Be There With Bells On.
filed in Cemeteries! on Jun.02, 2009
Okay, so did you ever know there was such a thing called a ‘Waiting Mortuary’? It’s exactly as the name implies….when you died, they’d take your body to this place where you’d sit (or rather lay…sitting might be creepy)…anyhooo you’d lay there for several W E E K S before being buried…all to make ‘sure’ you were dead. lol. Family members would come and visit you…. and there was also a worker there who would sit with the bodies all day. And all night. ((queue the spooky music))
Apparently this was big in the late 1800′s / early 1900′s in Germany but there were Waiting Mortuaries everywhere. So imagine laying around….with a string tied to your finger…then strung up onto a beam with a bell on the other end. If you woke up or flinched (i.e. not really dead) the string would move, the bell would ring and yea…you wouldn’t be accidentally buried alive!
How would you like to have that job? Sitting with corpses day in and day out waiting for a bell to ring. And bells DID ring. Because bodies settle and gases form and build up in a dead body…and when that happens…parts…well, they move. Just because they ‘do’…but not because you’re not dead. Once you started to decompose and it was visible…this was a sure sign that you were, in fact…dead. Swimmin with the fishes…Finito…Had bitten the dust.
FYI, there is not one documented case that anyone every was ‘not dead’…no one ever came back to life…or wasn’t dead. Or, whatever, you know what I mean. For more indepth thoughts on where a mind goes when the body dies (a VERY cool experiment), and my thoughts on near death experiences, read my post at …..finding sheila











June 2nd, 2009 on 1:57 am
I feel I wouldn’t survive one bell. If ever I am there and it rings, I’d die of heart attack and then they will stick a bell on my toes too. Haaah! I hate anything related to mortuaries!!
Grace @ Sandier Pastures’s last blog post..Mock them and they’ll mock you back
June 2nd, 2009 on 6:46 am
Yikes. I had never heard of that before. Interesting tidbit.
Sweet Serendipity’s last blog post..Baby Bella Turns 6 Months Old
June 2nd, 2009 on 8:02 am
My mother SWEARS that when she was a child and attended her grandma’s funeral, that she leaned over the casket and her grandma’s body moved.
Now I’m not calling her a liar… but um… well whatever. She said it had something to do with decomposition. I say with current embalming techniques that isn’t possible, but *shrug* it’s just one of those stories that’s been in our family FOREVER.
Jennifer Suarez’s last blog post..Behind The Scenes
June 2nd, 2009 on 8:10 am
That’s crazy stuff. Have you read the book Stiff by Mary Roach (http://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243948167&sr=1-1) It’s super interesting and full of bizarre facts.
Cara’s last blog post..Ear Infection: Part Deux
June 2nd, 2009 on 8:30 am
I’ve heard about the bells tied to fingers when buried, but waiting mortuaries? Crazy stuff.
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June 2nd, 2009 on 8:39 am
I didn’t know about the waiting part, but I did know many bodies were buried with bells, or a string attached to bell so they could ring it, should this whole presumed dead thing be wrong.
Creepy but interesting.
Anita’s last blog post..I’ve been crowned!!
June 2nd, 2009 on 9:17 am
Oh wow…that’s creepy and intriguing all in one. Of course I had to read about the “white light” thing too over at your other blog. We think about things in the same light, you know — you have the great writing skills to blog it – love it!
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June 2nd, 2009 on 10:03 am
Sounds like a scam to me. Corpse attendant would not be my ideal job either. The first ring of a bell, I know I would pee my pants! And the smell, that can’t be pleasant either.
Aliceson’s last blog post..Monday Garden Club
June 2nd, 2009 on 7:23 pm
HI Shelia
I bounced back over here from Jannie’s. I like this blog. It make me laugh.
t
June 2nd, 2009 on 8:02 pm
Nope…wouldn’t be a job I’d be after….
June 2nd, 2009 on 9:22 pm
I had NO idea! My hair is standing on end here. I sure hope that night watch job paid well.
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June 2nd, 2009 on 9:59 pm
I suppose it’s better than accidentally burying someone alive. I wouldn’t mind taking the post, personally, sitting for the “dead” would probably be way more relaxing than keeping my kids from scalping eachother.
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June 2nd, 2009 on 10:27 pm
Ewww. Very weird. Couldn’t do that job. No matter what they paid me. No thanks!
June 4th, 2009 on 1:55 pm
Good Lord. Thats’ all I can say.
Jannie Funster’s last blog post..Another chance!
June 4th, 2009 on 3:42 pm
and thus the term… “dead ringer”.
sheila Reply:
June 4th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Ahhhh, and so it would make sense!