been no formal histopathological examinations of how the irregular clots differed from traditional ones. 

He criticized embalming associations for not investigating the phenomenon further. 

“If your members are saying something highly unusual is going on, rather than saying it doesn’t exist, they should be saying, ‘Well, that’s interesting, it should be studied.”

Dr. Cole is currently under investigation by the Washington Medical Commission, which says that he “made numerous false and misleading statements” related to COVID-19 and treated COVID-19 patients with Ivermectin, while Dr. Hodkinson said his medical licence is being threatened for speaking out against COVID-19 public health restrictions.

“I am suspicious of any organization condemning the actions of its members, just because of the history of the last few years. The first question would be, does that association take any money from big pharma?” Dr. Hodkinson said.

Two of the embalmers chose to have aliases for this story, fearing disciplinary action for speaking out about the blood clots.

‘Not Normal’

Alabama-based embalmer Mr. Hirschman says that while he realizes COVID-19 could cause more blood clotting in some individuals, that wasn’t the same as the types of clots he started observing after the vaccines were rolled out. 

In January 2021, when COVID-19 vaccine doses were first given out in Alabama, Mr. Hirschman said his workload embalming bodies increased “dramatically.”

“We have our ups and downs, but January was the busiest I have ever been in my life,” he said.

"Of course, they were saying COVID could cause more clotting," Richard Hirschman said. "These clots were larger than normal and there were a lot more of them." Courtesy of Mr. Hirschman

Then around May that year, Mr. Hirschman said began noticing irregular clots in the circulatory system of the bodies of vaccinated people he was embalming, saying that those “white fibrous” clots were “similar to calamari.”

“Of course, they were saying COVID could cause more clotting,” Mr. Hirschman said, but “these [white fibrous] clots were larger than normal and there were a lot more of them.”

He said that before the pandemic, only about 10 percent of bodies he embalmed would have blood clots. Now, he says he would be “lucky to have bodies that are not clotted.”

Mr. Hirschman also said that throughout 2022, he saw more younger people—in their 30s, 40s, and 50s—passing away suddenly. “I’ve heard it time and time again, they were fine when they went to bed but didn’t get up in the morning,” he said.

The youngest person Mr. Hirschman found fibrous clots in was a 20-year-old who was involved in a “strange” single-vehicle car accident, he says. “When I did the embalming, I found the clot. And I did a little research on the victim, read the obituary, and found his company mandated the vaccine.”

Mr. Hirschman said he also noticed an increase in babies dying. “I was talking to a guy from the funeral home who was on his way back from picking up a stillborn baby at the hospital. When he asked the nurse for the paperwork, she said ‘which one? We have four or five of them.’”

A series of 'white fibrous clots,' Richard Hirschman pulled out of a body. "They are similar to calamari. The white stuff is in your face, like 'something is wrong,'" Mr. Hirschman said. Courtesy of Mr. Hirschman

According to the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH), the state’s 2021 infant mortality rate was 7.6 deaths per 1,000 live births, with 443 infants dying during their first year of life. The state’s infant mortality for 2021 was an 8.6 percent increase over the 7.0 percent rate in 2020. The ADPH did not respond to Epoch’s request for comment.

Mr. Hirschman said he has pointed out the discovery of the clots to pathologists, but they refuse to talk about it. He said one autopsy technician told him that he himself wouldn’t go public about the clots due to fear of losing his job. 

“They’ll look at it and call it a thrombosis,” Mr. Hirschman said, adding that this is true, “it’s a clot, but why are these so different? That’s what needs to be investigated.”

‘They Remind Me of Parasites’

Carolyn is an Ontario funeral home director with over 25 years of embalming experience who spoke to The Epoch Times under a pseudonym out of fear of facing disciplinary action for speaking out about the blood clots.

She said she first noticed something was wrong in January 2021. She was seeing an uptick in unusual deaths, but the coroners weren’t following the usual protocols.

“If a death is suspicious, like they died at home alone or weren’t found for a long time, coroners determine if an investigation is warranted,” she told The Epoch Times. “Then the body is either sent to the hospital for an autopsy, or to a funeral home if an autopsy isn’t needed.”

She said despite more previously healthy middle-aged people dying, most were being sent to funeral homes without autopsies being performed. “The coroners were just dialling it in. That usually wasn’t allowed, but now it was. That was strange.”

Then in March 2021, Carolyn began noticing what she calls “fibrous masses” in the bodies she was embalming. “I had never seen anything like it,” she said.

