The feet were the creepiest thing she was selling. Earrings? Just wrong on so many levels.

Have you seen photos of dead people? I'm reminded of seeing photos collected by families of their dead relatives - children, infants, older people. All dead and posed. Now if that wouldn't cause a ghost to start haunting a house, I don't know what would!

The worst thing about those photos is that some of them had children posing for the photo with their dead sibling. Then when they drew eyes on the body's eyelids then you can't tell who's alive and who's dead.

Ick. You're right - forgot about that. People deal with mourning so differently in different cultures and throughout history. It was a very Victorian-era thing to do, as I recall - not that I was there, but, you know :)

We've had some strange practices, the strangest one by far has to be the embarment of a little girl who doesn't look like she's been dead as long as she has and is in the catacombs in Sicily.

There have been some odd finds there, from what I remember on documentaries that didn't deal specifically with the paranormal. The conditions with the rock, temperature, humidity, etc., can cause some interesting effects with corpses.

Are you familiar with incorrupt saints? Bodies of specific clergy - priests, nuns - would routinely be dug up to see if they had any signs of decay. Some were interred in environments (including tombs and caskets) that mummified some of the corpses. Some of those "incorrupt" individuals became saints.

I love the idea for this hangout....:glomp:

I've just found out that they may have found a list of the chemicals the embarmer used to embarm the girl in the catacombs. I watched something once and they'd found a body persevered so well they found out she's eaten watermelon before she'd died. The tomb she was put in had a gap in it where a constant stream of salty water could come through and preserve her.

Where I am we seem to have a supprising ammount of haunted churches.

It's really interesting to learn about how the preservation of bodies has changed. I have a friend who's studying forensic anthropology. She goes to a church site in Poland every couple of years to work on an excavation. All of the bodies there are skeletal - no fleshies - but the skeletons react to the minerals in the soil - making the remains a bit interesting to study. I think that an abyss was found to be incorrupt, and they discovered that some of it may have been due to her diet - plus, she was quite a large woman and had a lot of fat tissue.

The churches here are fairly new - most are less than 100 years old. Still, there are cemeteries where people who fought in the Civil War are buried. An old friend of mine used to rent a house that was between two cemeteries in Florida. It was quite haunted there. Lots of children and soldiers were seen in her yard and in her house. They have some documentation for the milder sounds and visuals they'd seen there. It was getting really bad there because the ghosts were hassling her and her two little kids. Anyhow, I haven't heard much about haunted churches here, but there is a paranormal society in our town that a friend wanted to get involved with. Do you have anything like that where you live?

Thats trippy HIM.... about the girl in Sicily. Mummy's scare me. D:
I remember watching the history channel and this one guy was like naturally embalmed because there was this weird soapy substance in the soil and when they uncovered the body you could totally see the weird facial expression... It looked like he was screaming so someone probably killed him. >< Or what I was also think about is all of those 100 dead girl bodies they found in macho picchu (spelled wrong lol) that were supposedly sacrificed. Each girl had her own catacomb filled with gold and ivory... And the article said that each girl was a 12 yr old virgin... Ewww I don't even want to think about how they found out if the corpses were virgins or not... Why must ancient cultures sacrifice girl virgins? Whats the point?

Thanks Goth rainbow. Have any paranormal beliefs? ^^

Thats cool Elmira. I think that would make a really fun job!

I have no idea how they could tell, unless they xrayed the bodies and could see that the pelvises were still intact - no fractures like you'd see on a woman who had a baby. Virginity represents cleanliness, virtue, etc. Cultures do some pretty extreme things to appeal to whatever god/s they believe in. Sometimes that leads them to sacrifice individuals who are either seen as outsiders or are so valued that their sacrifice would be felt in the community. I'm a mom and cannot imagine taking my daughter somewhere to be sacrificed like that, no matter what was going on in the community - but that's because of where we are now, ya know?

Originally Posted by HIM_ROCK

That sounds like a really creepy tattoo.

