A Sack of Sacred Skulls That Makes It Rain Has Disappeared
On the rolling prairie of western North Dakota, fields of wheat, barley and rye kiss a sky that is too often blue and dry, but ...
Author: Justin Nobel
Digital Dying is written by Justin Nobel, whose stories about science, culture and travel have appeared in publications such as the Chicago Tribune, Audubon, Gourmet.com, Nunatsiaq News, Point Reyes Light and The Smart Set www.justinnobel.com. Comments and ideas can be sent to justinnobel@gmail.com.
Sleeping in Cemeteries: In Hard Times, People around the World Choose to Live Among the Dead
Bratislav Stojanovic wakes up every morning in a tomb. For 15 years the Serbian man has been sleeping in a cemetery in the city of ...
To Live and Die in Nola: Interview with New Orleans’ Most Famous Obituary Writer
John Pope was born and raised in New Orleans and has been working at the Times-Picayune since 1973, when the paper was called the States-Item. ...
At the Bonnie and Clyde Museum: Why Louisiana Man Happily Runs a Room Dedicated to Murderers
Why visit Gibsland, Louisiana? Because it was near here that America’s most famous love-tangled pair of murderers, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, met their end, ...
Searching for an Inuit Afterlife: Nursing Homes Come to the Arctic, and a Way of Death Changes
Seven miles. That’s how far downstream the Mississippi River carried my grandfather when he swam across at Baton Rouge. The year must have been about ...
Death by Bee: When Killer Bees Attack, From Utah to Shaanxi to Wutang
Spring has sprung and summer is fast approaching, that means pool parties and potato salad and sleepaway camp and killer bees.
Piping New Orleans’ Dead into Heaven – Interview with a funeral bagpipe player and hospice musician
New Orleans is a small town, everyone has their favorite local cobbler or po-boy shop and when it comes to funeral bagpipes the go-to woman ...
What is a hellhound? The many faces of the devil dog
A hellhound is a supernatural dog. One thinks of mangled black fur, hot breath steaming forth on cold moonlit nights, glowing red eyes, superhuman strength, ...
Earth’s Ten Most Haunted Pet Cemeteries
Recently, I found myself wondering if there were any haunted pet cemeteries in New Orleans. The good lady Miss Karret then showed me a story ...
Enter the Land of Floating Tombs
The hurricane was not a major one but the sea still punched through a levee in tiny Braithwaite, 15 miles south of New Orleans and ...
The Story of Anna Bagenholm, the Coldest Woman on Earth
The coldest woman on earth just might be Anna Bagenholm, a Swedish radiologist. On May 20, 1999 she officially set the record of lowest human body ...
Blizzard Deaths, Now and Then
A blizzard is bearing down on New York City, so it’s a good time to talk about blizzard deaths. Usually, this means freezing to death, ...
Was a voodoo-practicing former slave the second oldest woman ever to live on earth?
The evidence is a collection of photographs from the Cammie G. Henry Research Center, at Northwestern State University, in Natchitoches, Louisiana. These images date back ...
A Bizarre Spate of Christmas Shopping Deaths, from Xuzhou to London to Omaha
Christmas shopping deaths seem to fall into two categories: Those people so enthusiastic about Christmas shopping that they cause the death of themselves or others ...
In a World Where We All Live to 120 – Interview with Dr. Felipe Sierra of the National Institute on Aging
In a world where humans regularly live to 120, retirement might occur at 105. Other people might retire at 65 then return to school and ...
