Morgue As Hotel?

Haydn Pearce, a Tasmanian businessman, is hoping to turn the morgue of a 1950s psychiatric ward into a hotel near Hobart.

The mental hospital has been closed for nearly a decade, xinMSN.com reports. But Pearce, an antiques dealer and hotelier, recently bought the seven-acre parsel of land on which the hospital and its morgue sit.

"It's still got its terrazzo slabs, and it's still got its pull-out fridge, it's a beautiful thing," Pearce told AFP earlier this week, before adding. "We'll be looking at putting a double bed in one of the rooms and then we have three slabs and two pull-out fridges which could be used."

The Daily Mail reports that Pearce will turn the four-room morgue into an extension of his existing 22-room hotel nearby.

Of the morgue-cum-hotel, Pearce reportedly quipped: "The idea is to give an experience in a morgue before it's too late."