Petrified Mummies & Millennial Saints: Caitlin's Death News You Can Use [PATRON ONLY]

Hello deathlings,

Did you know that every month Sarah Chavez (my longtime colleague at the Order of the Good Death) and I exchange death news stories?* This helps us stay informed, plan new content– last month's Ortiz Funeral Malfeasance video, for example– and generally geek out on the death news of the day. We thought you Patrons might want to join the club.

*Literally why would you know this?

After 128 Years in a Pennsylvania Funeral Home, a Beloved Mummy Is Buried

An anonymous Pennsylvania man who died in prison in 1895 spent his afterlife at Theo C. Auman Inc. Funeral Home as a roadside attraction for school children, locals, and tourists. His preservation was thanks to a funeral director who was testing out a DIY embalming fluid inspired by a German medical journal that detailed how to preserve meat. The result? “If you touch him, he’s like stone, he’s hard as wood...he’s that petrified.” 

128 years later, the “beloved mummy” known as Stoneman Wille has finally received a burial, and a name. 

Longtime Patrons will remember the video we did on the story of Eugene, another long-term funeral home mummy in Sabina, Ohio. (Worth a re-watch, the story is ...grim.)

Gridiron Afterlife Goals

A regent at the University of Nebraska suggested creating a columbarium beneath the school’s football field, saying “We really do love our sports teams and follow them everywhere. It’s part of being a Nebraskan. So why wouldn’t being buried under the field be a great way to be close to your team forever?” 

While her idea was quickly dismissed by her fellow regents, the idea isn't a new one. Columbariums can be found at a number of sports venues across Europe, and here in the U.S. There are cemeteries and columbariums at Texas A&M and Notre Dame, where a noted football coach was just reinterred in April. 

I think major sports venues (and Disneyland for that matter) should just accept that if they don't build official columbariums, families will keep showing up with secret little baggies of dad to spread at the 30-yard line, third base, It's A Small World, etc.

We’ll Always Have Today. And the Lamb Funeral Home.

Chop Shop, a true crime series about the worst funeral director ever is currently in the works, starring goth girl icon Christina Ricci, and star of death positive Netflix series, Midnight Mass, Hamish Linklater. 

Embalming Ban

A British politician is advocating for his town to become "trailblazers" by banning the practice of embalming. While we love to see this kind of enthusiasm for eco-friendly funeral options, banning embalming is probably not the answer. If we want the public, the funeral industry, and the government to accept and legalize new options like human composting and aquamation, we can't play the other side's game and insist THEIR choices should be banned instead. True, embalming fluid is not good for the environment, but neither are dozens of daily choices most people make (I'm about to fly internationally, for example.) In my opinion, the messaging should be that ALL people should be able to make decisions about what happens to their own dead bodies. I am a corpse libertarian, after all!

God’s Influencer 

This summer Catholics got their first millennial saint, Carlo Acutis, a boy who died at 15 in 2006 and has been nicknamed “God’s Influencer,” because he used the internet to help spread awareness of the religion. Acutis’ body was exhumed and put on display in an Italian church in 2019. 

While his corpse was not incorrupt–a Catholic belief that through divine intervention the body of a saint does not show signs of decomposition–sources say that Acutis’ organs were intact, and that body did require cosmetic work “to the face.” (Looking at this photo, I'm going to guess "cosmetic work to the face" means it's made out of wax.) A rector at the church expressed that “It’s a beautiful thing that for the first time in history you can see a saint dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt.” 

A Christian based gaming and VR company has created what they believe is a fitting tribute, by using Acutis’ likeness in a video game that lets you accompany the newly minted saint to meet up with various biblical figures and, you can even “ski as a young Pope John Paul II" in the game. Something I didn't know I wanted to do, but now can't live without it.

And that's the death news you can use! Do you enjoy death news as much as we do? Be honest. In my post-sabbatical content I'm ONLY creating things that bring me joy and that delight you. If it's an "eh" for you, it's an "eh" for me.

Gimme the death stories you've been following lately, they might make it into the next roundup.

xx

Caitlin