by Justin Nobel
In ancient Egypt, only the holiest of priests performed the act of embalming, often shrouded in the mask of Anubis, the jackal headed god of embalming. A British TV show is currently looking for a human to embalm.
A British TV show is currently searching for a terminally ill patient to embalm.
“It may sound rather macabre but we have mummified a large number of pigs to check that the process worked and it does,” a producer told a volunteer interviewing for the show, who was actually a reporter in disguise. “Afterward one thought was—though this is not obligatory—to put the body in an exhibition in a proper museum so people can properly understand the mummification process. That is something we would be flexible about.”
An unnamed English scientist has unlocked the secrets of mummification, producers say, and the on-air demonstration will be a trial run of this researcher’s theory. The Brit has reason to keep his methods secret. A world-renown anatomist with the Swiss Mummy Project—he previously proved that King Tut did not actually die of a blow to the head and that a 5,000 year old glacial mummy from the Alps named Otzi indeed died of blood loss from an arrow wound—is working on the mummy riddle too.
The Swiss’s work mimics a famous mummy study from the mid-1990s conducted by a Maryland M.D. and an Egyptologist from Long Island. The pair claimed to have successfully mummified an entire human body using only the tools available to the ancient Egyptians. While their exact solutions were a closely guarded secret it is widely believed the main ingredient was about 600 pounds of a naturally occurring salt called natron. Most second graders know what a mummy is and that the Egyptians made them, but exactly how they did it, surprisingly, still nobody knows for sure. Read the rest of this entry »
by Justin Nobel
Nikki Sian-Leigh Aksamit lost her unborn child after a car crash and struggled how to tell her kids what had happened. Her book, "Mommy, what is dead" explains death to pre-schoolers. (Image courtesy of Nikki Sian-Leigh Aksamit)
One day, a car raced through a yellow light and slammed into Nikki Sian-Leigh Aksamit’s vehicle. She was a mother of two and six weeks pregnant. The trauma of the accident eventually killed her unborn child. Her two boys wanted to know what had happened to the baby and Nikki struggled for a way to tell them. Finding no children’s book fit for the task, she wrote her own, “Mommy, what is dead?” Digital Dying recently spoke with Nikki on how to talk to children about death.
How did you tell your kids that your unborn child had died?
Rook, my four year-old, knew right away. “Mom, what’s wrong?” he asked. I said, “The baby died.” He said, “What do you mean it died. Why did it have to die?” I said, “The accident caused mommy to lose the baby.” He was just so full of questions. I was at a loss for words. My husband and I answered him the best we could, but I don’t think he got it. Two weeks later, I wrote out questions and what I wanted the pictures to be with a magic marker and construction paper. It probably took a good month and half to finish the book. Then I read it to him. It was just my scribbles, a way to purge myself, but he got it right away. Read the rest of this entry »
by Justin Nobel
Joe Rollino, who once lifted 475 pounds with his teeth, was recently struck dead by a minivan at the age of 104. There are 60,000 plus centenarians in the United States but there are only 75 validated supercentenarians on the planet.
Mighty Joe Rollino was struck by a minvan while crossing the street in Brooklyn, earlier this month. At a nearby hospital, the man considered by some as “for his size, the strongest man that ever lived”—he lifted 475 pounds with his teeth and once pressed 600 plus pounds with a single finger—was pronounced dead. He was 104.
Rollino was a centenarian, a rank reserved for those who live above 100. There may be 60,000 or more of them in the United States. A far more elite status is that of supercentenarian, those people age 110 and up. The concept is so new it is not in most dictionaries, and according to the Gerontology Research Group (GRG), which catalogues and verifies claims, there are only 20 verified supercentenarians in the U.S., and just 75 on the entire planet. Read the rest of this entry »
by Justin Nobel
Bubonic plague victims exhibit the classic "buboes" that gave the disease its name. Many who died from plague were buried in mass graves that are disturbingly similar to those being dug right now outside Port-au-Prince for victims of the Haiti earthquake.
