I honestly don't know where else to put this. Mods, if it's in the wrong category, please feel free to reposition it as appropriate thank you


Above ground burials -- that's the term for them, apparently

What they are are preserved corpses which are housed in 'buildings' (mausoleums).

They can be seen in many cemeteries. And now, according to a documentary I watched last week, they are being housed in multi-million dollar edifices which are able to contain hundreds, even thousands of preserved corpses.

The documentary first showed family mausoleums in a nearby (and almost filled) large city cemetary. The camera panned across the elaborate bronze doors, marble, colour photos under glass and religious statuettes of these substantial family 'houses of the dead'.

Then, the documentary explained that this large cemetery (one of, if not 'the' largest in the Southern Hemisphere) was now filled to overflowing.

In anticipation of this, apparently, the Roman Catholic church had constructed, at a cost of many millions of dollars, a massive and impressive structure where people could .. for a sum .. inter their preserved loved-ones within the walls of the purpose-built structure.

The cost to inter one preserved corpse, including maintainance of the building, cleaning, air-conditioning, chapels, 'family rooms', gardens, etc. was in the vicinity of $AU18,000. Some families placed down-payments on several adjoining spaces in the walls, so they and their children could be buried there later, near other family members.

It's a beautiful building. The walls, halls and floors are all covered in peach coloured stone (marble?) . . in fact, it's similar to a five star hotel, with its wide corridors, atriums, luxury appointments, soaring ceilings, etc.

But the purpose of this edifice is to house corpses .. dead people who've been chemically preserved.

Ashes to ashes ? Or chemically preserved ? Dust to dust ? Or waxen, fungus-sprouting preserved bodies kept in walls, inside magnificent rosewood and mahogany coffins with brass or even gold-plated fittings and re-touched photos on the front ?

What are our bodies ? I regard them as 'clothing' we use to house our souls, personalities during our time on this planet/dimension.

They're flesh and blood 'clothing'. Oh sure, they're practical. They allow us to get around during our lifetimes. We use these flesh and blood 'clothes' to experience a great deal. And those experiences are of value to our souls and personalities, we're told.

But when our soul / life force quits our bodies .. what do our bodies become, other than our 'old clothes' so to speak. And when our soul/life force quits our bodies, our bodies begin almost immediately to decompose. After a short while, that old 'clothing' is rotting like a piece of meat .. which is what our bodies are.

What do we do with our old clothing when it's rotting, falling apart ? Yes, we dispose of it.

So why do some people refuse to do so ?

Why, instead, do they pay people to disembowel the corpses of their loved ones ? Their internal organs are removed, they're packed with cotton and suffused with chemicals.

Why do some people refuse to relinquish their loved ones to Death ?

Why do they preserve corpses as if they were smoked hams ? And then put them in expensive marble 'houses' .. as if the corpses of their loved ones had merely 'relocated' to houses in cemeteries .. as if their loved ones were still alive, or at least in a state of formaldahyde induced suspended animation ?

They're dead !

Their spirit has quit those bodies.

Those bodies are just meat that's been prevented from rotting away.


Isn't artificially preserving corpses a denial of Death /
Isn't it at least 'willful' ?
Isn't it a refusal to accept Death ?
Isn't it questionable ?
Particularly when the Roman Catholic church itself is very much party to this refusal on the part of the living, to relinquish the dead to Nature .. and to God ?

Isn't it grotesque ? Walls filled with fungus spouting 'human hams' in expensive boxes stuffed inside expensive wall ?

Isn't it a very public form of denial of death and of the power of death to claim us all ?

The families 'visit' their human hams. They are provided a key to the door in the wall which conceals boxes containing their preserved family members. They open the door and kiss the boxes containing their human hams. They feel good, apparently, knowing their long dead grandparents are still grotesquely preserved inside that box.

' We still have you. We still own you. We still possess you.' they appear to be saying to the human hams.

Is it just another form of consumerism .. ' Preserve your human hams here and never have to say goodbye .. keep your dead with you and never have to learn how to submit to a higher power ... beat Death itself ' ?

I basically agree with all points, i mean they aren't really wrong.

But people still need to feel that connection for a generation or two. In time most graves are forgotten, mainly it's not like they remain sites for an eternity so it really isn't that big of a deal, the space in time gets reclaimed and it offers people solace even if it's not truely rational.

one mans fungus growing corpse is anothers mom... in the ned there are alot bigger wastes of space in the world and they won't be reclaimable many of them... like toxic waste dumps and reactor fuels storage... no one will ever be living on those plots again... so can't much worry about graves all things considered

And honestly, I always kind of liked cemetaries.. like is the Graveyard behind the Chjurch of the Trinity a fungus filled waste of real estate? Or a cool looking piece of history with Hamiltons grave in it? I'd lean to the later... maybe I'm morbid but I kind of like cemetaries, the look and feel and reading about people and wondering who they were...

In the future I'd like to see little solar powered videos of people you cna go and see who they were and how they lived, technology can make cemetaries kind of cool.

I just couldn't get my underwear run up about this one... even as a teen a nearby cemetary supplied me with a place to go smoke and drink and listen to metal lol, like I said, just always dug cemetaries... (no pun intended)

I love you for the mere fact that you used the term "human hams" more than three times in a post.

And of course its ridiculous. But then again what else could we expect from the catholic church. i think the most beautiful, least obsessive way to get rid of a body, is to bury it somewhere remote, like a forest or something, so they can Literally live on in the flora and fauna that there stinking meat helps sustain.

I think they are being preserved so that when Jesus returns they have a body to come back to life in. This is ridiculous of course but somehow they rationalize it. They expect the others to just pop out of the ground.

People have a big problem with not being able to accept death.
When the tenant leaves the crumbling house it is time to complete the job by burning it. I don't believe in wasting good ground space on them. I don't want anyone crying over my bones.

More and more people are opting for cremation and I think that this should be pushed by the churches, as there are just too many people and as a practical matter we just cannot devote acres and acres to keeping their remains. I

n time cemetaries are abandoned, but then the bodies have to be dug up and moved. Its not a good thing to be digging a basement for a home and finding half a dozen or so skeletons or maybe those concrete vaults they use.

I always thought those old cemetaries with with big tombstones had kind of a mystique too. A few years ago I visited my childhood town, and was disappointed to find all those big markers were gone and had been replaced by those flat markers.

The death industry has to think up the most costly way to extract money from families for one last party for the deceased. A funeral pyre would be too practical and inexpensive, don't you think? Besides, the EPA would not allow it or simply throwing bodies into the raw earth like the rest of the roadkill that we see.