Digital Dying By: Justin Nobel

by Justin Nobel

The Chinese have been burning Hell Money and 3-D paper objects to aid the dead in the afterworld for thousands of years. But setting ablaze tiny paper condoms, Viagra pills and barroom dancers is a relatively new trend that has both Buddhist monks and Chinese officials worried.

Next month, millions of Chinese will head to cemeteries to burn Viagra, brandy bottles, toiletries, tweed shoes, stiletto heels, credit cards, cosmetics, exotic potions, common pain relievers, camcorders, rice cookers, flat screen TVs, cell phones and Mercedes coupes. These tiny paper offerings are meticulously crafted to resemble real world items. In setting them aflame it is thought the objects will be carried to the afterworld, where they will become available in full form to the recently deceased.

The idea is to provide the dead with everything they will need in the next life, including, in some instances, things that they may never have had in this one. A recent article in the Nanjing Morning News listed some of the more explicit paper offerings being sold, such as condoms and scantily clad barroom dancers. Read the rest of this entry »

by Justin Nobel

White ring neck doves can barely fly more than a mile but white homing pigeons can find their way home from distances of more than 500 miles. The birds are used to relay messages in war, and are also released during weddings and funerals.

“Dear God, make me a bird. So I could fly far. Far far away from here.”

It's a memorable scene from “Forrest Gump”, young Jenny skips school and Forrest stops by her home to see why. She is standing in the backyard, wearing a sundress and looking morose. The two tear through a cornfield and hide among the stalks, Jenny's abusive father stumbles after. She asks God to turn her into a bird and the camera pans out, in the distance a flock of white birds flies up from the field.

THE BIZARRE WORLD OF ANIMAL FUNERALS

Something about a white wing in motion plucks the heartstrings. And catering to this preference has developed into a handsome niche industry, funeral doves. According to some estimates, there are more than 1,000 companies that specialize in “white dove releases” in the United States. Operators release birds at graduations, grand openings and bar mitzvahs, but their bread and butter events are weddings and funerals.

The actual birds used are white homing pigeons, which can return home from as far away as 600 miles; ring neck doves, which look almost identical to the untrained eye, are highly domesticated birds that can not fly more than a mile. Dove clearly has more emotional appeal than pigeon, and thus all providers label their services as such. But these are far from your typical nuisance city pigeon, hopping around the sidewalk pecking at crumbs pooping on everything.

EUTHANIZING A PET

“These birds are like the racehorses of the sky,” says Jeff Newsom, who, several years ago, founded the dove release company “Crystal Wings & Amber Dreams”, in loving memory of his daughter Crystal. Read the rest of this entry »

by Justin Nobel

Apical Ballooning Syndrome, better known as “broken heart syndrome”, may not be complete hooey. J.A. and Relda Auger, a Louisiana couple that had been married 75 years, died less than 24 hours apart. There are many other examples.

Upon finding his lover lifeless in a crypt, a young man guzzles a vile of poison. The maiden awakens, spots her man dead and buries a dagger in her heart. Ah, Romeo and Juliet, a love so strong it vanquished life. Their youthful tale is fictional, but elderly lovers' dying one after the other is actually a phenomenon of significant scholarly intrigue.

“We see it all the time,” the medical director at a Washington state hospice recently told a reporter. But the question remains, do these cases result from coincidence, a true medical condition or something more sublime, perhaps even the intervention of a divine hand? A suite of examples indicates it may be a bit of all three. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »