16 Grave Facts About the History of Coffins and Burial

8. Some People Today Attend Their Own Funerals

Modern embalming practices have come a long way from the priests of ancient Egypt, who spent 70 days turning a dead body into a mummy. So far, in fact, that some families now opt for a process known as “extreme embalming.” Instead of putting their loved ones into coffins and having a somber service to send them off and begin the process of rebuilding their lives, the person’s body is displayed in death much as it would have been in life. The corpse may be positioned on a chair with his or her favorite things, like a PlayStation controller, a drum set, or a bag of cookies. By many accounts, the person seems to be present at his or her own funeral.

Families who opt for extreme embalming see it as a means of honoring the person’s life in a fun-loving fashion. In doing so, they can ensure that they remember the dead as they indeed were in life rather than as a lifeless body in a casket. However, because much of the religious tradition is stripped of the service, many people have a hard time accepting this unique means of sending a loved one off and are even offended by it.

9. Frankenstein’s Inspiration Came From Real-Life Grave-Digging

Mary Shelley, the author of the quintessential Gothic ghost story, Frankenstein, grew up in an era in which the only legal means of acquiring bodies for medical research was from the gallows. As a deterrent to committing more sinister crimes, such as murder, criminals were not only hung but their bodies dismembered and sold to medical institutions, especially schools. The deterrent may have been somewhat effective, as there were never enough dead bodies to satisfy the needs of medical students. Enter the profession of grave digging, when real-life body snatchers were paid to dig up the freshly-buried bodies.

This ignoble profession served as the inspiration for how the monster in Frankenstein was created: the mad scientist, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, becomes so obsessed in his quest to create the perfect human that he exhumes dead bodies and uses their parts to make his creature. In fact, Mary Shelley and her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, often met up in London’s St. Pancras cemetery, a place that was well-known for grave digging. No doubt their courtship was filled with telling ghost stories to each other that were based on the happenings at the cemetery. There is speculation that the body of Mary’s mother, who died when she was young, was snatched and thereafter dismembered.

10. Medieval Suicide Victims Were Punished After Death

While previous cultures had been somewhat ambivalent towards suicide, when Christianity rose to prominence, the act of taking one’s life came to be seen as an abomination that would be eternally punished. In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, this belief can be seen following Ophelia’s suicide. Even though she had gone mad before taking her own life, she was denied burial and had to be buried secretly by gravediggers.

Often, the person who took his or her own life would be ceremoniously excommunicated, or sent out of the church, posthumously. The belief was that such a practice would condemn the person to purgatory, if not to hell, for eternity. In England, the corpse might be dragged through the streets to ensure that the person experienced shame for the act of self-slaughter. In some places, there would actually be a trial to determine if the person had committed suicide, though the “trial” looked more like a circus with an already-determined outcome than a modern-day autopsy. If found guilty, the person would be subjected to both conventional and canonical law.

In some Christian areas, though, suicide was treated with a bit more leniency, particularly if the perpetrator was feeling intense desperation or was being tormented by demonic forces.

11. Voodoo Doctors Bring People Back From the Dead as Zombies

The Inferi of Harry Potter are beings who were once dead yet were brought back to life through the dark art of necromancy. Though they inhabit the bodies of the deceased, they are entirely under the control of the necromancer and therefore lack the will and personality of the body’s former inhabitant. The Inferi could be seen as J.K. Rowling’s take on zombies, dead people whose lives were restored by a Voodoo sorcerer known as a bokor.

Voodoo beliefs can often be traced back to African folk religions and superstitions; in this case, the word “zombie” probably originates from the Congolese word “nzambi,” which refers to a dead person’s spirit. Reported cases of zombism, particularly in Haiti, have been shown to be the result of poisoning combined with mental and physical torture. A bokor administers poison to an individual and then enters him or her as if he or she is dead. The bokor then revives the person, allegedly bringing him or her back to life, and beats and starves the individual into a state of complete submission. The person can now be said to have been brought back to life yet exists under the control of the “necromancer.”

12. Vampires Really Were Pierced With Wooden Stakes

Vampires, the terrifying undead creatures that Stephanie Meyer popularized with her Twilight series, have little to do with the pale beings who suck people’s blood in order to turn them into vampires. Beliefs about vampires have origins in the ancient Middle East and the Far East, but the creature that fascinates the modern imagination — the cultural legacy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula — tends to be the one that hails from Eastern Europe, especially the Balkans and Romania.

In these cultures, the vampire was largely seen as a particular type of corpse that, when unearthed, had not decomposed and had fresh blood on it. However, these cases of lack of decomposition can probably be attributed to certain medical conditions or the premature burial of someone who was still alive (perhaps in a coma). The fresh blood was likely the corpse’s own blood, which naturally flowed from the body’s orifices, the “shrieking” noises were from air escaping the glottis, and shiny fingernails were actually the nail undergrowth that exposed itself once the fingernails themselves fell off.

Nevertheless, the people would pierce the hearts of these corpses with wooden stakes to ensure that they remained in their final resting places. They wouldn’t be able to terrorize the villages by sucking people’s blood.

13. Ancient Egyptian Priests Pulled Corpses’ Brains Out Through Their Noses

The process of mummification in ancient Egypt was a gruesome, gory process that predates our modern embalming processes. The most important thing to understand about the mummification process is that it was deeply imbued with a religious significance; in fact, it was carried out by priests rather than doctors. As such, every step carried spiritual meaning.

