11 Beautiful And Unusual Funeral And Burial Practices

In Tibet, the deceased are given "sky burials", and in Ghana "fantasy coffins" are popular.

1. In Ghana, coffins are fantastical things, made in a huge variety of shapes to represent the person buried within.

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The above is a coffin in the shape of a sneaker. Coffins in Ghana are considered a form of art and collections of them have been exhibited as art around the world. It is believed that death is not the end of life but another stage of it, and the dead are much more powerful than the living, with an ability to influence their lives. Consequently, family members do all within their power to give their relatives a good send-off, with elaborate coffins that are in symbolic shapes. Often they represent the profession of the deceased (such as a fish-shaped coffin for a fisherman), but others have other meanings — such as a sword signifying an important status, or an animal representing clan ties.

2. In South Korea, it is becoming more popular to turn the ashes of your deceased loved ones into beads.

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Though historically South Korea followed the Confucian tradition of burying ancestors, space is in short supply in the small country and it is no longer so taboo to cremate bodies. However, the tradition of respecting and cherishing one's elders is still preserved with the new trend of turning ashes into sea-green beads. The ashes are heated to their melting point, then cooled so they crystallise — similar to the process in which sand is heated and turned into glass. The beads can then be stored in jars and bottles.

3. Ancient Hawaiians had many different burial practices, including burial at sea, in caves, and in sand dunes.

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Some still prevail to this day — such as burial at sea — while others are now much less common. It was believed that the most sacred part of the body was the bones, where the spirit of a person was located. The organs were removed and replaced with salt, to better preserve the sacred bones. In the case of a cave burial, the body was placed in a foetal position, but this became less common with the influence of European colonisers and later cave burials had stretched out bodies instead.

4. In Mongolia and Tibet, the dead are given a "sky burial" in line with the Buddhist tradition.

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Steeped in Vajrayana Buddhism tradition, the funeral practice involves leaving the body of the deceased on a mountaintop to be eaten by scavenging animals or withered away by the elements. The idea is that the body is now of no value, only an empty vessel, and to give it away to the wild is to get rid of it in a generous way.

5. The Torajan people of Indonesia keep the bodies of the deceased in a separate room, cleaned and fed daily, until they can afford proper funerals.

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The funerals are elaborate, and it can take families years to collect the funds to pay for them. Even after the funeral, bodies are ceremonially visited each year, cleaned, and given fresh clothes and gifts from family members, then returned to either the cave or the carved stone grave in which they were buried.

6. Another Torajan tradition is to hang coffins on either cliff faces or trees.

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Coffins can also be placed inside hollows inside the cliff faces made especially for this purpose. They are placed high above the ground, partly for a practical reason — to discourage grave robbing — and partly for a spiritual one: the earth is seen as the mother of all life, and to bury the dead within it would be to defile it. The bodies of young children who die still toothless are sealed inside hollows in trees, and it is believed that over time as the tree heals, it absorbs the remains of the child within it.

7. Funeral services in Azerbaijan are so lavish that it is becoming an economic problem.

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The feasts are huge, often costing thousands of dollars. The government is concerned about this as it is often done for appearances rather than necessarily religious reasons or tradition. Most Azerbaijanis adhere to Shia Islam, which discourages wastefulness, so a lavish funeral is not a more pious one — but the government cannot outlaw lavish funerals, so it continues,

8. In Russia (and many other former Eastern Bloc countries), when bringing flowers to a funeral or in consolation to the bereaved, you must give an even number of flowers.

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Conversely, whenever you give flowers to someone living, they must be an odd number. It is believed that this superstition stems from the tradition of giving two flowers to fallen soldiers — one for them, and one for God.

9. Île Sainte-Marie (St. Mary's Island) is home to reportedly the world's only pirate cemetery.

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Given the transitory nature of a career as a pirate, plus all the pillaging and criminal activities that make would make them deeply unpopular, few pirates have traditional resting places in the earth. Presumably, many were buried at sea. However, Île Saint-Marie, a beautiful and abundant island off the east coast of Madagascar, was popular with pirates due to its abundant fruit and convenient geographical location. It is where many notorious pirates settled down, started families, and were eventually buried.

10. In China, Feng Shui is not just for the home you live in while alive, but for your burial home, too.

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It is called yin feng shui (as opposed to yang feng shui, which is for your lived-in home), and there are experts who are hired to find suitable burial spots. For a spot to qualify, it must factor in several things: It must not be too windy, it mustn't face a straight road or temple, it must take into account the configuration of the celestial animals of feng shui, and it must face either the west or east — which way specifically is decided depending on the birth date of the deceased.

11. In the Jamaican tradition, death is a reason not to mourn a loss but to celebrate a life well-lived.

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It is believed that it takes nine days for the soul to finally rest after death. This is a time to celebrate, as the departed is no longer suffering. On the ninth night after death, friends and family will gather and bring food and drink and celebrate the life of their loved one and give their soul a good send-off. A table will be laid out, but no one is permitted to eat from it until after midnight as the food is for the departed soul, and it is believed that at the stroke of midnight it will have finally left the mortal realm.