Dead bodies from Haiti’s earthquake are being piled into dump trucks and unloaded in mass graves outside Port-au-Prince. This burial method dates back to the Middle Ages but according to the field manual, Management of dead bodies after disasters, produced by the International Committee of the Red Cross, burying bodies in mass graves can be traumatizing for survivors and lead to legal troubles later on, as family members seek to retrieve loved ones. The manual also notes an important misconception, one still being posited by some newscasters in Haiti: “The bodies of people who have died in a disaster do not cause epidemics…In most cases, those who have survived are more likely to be spreading diseases.”
It was fear of disease that led to some of the largest mass graves in history, those dug across Europe during the Bubonic Plague. A particularly virulent outbreak, called the Black Death, killed one-quarter to one-half of the European population in the mid-14th century. Flea-infested rats are believed to have spread the plague from the Gobi Desert to the Crimea, Constantinople and eventually all of Europe. Bouts of plague continued to erupt in the centuries to follow, with one of the last ones occurring in London, in 1665. In The Decameron, a bloody chronicle of the plague in 14th century Florence, Giovanni Boccaccio describes a scene similar to those presently being witnessed throughout Port-au-Prince.
Read the rest of this entry »
by Justin Nobel
Frankie Yale was murdered by Al Cappone's gunmen. His Brooklyn funeral was the most ostentatious in mob history, featuring a $15,000 silver casket and 110 Cadillac limousines. One woman bolted from the crowd and spit on the gleaming coffin; Yale’s thugs had murdered her husband while in bed some years earlier.
With a heavy police presence and a bevy of gawking onlookers, a golden coffin was carried through the streets of Montreal’s Little Italy neighborhood earlier this week. Inside was the body of 42 year-old Nick Rizzuto, gunned down in broad daylight while standing beside a black Mercedes. His father Vito, considered Canada’s most powerful mafia boss, is presently in a Colorado prison on racketeering charges related to three mob murders.
For Montreal, it was a noteworthy funerary event, but as crime family funerals go, the funeral procession was uneventful and the end for Nick was swift and unexpected. Mob deaths can be much worse. Salvatore Maranzano, a Sicilian-born New York mobster known as the “boss of bosses” was shot and stabbed to death in September 1931 in his Park Avenue office by four thugs posing to be detectives, a murder arranged by Salvatore “Lucky” Luciano. Carmine “Cigar” Galante, acting boss of the Bonanno crime family in the late 1970s was showered with bullets in an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn with a cigar in his mouth, having just polished off a plate of spaghetti. And then there is the unlucky end of Frankie Yale. Read the rest of this entry »
by Justin Nobel
Catherine de' Medici at a funeral in the 1560s. The Romans first wore black at funerals and for some reason the Western World has followed ever since. Some cultures wear purple or yellow.
“Wear Black in sunlight and you will roast as the Heat VIBRATIONS absorb easily. Hence Black is the most absurd colour for funerals & Hospitals: It attracts all sorts of Dark moods and energies and influences just when you need extra protection…In certain contrasts Black garments act as a Vacuum cleaner for Bad vibrations…MANY WOMEN WEAR BLACK HEAD TO TOE, THIS IS VERY DANGEROUS.”
These words come from Samuel Sagan, who pasted the lines in an email he dropped Funeralwise earlier this week. Sagan, author of books such as Bleeding Sun, Entity Possession and the Atlantean Secrets tetralogy, comes at it from an odd angle but raises a good question: why wear black at funerals? Read the rest of this entry »
by Justin Nobel
Pope Formosus died in 896. Six months later, his successor, Stephen VI, had his corpse brought to trial for capital crimes. Formosus was found guilty and his cadaver was stripped of its papal vestments, dragged through the streets of Rome and dumped in the Tiber River.
A mentally unstable woman in a bright red coat jumped a barrier and tackled Pope Benedict XVI during Christmas Eve mass at St. Peter’s Basilica. Benedict survived the attack but an examination of papal history reveals that strange and horrible deaths are actually quite common. A book has even been written on the topic, The Death of the Popes: Comprehensive accounts, including funerals, burial places, and epitaphs. The following are some of the most disturbing and unknown papal deaths..
