The Victorian Book of the Dead

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There was a resurgence in mourning tableaux, where the living were photographed surrounding the coffin of the deceased, sometimes having them visible. The complete version of this story of the haunted Herr Humbarger is found in The Headless Horror: Strange and Ghostly Ohio Tales.

Books by Chris Woodyard Haunted Ohio Books by Chris Woodyard

It does not need to be the focus of our lives as it was then, but we do need to have more of these important conversations. I know that the late Mark Chorvinsky was collecting reports of Grim Reaper apparitions, but was, lamentably, harvested before he published them. No one was in that portion of the house at the time and some time this afternoon the members of the family who went to look for Mrs.

On the last excursion of any kind he ever made the yacht capsized in a squall, and the doctor was drowned, everyone else being rescued alive. Tears came into her eyes as she thought of the little, carefully attended grave of her children in Greenwood, and her face seemed to mirror the thought. In the one he is seen alive, in the other the shroud and black ribbons seem to indicate that he is dead, and he complains of the refusal to give him a farewell kiss. In another, the hooded figure of the Reaper was seen in a building adjoining a haunted theatre in Chillicothe, Ohio. Funeral coaches and four-wheel cabs will follow with many mourners, and the street will be filled with a crowd of women and children assembled to see the grand funeral of Widow Wilson’s eldest son.

The Deepest Mourning Ever Worn; and the Richest: 1859

In the centre is a rickety table, round which the widow and her three remaining children are gathered, making a scanty meal before they put on their black to follow the dead lad to the cemetery. I have never understood the nature of this apparition up to the present time, and I am perfectly willing to give my name to anyone who would be inclined to doubt the occurrence.

It was far cheaper and quicker than commissioning a painted portrait and it enabled the middle classes to have an affordable, cherished keepsake of their dead family members. Ferris and the Nepaul doctor tacitly agreed that if I had caved in on either of these occasions I should not now be spoiling paper in an attempt to edify newspaper readers. But there is no mention of standing poses for the dead or of using a headrest to support them, as, indeed, there is no mention in any of the photographic journals or photographers’ accounts I’ve seen. She kissed me just before she went on that fatal excursion, Baldwin; she will never kiss me again—oh!

The Victorian Book of the Dead (The Ghosts of the Past 4)

This site covers the question so well, I’m not sure why I’m bothering…] But indulge me while I rail against this beloved Victorian mortuary falsehood, with little hope that it will make the slightest difference to those who Believe. A few days afterwards, being in school with the children about noon, I heard a great noise overhead, as if the top of the house was coming down; I went out to see the garret, and there was nothing amiss. Burney’s three-year-old son yesterday, listening ot the funeral service, the body moved and presented the child, clad in its shroud, sat up and gazed about the room.As these ladies were not in the habit of regular correspondence with their relative, they knew that the earliest intelligence likely to reach them, if he were actually dead, would be by means of the Irish papers; and they waited anxiously for the following Wednesday, which was the day these journals were received in Cheltenham. I will warn those of you with sensitive stomachs or advanced degrees, that I am all about the primary source.