Customer Reviews

Cemetery Stories

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Cemetery Stories is a ghoulishly fun read but scattershot of focus. Ramsland is very good at wandering about, talking to people whom she encounters, but not so good at in-depth research. There are no real facts in this book about the handling of bodies, decomposition, or the funeral industry that couldn't be found online or in reference books. There are no historic cases mentioned that haven't been trotted out on TV or in print a dozen times before. The bulk of the new material in the book is "I have this friend who said..." stories that may be true, but mostly sound like urban legends.

The upshot: if you know nothing about the topic, you'll definitely have your eyes opened and probably a good giggle, too. If you are looking for anything other than a romp, this isn't the book to choose.

I'm very interested in books about funeral practices and cemeteries in general, but this book fell way too short to be worth while. Any technical information presented was glossed over by the author. Most of her interviews with people in the death care business remained annonomous, which to me means that its not a credible account unless you can prove it came from a credible source. In fact, almost all of her "ghost stories" came from unidentified people, lacking in either the location of the cemetery or time period, which does make for good fiction, but I was hoping for something more substantial. Its evident throughout the book that there wasn't enough research done on the topics presented and broad generalizations and unreliable accounts are used to fill in the gaps. The one topic the author seems to take too much time with is Necrophilia. The accounts presented in this section border on pornographic. There is no need for the detail the author went into on this subject. Overall, it apperars that the author began her research hoping to find twisted stories and individuals that would confirm her immage of the death care business as it is portrayed in The Comedy of Terrors. And when she finds that needle in the haystack, she grasps on to it as if it confirms all her misguided beliefs. My suggestion is, if your interested in these topics, skip this book and grab Stiff, by Mary Roach. You'll find no twisted deliusions there, just a well researched, well writen book on the life of a human cadaver. I've read both books, and I could have definately done without this one. -Amanda R.

Though not a book for the squeamish, it is a nonetheless engrossing work on the business of death. Ms. Ramsland wanted to know about a subject that no one really likes to think about, so she went to the experts, from morticians to funeral directors to cemetery caretakers. She touched on everything from buying the "right" coffin, to whether or not to creamate, to tracing the writings on gravestones. Being a ghosthunter, I especially enjoyed her sharing the experience she had in a allegedly haunted cemetery, and I was touched as well by the story of how her and some friends celebrated the Day of The Dead in Mexico.
I'm sure there are people who would read this book with a cocked eyebrow, but those people would be finishing it perhaps a little more informed. I know I learned quite a bit from it!

I am a former Death care worker, and I bought this hoping to hear some of the same tales we all told. Well, all of us in death care know there are creeps out there that mistreat corpses, but to write about all of it in the open market where kids could read it is too much. Some of the people in this book that Katherine wrote about should have been prosecuted. Necrophilia of the most physical kind...not the witchy talking to the dead....is a most mature subject matter,objectionable even. The people that participate in corpse abuse, mutilation or sexual acts, are mentally ill or evil or both. If you buy this book, and it has some interesting tales and some fact, don't leave it around for young people. Thanks, Dawn.

This is a rambling collection of anecdotes. It really doesn't cover anything very well, just drifts superficially from topic to topic. There are accounts of necrophilia and necromancy that are gross, pornographic, and unedifying. Keep this book away from your kids. And don't read it while eating.

I didn't expect this book to give me a play by play description of how to embalm a body or cremate a corpse. I also didn't expect this to be an extension of Jessica Mitford's rip on the funeral industry. I didn't expect this to be an unending series of ghost stories. I expected random stories that delved into the often strange and sometimes humorous happenings that occur in funeral homes and cemeteries. I expected to hear stories that have their roots in what is commonly called "gallows humor". And I got exactly what I expected.
Some of the stories were short and moderately interesting, some had me guessing such as who the actress is who is buried in a pet cemetery by her pooch (and not by her husband). A few had me cringeing such as the thought of a less than professional embalmer wielding a wanton trocar like a headhunter jabbing a spear around. Some stories even had me laughing. And one story even featured the ever quirky and wonderful Shelley Winters.
The best part of this book was that it kept me reading. I took it to the health club and pumped away on a health cycle and read, read, read. I couldn't put the darn thing down. After I finished reading it, the book made it through my small circle of friends. Five people out of five gave it high marks.

