Gloria Ramirez, The Toxic Lady
YouTubeGloria Ramirez, before her 1994 death.
Gloria Ramirez’s life was pretty normal but the circumstances surrounding her bizarre death have made her one of history’s weirdest people.
Ramirez’s seemingly average life took its unusual turn on Feb. 19, 1994, when she was taken to General Hospital in Riverside, Calif. after she experienced a rapid heart rate, a drop in blood pressure, and was unable to form coherent sentences.
Ramirez was only 31-years-old and in the late stages of cervical cancer which was thought to have caused her sudden deterioration. Doctors quickly got to work trying to save her life, but nothing seemed to be working.
Wikimedia Commons An emergency room entrance. Gloria Ramirez sickened half a dozen ER personnel after she came in.
Nurses removed Ramirez’s shirt and saw a mysterious oily sheen on her skin and her mouth was emitting a fruity, garlicky smell. They took a blood sample and saw manila-colored particles floating in it. Her blood also alarmingly smelled like ammonia.
As if the situation wasn’t strange enough already, suddenly, one after the other, nurses in the room started to faint. Others developed breathing problems and one nurse experienced paralysis – and no one knew why.
Despite the hospital team’s best efforts, Ramirez died that night. A special team came in to examine her body while wearing hazmat suits to protect themselves from whatever had taken down the nurses.
Ramirez earned the nickname the “Toxic Lady” because no one could examine her body without exposing themselves to a wide range of medical problems.
All in all, officials conducted three autopsies on Ramirez’s body and concluded that she died of heart failure due to kidney failure brought on by her late-stage cancer. However, the autopsies never presented definitive reasons for Ramirez’s strange ailments and why several of the hospital staffers fell mysteriously ill.
