6

Everyone Would Have Panicked That They'd Buried You Alive

After the Middle Ages, science and medicine swooped in and took a lot of the mystery out of death -- like how it's totally natural to poop yourself and not, say, God pulling one final prank on you for being such a dickhead. Eventually, people stopped being worried they'd wake up in their graves as an undead monster ... and started being worried they'd wake up in their graves, realize they're still alive, and die screaming for help.

In the 1800s, the world lived in fear of two things: the wrath of MechaNapoleon, and the horror of having been accidentally buried alive. The latter can be blamed on a cholera epidemic that was ravaging Western society and was capable of putting people into dead-esque comas. It was such a popular fear of the times, even Edgar Allan Poe got in on the action and penned The Premature Burial, which was a massive hit -- and only made things worse. As a result, a cottage industry popped up promising families that they'd be taken care of should they wind up buried earlier than they planned. One development was a range of coffins that allowed not-dead residents to signal for rescue, such as this model which made use of a bell-and-string system.

Franz Vester "Yeah, that's pretty great, but do you have anything with a loudspeaker?"

Another design had shaft that allowed groundskeepers and priests to regularly peer at your interred face. If they noticed that you weren't decomposing as expected, they'd summon a rescue party immediately.

Three Lions/Stringer/Getty Images This guy's will stated that the shaft should be pointed at his shaft instead.

5

Widows Could Be Forced Into Ritual Suicide After Their Husbands' Deaths

This might come as a big surprise to some, but past societies haven't been all that kind to women, especially widows. No longer having a husband to serve like he's too precious to wipe his own asshole, these women were often seen as useless by their community. They might as well leap onto their man's funeral pyre and save everyone the hassle. No, seriously.

Get on the fucking pyre.

Wiki Commons "The you, the you, the you is on pyre."

Widow suicide, also known as sati, was extremely popular in India up until the 18th century. The most common form of sati was burning to death on your husband's funeral pyre, although other methods did exist, including being buried alive with his corpse, and drowning.

4

Dying In A Disaster Meant Someone Would Sing A Vaudeville Song About It

Disasters seem to bring out extremes in people: some will run into a burning building to save a child, others will run into a burning building to loot a $100 stereo. Of course, we're here to talk about the latter, the type of humanity that only sees death and destruction as another way to make a quick buck. And now, those dickheads have their own music genre.

3

Mimes Would Mock You At Your Own Funeral

There's a time and place for comedy -- and none of them involve a funeral. That's why not even Louis CK could sell out Arlington Cemetery. But the Romans had no time for this silly political correctness. According to them, the dead are there to be made fun of, preferably while their loved ones are still wearing black. And to make it extra humiliating, they left that job to the mimes.

Ljupco/iStock" ... "

In Ancient Rome, it was tradition for some douchebag mime to attend aristocratic funerals and perform scenes from the noble's life. The event would start with a funeral procession consisting of musicians, animals, and professional mourners, all led by a lookalike of the deceased. Once a sufficient amount of respect had been paid to the deceased, the lookalike would then throw off the toga of respectability and reveal their true role as the "funerary mime" or archimimus -- an actor who would, basically, roast the deceased on everything from their mannerisms to vocal patterns to accomplishments. And just to add insult to injury, they'd be doing this whilst wearing the deceased's clothes and a mask of their face.

Britannica.comLeatherface: The Musical!

2

Your Family Were Stuck With Awful Death Clothing

Traditionally, funeral garb has a pretty easy-to-follow dress code: all black, no cargo shorts. It isn't meant to be the height of fashion, just a way to show on the outside what you're feeling on the inside. But during the 19th century, the family was expected to dress for mourning not just during the funeral, but also for some time after, requiring mourners to cosplay as emo specters of death for anywhere up to two years.

Anna Ancher"Can we at least get this casket out of the heat?"

Upon hearing of a death, the entire family would be required to enter "deep mourning," a period where wearing black isn't just stylish, but mandatory. As time wore on, they then entered "'half mourning" which prescribed dark purple or green clothing trimmed with black, eventually culminating in leaving mourning altogether and tripping the sartorial light fantastic. The speed at which this took didn't depend on a family's devotion, but specifically on each family member's relationship to the deceased. For cousins, aunts, and general holidays-only blood relations, they'd only have to stay in mourning for six months. Children had to go for a full year. And for widows, a phenomenal two motherfucking years in deep mourning, followed by another six months of staying in half mourning.

But color wasn't everything. Just like the modern wedding industry, you were also expected to kit yourself and your family out with the latest de rigueur mortis fashions. It was such a thriving market that clothing boutiques would regularly travel to the continent and snatch up the hottest funeral-ready designs before their competitors.

Jay's "Jay's -- You'll die for our fashion!"

1

Your Family Would Pay A Poor Person To Go To Hell On Your Behalf

It used to be super hard to live a sinless life, and we don't mean that in a crazy hedonistic "looking at your neighbor's ankles" sense either. Hell, just thinking the word "hell" condemns you to one of the lower circles of the Inferno for blasphemy. (Sorry.) And woe betide you if you've ever eaten bacon-wrapped shrimp or gotten a tattoo. Christianity has mellowed a lot since those days, but to people in the 18th and 19th centuries, Hell wasn't just an abstract concept -- it was real and ugly and vicious and barrelling straight at them for the most minor of infractions. Enter the sin eater. When you were a little uneasy about your loved one's chances for Heaven, the sin eater was the guy you called to come over and literally eat their sins and go to Hell on their behalf.

Edward Lewes Cutts"You got any hot sauce?"

When someone passed, the family would place a piece of bread on their chest. The bread, which was said to "soak up" their sins, would then be eaten by the sin eater, commencing a Trading Places-like switch where he would take their spot in Hell, rooming with Vlad The Impaler, the no-plate-washing thermostat-adjusting dick.

And how much did it cost for rich dicks to buy their way out of Hell? An insultingly small amount. Sin eaters left the deceased's house with nothing but a few coins and the knowledge they were going to burn in Hell forever. That's why sin eaters were typically beggars who were on the brink of starvation, willing to eat any slice of bread no matter the filling. Most did not repeat the process too often, hoping they'd only absorbed some minor bathroom-related sins. Which is a shame. An atheist Medieval beggar could have led a sweet, carb-laden life exploiting the rich and paranoid.

Clker-Free-Vector-Images/Pixabay "My good sir, you have the look of a man with a few unsolved stabbings you'd like me to eat."

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