Pope Saint Clement I – He was born in the first century A.D., became bishop of Rome and rose to the pontificate during a schism at Corinth. Not much beyond that exists in the written record, but according to legend a riot arose in Rome and a city official named Mamertinus put it down and arrested Clement. The Emperor banished him to Pontus, a city on the shores of the Black Sea, where he was condemned to work in a marble quarry. Clement gained the respect of his fellow convicts and began preaching the word of God. The group took their water from a faraway spring but one day Clement noticed a nearby lamb scraping the soil and took it as a sign that water was below. He dug and sure enough, found a spring. Read the rest of this entry »
by Justin Nobel
The "Serene Urn Compartments" at Nirvana, a luxurious columbarium being constructed in the land-starved city-state of Singapore. Costs will range from $2,988 for a single-urn lot to as much as $26,888 for a double-urn compartment. (Photo courtesy of Nirvana Memorial Garden Pte. Ltd.)
From the outside it looks like a downed spacecraft and on the inside, a Las Vegas casino. There are red carpeted VIP rooms, curved hallways lined with lavender and neon-yellow psychedelic swirls and several statues of Buddha. There are skylights, a café and 40,000 niches. What is it? Nirvana, a “six-star” columbarium currently being constructed in Singapore.
The massive structure will be a luxurious home for the dead in a city-state increasingly short on space. Costs will range from $2,988 for a single-urn lot to as much as $26,888 for a double-urn compartment. “Hallways with sumptuous embellishment and dignity closures remind the visitors of a 5-star hotel, so they can abandon the fear and sadness but instead cherish the memories and remembrance,” reads the Nirvana website.
Singapore is the smallest nation in Southeast Asia, with a land area less than most U.S. counties. The present population is 5 million, and that number is expected to rise by 40 percent over the next half-century.
“It’s a spatial competition between the living and the dead,” Lily Kong, a National University of Singapore researcher, recently told the New York Times.
A national law states that bodies must be exhumed after 15 years to make room for new burials. This has led to an entirely new vocation across the country: the grave digger-upper. Read the rest of this entry »
by Justin Nobel
Celestis, a Houston-based company, first launched humans, in their cremated form, into space in 1997. Current prices for a Celestis space flight run as low as $695. A spot aboard Virgin Galactic's recently released SpaceShipTwo costs $200,000.
On a stormy December night in the middle of the Mojave Desert, SpaceShipTwo was unveiled. The sleek Virgin Galactic craft, which has been in secret development for two years, can hold six passengers and has windows on the sides and ceiling. By 2012, Virgin hopes it will put the first passenger astronauts into orbit; tickets start at $200,000. The company is billing the craft as the world’s first commercial spaceship, but that is not necessarily true. Non astronauts, in cremated form, have been flying through space for more than a decade.
The first craft was an American Pegasus rocket, launched from Grand Canary Island, off the Moroccan coast, on April 21, 1997. The official goal was to put a Spanish satellite into space but bolted to the rocket was a canister with the ashes of 24 people, in separate aluminum capsules. They contained the 1960s drug icon Timothy Leary, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and a four year-old Japanese-American boy who apparently, “loved to talk about the stars.” The post-mortem flight was organized by Celestis, a Houston-based company; the cost for a capsule was $4,800. Read the rest of this entry »
by Justin Nobel
Guatemala City and Tijuana have seen an increasing amount of funerary violence, and also a bourgeoning and brazen set of homespun businesses that feed off the mayhem. Last month in Baltimore, a woman was gunned down at the funeral of her boyfriend, also a murder victim. (Photo by Simon Howden)
Virginia McGhee stepped out to make a phone call while at the funeral of her boyfriend in Baltimore and was shot in the chest. The high murder rate means good business for funeral homes. Joseph Brown, the owner of the funeral home where McGhee was shot, said he cares for at least two to three homicide victims a month. But after blood was spilled on his own sidewalk, Brown vented to a Baltimore Sun reporter last month that the murderers have gone too far.
Last year, two people were shot outside a West Baltimore church, where 300 mourners had gathered to view the body of a 26-year-old killed in a triple shooting and in 2001, a man was shot at while leaving the wake of his brother.
“[Respect has] gone out the window,” said Brown. “This has become a fact of life as much here in Baltimore as it is in Afghanistan, Iraq and anywhere else.”
The more appropriate comparison would be Guatemala City, Guatemala or Tijuana, Mexico. These well-known murder havens, like Baltimore, have seen an increasing amount of funerary violence, and also a bourgeoning and brazen set of homespun businesses that feed off the mayhem. Read the rest of this entry »
