There are bad phone calls, and then, there are really bad phone calls, like the ones in which you’re forced to give someone news that a loved one was in an accident or worse — they’ve died.

With more suspected drug-related deaths at festivals this summer, the debate around testing these illegal drugs to check their purity and for contaminants has flared up once more. But from a user perspective, when should a person seek help for themselves or a friend after taking a pill? What can ambulance paramedics do to help if you do?

We spend a lot of time worrying about death: Our own, and the deaths of those we love. This week we look at our deeply held fears and assumptions about dying and see if we can’t lessen some of our anxiety about it.

Cleaning out a loved one's home after their death hits the trifecta of misery: It's a series of chores that can be emotionally, physically, and financially overwhelming. And what makes the whole task even worse is that it's difficult to know where to start - should you throw out the beds first, then have nowhere to sleep while you're working? Toss the pots and pans and rely on takeout for the duration?

The decisions around what to keep, donate, recycle, toss, or sell can be lengthy and depressing, especially for items that were treasures to your parent but not to you: It seems like a sin to chuck original artwork, or religious items, or someone's beloved collections of figurines into the landfill - but what else are you going to do with it?

Lifehacker readers love a good to-do list list. We’re goal-oriented, and we like to feel a sense of accomplishment. But what happens when you’re not making as much progress as you’d like?

When my father died suddenly six years ago, I wasn't prepared for the waves of grief that washed over me in the aftermath of his death. In the midst of funeral preparations, I waded through decisions over flowers, services and gravestones as though in a fog. It was all I could do to keep it together as we went through the painful process of saying goodbye.

Content warning: There are some potentially disturbing images of dead bodies throughout this story.

Humans spend a lot of their waking hours avoiding thoughts of our inevitable end. That's probably for the best, since dwelling on your death is a morbid exercise. But, it turns out, it's also a very useful thing to think about when trying to figure out your life.

You've seen the headlines: "Dead Man Wakes Up At Own Funeral", or "Woman Startled To Wake Up In Morgue." It always makes it feel like one day you're going to wake up in your worst Kill Bill nightmare, buried alive in a fancy casket. But how often does this actually happen?

A number of unique weather conditions have combined today, resulting in a thunderstorm asthma warning being issued to Melburnians. Factors such as high winds, high pollen counts and impending thunderstorms can lead to potentially fatal symptoms for people with hayfever and allergies. Here's what you need to know, and what you should do if you're at risk.

Approximately one third of adults don't get enough sleep. Meanwhile, science keeps telling us that sleep deprivation has serious consequences for your brain and body. In fact, it might be slowly killing you.

Most of you have probably heard about the the Somerton man before - a corpse discovered propped up against a stone wall at Somerton beach on 1 December 1948 with no identification and the tags on his clothing removed. But did you know there was an eerily similar case in the 1970s?

With a burned body, a glamorous woman, multiple identities and mysterious men in black, the Isdal Woman mystery goes beyond most people's understanding.

Corpse-freezing hasn’t exactly gone mainstream, but most people are now familiar with the concept: you lay out a ton of cash, sign some papers, and spend a couple post-death decades in a cutting-edge meat locker, calmly awaiting the conditions for your eventual revival. Over 300 cold, dead Americans — or dead, cold American brains, depending on which procedure they opted for (whole-body vs. brain-only) — can currently be found in storage facilities across the country. All of them took a gamble — one that was pretty cheap, metaphysically speaking: the worse case scenario here is just continued death.

First of all, don’t believe it couldn’t happen. It could.

Overtoun Bridge in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland was built in 1895 for ease of access to Overtoun house. While it is quite a nice looking bridge, it isn't anything special compared to most historical sites in Scotland... except for the fact that dogs crossing the bridge feel compelled to throw themselves to their inevitable demise.

This phenomenon has been occurring since the 1950s, with the bridge claiming the lives of dogs at an average rate of one per year.

There's a simple explanation for how the Ouija board works: it's not ghosts, but how you feel about them.

Nearly one million people die every year from bacterial infections that cannot be treated with common antibiotics. This is frightening because right now we don’t have any alternatives to these antibiotics. Here are five of the scariest examples in the past five years.

Excess storage of fat is linked to many different chronic diseases. But some areas of fat storage on the body are worse than others.

Many wonder how to talk to someone who is going through a loss, how best to be supportive, and how to properly offer condolences. But when grief hits you, it isn’t only painful, it’s extremely difficult to navigate through a range of new emotions.