“With a funeral you never know what's going to happen,” says Priscilla Etienne, who runs a company that takes professional photos at funerals. “Someone might jump up and leap on the coffin. Emotions are real, they're raw.”

Priscilla Etienne runs a London-based company called Funeography that takes professional photos at funerals. She has been featured on the BBC and in Popular Photography. Digital Dying spoke with Priscilla about her beef with funeral directors, why weddings are boring and the reason she's dying to photograph a gypsy funeral.

Most people aren't accustomed to funeral photos, how do you persuade potential clients that it is a good idea?

People spend so much money on getting the coffin, or getting the brass band, what's the point if you don't remember it? Why not have a record of everything? I was at a funeral of a 12 year old boy, they had a Welsh quartet then sung football club songs. It was marvelous, but no one was taking pictures. When my parents died in 1996 no one took pictures. We all missed it. My mom's death was expected, she had been sick for a year. But my dad died eight months later and it was unexpected. He was in the Caribbean. We weren't told about the funeral until literally two days before. That kind of thing happens quite a lot and is another reason why it's good to have the photos. The distance people sometimes have to go for funerals is tremendous. Not everyone can make it.

How do you go about photographing a funeral?

We wear black trousers and black T-shirts with the photographers name. We'll go to the home beforehand and ask about the person. If, for example, I learn that the dog will be getting their possessions, then I know to make sure and get two to three pictures of the dog. We take pictures at the home, at the church and of the family arriving and the coffin being carried in. Coming from the East End there are a lot of old gangster types and sometimes they'll ask about the camera, say something like, ‘Where's that going love?' We do a lot with zoom lenses. Inside the congregation everyone's eyes are at the front but they are in their own thoughts. I have one photo of a white woman amongst a group of about 400 black people and she is just looking up with this expression like, ‘I wonder what's for dinner?'

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What's the business model for Funeography, and just who are your funeographers?

I run the business like a newspaper, it's efficient and quick but we're not as cutthroat. We have empathy, we have understanding. Many funeographers are students. They have to have certain techniques but they can experiment. There is room for artistry within the funeography books, which is the item the families receive at the end. We own the images, but if families tell us not to use the images then we don't. It took me five years to build this from scratch and there's still a bit more I need to learn. I'm still gaining people's trust, that's important. If people trust you it will come flowing in.

Were you always into both funerals and photography?

I grew up in East London. There were literally only 10 Caribbean families in the area. They do not see death as a bad thing, it's joyous. They don't expect you to cry because the dead are entering heaven. It's a celebration, you should be happy, you are going to God. In Caribbean culture, someone will always have an ordinary small camera around. I was into photography from about age nine. My dad was an amateur photographer and built a dark room in our loft. My first funeral was at 17. And then people in my life just kept dying.

Why do you have such beef with funeral directors?  

I believe when funeral directors started to establish themselves in the 1800s and said, ‘let us take the burden from you, let us handle it,' is when people became fearful of death, because they were no longer touching it. The funeral directors make death like a secret club. They feel no one else can do the job. When I approached funeral directors with my funeography idea they were like, ‘Oh yeah, fantastic idea.' They just were not grasping it. Funeral directors have forgotten where they stand, and I think people are starting to get fed up with them. Families want to take control of their funerals again.

Do you see the funeral industry changing for the better?

People are becoming bolder, even in what they name their companies. A woman contacted me last year who has a company called when they croak dot com. People now want humor with death, they want to celebrate more. I am part of a group called Farewell Innovators. Two of our members are women up north who have a Volkswagen Beetle they use for coffins. We are looking to do our own website where people can find information on how to arrange certain things for a funeral that aren't so common now, say a comedian. Also, things like cemetery open days are becoming more popular. People get to look at remains and see the crematorium. It takes the mystery out of it. When you're buying a car you go and look at it and check the mileage and the price. Why not do that with cemeteries?

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Have you had success landing clients amongst other cultures?

I was recently at a funeral and there was a Chinese funeral going on across the way. They were standing at the grave with white bandannas on and doing this ritual dancing. It looked a bit like a tai chi class, it just looked fantastic. I had a small camera in my bag and I was thinking I want to go over there and take some pictures. But I didn't. Some cultures will be slower in coming forward, I think. I am trying to get into the gypsy community. There is a massive one here and they know how to party and celebrate. There is a show now called My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. The main character is called Paddy Doherty. I bumped into him on the way back from Manchester. We spoke and I told him what I do. They're talking about doing a My Big Fat Gypsy Funeral and I am trying to get on with that.

Why are funerals so much better than weddings?

Most weddings are the same. Everyone dances, the bride and groom probably do some dance they learned on YouTube and wow people. With a funeral you never know what's going to happen. Someone might jump up and leap on the coffin. Emotions are real, they're raw. Often you see men kissing each other, it's one of the only times you see that. I have even had a couple arguments break out, not many, but you do find that some people might not like each other. It all comes out at a funeral, but usually they keep the bad stuff at the door.

Inquiring minds want to know, will you bring Funeography to America?

This is a perfect opportunity for a franchise, and I am kind of surprised funeral photography hasn't come to the U.S. I would have expected it to be there in at least some states but it isn't. I am particularly shocked that it is not in New York, that is one of those places that is supposed to be very on top of things.

The freemasons are a secretive organization with obscure origins and mysterious symbols. Norman Miller is 93 years old and has performed more than 1,000 masonic funerals.

Norman Miller fought in World War II then Korea and has been leading Freemason funeral services ever since. He currently lives in El Paso, Texas. Digital Dying spoke with him over the phone about how he got started, what a Freemason funeral is like and after seeing so many deaths, how he keeps going. The freemasons are a secretive organization with obscure origins. Sometime during the 15th or 16th century the first chapel, or lodge, was begun in Scotland. There are now an estimated six million Masons around the world, and just under two million in the US. Geographic regions are divided into jurisdictions, which are administered by Grand Lodges. El Paso, where Norman lives, has 10 lodges. A list of famous Freemasons includes the Italian President Silvio Berlusconi (he was expelled from the order in 1981), Nat King Cole, King Edward the VIII, Benjamin Franklin, J. Edgar Hoover, Meriwether Lewis, Harry Houdini, Mozart's dad Leopold, Arnold Palmer, Paul Revere, World War II General Douglas MacArthur, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde and numerous US presidents, including the most famous Mason, George Washington.

