Peruse Cemetery Stories: Haunted Graveyards, Embalming Secrets And The Life Of A Corpse After Death Picturized By Katherine Ramsland In Physical Edition

good nonfiction she covers all the bases in a clear style, She takes some of the mystery out of what happens when we die and does it in an understandable and not gory manner.
This was kind of creepy, but very informative, It's a factual trip of what a body goes through, from death to the monuments they have on their graves.
I really liked it! This is what I would describe as an overview book, it does not go into detail about anything.
I dont feel it needs to as Ramsland describes at the beginning that this was a subject she was curious about and intended to find out more.
At no point was she trying to write an exhaustive or academic account and therefore should only be treated as an introduction or interest book.


It took me two attempts to read this, I started reading this a while ago but then a family member took seriously ill and there was no way I could continue, it was a little too close to home.
About a year later I tried again now my family member is a lot better and the book proved much easier to read.
There was no way I could have enjoyed it earlier, When I write reviews if I can offer any advice to other readers I will always include this, therefore my advice is this this book may not be suitable if you are recently bereaved of have someone close to you who is very ill, however once you have overcome these issues and are feeling less emotionally vulnerable it is worth a read.
I knew next to nothing about the funerary or death processes although this is predominantly based in America and I am British so I am aware that a number of things will be different based on which country youre in and found these parts to be quite interesting.


There were some very touching parts,spring to mind, her section on pet cemeteries and her very moving story of how she and her friends adopted a grave during the Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico.
I shed a tear while reading both of these parts and its unusual for a book to make me cry.


There were also some very uncomfortable sections particularly nearer the end about people who have particular tastes for the deceased and a few bits about necromancy.
Few of us would ever feel comfortable reading this and I will admit to reading this section as fast as possible wanting it to be over and to move onto something less uncomfortable, but I do respect Ramsland for not shying away from these issues.
They do exist whether we like it or not and it would not be right to wright a book about the dead that only covers the “nicer” bits.


I remain sceptical about her story of her own ghost hunt in a cemetery, many ghost hunters try for decades and get less what she claims to have experienced on her first attempt.
Perhaps she was just in the right place at the right time but I admit Im not convinced.


Overall I enjoyed this, some people will hate it, others will be offended, still others will not be able to read parts due to personal experiences, but for those who are curious and easily put off Id definitely recommend it as a nice easy read.


  Here Lies the Hype

This novel was undeveloped and mostly anecdotal, There are much better books out there, I picked this book up at a recent library booksale and took it on a flight to FL to pass the time.
I'm an admitted taphophile and found it the perfect diversion for the cramped and uncomfortable flight.
The first segments of the book got into the mortuary life and the anecdotes from funeral directors, undertakers and morticians were entertaining, and often tinged with sadness.
I'm not someone who is squeamish about the decomposition of the body after death, or the processes employed by the funeral industry to prepare a body for interment.


Had the book not finished with an overly long and seemingly manipulated attempt to titillate the reader or disgust the reader by getting into the weeds about the horrific things that have been done to bodies after death and I'm talking about sex here, I would have given the book another star.
In fact, there are two incidents the author goes into unnecessary detail of the sexual perversions that were committed by individuals on the deceased.
I'm not disputing the possibility these events did not occur or do not happen although, I'm thinking it's far more rare than the author would like you to believe, but it was a sour note in an otherwise lightly entertaining read.


I picked up a copy of this book based on a negative review which claimed it was disgusting.
It's always an occasion when such reviews on the subject matter turn out to be true, but absolutely, to a large portion of the population this book would be quite disgusting.


I'm part of a smaller percentage of the population who have no problem whatever with reading about decomposition, embalming, exploding corpses, and leaking crypts.
In fact it was all good until I reached the section on necrophilia, . .

The act of sleeping with a corpse isn't what disgusted me about the cases of necrophilia presented in this book, it's the people themselves.
It was beyond pure sexual gratification for some, I shouldn't go into detail, but the idea that a person could do what "John" did to the corpse of a woman.
She had arranged her funeral preneed she was dying of cancer so he'd met her and planned to sleep with her while she was still alive.
This man then would have consoled her family after what he did, That is low. It's tantamount to rape. It bothered me.

