Am I disrespecting the dead? On All Saints’ Day, that disturbing thought struck me as I manned our historic house’s first ghost tour.

DISRESPECTING THE DEAD EXAMPLES

1. The ways to disrespect the dead can be gruesome. Here are a few:

• Body snatching is the secret removal of corpses from burial sites. A common purpose of body snatching, especially in the 19th century, was to sell the corpses for dissection or anatomy lectures in medical schools.^[1]
• Damnatio memoriae Latin phrase meaning “condemnation of memory”, indicating that a person is to be excluded from official accounts.^[2]
• Decanonization is the removal of a person’s name from the calendar of saints; the opposite of canonization.
• Desecration of graves involves intentional acts of vandalism or destruction in places where humans are interred and includes grave sites and grave markers.

• Urinating on someone’s grave is a form of grave desecration.^[3]

• Gibbeting is any instrument of public execution (including guillotine, executioner’s block, impalement stake, hanging gallows, or related scaffold), but gibbeting refers to the use of a gallows-type structure from which the dead or dying bodies of criminals were hanged on public display to deter other existing or potential criminals.^[4]
• Grave robbery is the act of uncovering a grave, tomb or crypt to steal commodities.
• Headhunting is the practice of hunting a human and collecting the severed head after killing the victim, although sometimes more portable body parts (such as ear, nose or scalp) are taken instead as trophies.
• Human trophy collecting involves the acquisition of human body parts as trophy, usually as a war trophy, or as a status symbol of superior masculinity. Psychopathic serial murderers‘ collection of their victims’ body parts has also been described as a form of trophy-taking; the FBI draws a distinction between souvenirs and trophies in this regard.^[5]
• Maschalismos is the practice of physically rendering the dead incapable of rising or haunting the living in undead form.
• Necrophilia is sexual attraction towards or a sexual act involving corpses.^[6]
• Posthumous execution is the ritual or ceremonial mutilation of an already dead body as a punishment.

Who knew?

DISRESPECTING THE DEAD ANTIDOTE

The most fascinating show of respect for the dead is Mexico’s Día de Los Muertos. This day is designed to honor the dead and make peace with the fact that you will die someday. The Catholic Relief Services explains that All Souls Day, for example, remembers “all the faithful departed,” whereas Día de los Muertos welcomes the return of all the departed for an annual visit that reunites the dead and the living.

DISRESPECTING THE DEAD—OUR PLAY

Granted, we did not go all kinky or horrific with our disrespect. But we did reveal part of the painful past of Maria Faison, a resident of the house from 1872 until her untimely death in 1888 at the age of 26. She never married.

The short script I wrote portrays Maria as a ghost who mistakes a man for her former boyfriend, Willie Ledbetter. Her father, Peter, however, wanted her to marry someone else. She was so unhappy that she wrote her mother that she (Maria) wished she were dead.

Full Confession: We know she wished she were dead from a letter she wrote home. We discovered, in correspondence, that Peter became irate when Willie Ledbetter visited Maria at boarding school, even though she was accompanied by a chaperone. Following the dots, we believe Peter wanted her to marry her distant cousin, a physician.

DISRESPECTING THE DEAD TO KEEP THEIR MEMORY ALIVE

Am I dishonoring these complex individuals who lived, loved, cried, laughed, and died before me by airing their dirty laundry and turning them into ghosts?

This thought has haunted me.

My dilemma is that this house, the N.W. Faison House, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is recognized at the state level due to its social significance. Louisia Brown was one of the first women of color to own a home in Texas. Its history tells of the complex relationships between Blacks and Whites after the Civil War. The house is remarkably well-preserved, with the same furniture as in the 1880s, and doesn’t even have a bathtub.  

LAST THOUGHTS ON DISRESPECTING THE DEAD

Sadly, this rich chronicle of the past is in danger of disappearing. House museums are in decline, grants are disappearing, and our volunteers are aging out. In desperation, we are turning to the ghosts, vortexes, spirits, and orbs to bring in visitors.

What would you do?

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