BREDA, Netherlands: Dutch scientists are recreating the deaths of some of the world’s most famous personalities by reconstructing their last moments using scents and sounds. From the sweet smell of Jacqueline Kennedy’s perfume mingled with the scent of John F. Kennedy’s blood to Whitney Houston’s last drug-fueled moments in a Beverly Hills hotel, scientists at Breda University say they offer visitors a unique, if somewhat macabre, historical snapshot.
“We all have seen the images of JFK’s assassination, but what did it smell like?” asks Frederik Duerinck, from the communication and multimedia design faculty of Breda’s Avans University of Applied Sciences.
To find out, visitors with a sense of the morbid are invited to lie in a series of four silver metal boxes similar to those found in a morgue. The boxes, which are pitch-dark inside, are rigged with pipes leading to bottles containing pressurised smells. A soundtrack is played and on queue different scents are released into the box to recreate a specific “final moment.”
For around five minutes, visitors can relive the smells and sounds believed to have surrounded four people whose deaths are etched into the world’s collective memory: Kennedy (1963); Princess Diana (1997); and Whitney Houston (2012). For instance, those wanting to experience Houston’s final moments are transported to the same place at the upmarket Beverly Hills hotel where the diva died.