Scary! This will make hairs stand on end
 

http://www.forteantimes.com/articles...reserved.shtml

Of all the stuff you read about in religion, this phenomenon is really creepy. It's one of those weird things that you can see for yourself if you live in one of the areas. I mean REALLY FUCKING CREEPY SHIT!

Sorry if you have nightmares.

yes very creepy

too long!

damn, too long too read, can you just highlight and post the creepy part ;-)

i agree too

Lazy bums! It's a story about a phenomenon where people who are buried and their bodies don't decay. There are irrefutable bodies of saints who didn't decay or decayed a little bit even without embalming. Pics are on the site.

The first thing i read was that they were embalmed? And anyway anyone who watches A&E 40million murder shows knows every time they dig some putz up the first thing they say is "This person were remarkably preserved"...

These bodies are never embalmed by modern or even conventional methods. We're not talking about "remarkably well-preserved" meaning he still has hair and teeth ... we're talking about instances like Sainte Bernadette where her skin is still soft. She looks like she just stretched out for a nap, I kid you not.

Here's a pic --
http://mike.friese.com/pilgrimage/paris/bernaut.html

I'm an agnostic, but even I find this an interesting phenomenon. Possibly a physical explanation, but intriguing when you consider most of these saints were healers.

(I bet this is the weirdest hit the guys at friese.com have ever received)

Might have something to do with the fact they are buried in marble slab crypts.

Cliff Notes please...

Nonononoooo. If you read the story you'ld have seen where many of these people were buried in wooden caskets that rotted away or in some cases buried in mud or peat. The caskets and clothes rotted away but the bodies were remarkably preserved.

It's very, very weird.

interesting read.

"Another extraordinary saint is Blessed Margaret of Metola. Margaret was a blind dwarf, hunchbacked and lame, but that didn?t stop her from living a life of heroic service to the poor. She died in 1330, but in 1558 her remains had to be transferred because her coffin was rotting away. At the exhumation, witnesses were amazed to find that like the coffin, the clothes had rotted, but Margaret?s crippled body hadn?t. With typical understatement, Cruz reports: "The body of Blessed Margaret, which has never been embalmed, is dressed in a Dominican habit, and lies under the high altar of the Church of St Domenico at Citta-di-Castello, Italy. The arms of the body are still flexible, the eyelashes are present, and the nails are in place on the hands and feet. The colouring of the body has darkened slightly and the skin is dry and somewhat hardened, but by all standards the preservation can be considered a remarkable condition, having endured for over six hundred and fifty years.""

Her hands and face have a layer of wax, this is just hype!

cliff notes?

Creepy.

:2 cents:

>Might have something to do with the fact they are buried in marble slab crypts.

Bernadette was buried in a pauper's grave -- basically the 1879 equivalent of a shovel and a Hefty bag. lol

BTW, there are eastern mystics whose bodies haven't rotted away either, so it's a religiously neutral phenomenon. That may be one explanation, though ... this may be something that happens all the time, but we only notice it in religious figures because we venerate their bodies.

That said, it still doesn't explain why Bernadette with no modern embalming looks like this: http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/stb06003.jpg

And an infant cadaver from only 90 years ago looks like this:
http://www.local6.com/2006/0424/8956892.jpg

At last, my college major cultural anthropology has some bearing on my actual livelihood. :helpme

strange occurrences,
but sometimes more strange things happen.

crazy story.... makes you think...

such things are all around, just meny people do not believe it untill they see it!

what if he asked to do something with him when he would die? And they did and that is whay his body was alright in 37 years?