As a student considering Mortuary School, I have been hoarding everything and anything relating to death and the Funeral Sciences. I must say, after reading this book I am truly disappointed with the authors superficial focus.
Ms. Ramsland comes off like a true rubbernecker, only looking for the gruesome and gore, hoping to find horrible stories relating to the Funeral Industry. She seems to have no real interest in the science or sociology of the the subject at hand, but rather regurgitating old stories I have heard since I was 8. The latter part of the book speaks of Necrophilia with such a light manner, all I thought when I set the book down was "it figures".
This book is a rather mind numbing one and would be great to share at a 16 year old's slumber party. This author is nothing more than a voyeur peeking through the windows of the mortuary. Ooooh, how totally spooky.(sigh)

Katherine Ramsland has written about death, darkness, and the unknown before. She has, among other things, written biographies about Dean Koontz and the "queen of vampires" Anne Rice, investigated ghost phenomena, and produced a thorough exposé of the secret vampire scene in New York.

In other words; Ramsland is no beginner. She's a skilled writer, she's proven this again and again, however, Cemetery Stories is a low-water mark in her career. It's simply not a very good book.

Still, the topic in itself is perfectly fine. What is life like to a mortician and other members of the "death business", what really happens to a body that has been dead for days or weeks, how happens during an embalming, what's with man's fascination with death, what are some of the most famous ghost stories ever told; these things and much more are brought up to discussion.

But, throughout the entire book the overall perspective is very brief, and while reading one continually feels that there must be more to the stories, things that should and could be told, but are left out. It's very much written for an American audience - who have very different traditions compared to Sweden when it comes to open caskets, funeral homes, and other things of that matter (for instance, only 30% of Americans choose cremation) - but since the topic is global, then there is, in theory, a global audience as well. Too bad the book doesn't feel thoroughly done.

Put another way, there's a lot of potential, but that's all there is. Many of the stories told by Ramsland, stories she's been told by sources or looked up herself, will almost bore you to death, and more or less all her reports of haunted cemeteries or living dead are both pointless and most of all boring, because they all sound like your ordinary urban legend.

At the end of the book Ramsland starts talking about necromancy and necrophilia, but just as the book starts turning interesting it's finished. Considering all the energy devoted earlier in the book to pointless ghost stories, one could only hope Ramsland would spend as much energy on actual phenomena, but no. Instead she chooses to leave the reader high and dry.

The cover is beautiful, the topic interesting, the ambition admirable; but still, it's first and foremost a huge disappointment.

And finally, when Ramsland chooses to analyze traditional urban legends with the attitude "This type of incident has been reported so many times there's no reason to think it does not happen," (p. 174), it really makes one think how skilled she is in critical thinking.

I read this book in a matter of days because it really struck my curiosity from the get-go. Yes, it was filled with very interesting facts about the funeral industry, alot of macabre and eerie stories (even a horrid true story of necrophilia that I surely could have done without). Ms. Ramsland surely does take you to places and scenarios that few have gone to before. Yet I find her approach to be very disrespectful, most especially when she implies that an obese person's corpse looked like a whale and did not seem human. It's sentences like these that add the sourness to the book. Overall I would recommend the book to those that are extremely curious about the eerie and not so pleasent aspect of death, yet I would caution that most of the subjects that were not so cleverly compilled in this book are things that its just better we not know about.

What a dissapointment, the writing is so bland and poor in this mediocre book I could barely get through it. After reading Stiff by Mary Roach, there is simply no comparison. The sentences in Cemetery Stories are choppy, the writing is bland and boring and nothing is cited so when you do find something interresting in the book, it ends there. Forget this book and read Stiff instead, a much more interresting and rewarding read.