Thomas Lynn Bradford

Transcription

We are in St Bonnet-le-Château, a Loire commune located about 60 miles from Lyon. This medieval village is 2854 ft high, and has an exceptional panorama. But the reason that brought me here is the unbelievable secret hidden under its collegiate church. The church of St Bonnet-le-Château contains splendid 15th-century murals, as well as a remarkable collection of ancient manuscripts in its library, but its most impressive treasure is underground, and is called « the mummies' vault ». The bodies in this vault have been accidentally discovered in 1837. They aren't strictly speaking mummies, but the arsenic and the alum in the ground have conserved them in a very good condition. For the sake of preservation, the vault is consequently not open to the public anymore, we were able to go exceptionally inside. But if you visit the church of St Bonnet, you will see the mummies through a window. The reason for their presence is a mystery : they were thought to be Black Death victims, or notables walled up alive by the cruel baron des Adrets, who massacred the village in 1562. But the carbon-14 datings have revealed that the bodies dated back to the 17th century. Nowadays, nobody still doesn't know neither who they are, nor why they are here. The reason why I choose to show you this place isn't only its extraordinary and unknown aspect, but also because it is a perfect introduction for the subject of this episode… In the West, our relationship with death is quite normalized. We are kept back from bodies, and we are spared every shock linked to the direct vision of a corpse, unless he has been prepared, and made up. But in some cultures, the approach is way more… radical. Take for example sky burials. This Tibetan practice involves placing a body in the mountains so that vultures come and take care of it. From our point of view, the tradition might seem disrespectful and cruel. But in a Buddhist perspective, this act is meaningful : as the soul has reincarnated, the dead body is only an empty shell, and the best way to recycle it is to get another form of life. To be specific, vultures. Another spectacular ritual is the Famadihana, or « turning of the bones ». In this habit used by the tribes of Madagascar, the dead are exhumed, then they are wrapped in a white cloth before dancing around the grave. Once the celebrations are over, the deceased are buried again, before starting over 7 years later. The ceremony is supposed to allow souls reaching the beyond, which, according to the Madagascan beliefs, can only happen once the body is totally decomposed. Concerning the conviviality, the Toraja from Indonesia go even further. During the Ma’nene, a ceremony which takes place every year in August, Torajan families exhume the bodies of their relatives to wash, groom, and dress them with new clothes. Then, the dead are walked around the village, as in an exotic version of The Walking Dead. Through this practice, the Toraja show the affection they have for the deceased, considered as members of the family in their own right. Funeral rites are a very important part of the Toraja culture, and they have other remarkable characteristics : the coffins, for instance, can be placed balanced on a cliff side. This impressive habit is specific to Southeast Asia, and it is also possible to see it in the Philippines, or even in the south of China. But the most distinctive Torajan graves are directly carved into rock, and they have small balconies on which are laid dolls in the image of the deceased. Called Tau Tau, these dolls have the difficult task to represent the dead, guard their coffins, and protect the living. Finally, the Toraja have a unique tradition to honour the children who died in infancy : they put them inside a tree trunk. The bodies are then absorbed by the tree, and the children souls are wafted by the wind. The ritual I'm going to talk about now may come straight from a 1970s Italian horror movie, but it is very real. For several centuries, the Anga from Papua-New-Guinea use a unique method of mummification : they smoke their dead. Yes. Like some ham. This rare privilege is reserved for the bravest warriors of the tribe, because the process is long and complex. First you have to drain fat thanks to hollowed-out bamboo poles, then seal all the orifices of the body. The deceased is then smoked in a great bonfire, before being covered with red clay. Apart from the technique, what distinguishes the Anga mummies from the traditional ones is that they aren't placed in the tombs at all. Instead, they are perched on big wooden structures placed on moutainside. In this way, even dead, the warriors can watch the village below, and protect the inhabitants. The conservation process is so efficient that some mummies have standed guard for more than 200 years. Speaking of mummies, there is a practice so rare and so astonishing that no more than twenty or so examples are listed throughout history. The Sokushinbutsu are Buddhist monks who deliberately mummified themselves to reach enlightenment. This practice has