Eating disorders are complex processes to live with and recover from – I know firsthand from my struggle and subsequent […]
History, Ghosts & Jokes: A Review of Ghost Church
I first went to a medium for the same reason probably everyone does: I hoped to speak to the dead. […]
Modern Medicine Has Improved Our Lives, But What About Our Deaths?
In 1929, a young woman entered Koch Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. Her symptoms may have included coughing, difficulty breathing, […]
What’s Old is New Again: The David Saunders Autopsy and Corporate Graverobbing in America
On August 24, 2021, 98-year-old David Saunders died from COVID-19 at a hospital near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Nearly two months […]
Screaming Over the Rubble: The Shifting Role of the Family in American Disaster Victim Identification
When the South Champlain Towers in Surfside, Florida, collapsed in the early hours of June 24, I shuddered to think […]
Irish Keens, Modern Grief, and the Digital Landscape of Mourning
In January 1833, an author known only as O’G published their musings on the Irish funeral cry, or caoine, in […]
Alone, Together: Memory and Death in a Pandemic
“You’re lucky, then, that your mom died before all this began,” my friend said. “At least you got to be […]
Dead Babies in Boxes: Dealing with the Consequences of Interrupted Reproduction
One morning in June 2019, two city workers in Lyon, France, pulled a plastic bag out of the river that […]
Burying the Dead, and Then Digging Them Up
About a week after my partner Clayton was murdered in 2015, I went back to his gravesite with one of […]
News from the Dead
On December 14, 1650, 22-year old Anne Greene was led up the gallows in Oxford. She had been charged with […]