This story has been doing the rounds all over the island over the past week or so, and many people believed it but, when pressed, all they could say was that they knew someone who knew someone who knew the girl, etc.

Media reports about sexual intercourse with corpses in the Mater Dei mortuary were on Friday denied and condemned by Mater Dei Hospital management.

Favourite News had reported that a former worker at the Mater Dei mortuary had had sexual intercourse with corpses and, as a result, a woman who had had a sexual relationship with him had suffered from a sexually transmitted disease.

The story, which is also doing the rounds on some social networking sites on the internet, said that the woman had been hospitalised in a serious condition.

Mater Dei Hospital management said in a statement that the story was unfounded.

“Mater Dei Hospital Management denies all these facts and condemns the circulation of such unfounded morbid news which is causing great pressure on the staff who work in the Hospital Mortuary,” it said.

But, according to some sources, the story may have been nothing more than an urban legend that has been circulating all around the world over the last few years.

Here is a link to about.com on urban legends: http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/sex/a/necrophiliac.htm. It refers to a very similar story carried by a Norwegian newspaper and also says the same events were said to have taken place in six different Norwegian towns – the strongest indication that it is an urban legend. There is also a link to a very similar horror story The Bad Date, shared by Oystein Skundberg in an online discussion in 1998.

There is also another link: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081101192711AABPyRD which dates from two years ago.