Burial Box
Burial boxes are already mentioned and described to some extent in the article about funeral traditions, but there is still more to be said about them. Their origin long predates the apocalypse, and their history is more than terrifying. Now, far from their gruesome origins, burial boxes have changed alot in their use and symbolism.
History of burial boxes and the quastionable treatment of the dead
It’s nearly impossible to track down when this tradition started but it was spread all over the world in the times right before the apocalypse. These old burial boxes were much larger than the ones today, and the reason for this is terrifyingly gruesome, to say the least.
You see, in the past people treated their dead quite differently. While today we let the dead freely pass on to the afterlife, people in the past for whatever reason weren’t too keen on this idea. This resulted in many souls remaining trapped in the world of the living in the form of ghosts or similar apparitions. These burial boxes were exactly how they kept them here. The boxes would range from big enough to fit in a whole person, to smaller vase-like vessels, called urns. The large ones would be able to hold the whole body of a dead person, but it wasn’t as easy to fit a whole person in these smaller urns. As horrifying as it may sound, many are convinced that the people would straight up burn their dead, until nothing more than a pile of ashes was left. This, of course, would be much easier to fit into an urn. Most of these burial boxes would be buried in the ground, but some of the urns were kept in people’s homes, for whatever reasons. I guess they couldn’t have freely escaped to the afterlife now that they were nothing more than a pile of ashes.
Regardless of the reasons for ancient people’s obsession with keeping their dead in the world of the living, they let themselves be creative with their burial boxes. Some of them were simpler, while some more expensive ones were ornately carved. On the inside, they would be lined with silk and the dead would even have the luxury of a pillow under their head. Not that this helps you much when you’re confined to this tight box for the rest of the eternity. This is another thing about these burial boxes - they were big enough to hold a person, but just barely. You couldn’t do much of anything down there except lie still in complete darkness.
However, it didn’t always seem to be so. In much more ancient times, the most wealthy and important people in particular would get entire burial chambers where they would store all the necessities one might need in the afterlife, but the living didn’t seem to like this idea too much and it has almost completely fallen out of favor later. At some point in time they did equip burial grounds with bells connected to the burial boxes, so the dead could ring them, and be let out if they needed or wanted to. But this seems to have been too much of a luxury too, and at some point people would just bury their dead and leave them here for good. Even more, many would even put iron cages on top of the graves of the dead to keep them from ever getting out again. There have been some reports of occasional people keeping their dead in their homes, or even digging them out and bringing them back home, and letting them live in their homes, but these were heavily frowned upon.
The reasons for these barbaric traditions aren’t fully understood today, but everyone can agree that the burial boxes themselves were always an interesting and often beautiful item that intrigues people to this day.
Burial Boxes Today
Today, of course, people would never confine their dead into a box and bury them underground. Even serial killers that live near Haunted Forest and bury their victims there only bury them in shallow graves with no boxes involved. That way they can still dig themselves out and escape to Hell or the nearby Graveyard. But this is a whole other can of worms. For people who died fair and square, their loved ones still like to get burial boxes.
These are first and foremost noticeably smaller than those of the past. Similar to the ones from the past though, they are more or less intricately decorated or carved, depending on how much money the family has. They do come in different sizes as well, but none of them exceed about 25cm of width. They are wooden and lined on the inside with fabric. These materials as well depend on how much money the family of the loved one has.
The exact function and contents of these, is very much unknown and usually kept as a secret. As obviously no one will shut their dead in there, families are very much free to do what they want with these boxes. A lot of the time they will put into the box something that reminds them of their loved ones, some of their favorite items, or maybe some things their dead loved one might need, should they come back from Hell and have to make their way back home from the Graveyard. This might be items such as a small snack, some money, maybe even a paper bird that the person can send out to their family, to come and pick them up.
These boxes are often buried in the graveyard, next to the person’s cross, left near their grave, but sometimes the family will fill the box with things to remind them of their dead loved ones and keep it in their home. Whatever they decide to do is a very private affair and no one outside the family is to know what the family did with the box. If they got a burial box to begin with. Since more often than not the dead will still return from Hell, a lot of the time there is no need for a burial box to begin with. On the other hand, this is also the reason why some may even end up with more than one burial box of their own. There are no specific rules, and no telling what people might do with their burial boxes.
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