Smithsonian.com: The Great New England Vampire Panic

Exhumations! Shenanigans! Connecticut! Read all about it:

Children playing near a hillside gravel mine found the first graves. One ran home to tell his mother, who was skeptical at first—until the boy produced a skull.

Because this was Griswold, Connecticut, in 1990, police initially thought the burials might be the work of a local serial killer named Michael Ross, and they taped off the area as a crime scene. But the brown, decaying bones turned out to be more than a century old. The Connecticut state archaeologist, Nick Bellantoni, soon determined that the hillside contained a colonial-era farm cemetery. New England is full of such unmarked family plots, and the 29 burials were typical of the 1700s and early 1800s: The dead, many of them children, were laid to rest in thrifty Yankee style, in simple wood coffins, without jewelry or even much clothing, their arms resting by their sides or crossed over their chests.

Except, that is, for Burial Number 4.

Read more. Via Powered by Osteons.

The Great New England Vampire Panic

Photo by Landon Nordeman, Smithsonian.com.

ellamorte: In Colon Cemetery in Havana, Cuba is the site of the celebrated ‘boneyard’. A single grave in the cemetery cost $10 in rent for five years. At the end of the five years, if the remains were not claimed, the bones were thrown into the boneyard, (sometimes known as ‘bone pile’) by the cemetery authorities.

ellamorte:

In Colon Cemetery in Havana, Cuba is the site of the celebrated ‘boneyard’. A single grave in the cemetery cost $10 in rent for five years. At the end of the five years, if the remains were not claimed, the bones were thrown into the boneyard, (sometimes known as ‘bone pile’) by the cemetery authorities.

Wish I knew the backstory here. Shanghai Corpse Backlog, December 1946. Photograph by John Florea for LIFE. Source: LIFE Photo Archive, hosted by Google.

Wish I knew the backstory here.

Shanghai Corpse Backlog, December 1946. Photograph by John Florea for LIFE. Source: LIFE Photo Archive, hosted by Google.

Image: A post-medieval skull with a coin in each eye orbit, excavated from Bethnal Green, London. Copyright AOC Archaeology. Via Bones Don’t Lie: Coin in the Mouth or Shoe in the Coffin.

Image: A post-medieval skull with a coin in each eye orbit, excavated from Bethnal Green, London. Copyright AOC Archaeology.

Via Bones Don’t Lie: Coin in the Mouth or Shoe in the Coffin.

I clumsily fumbled for the key to the back entrance of the funeral home. Blindly searching for the light switch inside, I became aware of a low whisper. Upon flipping the switch, I realized the noise was coming from the occupied stretcher. Frightened, yet intrigued, I unzipped the bag on the stretcher and found a tape recorder playing a chant. Relief swept over me; everything was as it should be.

From “First Buddhist Death Rites,” by Jenn Park-Mustacchio on The Order of the Good Death’s blog.

Illustration by H.L. Stephens for The Death and Burial of Poor Cock Robin, ca. 1865, on 50 Watts: Who’ll dig his grave?I, said the Owl,with my pick and shovel,I’ll dig his grave. Found via Daily Undertaker.

Illustration by H.L. Stephens for The Death and Burial of Poor Cock Robin, ca. 1865, on 50 Watts:

Who’ll dig his grave?
I, said the Owl,
with my pick and shovel,
I’ll dig his grave.

Found via Daily Undertaker.

The Order of the Good Death: Mortuary Services for Nuclear Disaster, 1956

“It seemed kind of kitschy and 50′s until it started talking about how ten thousand bodies would need 5.5 acres of space to spread out and probably half would be unrecognizable due to disfigurement from injury and fire.  That’s when SHIT GOT REAL.”

io9: Who is buried in the Hoover Dam?

Hint: No one, probably. But Montana’s Fort Peck Dam contains six bodies.

This and other physical aspects of the pits created permafrost, which preserved much of the organic matter in the graves — though looting long ago disturbed permafrost conditions. Still, enough survived of bones, hair, nails and some flesh to tell that some of the bodies had tattoos and had been embalmed. Hair of the buried men had been cut short and covered with wigs.

“Artifacts Show Sophistication of Ancient Nomads,” New York Times.

The Chirurgeon's Apprentice: The Body-Snatchers Unearthed

Remember my recent posts about the rise of body-snatching in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the preventative measures folks took to protect their dead?

The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice has given the subject a much more detailed (and well-researched) treatment over on her site.

From what little records exist, we know that body-snatchers required some level of moonlight in order to conduct their work in cemeteries, although not all bodies were obtained through exhumation. The clothes and burial shroud were sometimes removed, for stealing a body on its own was not considered theft since it had no value as property.

Read the whole article.

