Elephant Tramples Woman's Funeral

Submission 10,135

Part of a series on Elephants. [View Related Entries]

About

Elephant Tramples Woman's Funeral, also known as Elephant at Funeral, is a viral story about a 70-year-old Indian woman who was trampled to death by an elephant. Later, at her funeral, the elephant returned to lift her body from the funeral pyre and trample her corpse again. The event happened in June 2022 and was covered by multiple news outlets. The awareness spread to social media on Twitter and Reddit where "The Elephant" became a reference used in various memes.

Origin

On June 9th, 2022, a 70-year-old Indian woman named Maya Murmu was at a tube well drawing water in Mayurbhanj district’s Raipal village when an elephant appeared and trampled her to death.^[1] Local authorities stated that it had strayed from the Dalma wildlife sanctuary, nearly 200km from Mayurbhanj.^[1]

A few days later, Murmu's loved ones gathered for her funeral and in the middle of performing the last rites, the same elephant appeared, lifted Murmu’s body from the funeral pyre and trampled it again.^[1] The elephant stayed for a little afterward and then left. Only then could the funeral continue.

Multiple news outlets like The Independent^[1] and the Daily Mail UK^[2] reported on the story. On June 12th, 2022, the Instagram ^[3] account theneighborhoodtalk posted a news headline to its page that received roughly 37,200 likes in four days (shown below). Theneighborhoodtalk's post became the primary source for the story's later virality.

Spread

Later on June 12th, 2022, Twitter^[4] user Dom_2k reposted theneighborhoodtalk's image, captioning it, "this is crazy hating," and earning roughly 213,100 likes over the course of four days (shown below, left). Also on June 12th, Twitter^[5] user Phil_Lewis_ tweeted a link to the Daily Mail's article, earning roughly 14,300 likes over the course of four days (shown below, right).

Going forward, the aforementioned tweets made many Twitter users aware of the story, inspiring reactions, memes and funny tweets. For instance, on June 12th, 2022, Twitter^[6] user little__f0ot who likened the original RIPBOZO Instagram post to the elephant's motive, earning roughly 13,900 likes over the course of four days (shown below, left). Twitter^[7] user BigDamnHerosSir posted a similar tweet on June 12th, being an elephant photoshopped onto the RIPBOZO post, earning roughly 19,800 likes in four days (shown below, right).

More tweets and memes surfaced about the elephant going into the remainder of June 2022. Meme creators started to focus on a couple of punchlines regarding the story like imagining what the elephant's motive was, how the elephant knew where the funeral was and the cliché that an elephant never forgets. For instance, on June 15th, 2022, Twitter^[8] user Puff_Iya tweeted a video of a man walking away in high heels with, "The elephant when it heard that lady was being buried at 2pm," earning roughly 353,000 views and 34,900 likes in less than a day (shown below).

The elephant also received attention in memes on TikTok. For instance, on June 14th, 2022, TikToker^[9] eggggzaclee posted a video that earned roughly 183,000 plays and 50,500 likes in one day (shown below, left). On June 15th, 2022, TikToker^[10] itsmaxwell used the Sad Filter in a video that earned roughly 193,000 plays and 52,200 likes in less than a day (shown below, right).