A number of 'parasite 'clots Carolyn pulled from corpses. "Every tentacle is basically down a part of the circulatory system, and at the end of those fingers there is a normal clot, and it looks like they're feeding off it," Carolyn said. Courtesy of Carolyn

Carolyn said that in each body, there are usually enough clots to be comparable to a “heaping plate of spaghetti.” She said the fibrous masses look like “calamari,” the same description given by Mr. Hirschman, and they have a feel similar to “chewed gum and rubber mixed together.”

“They remind me of parasites, because it’s like they’re creating a blood clot and they’re feeding off it,” she said.

She also said that as of late, 100 percent of the bodies she’s embalmed have had fibrous clots inside them. 

“We’re finding people [dying] on couches. We’re finding people in bed, fully dressed. It’s like they tried to get through their day, got tired, and then just couldn’t carry on. And it makes sense if your circulatory system is clogged up like that.”

While embalmers don’t receive paperwork on the vaccination status of the deceased, she has had a few family members confirm that their family members didn’t receive the vaccine, she said, and she said those individuals didn’t have the issues she’s been witnessing lately.

“Those unvaccinated bodies have not had the clots. Last week I cried over an 80-year-old man in the prep room, because he hadn’t taken it and I could tell.”

Carolyn said the pathologists she worked with are seeing the fibrous clots but refusing to speak up. In one case, she received an older woman from the pathology department that had “massive” fibrous clots still dangling out of her arteries, she says.

“The long clots are from the femoral artery, and I can see cut marks that were made by the pathology department,” she said. When she tried calling the coroners and conveying what she has been seeing, they just say, “You noticed that?” but don’t say anything more, she says.

Carolyn said the physicians’ regulatory college has “silenced the supposedly scientifically inquiring minds” from speaking out. She said pathologists and coroners—who have also seen the clots—have been gagged by fear of losing their jobs.

‘Why Does Nobody Want to Talk About It?’

When COVID-19 first hit the United Kingdom, John O'Looney was surprised he wasn’t seeing an uptick in deaths at his funeral home. But O'Looney, who owns Milton Keynes Family Funeral Services, said he did observe an increase in deaths once the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out. 

“The moment they started putting needles in arms, [the deaths] went through the roof. My phone started ringing off the hook. And that’s when I knew in my heart that something was wrong,” he told The Epoch Times.

"The moment they started putting needles in arms, [the deaths] went through the roof," John O'Looney said. "My phone started ringing off the hook. And that's when I knew in my heart that something was wrong." Courtesy of O'Looney

Mr. O'Looney said he spoke with many families of the deceased and confirmed most had received the COVID vaccine. “Some of them just 90 minutes before,” he added.

While the increase in deaths was concerning, Mr. O'Looney said he became particularly alarmed after his embalmer started complaining of difficulty with the embalming process. The embalming fluid that is injected into bodies, which normally freely flows throughout the circulatory system, was getting jammed.

“We usually make an incision in the carotid artery and we use that arterial system to get fluid around people. But we were struggling to get the embalming fluid through jab recipients,” he said. 

While embalming one clogged-up body, Mr. O'Looney had to manually target several arteries with his pump to clear it out, he said. Clots began pouring out of the body, but he said these weren’t like any blood clots he had ever seen before.

“They’re red in colour, but then you wash them off and they’re bright white like calamari. They are absolutely horrific,” Mr. O'Looney said.

“With a normal clot, you couldn’t pull it out in one piece. It’s like jello that could be washed down the drain. But these would come out in one piece and be the shape of the artery. They are slowly growing in the arteries until they block them.”

Mr. O'Looney said that after he began speaking up about what he was seeing, the governing body of funeral directors removed him as a member.

“They’re only an advisory body, or my business would have been closed,” he said. “They told me I'd brought them into disrepute. And I said, ‘I know your members are seeing this, so why are you taking that stance? Why does nobody want to talk about it? And why have I got to shut up?’”

Two vials of embalmed fibrous clots. "These would come out in one piece and be the shape of the artery. They are slowly growing in the arteries until they block them," Mr. O'Looney said. Courtesy of John O'Looney

Growing Awareness

Sarah, who is going to school in Wisconsin to get her funeral director’s licence, used a pseudonym for fear that speaking out would lead to disciplinary action against her. She told The Epoch Times that on two separate occasions, while assisting with embalming, she witnessed “large, irregular clots” coming out of the jugular veins of bodies.

