I have inventoried hundreds of cemeteries and thousands of historic gravestones, my mentor (Jim Deetz) wrote the seminal study that brought the study of gravestones into archaeology, and I truly believe the words of former English Prime Minister William E. Gladstone, who said, “Show me the manner in which a nation or a community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender sympathies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land and their loyalty to high ideals.”
For many of us who study cemeteries, there is a danger of thinking that these landscapes of the dead are just bodies and gravestones. Katherine Ramsland’s Cemetery Stories: Haunted Graveyards, Embalming Secrets, and the Life of a Corpse After Death is one of the few books out there that details every step between death and internment, which are just as revealing about American culture as a fancy gravestone epitaph or a biography of a deceased local celebrity.
Admit it: You're fascinated by cemeteries. We all die, and for most of us, a cemetery is our final resting place. But how many people really know what goes on inside, around, and beyond them?
Enter the world of the dead as Katherine Ramsland talks to mortuary assistants, gravediggers, funeral home owners, and more, and find out about:
Stitching and cosmetic secrets used on mutilated bodies
Embalmers who do more than just embalm
The rising popularity of cremation art
Ghosts that infest graveyards everywhere