The process began with the priests removing all of the corpse’s vital organs, usually starting with the mind. They would delicately insert a unique hooked instrument up the corpse’s nose and bring out the brain, bit by bit, careful to not disfigure the face. They would then cut the left side of the person’s body to remove all of the internal organs, excluding only the heart, believing it to be the center of intelligence and the seat of the soul. The liver, stomach, lungs, intestines, and all other organs were placed inside jars and sealed so that they would journey with the person to the afterlife.

Next, the priests would salt the body to remove as much moisture as possible before wrapping it in linen. This part of the process was quite tedious, as sometimes fingers and toes would be bound separately, and several hundred yards of linen strips were required. Their technique withstood the test of time: whether or not the bodies found their way to the afterlife, they have lived on in the stories of ancient Egypt and the mummies that today can be viewed at museums.

14. Some People Celebrate Their Dead Instead of Mourning Them

Ancient tribes in Latin America, including the Aztecs and Toltecs, believed that the act of mourning those who had died was disrespectful; they were still present and should have their memories preserved. Enter Mexico’s Day of the Dead, celebrated on November 2 as a means of honoring, rather than mourning, those who have been lost. Altars are constructed in people’s homes, not for worship but for providing the dead spirits with things that they may need, such as food and water, as well as a candle and family photos. After all, the journey from the world of the dead to the world of the living can make you quite hungry and thirsty. Families that have lost children might also place toys on the altar.

Day of the Dead celebrations in Latin America are festive, social occasions. Parties are held in the streets and public squares all day long and well into the night. Symbols that many people might find macabre and disorienting, such as skulls, are used as molds to bake sweets and other treats for the celebrations. The effect is a different way of viewing death and grieving, and UNESCO feels that this is so momentous that it has made the Day of the Dead an official cultural heritage.

15. Some Indian Widows Are Still Expected to Die From Grief

In an era of feminism and unparalleled pushes for equal rights for women, there is much concern over the ancient practice of sati. In many parts of India, bodies are cremated on a funeral pyre according to local Hindu traditions. Sati is the practice of the widow throwing herself onto the flames so that she, too, dies with her husband.

The practice originated around the 1300s when Rajput women would commit suicide on a funeral pyre after their husbands were killed in battle. The method had a practical purpose: the women would rather die than be enslaved by their enemies. Over time, it evolved into a test of the wife’s devotion; she was expected to throw herself onto the pyre and burn to death in order to prove that she had been a good wife.

Fortunately, the practice of sati has been outlawed in India, and women are not even allowed to throw themselves onto their husbands’ funeral pyres voluntarily. However, reported cases still happen and sometimes receive high-profile attention. In remote villages that are more bound to local traditions than the central authorities, though, the practice may be much more prominent than believed.

16. Your Body Can Nourish a Tree

Death has long been tied to religious beliefs, and there can easily be an argument made that much of today’s religion is consumerism. However, many people are actively and passionately eschewing that lifestyle in favor of something more simplistic and natural. The creators of the Capsula Mundi certainly have as they believe that death is as much commercialized today as is life. The expenses of coffins, funerals, and everything else make the process of ending one’s life yet another aspect of a consumerist lifestyle.

They wanted to give people a different option, one that is as minimalist and natural as possible. Enter the Capsula Mundi, an egg-shaped coffin made of biodegradable plastic. The coffin is buried underneath a tree sapling. As it degrades underground, the nutrients from the deceased’s corpse nourish the seedling and take on new life in the form of the growing tree.

In addition to providing a means for minimalist people to be buried according to their own “religion,” the Capsula Mundi is much more environmentally friendly. Traditional coffins pollute the ground and are not helpful to the process of decomposition. The Capsula Mundi enables people to leave a smaller carbon footprint in death and even give back to the earth.

Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:

“It Is Forbidden To Wear Clogs: Saving Energy Under Maria Theresa and Joseph II,” by Christina Linsboth. The World of the Habsburgs.

“Enon Chapel: London’s Victoria Golgotha,” by Carla Valentine. Order of the Good Death. June 30, 2014.

“Zoroastrian Towers of Silence, Where The Dead Are Left to the Vultures,” by Wu Mingren. December 6, 2019.

“Rites of Desecration: Suicide, Sacrilege, and the Crossroads,” by Mark Laskey. CVLT Nation. September 8, 2014.

“Plague Pits.” Wikipedia. March 1, 2018.

“The Bone Collector,” by Yu Sen-lun. Taipei Times. November 21, 2004.

“When Death Doesn’t Mean Goodbye,” by Amanda Bennett. National Geographic. March 2016.

“Frankenstein: Graveyards, Scientific Experiments, and Bodysnatchers,” by Ruth Richardson. The British Library online collections. May 15, 2014.

The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits by Rosemary Ellen Guiley 2007

“Egyptian Mummies.” Smithsonian Institute online collection.

“A teenager’s funeral featured an ‘extreme embalming’ – and it’s more common than you might think,” by Kaila Hale-Stern. Insider. July 10, 2018.

“Top 10 Things to Know About the Day of the Dead,” by Logan Ward. National Geographic.

“India wife dies on husband’s pyre.” BBC News. August 22, 2006.

“The biodegradable burial pod that turns your body into a tree,” by Paula Erizanu. CNN. January 11, 2018.