How people have cared for, mourned and remembered their dead: ossuaries and catacombs, mourning dress and jewellery, wakes, burial rites and the fears that came with them.
Each episode is a Short of about a minute on our YouTube channel @MacabreChronicle. Its companion article on this site holds what a minute cannot: the sources, a timeline and a “Documented / Disputed” box.
What this series covers
- Burial and reburial practices around the world
- Mourning rules, objects and photographs
- Cemeteries, ossuaries and what their symbols meant
- Old fears about death, and what lay behind them
Episodes and articles
Oldest first. This list updates automatically as new episodes and articles are published. You can also browse the Death Customs archive, newest first.
- Post-Mortem Photography: What Was Real, and What Is Myth
- Safety Coffins and Burial Bells: The Inventions Against Being Buried Alive
- Charnel Houses and Ossuaries: Where Europe Kept Its Bones
- Wakes and Vigils: Why the Living Sat Up With the Dead
- Death Masks: Faces Cast After the Last Breath
- Mourning and Memento Mori Jewelry: Rings, Hair and Whitby Jet
- Victorian Mourning Rituals: Crape, Black Borders and a Queen in Black
- Grave Goods and Burial Coins: Charon’s Obol to Sutton Hoo
- Tombstone and Graveyard Symbolism: Skulls, Cherubs, Urns and Willows
- Sky Burial: Giving the Dead to the Birds in Tibet
- Second Burials: When Funerals Happen Twice
Case pages
Case pages collect everything we have on one event or person: key facts, every related episode and article, and further reading.
- The Paris Catacombs, 1785–1860: How the city’s cemeteries were emptied into old quarries.
- Sedlec Ossuary, Kutná Hora: The bone chapel under a 14th-century church, and what is actually known about it.
All case pages: Case pages index.
How we work
Every claim in this series is tied to a cited source. Read our Editorial Standards, and see the Corrections page for anything we have fixed.
More series in Dark History, Documented: Dark Medicine · Disaster Minute · Desperate Measures · Strange Justice.
