I used to publish a zine called Morbid Curiosity. One of the pleasures of working on it was finding images to accompany the confessional essays that filled each issue. I liked to use vintage advertisements, especially menacing insurance or medical illustrations. In the process of illustrating one issue, I came across an announcement for the …
No Ethical Decomposition Under Capitalism It’s been a long week here in the underworld. A seventy-hour work week, to be precise. Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life? More accurately, do what you love and you’ll have trouble setting boundaries and have no idea what a healthy work/life balance …
You’re attending a funeral in a remote village in Southern Italy. The coffin has been laid in the open tomb, under the harsh sun of the Mediterranean, but the mourners’ attention is directed elsewhere. They gather, still and silent, to watch a group of women dancing and crying their laments to the sky. Their show …
The Indignities of Death We begin life confronted with all manner of indignities and inconveniences: diapers, pants, shoes, etc. The list just gets longer and longer as we age. I hate to break it to you, dear reader, but death does not free us from these aggravations. One of the very first questions anyone ever …
The Danse Macabre—the Dance of Death—is an iconographic theme that first appears in fifteenth-century European art. It shows skeletons or cadavers leading a procession of the living from all walks of life towards the grave. From the modern perspective, this may seem gruesome, even morbid. Most images of (Western) death are banned in the …
Danse Macabre: Equality in Death in Medieval Istrian Frescoes, by Jelena Dunato Keep Reading »
The Color of the Grave is Green Several people have asked me about green burial. Is it really a thing? The Green Burial Council defines green burial as “a way of caring for the dead with minimal environmental impact that aids in the conservation of natural resources, reduction of carbon emissions, protection of worker health, …
I work in haunted houses. In this one, there was a child who drowned in the well. In that one, a woman wasted away of cancer. Here, there lived a man who couldn’t let go of his worldly goods. Every historic house museum has its ghosts. We cobble together stories, passed from one staff member …
My first skull was a roadkill deer in town. It was November, and I had been a month separated from my husband, seeing him only for dinner at our shared home a couple of times a week. Driving home for one of these dates, I saw a struck doe flopped in the grass across the …
The Thing That Doesn’t Disintegrate, by Kate Lechler Keep Reading »
When I started my Mortuary Science program in 2019, I immediately wanted to talk about all the amazing things I was learning. For reasons I will never understand, however, not everyone wants to hear about how cool dead bodies are. I first envisioned Ask a Necromancer as a Q and A to pitch to my …
Ask a Necromancer: Decay Always Wins, by Amanda Downum Keep Reading »
Tonight I’m piecing a man’s skull back together. He came from the medical examiner, a full autopsy, his calvarium not only sawed open but shattered by a bullet. This will be a project. At the end of 2018, I was not feeling my best. My writing career was in a slump, and the combination of …
You Always Were a Morbid Child, by Amanda Downum Keep Reading »