only been noticed in the north of Japan, and it only concerns the disciples of Shingon buddhism. To become Sokushinbutsu, the monks had a drastic diet : during several years, they mainly ate seeds, barks or even pine needles to remove every fat of their body. Then, they were buried alive in a stone tomb, only with a bamboo pipe to breathe, and a bell they rang everyday to signal they were still alive. When the bell stopped ringing, the tomb was completely sealed, before being opened again three years later to check if the process had succeeded. Most of the time, it was a failure, so the tomb was definitively closed. But on some rare occasion, the monks had naturally mummified, and in that case they were exhibited, and venerated like buddhas. Between the 12th and the 20th centuries, only 24 Sokushinbutsu have been numbered. Nowadays, it is possible to see a couple in some temples of Yamagata Prefecture. To brighten up this quite macabre thematic, I offer you to go for a short walk… In a cemetery. In some Scottish graveyards, you can see strange cages set over the tombs. According to a legend, they have been put there for fear of vampires getting out of their coffins. But the truth may be even more frightening : in the 18th century, medical schools in United-Kingdom were lacking dead bodies for their anatomy courses, and they started to hire body snatchers to supply them. The authorities turned a blind eye, because the aim of these thefts was to drive science forward, but because of the growing number of schools, the desecration of graves became a flourishing business. People looked for solutions to protect their dead, and in 1816 were created mortsafes, some heavy iron cages solidly fixed on the tombs. The cages were removed after a couple of weeks, once the bodies were too much decomposed to be stolen, but some of them have been left until today. For instance you can see some in the Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh. This kind of protection would be totally useless in the Neptune Memorial Reef of Key Biscayne in Florida because it is the only underwater cemetery in the world. Opened in 2007, and designed by artist Kim Brandell, this underwater necropolis is at a depth of 40 feet. There are monumental sculptures such as arches, columns, or lions, in which the ashes of the deceased have been included. More than a cemetery, it is a memorial where divers can come and explore, and whose goal is to become a sanctuary for the deceased but also for the marine life. Because with its 16 acres area, the Memorial Reef is the largest man-made reef in the world. The cemetery of Evergreen, in Vermont, is much more classic, but is has at least one very surprising tomb. The tomb of Timothy Clark Smith, a doctor dead in the 19th century who suffered from taphephobia : the fear of being buried alive. To make sure that his nightmare never becomes a reality, Smith had a window put at the top of his tomb, 6 ft far from his face, so that people could check if he was really dead. Finally he was buried in 1893, and everything went well. Nowadays, it is still possible to look through the window to make sure Smith did not wake up, but because of condensation and the age of the glass, nothing is left to watch except the tomb's darkness… In Natchez cemetery, in Mississipi, the tomb of Florence Irene Ford hides a quite similar story, but much more tragic. Florence was a young girl very afraid of thunder, and who died of yellow fever at the age of 10 years old, in 1871. Her mother, devastated and grieving, had a window set on her daughter's coffin, to see her face. She also asked for the construction of a small space next to the coffin, with a staircase to get down there, to be able to console her daughter on thunderstorm nights. An iron trapdoor was placed above the stairs to protect the mother from rain, and you can still open it nowadays. On the other hand, it is not possible anymore to see Florence's coffin : a wall has been built at the foot of the stairway in the 1950s to prevent curious people from bothering the young girl. The devotion of this mother is overwhelming, but a certain Jonathan Reed went even further. When his wife, Mary, died in 1893, he squarely decided to move in with her in her tomb. Reed settled in the vault where the coffin of his wife was, and he brought furniture, a wood-burner, paintings, a card game, and even the family's parrot. When the rumour spread, onlookers started to converge, and it is believed around 7000 people came and visited Jonathan as soon as the first year. According to witnesses, Jonathan couldn't believe that his wife was really dead, and he regularly spoke with her, convinced she understood what he said. He was found unconscious on the vault's ground in May 1905, and he since lies beside his beloved. The mystery I am going to talk you about now may also be linked to a love story. In the old Freiburg cemetery, in Deutschland, you can see the stunning grave of a young lady dead in 1867, Caroline Christine Walter. