Do Your Hair And Nails Really Keep Growing After You Die?

It comes up a quite a little , long after it ’s beenthoroughly debunked , but just in display case you missed the memo : No , your nails and hair do n’t extend to grow after destruction . die is undeniably dismal but it , as luck would have it , does n’t demand this bizarre , continued extrusion . So why does everyone reckon they do ?

When you shuffle off your deadly coil and join the consort invisible , as some marvelous blighter once read ina pet shop , your body commence to dry out out . This dehydration causes your skin , as well as other soft tissues , to shrink back , but your hair and nails remain entire . This , then , can sometimes give the appearance of growing hair and nails post - mortem , but it ’s an illusion , nothing more . No more beautiful plume for you , ex - human .

LiveScienceexplains that when you ’ve take a breath your last , there is n’t any material or hormonal activity leave behind to induce any growth in your fingernails , toenails , or tomentum . No matter how much your lifeless body wants to change its aesthetics , it wo n’t be able to – well , at least in this sentiency . You ’ll still decompose quite dreadfully , of course .

There are far strange things that really do happen to you after you die . As observe bySnopes , you may even make noises while you ’re pushing up the daisies – but only because putrefaction - linked gas is trying to escape your corpse . Gizmodoexplains that the contraction of sinew after you give way , as well as the aforementioned tissue shrinkage , sometimes cause the unfortunate seepage of urine and fecal subject .

Either room , when you think about it , it ’s quite the substitute that nails and hair do n’t continuously grow after they perish . Imagine excavating a tomb to just find massive mounds of hair and networks of nails , like some unusual monument to theAddams Family ’s Cousin It .

According to the Guinness Book of World Records 2018 , one Ayanna Williams of Houston has nail that are576.4 centimeters(227 inches ) long , the fruit of more than two ten of peculiar patience . distinctly , if fingernails raise after end , coffins would quickly resemble wooden , elongated porcupines .

It ’s not clear where this myth started , but Snopes does note that Vincent Price ’s case in the 1959 movieThe Tinglermakes the claim . It ’s also reference in the tome “ All Quiet on the Western Front ” , albeit more whimsically .

In any type , it ’s likely that the myth will persist for many years to come – it ’s one of the more pervasive biological prevarications out there . Trust us , your hair would n’t grow even with 4   million volt running through it .