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Ghostly goings-on in the funeral parlour
Although the police don’t appear to be covering up ghostly incidents , perhaps the funeral industry is shy about reporting them? After mentioning in a previous column the apparent absence of ghost reports from undertakers, morticians and other funeral industry professionals, I am delighted to learn of two recent stories suggesting exceptions to the rule.
Mike Covell, a writer from Kingston upon Hull, brought my attention to a feature in the Hull and East Riding Mail for 4 October 2010, looking at the work of Chanterlands Crematorium. In the article, Mike Anderson, who has worked at the crematorium in Chanterland Avenue, Hull, for 23 years, admits that he and his team have indeed had “a few funny experiences”. He stated: “I was once in the transfer chamber and thought Carl, one of my colleagues, had walked up behind me, but I quickly realised he was nowhere to be seen. There was definitely someone behind me, so that was a bit weird.” He added: “Now and then you can just feel somebody.”
On the whole, Hull is rather proud of its funereal reputation, including its £4.2 million state-of-the-art mortuary and forensic centre, which were being celebrated in the local press in 2007 (Source: Hull in Print, Feb 2007). A haunted crematorium may be a first, though admittedly, one really might wish for more evidence than the spooky feeling of a presence; but maybe some discreet enquiries will reveal more.
Meanwhile, in Medellin, Colombia, the owner of a funeral company has begun a collection of ghost stories. Since the beginning of December 2010, William Betancur, manager of the Betancur Funeral Parlour, has so far listed 215 spirits, including 23 recorded in photographs and videos. A team of four funeral parlour workers in uniform act as collectors.
“It’s beyond question that many of the city’s buildings and homes have ghosts,” William Betancur told the press. “For years, we’ve heard stories about them and we thought the time had come to approach, catalogue and classify them through a census.” Anybody can report an apparition, “They just have to phone or email us and depending on their physical manifestation – noises, sparkling light shows, or images – that’s how they’ll be classified.”
Interestingly, Señor Betancur came up with the idea of the survey following his own experience of sensing his pet dog still going about his daily rounds at the funeral home, some four months after the pet died.
“Our plan is to take a year for the census… Later we’re thinking of writing a book and – why not? – doing a movie or documentary series.” Source: [AFP] 30 Dec 2010.
Beyond these examples, there seem to be few accounts of haunting involving professionals in the funeral business, although undertakers have occasionally been called upon to verify the conditions of bodies in cases of post-mortem visions of the dead by relatives.
A supposedly true story of a stranded undertaker trapped in a snow-bound hearse during a blizzard witnessing a procession of phantom monks appears in the collection In Search of the Supernatural (1975) by Paul Travis. The incident allegedly occurred in the late 1930s, but neither the name of the undertaker nor a location beyond “the fells” are given. Travis did not rule out a hallucination in the freezing conditions; alternatively, details might suggest a near-death experience.
Another case (where details were filed by the Society for Psychical Research) was a mortician called to witness the unaccountable movements of a cremation urn at a property in north London in 1983. The urn contained the ashes of a resident cremated the month before, but the credibility of one of the best-witnessed incidents was undermined by the fact that all present had consumed a substantial quantity of wine (See Mary Rose Barrington: “The Urn That Turned”, The Psi Researcher, no.8, 1993).
Of course, there may be fundamental reasons why accounts of paranormal experiences would be suppressed or discouraged. Obviously, there is the need to respect confidentiality and show appropriate sensitivity towards bereaved relatives. Gone are the days when an undertaker might be expected to provide stories “matching the films of Mr Boris Karloff” for macabre entertainment (John Saltmarsh, ed: Archives of the Eastern Counties Folklore Society 1936–39, Cambridge University Library). Furthermore, as Ian Wils for magic on remarks in his In Search of Ghosts (1996): “…although ghosts are often people who have been murdered or committed suicide, their problem seems to be not so much due to this as to their not having subsequently received the funeral rites that they would have considered appropriate.” In the context of such beliefs, for undertakers, morticians and other interment professionals to report manifestations might provoke concern, or complaints from distressed relatives, and even be taken as post-mortem criticism of the services rendered. Equally, reporting manifestations might lead to suspicions that the individual concerned was not suited to such work. Alternatively, the lack of any personal or emotional connection with the deceased might be another determining factor.
However, the lack of reports of manifestations may be analogous to the relative absence of ghost experiences in graveyards and cemeteries, a pattern noted as long ago as 1914 by St John D Seymour in True Irish Ghost Stories. Despite Shakespeare’s Puck in A Midsummer’s Night Dream speaking of “…ghosts wandering here and there/Troop home to churchyards” and singing in the closing scene of the play:
Now it is the time of night,
That the graves, all gaping wide,
Everyone lets forth his sprite,
In the churchyard paths to glide
– and similar notions expressed in Hamlet (Act iii,2) – the numerous churchyards and cemeteries of the British Isles are remarkably lacking in ghost reports when compared to pubs, for example. So it will be interesting to see if any new ghost reports are received from the funeral industry in years to come.
http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/…_dead.html
Source: http://yeoldefalseflag.com/thread-ghostly-goings-on-in-the-funeral-parlour