It was. >_o

Originally Posted by Elmira Swift

Raggedy with a noose around her neck? That's just weird. And she's going to be an old lady in a wheelchair with that thing on her leg. And chains dangling from the crater in her lobe? Chains tend to get caught on things, like hair and clothing. Did she not read the instruction manual that came along with her when she was born that should up her survival rate to by at least 50% if she bothered to adhere to it? I mean - hello, common sense??

I have a butterfly with a skull - a skullerfly - on the back of one of my legs. It remains covered most of the time. I got it when I felt that I was doing better about my 1st husband's death - and didn't want something creepy or cutesy. Just something to celebrate getting through that stage of the grieving process.

I know. D:
Yeah, and I saw her another time at walmart, and she had a bunch of huge metal hoops in the hole in her ear. ><
I think maybe her head was shaved, but I don't remember...

That's kind of an interesting idea...
The tattoo I want, well I want two- one a flying swallow, and the other, I want music notes wrapping around my arm or my leg, somewhere I can cover up. :3
Both are meaningful; I wouldn't just get them to have them.

Originally Posted by Elmira Swift

The feet were the creepiest thing she was selling. Earrings? Just wrong on so many levels.

Have you seen photos of dead people? I'm reminded of seeing photos collected by families of their dead relatives - children, infants, older people. All dead and posed. Now if that wouldn't cause a ghost to start haunting a house, I don't know what would!

When my nephew died, he didn't have a coffin because he was being cremated. So at the family viewing thing, they just had him in a baby cradle thing. And he looked like he was sleeping...
One of my sister's relatives was taking pictures and like, making us pose with each other and shit, while we were all bawling our eyes out. It was totally disturbing, I wanting to throw that camera against the wall. ><

Originally Posted by Goth Rainbow1

I love the idea for this hangout....:glomp:

Its pretty cool. I hope you like it here. :)

Creepy nine foot tall ghost in a church. I want to meet it.

Hmmm... I always wonder what kind of work people who look like that do, because there are so many places that would at least hesitate to hire them. I like your tattoo ideas :)

Some people react in odd ways to death. When I was 11, my grandmother died and I set up a haunted cemetery in her backyard. My family is not religious and I had no concept of what happens after people die, so it was my own weird little way of dealing with her not being there. I hate open casket funerals. I know that some folks need to come to terms with a person being dead by seeing them in the casket and then witnessing its burial. My husband was cremated and we have his urn in a curio cabinet in the house. We placed items that he liked around it - like a shrine of sorts. It includes a couple of cans of his favorite soda - Moxie - and bobblehead dolls from the "Red Green" show - since it was his favorite. I think the keys to his old Gremlin are up there too. Sometimes, we wave to him when we come in.

I don't like the idea of having an open casket funeral, it'd just be more upsetting seeing them more than not seeing them. The most upsetting time is when someone dies abroad seeing as it takes a while to get the body back. It took about two months to get my graddad's body back.
We have the last picture of him alive on top of the writing beuro(sp?) and I have a pengalum clock hanging on the wall.

Yeah, I think you're right Elmira. Some of those ancient religions and civilizations have some super bizarre rituals. I could never imagine allowing any of my kids to be sacrificed either... I'd probably fight the entire population before doing that. lol.

Hello christa. Anything paranormal going on? heh.
I want to have a slumber party at a haunted house just to say that I did. xD

Same here HIM. I've been to an open casket funeral and it was ghastly...

Thankfully open casket funerals aren't that common over here anymore.

I want to be thrown into a peat bog when I'm dead have me own little section fenced off so no one chops off anything when they're farming the peat.

When I was 12, my best friend's mom would lament that we weren't Aztecs because she wanted to throw our butts into a sacrificial well. Particularly if we were arguing with each other.

Peat bog mummies... interesting.

Human sacrifices have been found in peat bogs, which is rather strange because human sacrifices aren't normally preserved.