“We kept pumping embalming fluid in through the carotid arteries, yet we weren’t getting drainage, meaning there were clots in there somewhere. Then we saw them,” Sarah said, adding that they were “not normal clots” and that she repeatedly checked her textbooks on embalming for reference.

Sarah also said that while she had seen fewer fibrous clots recently due to cremation at her funeral home being “on the rise,” many people in her community had become aware of the clots. “In my area, there are more people that are becoming more aware of it. People will randomly ask me about it,” she said.

While Sarah only began working at her funeral home in April 2022, her employer told her the “abnormal” clots started appearing around the time more people were getting vaccinated for COVID-19, she said.

Sarah claimed the fibrous clots are not confined to her small town in Wisconsin. She estimated that out of her 32 classmates—who come from different parts of the state—approximately 70 percent have witnessed the strange clots. 

A page from Sarah's embalming textbook that shows what a normal blood clot is supposed to look like. Courtesy of Sarah

“It surprised me that this was a common consensus of ’this is weird.' Everyone has to work at a funeral home to be in the course, so it seems like almost everybody has this experience,” she said.

“It’s common knowledge, according to my classmates.”

At her funeral home, Sarah also noticed a stark increase in people in their 50s and 60s passing away.

“We’ve had a lot of cases where you'll see cancer or traumatic accidents, but a lot of them just suddenly died and there’s no real explanation,” she said. “I’m noticing a lot more friends and family that have people in the hospital for blood clots, or they’re having strokes and aneurysms.”

Theories, Calls for Further Analysis

Dr. Cole previously told The Epoch Times that he had also come across the strange blood clots. Licensed in Idaho since 2007, he said he has received tissue samples of the clots from living patients, confirming that they are not simply post-mortem clots.

The spike protein found in COVID-19 vaccines can inflame the endothelial lining of blood vessels, which can lead to a “cascade” of clotting, Dr. Cole said. 

He added that “there are receptors all throughout our body on our platelets, on those endothelial blood cell linings, and on our red blood cells, [where] once that spike binds, what you end up with is micro clots and macro clots,” he said.

Dr. Hodkinson theorized that the irregular clots could be due to “amyloid-like protein folding abnormalities.” Amyloidosis, a group of rare diseases caused by the accumulation of clumps of misfolded proteins called amyloid fibrils, can impact organs and tissues in the body, potentially resulting in organ failure.

Amyloids would make the proteins in the body “pathological, and non-functional,” Dr. Hodkinson said. He referenced studies that have found that the spike protein—occurring in both SARS-COV-2 and COVID-19 vaccines—was associated with amyloid-like fibrils in some cases.

In one study, researchers identified seven amyloidogenic sequences within the spike protein, and said the potential implications “should be addressed in understanding the disease, long COVID-19, and vaccine side effects.”

Dr. Chris Milburn, who was previously head of emergency medicine for Nova Scotia’s eastern zone, told The Epoch Times it was difficult to know whether the clots were unusual and being caused by COVID-19 vaccines based solely on case reports.

“What you need to do is compare a bunch of people who were not vaccinated to a bunch of people who are vaccinated after they die, and look at the type of clots in their body to see if they really are different,” he said. 

“And I think this blood clot issue is very interesting, concerning, and needs to be looked into. But I don’t think there’s any really good scientific data to say that that is a real thing yet.”

Euridice Prado, a PhD in physiology and pathophysiology who works as a biomedical consultant at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), theorized that COVID-19 vaccines could be upregulating the body’s fibrotic repair tissue typically made to protect the body, causing the strange clots to form.

In an email to The Epoch Times, Ms. Prado pointed to a study based on the first 100 COVID-19-positive autopsies performed at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City between March and June 2020. The study found that thrombosis, a disorder causing the formation of blood clots, was “a significant component of COVID-19-related morbidity and mortality.” 

She also referred to a German study, published in the peer-reviewed journal International Journal of Legal Medicine, that found thrombosis in the deep veins of subjects’ lower extremities in 40 percent of fatal COVID-19 cases.

“Couldn’t that be possible that, in some cases, the human body is fabricating an excessive response of the immune system? Hyaline and fibrotic repair tissue is made in order to protect the human body. Maybe these injections are upregulating this system,” Ms. Prado said.

“Further analysis must be performed to explain this strange mass formed within the vessels.”