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
If you've ever scoffed at the high price of burying the dead, or ever wondered how your loved ones are handled when they die, or simply stared at tombstones with morbid fascination, then take a trip with Katherine Ramsland and learn about the booming industry -- and strange tales -- that surround cemeteries everywhere.
From Publishers Weekly
The recent success of HBO's funeral home comedy Six Feet Under proves the power of the macabre over public imagination. "[A]mused, disturbed, and delighted by the range of human behavior surrounding the subject of death," Ramsland (Ghost, Forecasts, Aug. 20; etc.) undertook a pop-anthropological survey of "cemetery culture" by interviewing graveyard caretakers, "death-care" consultants, funeral directors, grave diggers, monument dealers and mortuary assistants. This rambling, anecdotal account traces burial traditions such as embalming, cremation (30% of all funerals), corpse preparation, restorative techniques, cadaver cosmetics and unconventional funerals like the one attended by the deceased's fellow nudists. At Houston's National Museum of Funeral History and the annual National Funeral Directors Association's convention, Ramsland, a Rutgers professor, learns about mortuary schools and entrepreneurial schemes like hologram tombstones, the $65,000 mummification procedure and cemetery kiosks with touch-screen biographies of the deceased. Along with instructions on gravestone rubbing, artistic grave markers and unusual epitaphs, the book introduces "taphophiles," who visit cemeteries as a hobby. The book's closing section recounts ghastly tales of ghouls, corpse abuse, necrophilia and people buried alive, and fascinating interviews with people who grew up in funeral homes. Although it's "the corpseless soul that inspires the most fear," those with weak stomachs might want to skip the graphic description of autopsy procedures, botched reinterments and adipocere ("body cheese"). A bibliography and list of Web sites provide further resources. (Oct.)Forecast: This should see a brief spike in sales at Halloween (aided by promotion at Grim Rides, an elegant online bookstore specializing in death-related volumes [www.geocities.com/grimrides].
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From the Back Cover
Never look at a grave the same way again
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
If you've ever scoffed at the high price of burying the dead, or ever wondered how your loved ones are handled when they die, or simply stared at tombstones with morbid fascination, then take a trip with Katherine Ramsland and learn about the booming industry -- and strange tales -- that surround cemeteries everywhere.
About the Author
Katherine Ramsland has written a dozen books and numerous articles and short stories. In the past year she has been editing Vampyre Magazine. After publishing two books in psychology, Engaging the Immediate and The Art of Learning , she wrote Prism of the Night: A Biography of Anne Rice. At the same time she had a cover story in Psychology Today on our culture's fascination with vampires. She followed the biography with several guide books to Anne Rice's fictional worlds including The Vampire Companion: The Official Guide to Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and The Anne Rice Reader. Her last book before Piercing the Darkness was a biography of Dean Koontz called Dean Koontz: A Writer's Biography. She has also written for The New York Times Book Review, The Writer, The Horror Show, The Newark Star Ledger, The Trenton Times, and Publishers Weekly. Ramsland has a master's degree in clinical psychology and a Ph.D. in philosophy. She has been a professor at Rutgers University, a therapist, and a psycho-educator specializing in the psyche's shadow side, and is currently at work on another master's degree--this one in forensic psychology. She lives in Princeton, NJ.
Description:
Never look at a grave the same way again
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:
If you've ever scoffed at the high price of burying the dead, or ever wondered how your loved ones are handled when they die, or simply stared at tombstones with morbid fascination, then take a trip with Katherine Ramsland and learn about the booming industry -- and strange tales -- that surround cemeteries everywhere.
From Publishers Weekly
The recent success of HBO's funeral home comedy Six Feet Under proves the power of the macabre over public imagination. "[A]mused, disturbed, and delighted by the range of human behavior surrounding the subject of death," Ramsland (Ghost, Forecasts, Aug. 20; etc.) undertook a pop-anthropological survey of "cemetery culture" by interviewing graveyard caretakers, "death-care" consultants, funeral directors, grave diggers, monument dealers and mortuary assistants. This rambling, anecdotal account traces burial traditions such as embalming, cremation (30% of all funerals), corpse preparation, restorative techniques, cadaver cosmetics and unconventional funerals like the one attended by the deceased's fellow nudists. At Houston's National Museum of Funeral History and the annual National Funeral Directors Association's convention, Ramsland, a Rutgers professor, learns about mortuary schools and entrepreneurial schemes like hologram tombstones, the $65,000 mummification procedure and cemetery kiosks with touch-screen biographies of the deceased. Along with instructions on gravestone rubbing, artistic grave markers and unusual epitaphs, the book introduces "taphophiles," who visit cemeteries as a hobby. The book's closing section recounts ghastly tales of ghouls, corpse abuse, necrophilia and people buried alive, and fascinating interviews with people who grew up in funeral homes. Although it's "the corpseless soul that inspires the most fear," those with weak stomachs might want to skip the graphic description of autopsy procedures, botched reinterments and adipocere ("body cheese"). A bibliography and list of Web sites provide further resources. (Oct.)Forecast: This should see a brief spike in sales at Halloween (aided by promotion at Grim Rides, an elegant online bookstore specializing in death-related volumes [www.geocities.com/grimrides].
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From the Back Cover
Never look at a grave the same way again
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:
If you've ever scoffed at the high price of burying the dead, or ever wondered how your loved ones are handled when they die, or simply stared at tombstones with morbid fascination, then take a trip with Katherine Ramsland and learn about the booming industry -- and strange tales -- that surround cemeteries everywhere.
About the Author
Katherine Ramsland has written a dozen books and numerous articles and short stories. In the past year she has been editing Vampyre Magazine. After publishing two books in psychology, Engaging the Immediate and The Art of Learning , she wrote Prism of the Night: A Biography of Anne Rice. At the same time she had a cover story in Psychology Today on our culture's fascination with vampires. She followed the biography with several guide books to Anne Rice's fictional worlds including The Vampire Companion: The Official Guide to Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and The Anne Rice Reader. Her last book before Piercing the Darkness was a biography of Dean Koontz called Dean Koontz: A Writer's Biography. She has also written for The New York Times Book Review, The Writer, The Horror Show, The Newark Star Ledger, The Trenton Times, and Publishers Weekly. Ramsland has a master's degree in clinical psychology and a Ph.D. in philosophy. She has been a professor at Rutgers University, a therapist, and a psycho-educator specializing in the psyche's shadow side, and is currently at work on another master's degree--this one in forensic psychology. She lives in Princeton, NJ.