Even a neighbor who got into a fight with Davis over the gravesite - Davis said he punched the man - isn't comfortable with limiting what a homeowner can do with his property.

Okay, so wait until this guy is dead and the next owner of the property can move her.

Sim Tree: Humans in a funeral go through an embalming process first.

They don't have to; you can just keep the body on ice, as we did in the old days.

/embalming didn't become a thing until the Civil War, when bodies needed to be preserved to be shipped home from the battlefield.
//It's an environmental nightmare, even in cemeteries, and a practice we need to give or or at least reform.

brerrabbit: nekom: How do you just go ahead and bury someone wherever? How do you even get the body from the coroner/funeral home if you aren't a proper cemetery?

It's not a requirement in many states. As long as a death certificate is made out, the Coroner has no choice but to release the body to the next of kin.

Yes, I have legally buried friends and family buried on the property. Some folks have issues with 5000$ funerals.

We drove my grandfathers body from Colorado to Montana and buried it at his former ranch at the family plot. The body has to be prepared by the mortician to be transported but other than that they have no choice but to release the body. There are some permits/paperwork to transport the body accross state lines. It was a couple grand to pay somebody to move it and would have taken a couple weeks for the permits and paperwork so my uncle just put the coffin in his truck bed and threw a tarp over it. His logic was the ticket was probably the same cost as the permits and we wouldnt have to wait.

theorellior: If I was one of his neighbors I'd be a little worried about nasty decomposition fluids ending up in my well water.

There is a reason society regulates burials.

Sanitation people apparently said that's a non-issue. Besides, three years on, you're probably okay in any case.

I find it a little odd that I can bury any number of dead animals wherever I want on my property, but suddenly a human corpse is a health risk. I wouldn't think the decomposer bacteria in a dead human would be that much more dangerous than those in a dead pig, for example.

If I was one of his neighbors I'd be a little worried about nasty decomposition fluids ending up in my well water.

There is a reason society regulates burials.

Krymson Tyde: This is the neighboring town to the town I grew up in. This fellow applied for a permit to bury his wife in the front yard while his wife's body was in cold storage at the local funeral home. His request was denied and he was told no, you can't do that. Apparently he then convinced the funeral home that everything was cool and to bring the corpse on home.
Now there is this huge movement to just let her rest in peace, that the local government should stay out of it, never mind that he broke the law to begin with.
By the way, this is in a residential area, not in an isolated area.

I think that disinterring her now while the old guy is still alive would be pretty dickish and unnecessary thing to do.

Time will sort this one out.

elguerodiablo: The My Little Pony Killer: Even a neighbor who got into a fight with Davis over the gravesite - Davis said he punched the man - isn't comfortable with limiting what a homeowner can do with his property.

Yes, this neighbor is so uncomfortable with telling a homeowner what he can and cannot do on his property that he felt the need to get into a fistfight over it. Riiiight.

We're talking about the south here. Drunken, uneducated, churchies will usually end up in a fist fight over anything more advanced than saying hello.

Speaking of uneducated, South is capitalized

This technically is a .

I submitted this same story over three years ago with a funnier headline:

Man wants to bury his dead wife on family property. Neighbors okay with it. Health department okay with it. Town council: "Not yours"

ANNOYING NEIGHBORS: "You'll bring our property values down!"

HIM: "You do realize we all live in rural Alabama, right?"

I am siding with the old guy on this one.


Even if they moved the body he could build a "memorial" to his wife in the exact same spot, it could have a stone commemorating her and a flower bed over top, the town would have no issues with it and there would be nothing they could do about it. Suddenly you put a body underneath but maintain the exact same appearance there is a problem.


The town is stupid, that this is even in the news is stupid, and you're stupid.

kertus: theorellior: If I was one of his neighbors I'd be a little worried about nasty decomposition fluids ending up in my well water.

There is a reason society regulates burials.

You are aware that a body is organic... Right? That it becomes worm food?
Nothing is going to seep into any water supply further than about 6 feet away from the body.

Sort of like all the other insects, bugs, birds, animals that decompose in the soil.

What we have here is a fear of a zombie uprising. Nothing more.


Sorry buddy, but there's a reason why socieites all have rituals regarding burial. There's a reason why cemeteries were always far from the town. And in this case in particular, it appears she was embalmed. Now, to be honest, this one woman probably isn't going to affect anything. But if every house in that neighborhood was burying a loved one in the yard, I don't think you would want to drink the well water.

I want to be buried and have an apple tree planted over my remains.

I guess there's even a place that will do it to!

brerrabbit: nekom: How do you just go ahead and bury someone wherever? How do you even get the body from the coroner/funeral home if you aren't a proper cemetery?

It's not a requirement in many states. As long as a death certificate is made out, the Coroner has no choice but to release the body to the next of kin.

Yes, I have legally buried friends and family buried on the property. Some folks have issues with 5000$ funerals.

Count me among them. And there're 7 billion of us. We're going to have to stop treating land where corpses have been as sacrosanct. Might as well start now.

Sim Tree: Chinchillazilla: I find it a little odd that I can bury any number of dead animals wherever I want on my property, but suddenly a human corpse is a health risk. I wouldn't think the decomposer bacteria in a dead human would be that much more dangerous than those in a dead pig, for example.

Humans in a funeral go through an embalming process first. The embalming fluids can seep into local groundwater. If you're going to try for a 'natural' burial, tell the mortician ahead of time.

How often do people have a funeral home prep a body that isn't going to be buried by said funeral home? If you're getting the body straight from the coroner, it will not have been embalmed.

"We're not in the 1800s any longer," said city attorney Parker Edmiston.

Yep, you've made it all the way up to about 1950.

brerrabbit: Yes, I have legally buried friends and family buried on the property. Some folks have issues with 5000$ funerals.

Your grandma looks suspiciously like a large Italian man with bullet holes.

"Remember, Mrs. Farmer. Whenever you buy a house, whatever's in the ground belongs to you - whether it's gold or oil... or Claude Musselman."

When my wife dies, I'll probably just toss her on top of the pile of dead hookers in my crawl space.

Chinchillazilla: Sanitation people apparently said that's a non-issue. Besides, three years on, you're probably okay in any case.

Well, alrighty then. I guess the main problem here is what if the next homeowner doesn't want a gravesite on his property, but putting a lien on the property for reburial would take care of that.

The My Little Pony Killer: Even a neighbor who got into a fight with Davis over the gravesite - Davis said he punched the man - isn't comfortable with limiting what a homeowner can do with his property.

Yes, this neighbor is so uncomfortable with telling a homeowner what he can and cannot do on his property that he felt the need to get into a fistfight over it. Riiiight.

going and yelling at someone, even to the point of inciting a physical altercation, is not the same as calling for the state to come and stomp on them.

Holy crap people in Alabama are stupid.

But we knew that already.

Even a neighbor who got into a fight with Davis over the gravesite - Davis said he punched the man - isn't comfortable with limiting what a homeowner can do with his property.

Yes, this neighbor is so uncomfortable with telling a homeowner what he can and cannot do on his property that he felt the need to get into a fistfight over it. Riiiight.