How did you start performing Mason funerals?

When I was still a young man a lady came up to me and we had a really nice conversation. She said, ‘Norman, you ought to go into the ministry.' I never did but I went to the Lutheran church and sang in the quire. I joined the Masons in 1958 and retired from the Army in 1963. I did my first Masonic funeral in March of 1964. The job was given to me by the former secretary of the lodge. He just handed me this paper about Mason funerals and told me that I would now be leading them. I said, ‘Isn't this supposed to be done by the master of the lodge?' and he said, ‘Learn it, you have to do it.' So I did. I have done over 1,000 funerals since then. I have another one this Thursday.

Has it been depressing to lead so many funerals?

It has been not a pleasure for me but an inspiration, because the people you come in contact with appreciate it so much. It doesn't bother me, I have a firm belief in the deity. I have no fear of death. When the Lord wants me he can take me. Both my parents have passed away, and I just had a brother who passed away, he was 94. I have had very close friends in the masonry that have passed away. I have realized that they must be taken, earth to earth, ashes to ashes and dust to dust. When you come into this world you are a free born person and when you pass away, if you live the right kind of life, you are also a free person.

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What's a Mason funeral ceremony like?

I wear a suit with a masonic apron over it, which is a white apron that we have worn for hundreds of years. They used to be made of animal skin but now are made by these companies that furnish masonic materials. You tie the apron around the back, and I have an arm band that I put on. I take a little sprig of evergreen and put it in my left breast jacket pocket. We deposit this sprig into the grave, or if it is a cremation we are dealing with, then into the urn. For it is our belief that within us there is an immortal spirit, and that our soul shall blossom in eternal strength. The sprig helps make that possible. The evergreen represents life everlasting. We commit the body to the earth and to the great creator.

How long are the ceremonies?

They used to be real long, sometimes 30 to 40 minutes, but it was too much. It distracted from things, so we shortened it down to about 12 minutes. I have done funeral services in chapels, and some right at the gravesite. The preacher does their part and if it's a military funeral there will be a salute and the folding of the flag, then we come in at the end of the service.

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Can you tell me a bit more about yourself?

I was raised in Wisconsin and drafted into the Army in January of 1942. I was in the Army for over 20 years and served in World War II and Korea. On my final tour I went back again to Germany. I was very fortunate, the Lord let me be, I came to no harm and here I am. I settled in El Paso because of my wife. We had gone to school together back in Wisconsin. She became sick with arthritis and I wanted to be in an area that was comfortable for her. El Paso is right on the border, it's really dry. She enjoyed being here. I followed in the footsteps of my brother, and my mother and father and lived a good life, a God-loving life. I think that's what I owe my longevity to. I am 93 years old, you know. Really, 93 years young. I still drive my own car.

Have you ever been to a Mason funeral? Leave a comment below and let us know more about it..

In 1821, the Romantic poet John Keats died of tuberculosis at the age of 26. A period of “tuberculosis chic” followed, says Professor Deborah Lutz.

Deborah Lutz has written about Gothic villains, Victorian sex rebels and the Cannibal Club; her latest book is on Victorian death culture. She is an assistant professor at Long Island University. Digital Dying spoke to her on hair jewelry, the glamorization of tuberculosis and just what it means to live in a world without relics.

Why were the Victorians so obsessed with death?

The Victorians died in homes and the body was kept around. People touched bodies, took hair from bodies, took photos of bodies. People were used to seeing bodies. But today people die in hospitals. We often don't see dead bodies, they go to the morgue and disappear. We want to think of ourselves as progressive people, interested in the sexual body, but we are disgusted by the dead body. The Victorians were okay with both.

What is a relic, and what does it have to do with sweat and blood?

Relics are often associated with the church, but the Victorian relics I talk about are secular relics. A firsthand secular relic could be hair, or someone's desiccated heart or a finger bone. Secondhand relics, or contact relics, could be clothing or letters or manuscripts. It could be something that was sweat on or bled on or cried on, like the Shroud of Turin. Their texture can carry someone's essence, a sweater would work because you wear it on your body and presumably you might sweat on it. Most religious relics are made of porous materials, something that takes in the essence, like wood. A wooden toy you have handled for all these years takes on the texture of being handled, the fact that you touched it over and over actually affects its surface.

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Do we have digital age relics?

One reason relics lost their importance was because of photography, which became popular in the 1840s and 1850s. Photography is a disembodied means of holding onto the memory of someone. You don't have to keep hair or clothes, you can just have a picture. By the 1880s and 1890s relic culture was dying out. You get early cinema and sound recording and telephones, all these disembodied ways of communicating with people and holding onto traces. The more embodied means eventually went out of fashion. People don't—or rarely—keep locks of hair. People don't keep body parts, that's for sure. People don't keep clothing. We no longer make jewelry out of hair or write letters. Letters used to be contact relics, people would touch paper, date it and put the place from where it was sent, something that really steeped it in time and place. In the nineteenth century it was common to put a lock of hair in a letter. If someone died you might keep their emails, but they never touched those emails, those emails are not contact relics, you can't email a lock hair. Our correspondences have lost the warmth of flesh. You can't bleed on an email, or cry on an email, or sweat on an email.

It's as if we're headed towards a world where people don't die?

That's precisely the problem, we don't think of death as being natural. It's like doctors have failed if they can't keep someone alive perpetually. Whereas earlier in the nineteenth and mid-twentieth century death was something that happened to everyone, and it could happen to you at any time. People have this idea that they should be able to live forever and if they can't, someone screwed up. Either the machine didn't work or the doctor screwed up and can be sued.