Necrophiliacs aside, sitelinkCemetery Stories: Haunted Graveyards, Embalming Secrets, and the Life of a Corpse After Death is an interesting book.
It drags a little in the middle during the section on ghost and urban legend related stores but that could have been due to my familiarity with the subject matter.
It's also slightly patchy in parts, it seems that the author had a little trouble going back and forward from facts and stories.
But over all, I liked it, Weird stuff. This book didnt keep me up at night but it helped me decide to be cremated after I die.
This is story after story after story of far out oddities and things I never wanted to know.
Seriously I started reading some sections and then skipped them because I didnt want to put that stuff into my brain.
And yet it was all strangely fascinating, I guess im a whacko, But I have absolutely NO desire to steal a corpse, Much less be “intimate” with one, I stumbled into this book randomly in my local library, After reading the entirety of it's contents, I'm amazed, The absolute vividness of the stories contained within will haunt me for the rest of my life and I'm somehow not even mad about it.
I'm a huge taphophile and this book was everything in one, The death industry needs a special kind of person with a certain kind of personality, Katherine Ramsland's Cemetery Stories: Haunted Graveyards, Embalming Secrets, and the Life of a Corpse After Death asks and answers many questions on these topics.
The author covers these areas, but unfortunately with her stiff writing style, the book which has a great deal of information is flat.
It comes across as a high school term paper where the student struggles with the topic she has chosen.
It is written as a list and does not flow as a book should, If one has read on these topics before, much of the book will be a repeat.
Not that I am completely comfortable with these areas, but the author often appears frightened while presenting her research and interviews with death industry personnel.
The ghost stories at the end of the book are fun even though some are urban legends.
This was a quick read, As a child I grew up with an old graveyard right across the road from where I lived.
I think that is where the fascination began, This book is good but I could have done without what sickening things people do with dead bodies.
I did find most of the book interesting and did find out things that I didn't know.
Overall a good read but wouldn't pass it on as most people I know would find reading about sex with a corpse offensive.
Read for research for my next book not for the fainthearted but an excellent overview of what happens to corpses.
Cremate me as fast as possible when I pop off, because I do not want to end up on an embalming slab.
. . DNF despite amazing nuggets like, "Herrera once recovered semen

from the body of a man who'd fallen from a balcony, so the man's fiancee could get pregnant.
" How exactly do you do that

After readmg sitelinkCaitlin Doughty and sitelinkJessica Mitford's wonderful books on the funeral business in the US, I was quite excited to find this book.
But it reads like a bathroom book,

Despite the immense amount of research, the author badly lets the reader, or at least this reader, down by being cowed by the funeral directors fear that she is going to do a Jessica Mitford hatchet job sitelinkThe American Way of Death and expose all the scams the industry inflicts on people when they are grieving a loved one, at their most vulnerable and likely to want "the best" and "all the services" no matter what the cost.


She tells the funeral directors she isn't going to do that and so any criticism of the undertaking business is very mild indeed.
Mostly she presents them all as jolly, family people who have to be on callhours a day to perform their selfless service and sell a coffin for,plus the rest of the services they offer to people who apparently can't wait until morning to have their dear departed taken out of bed still warm and plunked into a commercial refrigerator.
Obviously there are some very decent people in the business, but why go easy on the rest It makes the book less credible.


The second way in which I felt let down is she presents other people's peculiar ideas as facts without bothering to check.
She says she knew nothing about Jewish funerary rites so she asked the nonJewish widow of a man.
She tells her that Jews have to stop every few yards to pray on the way to the burial.
Really I come from an observant Orthodox background and we didn't do that! She says that when sitting shiva shiva just means, in this case thedays of morning the mirrors are covered with black cloth so that if the soul comes back, it will know it's dead.
Nope, the mirrors are covered because vanity has no place in a house of morning, Clothes have a traditional rip on them, make up is not worn, washing is kept to a minimum, it's so the world doesn't come between the mourners and their grief.
She goes on in this vein with even more weird things from this woman that I'd never even heard of before.


So that makes me wonder what else is presented as fact but is just what someone told her How accurate is this book really In any case, the book lacks insight and depth.
The writing per se isn't bad, so perhaps I'm expecting too much

Two and a half for a good bathroom book to pick up and read a bit, and put back until next time, r ounded up to three because it wasn't a bad book, just shallow.



Notes on reading I recently read sitelinkWill My Cat Eat My Eyeballs, so now I want to know what about the dogOMG, this dog went for his owner before she was even cold.
The poor woman had been dead for several hours before her body was discovered, Her dog had chewed off her chin, jaw, right cheek and lower lip, So much for man's best friend, Btw the cat will go for more tender parts, like the neck, .