Funeral Customs

Foods of ancient funeral feasts: bull heads, auroch and spiced sheep

There were 70 cooked tortoises, three aurochs (a now-extinct species of giant cattle), a section of a leopard pelvis, some…

14 years ago

Coffin Cartel tells Louisiana monks they can’t sell caskets

An embalming board referred to by critics as the Coffin Cartel has told Benedictine monk carpenters in the woods of…

14 years ago

Houston’s giant flower of death and President Andrew Jackson both stunk

Thousands of people visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science last month to observe the slow birth and quick death…

14 years ago

The sad story of how to appear at your own funeral

Last month, Theodore “Pete” Peterson sat at a New Jersey bar with a vodka tonic in hand and an oxygen…

14 years ago

Japan’s mummy-monks rise again

Last week, police in Tokyo broke into the home of Sogen Kato. According to local records he was 111, the…

14 years ago

Stripper funerals in China, naked funeral directors in America

Cai Jinlai and his son Cai Ruigong had a bet; if Jinlai lived past 100 his son would hire a…

14 years ago

The sad slow death of female serial killers, from “Monster” to Mary Ann Cotton

Paul Sterling Smith is a convicted sex offender and the prime suspect in the murder of an auto shop owner…

14 years ago

Mock funerals for Sarah Jessica Parker and Saudi Arabian schoolboys

On a winter morning in New York City a handful of mourners gathered underground. They dressed in black with black…

14 years ago

As the morbidly obese die, coffins change shape

Walter Hudson was the fourth most obese human in medical history. By age 12, he weighed 200 pounds and by…

14 years ago

Gary Coleman follows in the funeral-less footsteps of John Lennon

For Gary Coleman, fame was a burden. After the once well-known child actor died of a brain hemorrhage last month,…

14 years ago