 But even today there's a “death chic”, seen in people like Amy Winehouse?

The Victorians thought of death as beautiful and the dead body as a work of art. They aestheticized the dead body, what we do is make people look like they're dead and aestheticize that. People like Amy Winehouse are not quite gothic but play along the same lines. It's a form of bohemianism, a way of rebelling against middle class values, like being a really healthy good eater who gets enough sleep. The idea is young artistic radicals have a kind of deep wound inside of them and are internally bleeding. They are pale, they maybe have tuberculosis, they look like they're dead. But I think that look has been coopted by popular culture. It's no longer radical to look pale and thin and deathly. I mean, it's what all the models look like. It's a fashion statement now.

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Why was tuberculosis seen as sexy in the Victorian era?

The whole TB thing is connected to this romantic idea of a beautiful death. When someone dies, especially when someone dies young, they're frozen in that moment. You want them more because they're dead and you can't have them, and also because they're this young beautiful person and they can't age. It goes back to Goethe, and The Sorrows of Young Werther, which caused a kind of committing suicide fad among young people. In the book Goethe is so deeply in love he kills himself. It was glamorous to believe that you felt so deeply that you died, that your heart could break and you could pine away with deep emotion and deep feeling. People thought the Romantic poet John Keats, who died in 1821 of tuberculosis, died for love. He was in love with this woman, Fanny Brown, and he couldn't have her because he was poor, so people connected this deep love for this woman with his sickness and dying, which is wrong. You don't get TB because you're in love. People thought these romantic poets like Keats, Shelley and Emily Bronte lived these reckless, dashing lives. Emily Bronte died of tuberculosis when she was 31. The idea was, live recklessly, feel deeply, and die young and beautiful. It's similar to this whole idea of heroin chic; thin, pale. I mean, people who have taken a lot of heroin look like they're dead. I have seen these people walking around.

Queen Victoria mourned Prince Albert for 40 years, was that normal for the Victorian era?

Her mourning was pretty excessive, even for Victorians. But there were all these rules about mourning, what they had to wear and for how long. They had mourning jewelry and black carriages. It was connected to status. If you wanted to be an important person in the upper-middle class, you spent a lot of money on a funeral and you followed all the rules, and they were really expensive rules. In the Victorian era, if your husband died and you were a proper sophisticated person you would feel it for a long time and mourn. What Queen Victoria did was thought to be very sophisticated, because she had the leisure to lock herself away for 40 years and mourn.

Tell me about hair jewelry?

There is sentimental hair jewelry, like you might ask your girlfriend for a lock of her hair because you want to wear it on your body. It could be erotic, but your girlfriend is still alive. You could also cut hair from corpses, then it would be part of the mourning process. Mourning hair jewelry is often inscribed with things like, R.I.P. so and so, or a weeping willow over a tomb, or a black band. Sentimental hair jewelry might have an inscription about love, say a picture of two doves with their beaks together. There's a hair museum in Kansas, I think Wichita. It's full of nineteenth century hair wreaths, which came in shadow boxes, framed and behind glass. They are made up of different family members hair. You might have hair from five different heads. The hair was twisted and braided, sometimes there were also beads, or feathers and flowers. It was a pretty common practice in nineteenth century America. Now you can buy them on eBay, though they're kind of expensive.

Have a question for Deborah Lutz, or some thoughts on hair jewelry and the end of relics? Leave a comment below…

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced some 3-4,000 widows, 1,000 more come from deaths that occur on American bases and suicides. American Widow Project is reaching out to them.

Taryn Davis married the love of her life and was about to finish college, then she got the worst news of her life. Her husband Michael had been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. There was no organization dedicated to addressing the concerns of military widows, so she founded one: American Widow Project. Digital Dying spoke with Taryn about losing her husband, the stigma of the word widow and why becoming one can actually lead to happiness.

Explain the stigma of being a widow?

People look at us like we're handicapped. The word widow used to make me think of a 90 year-old woman on a rocking chair living outside a cave. Our society has put such a horrible stigma on the word that people don't even like to use it. I was 21 when Michael was killed. I never thought of a college student as being connected to such a word. After many nights of crying and figuring out how the hell I was going to get through this I realized the biggest thing was just accepting that title. Death and grief and sorrow are all things connected to the word widow but that word also represents Michael's sacrifice, it represents my sacrifice and it represents my survival.

How'd you find out Michael was going to war?

Michael and I met in marching band at Texas State University, I played the clarinet and he played the trombone, we were little geeks. His junior year he said was joining the Army. What I knew about the war was what I saw on the news before I watched shows like The Simpsons. It totally blindsided me. He had showed me what love was. It was scary to see him go off. Even his family was saying, ‘How about the Navy? How about the Air Force? Why infantry? Why Army?' He said, ‘I want to feel a challenge in life. I want to feel passion for something and I think taking the hard route is the way to do it.'

When was the last time you saw him?

Michael surprised me on R & R. We spent a lot of days just sitting with his family by the river, or on the patio with a Dos Equis and their dog. About a month and a half later, on May 21, 2007, Michael was killed. I had talked to him that morning. He didn't tell me what was going on and I didn't ask but he had to get off early so I knew they must have been about to go on a mission. I know this sounds cheesy but I told him I loved him more than life itself. He said, ‘That's really sweet babe, I love you too.' …And then I was a widow.

How'd you find out about his death?

I was at my parent's house and the phone rang, it was my neighbor. He couldn't tell me why but he said I needed to go home right away, there were people who needed to talk to me. I just kind of dropped the phone. It was a 10 minute drive, the longest 10 minutes of my life. I saw them standing next to an unmarked car. They gave me a line every military wife knows. I just started dry heaving. I started screaming that there was no God. I had this Johnny Cash-June Carter idea of our love and I was just waiting to die. I thought, Johnny Cash died really soon after June, let's get this going.

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What led you to start American Widow Project?

