Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1890 — Skeletons Resurrected. [ARTICLE]

Skeletons Resurrected.

A correspondent .gives a thrilling account of the method of exhibiting disinterred corpses in vogue at the Cemetery of the Capneini at Palermo. The earth there—powdered tuff rock—has the property of so hastening decomposition that within a year bodies are reduced to skin and bones, somewhat like mummies. Then they are clothed and displayed in rows by the “piety" of suiviving* kindred. The visitor descends a flight of stairs into a well-lit corridor. Corpses stand on either Bide of the passage, brushing your sleeve ns you walk. Some keep their coffins, but a glazed or wired side or lid shows you another version of the same grim spectacle. Few of the men are clothed in anything but the monk’s uniform. The biretti of the priests are sometimes tilted tipsily over the noseless faces; sometimes jauntily over the eyeless eye orbits. Some bodies have been regularly embalmed. These poor shades are ticketed, like the blind beggars who parade the streets of London, and their names and death dates figure on their placards. Undoubtedly the ugliest of the sights is the ladies’ gallery. Corpse worship here has prompted rreaks of burlesque millinery, sucii as the trimming of vacant skulls with deep frills of lace. One poor shade lay in purple silk. A young lady’s mummy was adorned with a silver crown, fantastic shoes, open-work stockings and white kid gloves. Imagine coming to pay your devoirs to the ladies with whom you used to dance, to your hostess of former years, to the members of your family, to the wife of your bosom, and being received by these phantoms of grizzly bone! These bedizened skeletons! These rag-and-bone things aping humanity! It is too horrible!