Corpse brides, and other strange things people do with dead bodies

[Kathryn Lilley]

Call me morbid (which you kinda have to be when you’re a mystery writer), but I was fascinated to read an article put out by CNN, which describes all the strange things people do with dead bodies.

Corpse brides and ghost marriages

In China, there is an old practice of providing “ghost marriages” between women and deceased bachelors. I gather the practice got started so that no woman would have to die as a spinster (no way to verify the rumor that some women preferred to marry dead guys so that they’d escape a fate of faked headaches and arguments over the dinner table with breathing spouses.).

After nearly dying out during the cultural revolution, ghost marriages have recently come back into vogue, but evidently with a new, more prurient purpose. In a country that’s chronically short of women, the practice is now aimed at making sure that dead bachelors are…ahem…satisfied in the afterlife. Tales have been told of people killing prostitutes and other unfortunate women so that these men will get some nooky in the netherworld.

Read the rest of the post and get link to original article at Killer Hobbies:
http://killerhobbies.blogspot.com/2008/05/corpse-brides.html