After Michael died people were constantly at my house. I was handed a booklet called Day's Ahead, really not an appropriate title. You don't have time to yourself until after the funeral. Like with planning a wedding, you focus so much on the wedding then the wedding is over and you realize you don't have anything to do. And instead of being left with a new husband you're left with an urn. There are support organizations. In World War II, a 19 year-old widow started an organization called Gold Star Wives of America. They are now a 501(c)(3) but really work on the legal issues. There is another organization called TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors). These resources are for any type of loss and involve going to seminars with thousands of family members. They have helped many people, but for me, as a 21 year-old widow, the last thing I wanted to do was be sitting in a plastic chair with l,300 people and having some counselor tell me what to do. We're really the first and only group that focuses exclusively on today's widows.

How do you contact the widows?

We've reached out to some 920 widows in the past three or four years but there's more, at least 3-4,000 widows from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and at least 1,000 more widows from deaths that occur on American bases and suicides. We've been trying to get the names of the spouses of the deceased from the Department of Defense but it has been tough. We don't have a PR company, it's really just me. Our facebook page has 25,000 people, a lot of woman share their stories there or through other social media and when they're ready attend one of our events. We use text messaging to let people know about events and we have a 1-800 line. I have had non-military widows call too, people just wanting to talk. No matter how you lost your spouse, grief is universal.

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How has becoming a widow actually inspired you?

Widows have this tool no one else has. To know that life is short, that life can be taken away at the drop of a dime. Most people don't recognize that until it's too late. We try to turn the tables, tell people they have this knowledge. Our widows have gone on to write books, go back to school, get pilot licenses after their husbands have been shot down in helicopters, do all these amazing things. It's kind of crappy knowledge, that you have to lose your soul mate to gain it, but use it to your advantage. Use it to follow your dream. Use it to push outside your comfort zone and do the things you're scared to do. Knowing that tomorrow might not be there makes you love the people you love harder and try things you may have been putting off. Michael and I had always wanted to travel, we never even had a honeymoon. After he died I vowed to once a year take a once in a life time trip. I've backpacked across Spain, done England, Ireland, parasailing, skydiving four times, surfing. The moment you put yourself outside your comfort zone is the moment you truly start living. And for widows, grief and pain can be a comfort zone.

What's the future of the American Widow Project?

I want this to be an organization that will be there if God forbid there is another generation of war widows. People always ask me, ‘What are you going to do after the war ends?' I tell them, ‘I'm still going to be a military widow.' That's the most important time, we'll be out of the public's eye. Widows are going to need more support than ever.

Werner Herzog's new documentary film about death row, "Into the Abyss", premiered Friday at the Toronto Film Festival. It discusses questions like, how does knowing when and how you're going to die affect an individual, and how does knowing that change time?

Imagine, you're rotting in jail with an execution date looming, what are you thinking? Werner Herzog's new documentary film, Into the Abyss, which premiered Friday at the Toronto Film Festival, tackles this question. Digital Dying recently spoke with Harry Schleiff, a New York City based video producer who worked on the film about the surprisingly poetic language of death row inmates, how time slows in the moments before death and just what it means to be a death row groupie.

Describe the film, is it a political statement on the death penalty?

The film follows the case of Michael Perry and Jason Burkett, two 19 year olds who basically stole a car and ended up killing three people over it, a totally mindless crime. Herzog interviewed Michael Perry something like ten days before he was to be executed. He tried as hard as he could to avoid making a film explicitly about the death penalty that made some sort of statement. It's more a look into the individual situations of these people, because when you start to look into these death penalty cases absurd details surface. Herzog is interested in questions like, how does knowing when and how you're going to die affect an individual? How does knowing that change time? We interviewed a number of other death row prisoners, footage which will appear in a TV series to be released at a later date.

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How is the mind affected by a death sentence?

I'll give you the example of Hank Skinner, who was in prison for killing two people and had been given an execution date. He was taken out of his cell and driven a bunch of miles chained up in the back of van with two guards who were ordered to shoot to kill if there was a problem. Skinner explains this in detail to Herzog. He's a very elegant speaker. He talks about the last trees he saw, and seeing a young girl with her mother pull up in the car behind them. She points at him, and he wonders if the girl knows he's on his way to be executed. He talks about the last meal, which is prepared by other prisoners. Usually people only eat a little bit because they're so nervous. Skinner said time slowed down an incredible amount and became not really a progression of moments as we think of it as, but like one freezing moment. He became unaware of what time and day it was. Just before he was to be killed Skinner called his lawyer and his lawyer said, ‘You have incredible timing, it turns out they're going to give you a stay'. He broke down and started crying. Then he ate all his food.

How did these "poets" feel about the lives that they took?

Burkett explains the crime as Perry having much more to do with it, and that he didn't actually kill anyone. For Perry it was vice versa. That sort of blaming the other is common. There's also a certain bravado at work here, the guys acting all gangster. Like with a man named Joseph Garcia. He got in a fight over a girl and got knocked down then chased the man down and stabbed him to death. Mostly just very stupid mistakes made by very young kids. There was one person who admitted his crime outright, this quintessentially psychopathic kind of guy who committed a horrible murder in Florida.

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What are death row groupies?

Many women begin relationships with death row inmates. There's a woman in the film named Mellysa Thompson who was an advocate against death row and ended up becoming involved in the Perry-Burkett case. First she met Perry, who told her, ‘Whatever you do, don't meet Burkett.' Of course, she goes and meets Burkett and ends up falling in love with him. She is educated and pretty smart but she ends up marrying this guy. She explains this whole situation of when she realized they were in love; a rainbow came from inside the prison to outside. Through some sort of covert operation she got some of his semen and was artificially inseminated and is now pregnant with his child. She is not necessarily a groupie though because she believes he's innocent and is fighting for him to be freed. Groupies are infatuated with death row men because of the allure that they have killed and that they are now condemned. For example, Scott Peterson, the San Diego man convicted of murdering his wife, has a huge following and apparently gets thousands of naked pictures sent to him.

