Digital Dying By: Justin Nobel

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 »

by Justin Nobel

Neptune Memorial Reef, off the coast of Florida, is an underwater city that will eventually be able to accommodate the cremated remains of more than 100,000 people. The artificial reef attracts tropical fish and scuba divers and is designed to withstand a Category 4 hurricane. (Photo courtesy of Neptune Memorial Reef)

Off the coast of Key Biscayne, Florida, a city of the dead is rising. Neptune Memorial Reef is an array of concrete structures infused with cremated remains, designed to form an elaborate underwater cemetery that when complete will cover 16 acres and be able to accommodate more than 125,000 dead. Reef occupants can choose placement in columns, arches, lion statues or mounds shaped like creatures of the sea.

“The most popular are the marine placements,” said Stephen Ziadie, the reef's Chief Operating Officer. “Everyone wants to be a shellfish or a starfish or a brain coral.”

ECO-FRIENDLY FUNERALS EXPLAINED

The Neptune Memorial Reef is a project of the Neptune Society, a U.S. company focused on cremation. Neptune is one of a handful of companies crafting innovative underwater burial sites in warm Florida waters. Read the rest of this entry »

by Justin Nobel

The Call of Death: Caitlin Doughty left a career in theater to study mortuary science. Four decades ago 95 percent of mortuary students were male, with the majority from funeral home families. (Photo by Justin Nobel)

How Caitlin Doughty came to a career in death is unusual. At the University of Chicago she studied medieval history and crafted plays from Victorian poems and obscure Edgar Allan Poe stories. After graduation she moved to San Francisco and produced theater.

“That's what I thought I wanted to do,” said Doughty. “Then I thought, ‘you know what I have also wanted to do,' work in a funeral home.”

Mortuary science was once a stiff calling, a trade passed from grandfather to father to son. Non-white morticians were rare, as were women. In 1971, 95 percent of students entering mortuary schools were male, and the majority of them were sons of funeral home directors, according to statistics from the American Board of Funeral Service Education (ABFSE). Now, nearly 60 percent of enrollees are female. At Cypress College of Mortuary Science in Los Angeles, where Doughty is in her first semester, three-quarters of the students are women and not one is from a traditional funeral family. This year a new demographic has emerged: laid-off workers looking for a second career. Read the rest of this entry »