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I don’t know about you guys, but I’m still uncertain about whether or not I would want my body to be buried or cremated after I die. That being said, I certainly would love to be a part of any of these unique and cool cemeteries located around the world.
Atlas Obscura continues with their 31 Days of Halloween, featuring a new and gruesome post every day about the world’s ghosts, goblins, legends, and death rituals. This post deals with the widespread fear of being buried alive, whether by mistake or by evil intent. That fear has a long history.
Being buried alive is a fear that has been with humanity for a long, long time. As early as the Greeks one can find stories of people being prematurely pronounced dead and accidentally burned alive on their funeral pyres. At various moments throughout history, this fear, this Taphephobia, has actively gripped the Western mind. The terror wasn’t without it’s basis in reality.
One circumstance in which live burials are thought to have often taken place were during outbreaks of disease such as the black plague. Due to the rapid spread of the disease victims were buried almost immediately after death, and sometimes beforehand. These circumstances would repeat themselves again with the cholera outbreaks throughout Europe.
Throughout the enlightenment, doctors were learning more about the human body and death. As they learned to revive people who were previously considered dead (such as drowning victims via the recently invented mouth to mouth resuscitation) doctors began to question if all the people they were burying had truly been dead. With increasing reports of premature burial, by the late 1700s the fear of being buried alive had fully taken hold of the Western mind.
And then folks dreamed up many ways to avoid this horrific fate, which you can read about. Link
(Image credit: Illustrator Harry Clarke)
Environmental Graffiti has a gallery of images from an underground crypt in Belgium. It was used for burials for decades, but maintenance was discontinued because of the expense. After years of decay, access to the crypt was closed for safety reasons. But you can see it still. Photographer and urban explorer Sven Fennema takes you on an underground tour with fascinating pictures from his book Anderswelten (Other Worlds).
“The air was very cold and wet, and you could see your every breath – also an experience I will never forget. It was as if death was close beside you somehow. The crypt was full of those strange plastic flowers – still with their bright colors – but it was also full of spiders’ webs and other kinds of decay.”
(Image credit: Sven Fennema)
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Larry Marten wanted to build a coffin for his father as one last gift. Making the finely-crafted coffin, complete with parts saved from his father’s life, was easy compared to negotiating the bureaucracy involved in burying the dead.
He was required to get a permit from the county to transport his father. The woman at the county office said that they don’t issue permits to individuals but to businesses licensed to do this work. She refused to issue the permit but Larry refused to leave without one. He thinks that he just finally wore her down and he got the permit.
At every point, he met resistance as though it was the craziest thing they’d ever heard of. Only professionals are allowed to do it, he was told, and there are all kinds of regulations. He was determined, however, and in the end, everyone at the hospital and county turned around and became helpful and came to respect his decision.
But that was not the end of the red tape Larry had to cut through. Read the rest of the story at Make magazine. Link -via Boing Boing
The fear of being buried alive is an old one, and is even the origin of the phrase “saved by the bell”. Annalee Newitz of io9 has a roundup of technologies developed over the years, right up to the present day, to prevent a person from meeting this fate. Pictured above is Thomas Pursell’s 1930s-era tomb that featured doors that could be opened from the inside.
The further we get into October, the creepier the internet becomes. From WebUrbanist, we have a list of cemeteries that made chills go up our spines while watching the movies. Some are purely fictional, some were filmed at real cemeteries, and some were based on real stories of cemeteries. Shown is a cemetery scene from National Treasure. Link
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A patent has been issued for this device, which would conserve space in burial grounds. The inventor even envisions a transparent variety:
“A clear plastic Easy Inter Burial Container, where the body is additionally encased in clear resin and is standing erect for all to view during installation, creates a very impressive image.”
The screwing-into-the-ground would be performed either by humans or by an adaptation on a tractor backhoe.
Photo: Monica Szczupider / National Geographic
When Dorothy, a beloved female chimp died at the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center in Cameroon, her burial was witnessed by the rest of the chimps residing there.