What was the physical space of death row like?

The walls of the visitation rooms were painted in hushed bleak tones. We were interviewing through bullet proof glass in most cases, or mesh wire. People scratch their names and messages in the glass. We went to a cemetery about a mile and a half out from the prison where they bury death row inmates in unmarked graves. Other prisoners dig the graves. You're buried by your number. A lot of these people don't have family members to bury them. The execution chamber has like four or five rooms, each with different names, there's a long hallway some people call the green mile. At the end of it there's a shower and a room where the inmates spend their final moments. There is a bible on the table and inmates can request certain things. We interviewed a captain of the tie-down team. He said the craziest request was when a prisoner told him, ‘I would love to smoke a doobie right now.' The guy was like, ‘Sorry, no can do.”

Was hanging around death row haunting?

I'm 22 and saw a kid who must have been my age or younger, he looked South American. We made eye contact, it was very bizarre, thinking that it could be you on the other side of the glass. There's a very thin separation between human beings on some level, and you end up thinking, how big would the change have to be for me to be in there and him to be outside. The most terrifying thing for me is that it's our closest attempt at a systematized way to kill someone. I think it's even more terrifying than some of the more archaic ways of execution, like say being stoned to death. To be put down an assembly line where everything from the design of the cell to the design of your chamber is part of the process. Herzog claims it was one the more intense filmmaking experiences of his life, and when this guy says he has an intense experience I think he can really mean it because he has done a lot of things. He told me that while editing he usually works from 9 to 5 but with this film he could only edit for five hours a day because the footage was so intense. And he started smoking cigarettes again.

Are you a death row groupie? Have strong opinions about the death penalty? Or Herzog himself? Leave a comment below..

A crime scene on the hit TV show CSI. “Everyone has this idea that the police does the cleanup or the coroner does the cleanup or the funeral home does the cleanup,” says Aftermath co-founder Tim Reifsteck, “but actually, they don't.”

Where do the blood and guts go after a horrific suicide or grisly accidental death? Often it is scrubbed away by Aftermath Inc., a crime scene cleanup company that began in a Chicago basement in 1996 and now has offices in 45 states. Digital Dying spoke with co-founder and Vice President Tim Reifsteck about why CSI is not real, the most gruesome thing he has ever seen—it involved a man whose body got spread the length of a football field by a machine that processes plastics—and how he still sleeps at night.

Give us the sticky specifics of how the job works?

We cleanup after murders, suicides, unintended deaths, industrial accidents. Our technicians wear Tyvek suits, booties, respirators, and two or three layers of gloves; surgical gloves, high risk leather gloves and sometimes another leather glove on top of that if we're dealing with lots of glass. The respirator helps filter out the pregnant odor of a decomposition, because bodies liquefy and really produce an unpleasant odor. When we arrive on site we'll assess the cleanup and establish a controlled zone then we'll do a bio-removal, observing what part of the structure has to be removed, for example, do we penetrate the floor and go through the room below. We deal with personal property, what can be cleaned and what must be disposed of. Step three is a bio-wash, we remove stuff from walls, we disinfect and deodorize.

HOW TO DEAL WITH GRIEF AFTER A SUICIDE

Is it tough to see bloody deaths every day?

Just like the police and coroner and funeral directors, you get desensitized with seeing blood and bodily fluids, but one thing you never get over is the human interaction you have with the families. This is the worst time of their lives, and that is very hard for our supervisors and technicians to deal with. People looking to work for our company will say, ‘I can see blood, I've worked in slaughter houses, I've been a hunter my whole life.' When we have someone leave it is usually because they can't deal with another crying family. Everyone deals with death differently, in one situation a family member might be crying at the top of their lungs and asking a technician to bring their loved one back while in another there's a fist fight in the front yard over who gets to take home the TV.

Describe the most gruesome job you've ever had?

We had a body stuck through the engine of an airplane, we had to take the entire thing apart. And we've had industrial accidents where bodies have gone through machines. We had one involving a machine that processed plastic that was literally 100 yards long. Different parts rolled out different sized pieces of plastic, and there were blowers that sorted out the different sized pieces. We had a guy who went through that grinding process, so those blowers blew him 100 yards up and down that machine. We've had other situation where bodies have been in homes for months or years, people who died in attics and their remains ended up in the basement.

SEE THE WORLD'S DUMBEST TV DEATHS

Has the job changed your views on life and death?

One thing you recognize very quickly is it's often the small things we do that cost us our lives. We get calls every day and we sit here and go, ‘Wow, this was the one moment in his life when everything pointed north.' Just the other day a person was working on a car and the jack came out. This small little thing, he didn't put the block behind the back wheel to stop the car from rolling, and that cost him his life. Or how many times people grab a gun and not think twice about whether or not it's loaded before they pull the trigger. Or someone lives through a horrible car accident then has some small accident at home that kills them. You just don't see when death is going to come. Our bodies can take a lot of punishment, they really can, but you take the wrong punishment at the wrong time and it costs you your life.

Are CSI and other crime scene shows getting it right?

Sometimes CSI stuff is pretty off, like this one where a person died in a bathtub and the bathtub overflowed and water was running down through this house and you had a cop along with CSI people just walk straight into the house with no protection. You would never do that, there are numerous OSHA and EPA regulations to follow. You have this rotting corpse sitting in a bathtub spreading contaminants and guys walking in there and the water dripping down on their heads and they don't even have eye protection.

How on earth did you get into this business?

A friend and I were getting ready to go golfing and we noticed a fire truck and a couple squad cars parked outside a home in a subdivision across the street, a kid inside had commit suicide. An officer approached us and asked if we knew of anyone that could clean it up. We recommended some restoration companies but he said they'd already called several and no one wanted to touch the blood. So my friend and I offered to clean it up. You have a million things run through your mind because you don't normally get behind the police line. When we entered the room we had no idea what we were walking into, we were both taken aback. The kid had used a rifle. The cleanup took forever, like seven hours. We kept reiterating to ourselves, ‘We're here for the family, let's keep pushing through, get this done for the family so the family can at least get back into the house.' Everyone has this idea that the police does the cleanup or the coroner does the cleanup or the funeral home does the cleanup, but actually, they don't.