The Boot Box Tragedy

An Australian murder-mystery from Rachael Weaver’s article “The Morgue” in Meanjin:

On 17 December 1898 three boys reported having seen a wooden trunk bobbing in the Yarra River near the Church Street bridge. The Richmond police soon managed to retrieve it—still floating though wired to a heavy stone. As they raised it from the water, the side of the box broke away, revealing a human leg, so they prised it open on the spot and found the naked body of a young woman. […] There was nothing to identify the woman’s body and so it was put on display in the hope that she would be recognised. Those who hurried to view it were described as ‘sensation-hunters eager to describe the appearance of the body to their acquaintances’. Parties of clairvoyants joined the throngs, offering their services to help unravel the mystery.

By 22 December, due to warm weather accelerating the deterioration of the corpse, authorities undertook to bury the body after first removing the jaws, which were missing several teeth, with a view to a future identification. But this was not to be. Two days after Christmas it was announced instead that the whole head had been severed from the body, plunged into a glass cylinder of methylated spirits, and placed on exhibition. The head alone continued to draw unparalleled public interest, but no useful information, so on 5 January 1899 two police detectives carried it to the General Post Office inside a cedar box. There it was removed from the spirits by cords that had been fixed to it for the purpose and mounted on a wire mesh partition in the letter carrier’s room where it was shown to all the city’s postmen that evening.

Find out what happened.

This is a watchtower in Dalkeith Cemetery, near Edinburgh, Scotland. It was built in 1827, when folks—particularly in Scottish communities near the medical schools in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen—felt a real need to have their dead protected, and those with enough money were able to do something about it. The well publicized crimes of the Williams Burke and Hare in 1827 and 1828—men who escalated body-snatching from mere grave-robbing to actual murder—didn’t help, either. Some communities built structures called morthouses to temporarily house the dead as they made their journey from freshness to putrefaction. This one is in Udny, in Aberdeenshire: This particular morthouse is unique because of its clever design. Inside was a sort of lazy Susan for the dead. From Geograph:  This circular stone building houses a revolving wheel upon which a coffin would be placed and kept securely under lock and key. When another body was deposited, the wheel would be turned slightly to accommodate the new coffin. Eventually, when a coffin had been rotated one full revolution, it could safely be buried because the corpse would be sufficiently decomposed as to be of no use to the body-snatchers. Only a few of these structures still exist. Here’s a recent article about plans to restore a deteriorating morthouse in east Perthshire, Scotland. Top image: Photograph by Kim Traynor, via Wikipedia. Bottom image: Lynette and Malcolm Johnson, via Geograph.

This is a watchtower in Dalkeith Cemetery, near Edinburgh, Scotland. It was built in 1827, when folks—particularly in Scottish communities near the medical schools in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen—felt a real need to have their dead protected, and those with enough money were able to do something about it.

The well publicized crimes of the Williams Burke and Hare in 1827 and 1828—men who escalated body-snatching from mere grave-robbing to actual murder—didn’t help, either. Some communities built structures called morthouses to temporarily house the dead as they made their journey from freshness to putrefaction. This one is in Udny, in Aberdeenshire:

This particular morthouse is unique because of its clever design. Inside was a sort of lazy Susan for the dead. From Geograph: 

This circular stone building houses a revolving wheel upon which a coffin would be placed and kept securely under lock and key. When another body was deposited, the wheel would be turned slightly to accommodate the new coffin. Eventually, when a coffin had been rotated one full revolution, it could safely be buried because the corpse would be sufficiently decomposed as to be of no use to the body-snatchers.

Only a few of these structures still exist. Here’s a recent article about plans to restore a deteriorating morthouse in east Perthshire, Scotland.

Top image: Photograph by Kim Traynor, via Wikipedia.
Bottom image: Lynette and Malcolm Johnson, via Geograph.

Kentucky Family Sues Cemetery Owners For Dropping Dead Mother's Casket

A Frankfort family is suing cemetery owners after they say workers dropped their mother twice during her burial, causing her body to roll out of its casket.

Dazed & Confused: Interview with Paul Koudounaris about his book "Empire of Death"

It took me long enough, but I finally ordered a copy of this book this morning. If you need me in the next 5 to 7 days business days, I’ll be near the mailbox.

From the interview:

There is something hypocritical about modern mortuary practices. We don’t want the dead around at all any more, so we ask the deceased to play out one last scene as a living person, dressed and made up as if they are still alive—whereas the natural state of a corpse is putrefaction. It strikes me as escapist and fictive.

Read the whole thing. Even better: Buy the book!


Photograph by Paul Koudounaris, from his book The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses.

Dead bodies stored in cupboards on the Tube

The bodies of people who commit suicide on the London Underground network are often stored in cleaning cupboards and store rooms until an undertaker can collect them, a new documentary has revealed.

(Source: xmorbidcuriosityx)

Skeletons, mummies, bog bodies, exhumations. The dead, and what happens to them.



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