SKELETON CREW

Somewhere out in the countryside, hidden behind a copse of trees, are fields full of dead human bodies. These corpses have been strategically laid out in rows, naked as the day they were born, and left to the mercy of the elements until all that's left of them are bones.

- JESS THOMSON

It sounds like a scene out of a horror film, but these places are real. They're called taphonomic research facilities, or sometimes “body farms”—sites where forensic scientists study how the human body decomposes. (Don't worry, the bodies are all donated.) By observing how fast cadavers break down in a controlled setting, investigators can learn more about decomposition and better pinpoint exactly what happened to dead bodies that are found in the real world.

There are only a handful of body farms in existence, and most are in the US. Employees spend their days answering emails, cleaning bones, and leaving corpses out in the sun. WIRED spoke to one researcher and instructor in the US about their job—the good, the gross, and the pungent.