**Digital Dying is not specifically endorsing Aftermath, there are many crime scene cleanup companies.

Digital Dying spoke with Islam historian and death expert Leor Halevi to see if Osama bin Laden's corpse was handled correctly and find out just what awaits him in the afterlife.

Osama bin Laden's body was placed on a flat board and slid into the sea, was that the proper thing to do? Will he attain bliss on the seabed or rot in purgatory? And what of those 72 virgins promised to all martyrs, will bin Laden get them? To find out, Digital Dying spoke with Leor Halevi, an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University whose 2007 book, “Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society” explores everything from funerary wailing and corpse washing to the torture of the spirit in the grave.

Bin Laden's body was washed and covered in a white sheet, a prayer was said then the body was slid overboard, was this the right way to handle the corpse according to Islamic tradition?

One of the bizarre things about all this is bin Laden died in battle but—the burial at sea aside—he was apparently granted more or less the funeral ceremony that pertains to ordinary Muslims who experience death in ordinary circumstances. In Islamic law, the type of burial one gets depends on how one dies. The burial prescribed for those who died on the battlefield is not the same as the burial dictated for people who die ordinary deaths. The rituals are actually totally different. Someone who dies in battle does not have to be buried in a shroud, and no one has to say a prayer.

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So did the US mess up, was their burial an insult?

I think it is clear the US did not try to humiliate him in burial. In fact, they have insisted that they did it properly, so even though maritime burial is very, very unusual, it's obvious that no slight was intended. But that doesn't mean that people might not take offense and view it as something not normally done for Muslims.

What's actually happening to bin Laden's spirit right now at the bottom of the sea?

For Muslims, his fate in the afterlife depends on what type of death they believe he died. The state of his body is irrelevant, theologically speaking, for those who believe he attained martyrdom. Martyrs are given new bodies in paradise the moment they die, and they enjoy a blessed existence. Muslims can gain the status of martyrdom not only through death on the battlefield, but also by dying in horrible ways: in childbirth, for instance, or due to a building collapsing on top of them. People who die in these ways also get new bodies in paradise. But the spirits of Muslims who die an ordinary death are more or less stuck with their bodies until the resurrection. And they can have a pretty miserable time in the grave. Just think of what happens to bodies in death, they decompose, bacteria get them. It's not very nice. But if Muslims live a sinless life then the torture of the grave, as this punishment in the afterlife is known, does not really apply. Even if they died an ordinary death, their sojourn in this period between death and the resurrection is far more pleasant.

READ ABOUT HOW DIFFERENT RELIGIONS DEAL WITH DEATH

If martyrs get new bodies immediately upon death, then it seems it would not matter where you buried them?

That's a good question, and it depends if you ask from an emotional, a political or a theological perspective. So, theologically speaking, it wouldn't matter, but in other respects, I think it would.

Will bin Laden get the 72 virgins?

Someone who considers bin Laden a martyr might take that as a corollary. But Muslims who do not consider bin Laden a martyr would disagree. How bin Laden is ranked in the afterlife will depend, of course, mostly on politics and ideology. But the recent disclosure that he died without a weapon in hand will also play a factor in discussions about this issue.

What's the history of burial at sea within Islam?

Burial at sea is connected to the sea voyages in the Middle Ages, and discussion in Islamic law goes back to the 8th century. There was a fairly robust commerce in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean in premodern times. Merchants traded silk, slaves, ceramics, gold, mostly luxury goods. In Baghdad, ships arrived from all parts of the world bringing coveted foreign wares. Voyages across the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean could take several weeks and even months. Sailors tried to hug the coast, but that was not always possible. They were sometimes out at sea for months. If someone died on board, keeping a corpse could become unbearable. Something had to be done. Do you try to hang on to the decomposing corpse? Do you dump it? Tow it? Store it in a compartment? These questions all came up. That's why medieval jurists addressed the eventuality of burial at sea.

In Eric Coble's new play, "Velocity of Autumn", an aging Brooklyn mother rebels against her children's decision to put her in a nursing home.

Eric Coble has written and produced plays on Edgar Allen Poe, Pinocchio and Pecos Bill; his latest, Velocity of Autumn, is about an elderly Brooklyn woman who boobytraps her apartment with firebombs to prevent her children from sending her to a nursing home. The play debuted in Boise last month and will show at Cleveland's Beck Center for the Arts next spring. Digital Dying spoke with Coble about Velocity and just how to die a graceful death.

Describe Velocity of Autumn?

There is a woman named Alexandra, about 79 years old, living alone in Brooklyn; she is beginning to falter, mentally and physically. Her husband has died and two of her adult children tell her it's time to go to a nursing home. She barricades herself in her home and uses her dead husband's photo developing fluid to set up fire bombs around every possible entrance; the windows, the doors. She says, ‘If anyone comes in after me, I'm taking the whole place out.' Her youngest son, the black sheep of the family, comes home through the one window he knew she wouldn't have barricaded. The two of them are in that room for 70 minutes, no entrances or exits or light shifts or anything. They don't leave until she comes to a solution, or she blows the place up.

SEE HOW DIFFERENT RELIGIONS DEAL WITH DEATH AND SUFFERING

Alexandra wants to die a 'natural death', why is that important?

Among other species we are the only ones that hoard stuff right up until the very end. Most animals when they realize they are coming to the end of their life try to crawl off someplace to die. Recently, we had a family cat here in Cleveland that wandered off toward the end. He had crawled under this porch like five houses away. We coaxed him out and he lay on the grass and kids pet him but he just wanted to lie there by himself it seemed to me. That image stuck with me. Alexandra wants to go out while looking out her window at this tree she has had a great relationship with. She just loves watching the way this tree changes with the season. That's her idea of a graceful death.

