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 »
I cannot think of my childhood without confronting my fear of death. One of my earliest memories is of me at four, lying in the dark, my heart hammering and stomach cramping, in panic over the idea that a person would be dead far longer than they would ever be alive; that time existed before …