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 17 years old, and her sister had a superb recumbent statue carved which represents her asleep with a book in her hand. A few days after the funeral of Caroline, her sister noticed that fresh flowers were regularly placed on her tomb. Years went by, and the grave was still flowered without anyone knowing by who. One of the theories is that one of Caroline's teachers had madly fallen in love with her, and that he spent his life grieving. Where the mystery deepens, it is that Caroline died more than 140 years ago, and someone keeps putting flowers on her tomb, again and again. Has the secret visitor asked to his descendants to take over him ? The mystery remains unsolved. In any case, on every morning, no matter it rains or snows, there is a flower on the tomb of Caroline Christine Walter. It is difficult to broach a subject like death without speaking about what's next. In 1921, a certain Thomas Lynn Bradford wanted to resolve the issue once and for all. This occultism enthousiast was convinced that science would end up proving the existence of the afterlife, and he decided to contribute in the most radical way which exists : he locked himself in his Detroit flat, and he turned on the gas. But committing suicide was only the first step, he still had to be able to share his hereafter experience with the living world. A few weeks before his suicide, Bradford had signed an agreement with a certain Ruth Doran, that he had recruited thanks to a newspaper ad : If there was a life after death, he would do everything possible to let Doran know. Unfortunately, a few days after the death of Bradford, the New York Times run as a headline « Dead Spiritualist Silent ». Even though the question of afterlife remains to be answered, it is certain that you can still explore new career opportunities after your death. For instance you can help the FBI resolving investigations. I swear you. You just need to join a body farm. The first body farm has been founded in 1980 by Dr. William Bass to precisely study the decomposition of corpses. It is a huge fenced site near the University of Tennessee on which there are dozens of more or less fresh bodies, in a large variety of situations. So not really the best spot for a picnic. But thanks to body farms, it is possible to estimate way more precisely the time of death in criminal cases among other things. Today, there are 5 complexes of this kind across the United States, which are regularly visited by FBI agents. If you prefer the mountain air, you can also transform yourself into a land mark on the Everest. The highest summit in the world is also one of the most dangerous, and more than 200 people died trying to climb it. Oxygen lack, coldness, falls, the possibilities for kicking the bucket are numerous, so much that the Everest is nowadays covered with bodies. One of its areas has even earned the nickname of “Rainbow Valley”, because of the colourful anoraks you can see along the route. As it is dangerous, expensive and complicated to go and get them, the dead bodies remain on site, perfectly conserved by the mountainous climate. Some of them have been there for decades, such as the English mountaineer Georges Mallory, declared missing in 1924 and found during an expedition in 1999. Others have become complete landmarks for the climbers, like Tsewang Paljor, better known under the name of “Green Boots”. This Indian mountaineer had sheltered in a small cave in 1996, but coldness never let him go. When climbers see his lying down silhouette and his famous green boots, they know they aren't far from the summit. Finally, if you aim even higher, the spatial exploration reaches you out. Since 1997, the Celestis company offers several types of spatial burials : in exchange for some thousands of dollars, your ashes can be put into orbit around the Earth, or the Moon, and for the most adventurous, they can even travel across the universe for eternity. The advantage of this latter option is that it gives you a slight chance to be picked up by an extraterrestrial civilization who will possibly be able to reconstitute you. Several personnalities have been eligible for spatial burials, such as Gene Rodenbderry, the Star Trek creator, or Timothy Leary, icon of the American counterculture. But the most remarkable case is probably Clyde Tombaugh one : in 1997, the ashes of this astronomist have been sent towards Pluto aboard the space probe New Horizons. The probe will reach its destination in July 2015, so Clyde Tombaugh will meet the dwarf planet he had himself discovered in 1930, namely 85 years earlier. Among every people we have talked about, and among every human being in history, he is the one whose remains are the farthest from the Earth. This episode is now over, I thank you for crossing the Styx banks with me, and I take this opportunity to announce you I will be at the ENS Lyon on April 6th for the Vulgarizators conference, at the Strasbourg Neocast on May 16th-17th, at the Geek Faeries on June 5th-7th, and at the Video City Paris on June 27th-28th. It is now time to get back to the world of the living. See you soon !