nonfiction

Mortui Vivos Docent This April I attended my first RavenCon, my new local convention (and one of my favorite avian psychopomps.) I was very excited to share the joy of death with a new audience. Here are a few of the questions I was asked. What’s the licensing process moving state-to-state as a mortician? So, […]

“So, what do you want to happen to your body when you die?” I had shown up to my girlfriend’s closing night cast party for our university’s production of Twelfth Night in a black cropped turtleneck with a sexy little cutout under the boobs, fishnets under a deep green leather skirt with embroidered flowers whose

Vision and Death Pam writes: I work in aged care and my facility makes a big deal of making sure glasses are removed once a resident has passed. The reasoning is that they don’t need them when they’re dead and they “look silly.” Personally I think my face looks naked without my glasses. I feel

Every day after school I had to pick up the mail. My family rented one of the bigger mailboxes in our small-town Iowa post office, but sometimes there would be a pink slip in the box, meaning I had to go to the counter to pick up a package that was too big to fit.

There you lie—with a thin tube attached to the side of your neck, an oxygen mask tightly clasped around your head, a shadow of the man you once were, but with the iron grip of a soldier. And, for a strange, uncanny reason, watching your yellowed body shrinking and dwindling has forced acceptance. Your life’s

A career in telling ghost stories to a live audience has led me to a unique and unexpected calling. I’ve become a sort of “paranormal chaplain.” When I first began engaging with audiences about spectral phenomena, I had no idea just how much this would mean to me. A chaplain is a term for a

Turn and Face the Stranger Once again we reach the long cold dark of the year, a time for changes, endings, and beginnings. The Deadlands is changing formats to a quarterly print publication. Changes loom for the necromancer as well. I’ve written about how much attending mortuary school meant to me. In my previous life

Never judge a movie by its marketing. July 2023 saw the height of the Barbie/Oppenheimer media phenomenon that took over the Internet as well as theaters all over the world. The contrast between the perceived content of the two movies releasing on the same day couldn’t be more jarring. The dark, somber tones of Oppenheimer

One From the Vaults Genevieve asks: Have you ever dug anyone up? Surprisingly enough, yes. Or at least, I’ve witnessed a disentombment—removing someone from a mausoleum niche—and bits and pieces of several disinterments, or exhumations—opening a grave. Working at a funeral home attached to a cemetery has its advantages. All the corpse relocations that I’ve

Día de los Muertos is celebrated throughout Mexico and wherever Mexicans living abroad can be found. Normally falling on November 1 and 2, in some regions such as Oaxaca it can extend for much longer, being traditionally celebrated from October 31 to November 6. You need that much time if you are going to do