Has anyone hear heard of the soap woman?
She CREEPS me out! You were just talking about bog mummies, and I thought 'Oh! Soap woman!' in case anyone was wondering...
*shudders* ugh.....

They keep finding mummies in bogs all over Europe. It's pretty fascinating. Some think that the people were criminals and others think of them as seasonal sacrifices.

There was one that was found and alot pointed to it being a sacrifice but no one is really sure if they were scarifices or not.


Soap woman I haven't heard of her.

Originally Posted by HIM_ROCK

Soap woman I haven't heard of her.

Yeah... Her body was buryed in a chemichal when she died (she died of the plage) and as she decayed her body turned into soap.
She's really ugly, and very scary. (Her body's in the mutter museum, in Philly, PA.)

Originally Posted by Elmira Swift

Hmmm... I always wonder what kind of work people who look like that do, because there are so many places that would at least hesitate to hire them. I like your tattoo ideas :)

Some people react in odd ways to death. When I was 11, my grandmother died and I set up a haunted cemetery in her backyard. My family is not religious and I had no concept of what happens after people die, so it was my own weird little way of dealing with her not being there. I hate open casket funerals. I know that some folks need to come to terms with a person being dead by seeing them in the casket and then witnessing its burial. My husband was cremated and we have his urn in a curio cabinet in the house. We placed items that he liked around it - like a shrine of sorts. It includes a couple of cans of his favorite soda - Moxie - and bobblehead dolls from the "Red Green" show - since it was his favorite. I think the keys to his old Gremlin are up there too. Sometimes, we wave to him when we come in.

Me too. I mean, having a tattoo or a piercing or two is one thing, but when they do up their whole body...I mean, you know people are just like :o when they walk through a door. Like- "You wanna work here??"

I've only ever been to funerals with the caskets open.
When I went to my great "grandmother's" (she abandoned my grandpa and his brother and sisters when they were little kids) funeral, my grandpa stood by the coffin like the whole time, and then when he thought no one was looking, he touched her face really gently and started talking to her. It was kinda touching...
That's really cool. My sister and her husband have something like that for my nephew. His ashes are in this special box, and they have this little hat that he wore sitting on top of the box.

Originally Posted by Thoth Star

Yeah, I think you're right Elmira. Some of those ancient religions and civilizations have some super bizarre rituals. I could never imagine allowing any of my kids to be sacrificed either... I'd probably fight the entire population before doing that. lol.

Hello christa. Anything paranormal going on? heh.
I want to have a slumber party at a haunted house just to say that I did. xD

Same here HIM. I've been to an open casket funeral and it was ghastly...

Me either. I couldn't see anything that would be worth sacrificing my children for. D:

Lol no. Well, there was something moving around in the wall last night when I was taking a bath. o_O
That was totally creepy, but I doubt that it was anything paranormal. >_>;

I've often thought about how bad the conditions must have been for people to offer human sacrifices. Archaeologists who studied the cave mummies in S. America thought that the cities were failing because they over-worked the land. Interestingly, a lot of the, I guess rural would be a good term, areas outside of those cities practiced a more varied form of subsistence. Slashing and burning areas to let them lay fallow for a while.

Anyhow, Tom's death was even more weird because we were studying forensic anthropology in my physical anthro class - and we'd just discussed things like cremation. It made it easier to describe the details of the process to our daughter. Just ironic - the day he died, I had a huge mid-term for that covered that topic. In a way, I was able to flip an internal switch to cope with what was going on without losing it - at least for a while.

It's interesting to see how different cultures deal with the death of a member of the community. I think that the whole open casket thing is a way to really come to terms with the fact that the person is really dead and at peace.

Soap woman is a very interesting case. I haven't googled it, but recall reading about her.

Oh yeah, I remember seeing the soap woman on tv before.... She is very ugly, but I find it fascinating how her bodies sooo well preserved.


That sounds scary Christa... Like a mouse? In my old house there were rats that lived in the walls until I bought my kitty cat and than she annihilated all of them. haha.