Anxious Walks & Spirit Channeling | 4M #155

Welcome to the hundred-and-fifty-fifth edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #155, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!

These parents need to be schooled

A UK funeral home looking to open a new location is facing opposition from a high school that doesn’t want it as a neighbor. While parents brought up parking concerns during “peak times” (to which the funeral home responded with a solid plan to avoid issues), it seems the real issue is the potential anxiety the location could cause to their children as they walk by. One parent told a news outlet, “I have two children attending this school and a business of this nature is likely to cause anxiety for them walking past it every day and subsequently cause anxiety about going to school.”

Did you know?

Well, you probably did know … or at least suspected, but now you have proof. According to the U.S. Money Reserve, funeral workers, proofreaders, and school bus monitors are the fields with the greatest percentage of workers age 65 and older in the United States. Overall, though, that’s not so surprising, as the total number of workers in this age group has doubled since the mid-1980s.

Death and candy corn

There’s a reason plastic pumpkins and kids’ Halloween costumes appear on the shelves of your local big-box stores in August. It’s because of something called “mortality salience.” Basically, as one marketing expert explained, when fall approaches, people start thinking more about death … and apparently, this makes them want to shop. “The theory is that we buy more as a compensatory mechanism for the fear of dying,” says Daniele Mathras, an associate professor of marketing at Northeastern University. “The changing of the seasons and end of summer is one of those time periods where mortality is salient, so retailers may benefit by reminding us fall is here early.” Who knew?

Firestarter

An Arkansas woman who provided to police the name “God” as one of her aliases, has been charged with public drinking and obstruction after trying to start a fire in a cemetery to “channel the spirits.” She came to the graveyard prepared for a long seance, as police found her “sitting slumped forward in the back of the cemetery next to the tree line with food, an open beer container, a marijuana container and other belongings.” 

Not-so-permanent memorialization

Officials in one Oklahoma city have obtained possession of a deteriorating mausoleum and plan to relocate its approximately 220 residents. Shawnee, Oklahoma authorities have tried to reach the mausoleum’s board for years, with no response, so they took a legal route to gain ownership of the formerly privately-owned facility, which is literally falling apart due to a lack of maintenance. They were also awarded access to the remaining balance of the facility’s perpetual care fund of around $30k, which hopefully will help to defray the costs of the transfer to a new location, which they haven’t yet determined.

Keanuisimmortal?

Actor Keanu Reeves recently made news (including in Connecting Directors) after mentioning in an interview that he thinks about death “all the time.” That quote probably wasn’t as newsworthy for a certain group of fans, though. It seems that there is a community out there promoting the conspiracy theory that Keanu Reeves is immortal. There’s even a website with the same name dedicated to the idea. The theory stemmed from a Reddit post that found Reeves’ appearance similar to several historic figures and suggested that he is either immortal or has been continuously reincarnated. They also point to Reeves’ generosity, choice of roles, and openness to discuss death for support.