Digital Dying By: Justin Nobel

bu Justin Nobel

Felix “Bush” Breazeale, of Roane, Tennessee was a hermit who became a celebrity overnight when he decided to host his own funeral. Robert Duvall plays Bush in a newly released Hollywood movie about the story called "Get Low".

Last month, Theodore “Pete” Peterson sat at a New Jersey bar with a vodka tonic in hand and an oxygen tank at his side. There was a buffet lunch, a 50/50 raffle and he was surrounded by friends and family, but this was no ordinary party, this was Pete's wake. The 67 year-old bricklayer was also an avid hunter, fisherman, drinker and smoker. He had racked up 11 DUI's over the course of his life, had one serious car accident and had been through one divorce, but earlier this summer he received the worst news of all: he had lung cancer as well as a tumor behind his esophagus and had just a few months to live. Pete wanted a chance to say goodbye to friends and family while still in relatively good health, so he decided to host his own wake. “Why wait until I'm dead to have one?” said Pete, to a local reporter.

Pete was an ordinary working man, though his story is uncommon; very few people have attended their own funerals. In fact, as history tells us, there is only one other, Felix “Bush” Breazeale, of Roane, Tennessee. Bush's story was recently turned into a Hollywood movie called Get Low, starring Bill Murray and Robert Duvall, a tender and whimsical tale about a hermit who became a celebrity overnight after hosting his own funeral. While Robert Duvall reportedly puts on a good show, the true story of Bush can't be beat. Read the rest of this entry »

by Justin Nobel

Daijuku Bosatsu Shinnyokai-Shonin is one of Japan's most well-known "mummy-monks". At the age of 96, he put himself on a strict diet of salt and water, then drank a poisonous tea and was buried alive.

Last week, police in Tokyo broke into the home of Sogen Kato. According to local records he was 111, the fifth oldest man on earth. But instead of a wizened old man, they found a skeleton in pajamas lying under a blanket. The body was surrounded by yellowed newspapers, whose date the police said indicate when Kato likely may have died; November, 1978.  “Grandpa was a very scary man,” said one granddaughter, who had visited his room a few months back and said she saw a skull.

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Police believe Kato's family hid his death so they could continue to collect his pension checks, a sum that totaled more than nine million yen, or about 100,000 U.S. dollars. But there is another reason that explains why Kato may have ended up the way he did, he was trying to attain sokushinbutsu, a revered state of being in which Buddhist monks cause their own death by limiting themselves to a sparse diet that induces mummification. Throughout history, hundreds of monks have tried to attain sokushinbutsu, but only about two dozen are known to have succeeded. Until the case of Kato, it was assumed that the practice had been extinct for centuries. Read the rest of this entry »