Simultaneously real and unreal, the dead are people, yet they are not. The society of medieval Europe developed a rich set of imaginative traditions about death and the afterlife, using the dead as a point of entry for thinking about the self, regeneration, and loss. These macabre preoccupations are evident in the widespread popularity of stories about the returned dead, who interacted with the living both as disembodied spirits and as living corpses or revenants. In Afterlives, Nancy Mandeville Caciola explores this extraordinary phenomenon of the living's relationship with the dead in Europe during the five hundred years after the year 1000.Caciola considers both Christian and pagan beliefs, showing how certain traditions survived and evolved over time, and how attitudes both diverged and overlapped through different contexts and social strata. As she shows, the intersection of Christian eschatology with various pagan afterlife imaginings-from the classical paganisms of the Mediterranean to the Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, and Scandinavian paganisms indigenous to northern Europe-brought new cultural values about the dead into the Christian fold as Christianity spread across Europe. Indeed, the Church proved surprisingly open to these influences, absorbing new images of death and afterlife in unpredictable fashion. Over time, however, the persistence of regional cultures and beliefs would be counterbalanced by the effects of an increasingly centralized Church hierarchy. Through it all, one thing remained constant: the deep desire in medieval people to bring together the living and the dead into a single community enduring across the generations.

In Tales from Kentucky Funeral Homes, William Lynwood Montell has collected stories and reminiscences from funeral home directors and embalmers across the state. These accounts provide a record of the business of death as it has been practiced in Kentucky over the past fifty years. The collection ranges from tales of old-time burial practices, to stories about funeral customs unique to the African American community, to tales of premonitions, mistakes, and even humorous occurrences. Other stories involve such unusual aspects of the business as snake-handling funerals, mistaken identities, and in-home embalming. Taken together, these firsthand narratives preserve an important aspect of Kentucky social life not likely to be collected elsewhere. Most of these funeral home stories involve the recent history of Kentucky funeral practices, but some descriptive accounts go back to the era when funeral directors used horse-drawn wagons to reach secluded areas. These accounts, including stories about fainting relatives, long-winded preachers, and pallbearers falling into graves, provide significant insights into the pivotal role morticians have played in local life and culture over the years.

All battlefields are haunted by the memory of what occurred there. Some, however, are haunted by more than remembrance, memorialization, and heritage events. There are American Civil War battlefields that remain "active" with the ongoing manifestations of past military behaviors. A theory of American Civil War battlefield hauntings is presented here, tied to mid-19th c. concepts of (and belief in) a "good death" and the importance of home and family. Fieldwork exploring these ideas shows, in many battlefield manifestations, a direct relationship between these concepts and battlefield interactive hauntings.

Part memoir, part how-to manual, this short, concise but in-depth guidebook for caregivers gently takes the reader from terminal diagnosis through death - covering topics such as interfacing with the medical community, making decisions about treatment, estate planning, completing important medical documents, providing comfort, engaging hospice, and choosing a funeral home - through personal recollection. Based on the author's experience of caring for her terminally ill brother, this primer is a valuable resource for anyone embarking on their own journey of caregiving for a terminally ill friend or loved one.

Gravestones, cemeteries, and memorial markers offer fixed points in time to examine Americans' changing attitudes toward death and dying. In tracing the evolution of commemorative practices from the seventeenth century to the present, Sherene Baugher and Richard Veit offer insights into our transformation from a preindustrial and agricultural to an industrial, capitalist country. Paying particular attention to populations often overlooked in the historical record - African Americans, Native Americans, and immigrant groups - the authors also address the legal, logistical, and ethical issues that confront field researchers who conduct cemetery excavations. Baugher and Veit reveal how gender, race, ethnicity, and class have shaped the cultural landscapes of burial grounds and summarize knowledge gleaned from the archaeological study of human remains and the material goods interred with the deceased. From the practices of historic period Native American groups to elite mausoleums, and from almshouse mass graves to the rise in popularity of green burials today, The Archaeology of Cemeteries and Gravemarkers provides an overview of the many facets of this fascinating topic.

What do all human beings have in common? Despite the self-help books about sex, money, power, happiness, weight, and relationships, there is one thing we all face that none of that guidance can prevent . . . death. What if we weren't so afraid of death, or of even talking about it? The fear of death - even when it's below our conscious awareness - underlies all fears. But, as Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler remind us in Life Lessons . . . "Fear doesn't stop death; it stops life." What this book suggests is that exploring our fears about death - talking about it, learning about it - might allow us to live more fully now and to die more consciously, with less fear and less unfinished business. With thought-provoking quotes and a list of resources from the top contributors in the field, this book provides a sturdy framework for us to begin and continue our inquiry. There are practices and tools we can use along the way. The author's informal style engages us easily in considering some of the most important questions about how we want to live and how we want to die. What "Fear of Death: It's About Life, Actually. Let's Talk About It" offers is an unusual opportunity to empower ourselves with regard to those questions and - perhaps - to help this conversation become a more natural part of our lives.