I have come up with a solution to the ever growing problem of running out of space at the cemetary. Half price plots for a vertical mount.
In all seriousness, people who do not wish to be cremated, get buried, I am guessing the average casket is about 3x3x10, and occupies 3x10 of the land. Why cant we we put the caskets in vertically, and get that to a 3x3, seems to make sense to me. No one ever sees the casket getting dropped in anyway, and even if it were only for show, behind the scenes, we could just stand them upright. I think this would save at least 50% of the land we use for this now.
Is there any place doing this now, or am I just way off base here?
This idea was mentioned in Battlefield Earth. The tribe that Johnny Goodboy Tyler was part of were running out of burial space, and there was a lot of dissent over whether it was disrespectful to bury the dead standing up or not.
The logics of hole digging make it much harder to dig a 3x3x10’ hole. Also, after “six feet” down, all the dirt will probably be clay or other difficult to shovel type of soil
Current US Military cemetaries (like Ft. Snelling here in Minnesota) allow up to 2 family members to be buried in a single plot. They are ‘stacked’, with the first coffin buried deeper, and then the 2nd one eventually buried above that.
There is a grave on the Isles Of Scilly in England, which holds a man buried standing up. From what I remember of its history, he was a minister on the islands, and he wanted to have a head start on Resurrection Day. He figured that everyone else would have to get to their feet but he’d be ready standing! The only trouble is that the Islands are very rocky, and the soil is not deep, so he could only be buried about chest deep. The rest of him is covered by a hollow slate headstone shaped like a box and banded with metal to keep it shut. It’s date is 17something but I haven’t looked at it in 20 years so can’t remember any more details.
In one of Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ books it describes how the Bene Gesserit (sp?) bury their dead upright with no casket and then plant a tree on top of them. Circle of life kinda thing.
Er, no, Romani (Gypsy) people are not buried standing up.
The ‘Bury me standing, I’ve been on my knees all my live’ proverb - which is quoted in and used as the title of the book Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey by Isabel Fonseca - is a referring to being opressed.