LEARN ABOUT NATURAL AND ECO-FRIENDLY FUNERALS

What's the most graceful way to die?

I think we come into life with very little identity and spend the first 20 years formulating who we are, we spend 20 years saying, ‘I am the kind of person who does this,' then we spend 20 years doing that; we spend the last 20 years letting go. Letting go of the possessions, letting go of the attitude, letting go of the opinions; it seems to me the more spaciousness we can have near the end the easier death can be. But I don't think there is a right or wrong way. To some people, dying gracefully might mean being alone and diving off a 500 foot cliff and having that one last utter sensation one was never able to feel in life. We won't all have the choice, but I think we can set in motion the idea of being intentional as we come to the end of life.

You were raised on Navajo and Ute Indian Reservations, how does that affect your plays and your views on death?

It wasn't until college I realized there was something really exotic about growing up on a reservation. With the Navajo, to get to school we packed onto a bus and drove on a one lane road over a rickety bridge that spanned a canyon. I keep going back to certain imagery from there in my plays, coyotes for example, or sandpainting, which is discussed in Velocity of Autumn. The Navajo make sandpaintings with sand colored blue, red and green; they sprinkle it by hand, almost one grain at a time, creating these very beautiful and elaborate pictures. The sand paintings are meant to be remembered for that moment, then destroyed; they sweep them away with a broom. I always found that metaphor striking in terms of death and the end of life, are we meant to have any importance beyond the particular moment? It's the sense that nothing is made to last, nothing is permanent. It's a very Buddhist or Navajo idea, we try to make it last, it may last for a while, but it will not last forever, it will be gone at some point.

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Are we doing a good job at dying gracefully in America?

There seems to be a growing willingness to accommodate the idea that death is not the worst thing that can happen to a patient. There is an increasing willingness of hospitals to let people die at home. And more and more people are going the hospice route, I view that as a pretty graceful way to go. A few years ago I collected oral histories for Ohio's bicentennial, there was a story a man told me about his grandfather. He had a stroke while working in the fields. The doctor said he wasn't going to make it and told people to come pay their final respects. So that evening all these neighbors he'd known all his life came in, they talked through the night, telling stories, just this group of men with this old man. They held him emotionally and talked him out of the world, I can't think of a better way to go out.

The most famous case of zombification involves Clairvius Narcissus. “Despite the fact he was completely conscious he still truly thought he had died,” says Hamilton Morris. "When he was resurrected he truly thought he had been resurrected."

Hamilton Morris, a pioneering young pharmacologist, has hacked through the Amazon looking for ayahuasca and hunkered down in a missile silo with an LSD kingpin; one of his most recent adventures involved death. He traveled deep into the Haitian countryside in search of the elusive drugs capable of turning people into zombies. “The first thing to do when you want to know about zombies is put aside all preconceived notions,” says legendary anthropologist Wade Davis at the beginning of Morris' riveting film Nzambi. Digital Dying recently sat down with Morris at a lively Brooklyn café to discuss the undead.

Is the idea of death different in Haiti?

It is almost like a Philip K. Dick idea, to be dead and not know it, or be alive and actually be dead. It is unclear how often zombification happens, and it is unclear how it is perceived by the people who actually go through the ordeal. There have been scientifically verified cases. When Clairvius Narcissus was being poisoned and turned into a zombie, he was completely conscious. He was nailed into a coffin and buried alive, one nail pierced his cheek and it left a wound, which he was proud of showing to people later. Despite the fact he was completely conscious he still truly thought he had died. When he was resurrected he truly thought he had been resurrected.

How do American zombies differ from Haitian zombies?

There's a lot of confusion between the American interpretation of why a zombie is scary and the Haitian interpretation. Americans are afraid of being attacked by zombies and having them eat their brains or claw them to death, but Haitians are afraid of becoming zombies, not of zombies themselves. If you become a zombie you lose your life force, your ability to work. But almost the opposite is true in terms of slave beliefs, which is where the idea of a zombie originally comes from; zombie slaves were put to work. So it seems like a contradiction but there is definitely an evolution in the way the zombie behaves. For example, they say that zombies now use computers.

You interviewed the famous voodoo priest Max Beauvoir, who had an interesting take on zombies?

He had this potentially whitewashed version of zombification, in that it is a way to deal with societies' criminal element. Every society has to do something with prisoners and from his perspective not only is it cheaper and more humane to turn them into zombies it is a service to everyone involved. In his eyes, the bokur, or voodoo sorcerer, is not a slave master but more like a nurse who takes care of someone who has been mentally ill then lobotomized chemically.

I understand you visited a Haitian morgue looking for voodoo?

Rumors were that they buried people with weapons so they can attack quickly upon resurrection. I also heard that corpses' heads were cut off or that bodies were cut in half, or coffins were filled with cement to prevent resurrection. I was hoping I would see something like that but it was actually a really modern morgue, there certainly wasn't any decapitation. It was completely normal except when they were washing the mouth. There is a belief that the mouth fills with poison which can be hidden in food and used to kill someone. The guy's mouth did fill with fluid, but there was nothing supernatural about it, because they were pouring water over his face and it collected in his mouth. But my fixer, Alex, a massive man who had been shot in the face 14 times over the course of his life, including twice in the eye, was deathly afraid of this liquid.

Does the voodoo view on death differ from the American view?

Voodoo revolves around death much more so than other religions. The Haitians understand death is a part of life, and there is also an element of poking fun at death. Like with Baron Samedi, one of voodoos main spirits of the dead, his purpose is to ridicule death and emphasize the absurdity of being alive. At a funeral there is also a very dramatic theatrical element in the way people cry for the dead. The more you were loved while alive the more people are supposed to scream and cry, this practice happens in many places around the world but it's taken to new heights in Haiti. Death is more out in the open in general in Haiti. There was a lot of being blocked by funeral processions; we had to wait for hours and hours and hours. The funerals were somber, people dressed in white. We also met a lot of coffin makers. In New York you would never see a coffin maker on the street pounding nails into a coffin for hours but in Haiti that's not unusual at all.

