Wikipedia Trails: From Grave Robbery to Posthumous Marriage

For my next story, I'm working on developing something that involves a couple of grave robbers. That said, I really only know the basics about the whole process, so I thought this assignment would be the perfect way to gather some details and deeper knowledge on it all.

1: Grave Robbing

Obviously, grave robbing's been an issue for a long time, and it was actually a bigger one in ye olden days. But I'm really interested in more modern grave robbing, which is why I found it really fascinating that it's apparently not only a real problem in China today, but also kind of a trade you can learn: "The increase in technology, such as night vision goggles, air breathing equipment, and metal detectors allows grave robbers to better find and rob ancient gravesites. There are institutions in which you can learn how to rob graves–'for about 200 yuan (about $30) a day. Land surveying skills are first taught, before progressing to probes and shovels, then finally explosives. After 10 days, adepts have the chance to assist an instructor in a real tomb robbery.'" Apparently, this information came from an article in the Epoch Times, which I'm noting here so I can refer back to it later.

In North America, apparently, grave robbers typically target "long-abandoned or forgotten" private grave sites, from before the Civil War and also the Great Depression. These spots make prime targets because they're undocumented and isolated, often hidden away in "rural, forested areas where once-prominent, wealthy landowners and their families were interred." Because they're the graves of rich people, robbers mainly go digging for old, valuable jewelry. Back when laws prevented African Americans from giving their loved ones more involved funerals, they often had to bury them at night; the sight of a bunch of people huddling around a grave was a dead (I know, I know, the pun's unforgivable) giveaway to the location of the body, and robbers would hang back till the funeral procession left, then go for the new grave.

There's also a bunch of information about different grave-robbing deterrents, and they're all pretty fascinating: mortsafes, mort houses, coffin collars, guards, family mausoleums, and what were essentially obstacle-course tombs full of fake rooms and other tricks. But I've already rambled on way too much about all this, so. Moving on.

2: Body Snatching

Naturally, from grave robbers I had to jump to body snatchers—who used to be called, delightfully enough, "resurrectionists" or "resurrection men." My day is officially made.

Rather than targeting the valuables in a grave, resurrection men went after the corpses themselves, usually to sell them to medical schools for the students to practice dissection or study anatomy. Of course, when people started offing others so they could skip the whole grave-robbing process and just sell the bodies fresh, the law finally cracked down, and the common business of body snatching pretty much died out. Before it did in the US, though, resurrectionists sometimes used to hire female accomplices to "act the part of grieving relatives and to claim the bodies of dead at poorhouses. Women were also hired to attend funerals as grieving mourners; their purpose was to ascertain any hardships the body snatchers may later encounter during the disinterment." The story pretty much writes itself.

3: Ghost Marriage

From body snatching, I stumbled across the idea of ghost marriages. There are several different forms of this, but the most interesting one to me comes from the following example. Once, about a month after a Chinese teenager died, his spirit appeared to his mother, saying he's lonely in the spirit world and wants to be married to this teen girl who died recently in another area. Before the son disappeared again, he didn't actually reveal the girl's name—so the mom, top-notch problem-solver that she was, turned to a Cantonese spirit medium. The medium was able to contact the boy and get the information about the girl from him.

To carry out the ghost weddings, there are even a few matchmakers available for that sort of thing: In fact, in Singapore, "there is in fact a ghost marriage broker's sign hung up in a doorway of a Taoist priest's home. The broker announces that he is willing to undertake the search for a family which has a suitable deceased member with a favourable horoscope."

4: Posthumous Marriage

And finally, from there, I found my way to the article on posthumous marriage. Unlike ghost marriages, this is done when a couple was supposed to be married, but the man dies before they can actually file through. Apparently, it became relatively popular after World War I. There's a legal process that has to be gone through first, but if the marriage is approved, there's actually a wedding ceremony in which the woman stands by a picture of her dead fiancé and says "I did" ((rather than the traditional "I do")). She doesn't actually get any of his property from the marriage, and essentially becomes a widow, but it's often practiced for either emotional closure or to legitimize what would otherwise end up being bastard children. Interesting stuff.

Image Credit: "Body Snatchers at Work," by Kim Traynor. Source: Wikimedia Commons.