The Folklore of Dying

Every culture has had to answer the same questions when someone dies. Who sits with them at the end? Who washes the body, and what is done to it before it goes in the ground? What happens if the rites are skipped, and what comes back when they are?

In three hours, we follow a death the way a household would have lived it. We begin at the bedside, with the watchers, the open window, and the candle put into a dying hand. We follow the body through the washing, the wake, the procession, and the grave, and into the long calendar of mourning that comes after. And we end with the dead who wouldn't stay put, and everything people did to settle them.

The sources run from Homer and the medieval handbooks on dying well to Irish wakes, Norse sagas, and the forensic science that explains what villagers were really seeing when they opened a grave. An Appalachian thread runs throughout: sitting up with the dead, death crowns found in a pillow, grave houses, and Decoration Day.

The Syllabus:

• Module 1 · Deathbed Customs — how communities prepared for a good death
• Module 2 · Wake and Burial Rites — tending the body and keeping the dead in their place
• Module 3 · The Returning Dead — why the dead came back, and how they were settled

Led by Shelby Bundy, @themoonincarolina. Each module is pre-recorded and is 40-70 minutes long, for a total of 3 hours instruction time