Harrowing story of a woman's mummified body that remained undiscovered for 42 years

One woman's dead body was left unnoticed for so long that she became mummified in her own flat, as architects discovered the horrifying remains roughly 42 years after many suspect she passed away.

Simulations have shown exactly what happens to the human body after we die, and it takes weeks for a cadaver to be reduced to the skeleton you'd typically find if you dug up a grave.

However, certain conditions can lead to the process of mummification, which is obviously a recognizable trait of deaths in ancient Egypt.

Becoming mummified means that the body's tissues and organs are largely preserved and prevented from the typical process of decay, only the body has to be stored in very specific conditions in order to achieve this.

Exposure to chemicals, extreme colds, and a distinct lack of humidity or air are typically the ways that can cause a human body to experience mummification, but it's an extremely lengthy process that is very rare in the contemporary world.

Hedviga Golik's body was discovered in her Rijeka apartment roughly 42 years after she passed away (Jean-Denis Joubert/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

However, one harrowing incident of mummification involved a woman whose dead body was left undisturbed in her apartment for around 42 years, and was only discovered when renovators broke into her home to survey the building.

Hedviga Golik is estimated to have died in 1966, yet it wasn't until 2008 that her body was found mummified in her top-floor home, and it was reported that she was sat as if she was watching TV, complete with a cup of tea to her side.

Autopsy attempts were unable to determine her cause of death due to the length of time between her passing and the discovery of her body, and it remains inconclusive when she actually died as many suggest that the cold season of 1973 in her native Croatia created the perfect conditions for her inevitable mummification.

As to how her body was left undiscovered for so long, that also largely remains a mystery but many point towards her isolated life, especially as she lived on the top floor of her building with no neighbors to her side that might perhaps notice a smell.

Seemingly her only interactions came with her downstairs neightbor, Karica Carić, who had bought food for her but only after a bucket of money was lowered down the stairs for Carić to collect.

Golik was also known to leave the country for unexplained reasons over long periods of time, and many speculated that she had done the same around the period at which she passed away in her home.

"She was probably 42 years old when she died, and then her body wasn't found for another 42 years," one user on Reddit points out.

Many have also wondered why, despite reports of an informal search for Golik in Yugoslavia, nobody ever appeared to search her own apartment, with some calling the situation in question.

"In the end though, this is just really sad," adds another comment. "Because regardless of the details and how it happened, she did sit dead in that chair with nobody noticing or caring enough to do anything about it." It's certainly not a way anyone would wish to depart from this world, and is more than horrifying enough to keep you up at night.