Monica Szczupider took this photo that showed a wall of grieving chimps paying their last respect:
Speaking about Dorothy, Miss Szczupider, 30, said the chimp was a "prominent figure" within a group of about 25 chimps.
"Chimps are not silent. They are gregarious, loud, vocal creatures, usually with relatively short attention spans", she said.
"But they could not take their eyes off Dorothy, and their silence, more than anything, spoke volumes."
Link | Larger pic at Nat Geo Visions of Earth 2009
Atlas Obscura has compiled pictures and information about twelve different churches and shrines decorated with human bones. The picture above is from a wall at the Chapel of Bones at the Royal Church of St. Francis in Portugal. Due to a land shortage, in the Sixteenth Century, the resident monks decided to clear out nearby cemeteries and relocate the bones to the chapel:
However, rather than interring the bones behind closed doors, the monks, who were concerned about society’s values at the time, thought it best to put them on display. They thought this would provide Evora, a town noted for its wealth in the early 1600s, with a helpful place to meditate on the transience of material things in the undeniable presence of death. This is made clear by the thought-provoking message above the chapel door: “Nós ossos que aqui estamos, pelos vossos esperamos,” or: “We bones that are here, for your bones we wait.”
The immediate view as you enter the Chapel gives you some idea of its scale and the sheer number of bodies that are interred here – some 5000 corpses. Among them, in a small white coffin by the altar, are the bones of the three Franciscan monks who founded the church in the 13th century. Also included are two desiccated corpses hanging by chains from the wall next to a cross. One is that of a child.
Link via io9 | Image: flickr user Tiago Ribeiro
There was a problem in the segregated Jewish ghetto of 15th century Prague: there were more people dying than there was land to bury them.
The solution? They were buried on top of one another. Here’s the unique story of the layered burial of the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague, Czech Republic:
Over the centuries, there has been close to 12 layers of people buried within the confines of the Old Jewish cemetery. It has been estimated that there are approximately 12,000 tombstones presently visible and there may be as many as 100,000 burials in all.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.
Edgar Allan Poe died 160 years ago, but did not have a proper funeral, especially for such a respected author.
Poe’s cousin, Neilson Poe, never announced his death publicly. Fewer than 10 people attended the hasty funeral for one of the 19th century’s greatest writers. And the injustices piled on. Poe’s tombstone was destroyed before it could be installed, when a train derailed and crashed into a stonecutter’s yard. Rufus Griswold, a Poe enemy, published a libelous obituary that damaged Poe’s reputation for decades.
But on Sunday, Poe’s funeral will get an elaborate do-over, with two services expected to draw about 350 people each _ the most a former church next to his grave can hold. Actors portraying Poe’s contemporaries and other long-dead writers and artists will pay their respects, reading eulogies adapted from their writings about Poe.
Instead of digging up and reburying Poe, a mockup was constructed and will lie instate for visitation and a wake before the funeral this weekend in Baltimore. Link -via Digg
90-year old Lonnie Holloway, of Saluda, South Carolina chose to be buried inside his old Pontiac Catalina. He was entombed with his collection of guns in the passenger seat and next to his wife (who was not in the car). Jerry Garnett writes in The New York Times:
“He said, ‘They’re going to have me with my hat on, driving down the road,’ and I said I’m going to be there. That’s what he wanted. I know that sounds crazy,” Malcom Jones, a friend of Mr. Holloway, told WLTX.com.
Hundreds of onlookers turned out for the service this week at Rock Hill Baptist Church.
“This is what Mr. Holloway wanted,” said the pastor who conducted the graveside service. The attendees responded, “Amen.”
Link via Bits & Pieces
Would you like to keep your departed loved ones in an urn on the mantle? How about in an urn that looks like the deceased person’s head? Cremation Solutions makes personalized urns using facial reconstruction and 3D mapping software.
The couple's cremated remains will be sealed into specially made capsules designed to withstand the rigors of space travel. A rocket-launched spacecraft will carry the capsules, along with digitized tributes from fans. The Roddenberrys' remains — and the spacecraft — will travel ever deeper into space and will not return to earth, company spokeswoman Susan Schonfeld said.
From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by 
