"You're morbid!"

[aurelemsrealm]

I don't think it's morbid to think or read about those things, or visit cemeteries or places where disasters happened. They all represent things that lie beyond normal everyday life. I find myself frequently thinking about the unknown, and wondering what it all really means. I think it's about trying to understand things that are beyond human understanding.

[Dreamstalker]

I took a psychology course in college that dealt with all aspects of death and dying (most useful class I took). The Twit thought I was morbid; I've always been fascinated with graveyards and various death rituals. I'm not an emo pseudo-goth who mopes around pondering death every minute, I try to find out about the unknown because I like to.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Ugh, I hate it when people fling out the "goth" label at me, too.

Luckily, my fiance is in full agreement with me when I say I'd love to go visit Pripyat and Chernobyl. I remember saying to him once after we watched a documentary on the disaster that if I ever got to go to Chernobyl, I'd lay flowers at the fireman memorial... and he thought that to be a wonderful idea.

[Dreamstalker]

"There are some things in this world that go way beyond human understanding. Things that cannot be explained, things that most people don't even want to know about. That is where we come in."

I've been called callous and even sociopathic (wtF) for wanting to understand death.

Whenever we go to my grandfather's grave in Monson, I always buy a few extra flowers to put on the graves in the back sections that I usually need to clear aside some weeds to find.

[aurelemsrealm]

How is wanting to understand death callous or sociopathic?

Every moment we live is one moment closer to the inevitable. It's just a given fact that death is one eventuality everyone faces. So, it only makes sense to make some kind of effort to prepare ourselves for that prospect.

I'm certainly in no hurry to get there, but I know it will happen someday. I'm not afraid of death in and of itself. I just hope that when the time comes, it's quick and painless.

Aside from that, I am curious if there is an afterlife. I certainly believe there is more to our existence than just our experiences here.

[Dreamstalker]

I think that a lot of people think only serial killers can be "interested" in death.

My grandmother was terrified of death in any form and I saw it made her a miserable person.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Being scared of death is understandable; however, it's a bit pointless cuz it comes to us all in the end. That's why you have to live and enjoy life. ^^

Edit: Thought I'd lost the link; now, I've found it again. ^^ Elena's Motorcycle Ride Thru Chernobyl Breathtaking photographs taken by a girl who rides thru the zone on a motorbike. Well worth a look.

[Trjgul]

I've been fascinated by death, death culture and the dead since I was a little girl.

It started with Egyptian mummies and their culture, then vampires and zombies and the like. It eventually became a fascination with forensics and the desire to become a forensic pathologist.

I'll admit I take it a bit further than most- I visit websites that feature the dead, or "gore" sites. Not out of any disrespect, it's just a fascination I've had for years.

Since I'm currently in Germany, eventually I want to go to the island of Sicily and visit the Capuchin Catacombs, as well as the Paris Catacombs and probably the necropoli in Scotland.

I'll fully cop to being a bit morbid, but it doesn't depress or drag me down- it's just insanely *fascinating* to me.

[Andara Bledin]

I am inordinately amused that this particular thread was subjected to thread-necromancy.

^-.-^

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I just recently became interested in post mortem photography. I'm also interested in "disturbing" urban legends, different diseases of the human body, and other such "morbid" things.

Funny thing is, I am one of the most bubbly people you could ever meet.

Stop, stop, don't make me love you! Oh wait, I already do.

Years ago, I got a bunch of books from one of my cousins. Several were about Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, and other serial killers. I read those multiple times until my parents took them away.

Sorry to have contributed to the exhumation of this thread, as it were.

[telecom_goddess]

Ok I'm all for photographing graveyards and such, but post mortem photography? as in BODIES? OH HAYELL NO that's just not something I ever want to do.

[Trjgul]

Ok I'm all for photographing graveyards and such, but post mortem photography? as in BODIES? OH HAYELL NO that's just not something I ever want to do.

I'm pretty sure that's something people don't regularly do anymore. Dunno if you caught it earlier in the thread, but postmortem photography was common because back when the technology first came about it was expensive, and the death rate was quite high. For many families it was often the only picture they had of a loved one.

So I discovered just the other day that I'm at most two and a half hours from Dachau. A friend of mine is taking me to see it this weekend. I mentioned this to my mom on Skype just yesterday and her response was "Why would you want to go there?!"

Oh, I dunno- culture, history, curiosity? Honestly I haven't really owned my morbid curiosity until recently so she doesn't quite know just how deep it goes. I'll be taking some pictures, if anyone wants to see them let me know, 'cause I don't think they're going up on Facebook!

[Lace Neil Singer]

Um, post mortem photography isn't necessarily what you think it is. Memento Mori, or post mortem photography, isn't about a squicky desire to take photographs of dead bodies; more of a means of remembering dead loved ones.

http://cogitz.com/2009/08/28/memento...-death-photos/

Back in Victorian times, due to the high infant mortality rate and the expensiveness of photography, often the only photo that a parent would have of their child would be a postmortem one.

[Ipecac Drano]

Not very long ago, wakes and viewings would take place in the deceased's home, and there were memorial photos of them in their coffins. My dad showed me his mother's funereal picture. (She died many years before I was born.)

He said he found the idea of the picture to be ghastly. I felt weird, as I used to eat cookies and play in that room when I was a kid.

[telecom_goddess]

I know times are different and back in the day photography was rare and ya the only pic you might get of a baby or relative was a post mortem one. HOWEVER I still find that...and I like this word that was used...ghastly.