In the end you give a huge sum of cash to a voodoo sorcerer deep in the countryside in return for the Haitian zombie powder but when you test it at a lab back in the US it is inactive; were you scammed?

That's what people don't understand in America. A lot of smart open-minded people are willing to instantaneously dismiss everything that happens in a place like Haiti as a scam. They say, ‘Oh, how arrogant of you to have gone to Haiti with money and think they would have given you their greatest secrets.' But that's what anthropologists have always done. Everything is very ambiguous in Haiti, it's possible they simultaneously scammed us and believed the scam themselves. But it certainly wasn't like they were scamming us and counting the money afterwards and laughing. I think what happened was truly somewhere in between, some grey area.

What are your thoughts on the magical Haitian worldview?

I've never loved science so much after leaving Haiti. I really understand science as the greatest liberating force in the world, because without it people live their lives in constant fear. In one way I don't want to devalue the Haitian traditions and say a magical way of thinking is wrong but the problem is people are constantly afraid of being cursed. And then you must give all your money to have the curse reversed. Once you abandon a scientific way of thinking the world becomes a lot scarier. If someone was bothering us on the street our fixer Alex would threaten to turn them into a goat and that was a very serious threat. You'd think after how many years of threating to turn people into goats and it not happening they would stop believing it, but you can't even imagine how deep the magical thinking goes.

So is it possible that Haiti actually is this magical place where the dead can somehow come back to life?

In Haiti it is very possible to be hit by a bus and then be resurrected. As far as I can tell there is nothing that they did not think was possible; flying , being revived from the dead, being turned into a werewolf, invisibility, these things are all very much within the realm of possibility. Then there's the fact that belief itself can fuel physical phenomenon. If you believe enough it can allow you to swallow eggs hole without breaking the shell, or eat burning coals or plunge your face into a pot of boiling water, I saw some of these things happen at a ceremony called God of the Graveyard. It definitely taught me the power of being immersed in the voodoo religion and living in Haiti, you do start to acknowledge the power of believing. You can only spend so long there without people telling you that you have been poisoned or your dreams have been cursed until you actually start having nightmares.

Did you have nightmares?

Yes, after taking the zombie poison I had a pretty overwhelming hypnagogic hallucination. I was falling asleep and looked at my forearm and saw a giant volcano of foaming puss coming out at the site where the poison had been.

In light of Haiti, how do you view the American way of death?

I don't think we are doing it wrong but it is not especially interesting. A student of Durkheim talks about all these different practices surrounding death around the world, one is putting the coffin on a tilted platform, drilling a hole in the bottom and putting a rice bowl under it. All the bodies' fluids drain in, and the family takes turns eating the rice, until no liquid is left. I suppose that is more interesting than what we do but at the same time, I wouldn't want to necessarily participate in that ceremony.

George Campbell taught a class on death and dying for 20 years at New Paltz High School, in upstate New York. At one point the popular course had more than 85 students.

New Paltz High School teacher George Campbell taught chemistry, biology and for 20 years, a course on death and dying called “Death Education.” The class began in 1975 with just 17 kids but by the mid-1980s it typically had more than 70 students enrolled and was one of the most popular courses at the school. Police officers and morticians came in to speak and there were class trips to hospitals and the morgue. A textbook on teaching death that Campbell wrote is available online. Digital Dying recently spoke with him about his experience as what seems to be the country's first and only high school death ed teacher.

1. How did you convince the school to run a class on death?

I taught the class for a few weeks just as an experiment. Some kids from my oceanography class who knew me as a teacher joined and were really interested. Then I went to the principal, he was very liberal and encouraged me but said we had to get permission from the board of education. Just by coincidence a medical doctor and a funeral director I had come in and talk for that initial class were members of the board of education, so these people stood up for me and thought it was a great idea. There was only one member who objected, she thought it would be a difficult topic for the students. Interestingly enough she was the daughter of a minister. But the others overruled her. After that it went smoothly.

2. How did students respond to the class?

Death is a common denominator and everyone is headed in that direction. No one wants to talk about it but everyone is interested. When my class was as big as 90 students most were seniors. There was a potential for disaster. If you were teaching a class in social studies or something else with that many students you would constantly be throwing people out of the room for not behaving themselves properly, but I wasn't. The kids didn't have any exams or any textbooks but because they were so interested it was self-motivating. Every type of student took the class, intellectuals, jocks, sons and daughters of funeral directors. Some students were intimidated initially because they were programmed to not respond when they had intellectuals near them, but they all contributed.

3. Were you ever concerned your class would make kids suicidal?

Many kids had emotional catharsis in my class. I had kids that had never realized that their underlying emotional issues were related to a fear of dying. I had kids that told their 90 classmates about things that they had never told anyone before, and it made them feel better. I guess it's part of my personality, I just have the ability to handle these issues, you don't necessarily need a therapist's couch or drugs. I was very leery that someone might commit suicide while enrolled in the class, especially during the first few years. But I did a pre and a post test, evaluating student's thoughts both before and after the course. After a few years I realized that if anything the course was making kids come out better, rather than hurting them.

4. Should death education be taught in every high school?

Death is the basis for most of the psychological problems we have today, and for most of the mental illness we have today. To avoid teaching this in high school is a crime. But you can't demand it be taught in high school because there are not that many people who can teach it. You can go to college and study how to teach chemistry, but you can't do the same for death. After I gave it up no one would teach the class. Some people have issues with death and don't want to talk about it.

5. How did teaching the course change your own views on death?

I don't necessarily go out have a few beers and start talking about death education, but I am very comfortable talking about death. When I was teaching the class many people would ask me questions about it. As one student said, it was a course on how to live, not how to die. Once you spend time thinking about death, you realize that certain things you think are important are not, and other things you think are not important are.