I realize I have stuffed animals in my office, but I'm forced to say (after reading this) that they were never actually REAL animals.
And I really don't want to know how one of The Fabulosity of Clients found this info. No, some things are better left unreported!
23 comments:
You mean everyone doesn't have a Google alert on "mummified baby"?!?
...the face I'm making right now would scare small children and pets, and rightly so. Gross.
The world's level of absurdity just shot up about five octaves.
(Yes, it's measured in octaves.)
Seriously, people are weird
That story is pure plot bubby.
And I thought it was weird when I found the mummy of the Pharoah Amenhotep in my basement.
I don't think the mummy in that news story spends all day watching Two & 1/2 Men reruns, eating potato chips and complaining that the History Channel doesn't give him any respect like Amenhotep, but it's still weird.
BTW- Anyone willing to give a cranky mummy a home, call me.
I just... I'm at a loss for words. Mummified grand-cousin as a doll? How Adam's Family is that?
Ewwww.
I could maybe see a distraught mother doing this. MAYBE. But to keep such a thing in the family? EWWWW.
Oh dear.
You know, you slave over a good story, you throw all kinds of crazy hijinks in there, you try to make an entertaining story for your readers...and then reality throws a whopper like this. Not cool, mummified baby keepers. Not cool.
That whole story is weird. I can't decide whether them having a mummy in the first place or them giving it gifts is the more disturbing issue.
And isn't it a bit insensitive to give a mummy a dead fish as a gift? Why a dead fish? Doesn't a mummy at least deserve a live fish?
All I can say is...WOW
That was a real "yuck" story. Shaking my head at the absurdity of what some people will do.
Nothing out of the ordinary in missing mummified babies... I grew up about an hour north of Concord, and I can attest to the fact that New England is chock full of weird, spooky stuff.
What? You're telling me that my collection of Jenny Hanivers really aren't the dried hides of Lovecraftian Deep Ones?
horrified
see that's the kind of story that sets writing minds running. crazy, bizarre, gruesome, and totally fascinating
--jhf
This historian behind this Pixie can't restrain herself from commenting. So even though I've sworn off commenting here, I'm back.
This behavior isn't as rare as you think. In the 18th and 19th Centuries, people took care of their own dead. Some kept their dead children. It's morbid to us, but it was less so then.
Post-mortem photos were common in the last half of the 19th Century. Morality rates, especially among children were high. Sometimes the ONLY photo of a child was one taken after death. I have several of these in an old family album. There is an ick factor today because we've pushed death away from us. We don't bury our own. Almost no one maintains a family cemetery today.
If you're interested in this beyond this one odd event where a family maintained a tradition more common a hundred and fifty years ago, then find and puruse the book Wisconsin Death Trip.
A post-mortum photo of Kezial, who died about 1881 is here: http://wardancingpixie.blogspot.com/search?q=keziah
It's not a particularly disturbing photo. It is the only photo of her ever taken.
It is hard to make fun of a family that kept a tradition we now reject. Families keep odd bits of behaviors with no reference to their origins.
I'm new to this blog. I thought it was about writing.
My grandmother preserved her pet alligator in an old Miracle Whip jar full of formaldehyde. His name was Ozzy, he was a very small alligator.
I'm into Hellman's now and I really like this blog.
Ah, that must be why you didn't want my novel featuring a mummified MacGuffin! :)
So, Hallmark has a "dead baby" line, now? Hasn't this political correctness gone a little too far? No offense to the dead baby community, but...
Will I ever learn to check my spelling when I have a wonky keyboard?
That should have read "plot bunny."
Sha'el, in some rural areas, that tradition of corpse and coffin photography carried on into the first half of the twentieth century.
Hi Bernita,
Yes it was. My grandmother remembered a neighbor propping up her dead husband's coffin (with him in it, of course) in the parlor window. That would have been in the 1930's.
They lived in the little lumber town of Westwood, Lassen, California. Traditions die hard.
Post a Comment