N.H. Man Seeks Return Of Mummified Baby

[GlitchWizard]

i will try to explain the diffrence but may be unable to since i dumped my baby in the ground to rot. first it is a public health issue. a dead body rotting in your house is not healthy, even a small dead body. there is also the matter of respect. yes i know we take the skin and bone of dead animals to hang on our wall as a trophy. it is disrespectful to the animal and sorta gross but we do it. i wont debate if we should use dead animals for decoration but i will argue we should not use dead children as decoration. if this family wanted to be close to the baby they had kept around so long as anything other than a novilty they could have asked that it was cremated. speaking for myself the fact i buried my child does not mean i forgot it. i still send flowers regularly and visit the grave. not a day passes i do not remember my child despite the fact i did not place his body on a shelf and pass it around to the next lucky family member. had this child been placed in a small coffin and kept on the shelf i would think the family a bit odd maybe but not sick. to prop a corpse up on a shelf and give it a dead fish as a pet is sick no matter the age of the dead. have we realy come to devalue the life of a child so much that if a family wants to treat the body as a ornament we see that as ok? i guess the answer is yes if i was to go by what is seen in the crime forums daily.

No kidding about the crime forums - which may be why this is so far better to me than the violence we read about. The baby was mummified, so it wasn't rotting in their house... if it were, that would be completely different for me. I've seen family members of mine burried (not my choice), and think that's horrific - not that the other options are any better, mind you. It all sucks.

I'm donating myself (or my child if she preceeds me) to science. Has to be more interesting than being burried, and probably even cooler than being given a dead fish.

I apologize for not phrasing my views of burial more sensitively, earlier. I get stupid sometimes.

 

[sherri79]

I totally understand what you are saying Sherri, I am sorry for your loss. I do think this family is very odd but I do think they had the right to do with the body what they wanted if he truly was their relative. In Mexico they put the bodies in toombs and they come back every year and go in and place flowers with the body. It is left in the open. There are different cultures for different people. Egyptian mummies are on display in lots of museums. We have a museum here in Illinois called Dixon Mounds. It used to have Native American bones you could look at but the Native people were not happy about this and fought to have them buried, which was done. I really think it depends on your beliefs.

they visit the body in a open tomb not on the shelf in the hall. huge diffrence. i also would like to point out that they are not from a diffrent country that simply has a diffrent culture. they bury all their dead but this 1 child. thank you for your kind words over the loss of my son. this is a personal issue for me.

eta: as for mummies in a museum i see that as diffrent. the people who placed these dead on display do not claim to love the corpse as a family member. they feel no respect for the dead just for the history they represent.

 

[sherri79]

No kidding about the crime forums - which may be why this is so far better to me than the violence we read about. The baby was mummified, so it wasn't rotting in their house... if it were, that would be completely different for me. I've seen family members of mine burried (not my choice), and think that's horrific - not that the other options are any better, mind you. It all sucks.

I'm donating myself (or my child if she preceeds me) to science. Has to be more interesting than being burried, and probably even cooler than being given a dead fish.

I apologize for not phrasing my views of burial more sensitively, earlier. I get stupid sometimes.

the baby did not die and suddenly become a mummy. this childs body had to dry out and with out use of special equipment this would have took some time. ever smell a dead mouse? tiny little mouse can stink to high heaven. yet this child was kept somewhere as it slowly turned to a mummy. all options suck because they involve death and the decay in some form of a body. what makes me ill about this story is not that they decided to go with another option it is the lack of respect they seem to have for a dead child. the attitude shown was not "we loved this child so much we could not part with the body" but more along the lines of " kool, look at the odd thing i have to hand down. who cares if it is a kid. it is so neat." they even admit in the first artical the child might not even be a relative but since they have "owned" the body so long it is their property. no! it is a child despite the fact it is a neat mummy. i know you did not mean to offend in your earlier post and i am sorry that it upset me so much. i am just sick of how we treat children as property with no real value as a actual person.

 

[GlitchWizard]

... i am just sick of how we treat children as property with no real value as a actual person.

I know exactly what you mean here, and agree with you when we're talking about live babies. I truely hope you know that your child isn't in the ground. The child you love is somewhere else. I don't yet know where else, but someday you'll know and it will be alright because you'll be there, too.

 

[sweetmop]

There are weird people all around this country, for sure! This story borders on just plain sick to me. In fact I feel the same way sherri79 does!

I work with a lady who once told me about her mother and father had "kept" 2 miscarried fetuses in jars on the mantle over their fireplace for years. She was told thet they were her siblings that were born a few years before her! She went on to say that it had always disturbed her as a child and still does to this day.

I thought this was the weirdest story I had ever heard. I had never heard a story like this, until now.

I also have a friend who took a bunch of photos of her dead father in his coffin, and has them in a family photo album! I think that's strange too, something I wouldn't ever do!

 

[KarlK]

There are far weirder things than keeping a mummy. Museums are filled with them.

If I were the baby, I'd sure prefer to get cards and presents than to be forgotten. That's me, though.

I agree, keeping a mummy may be unusual but it's not perverted. Lots of people also keep preserved fetuses and body parts in jars as curios, some even make the public pay to see them at carnivals. Of course some will say that those are different because they're not relatives, and maybe that's what the fuss is all about. If the family had claimed that the mummy had been found in some remote corner of the world and brought back as a souvenir by their eccentric great-grand-uncle Ebenezeer no one would have thought it was weird to keep it. As for treating him like a family member it reminds me of my frat house where we kept a skeleton named Hercules and referred to it as a frat member. According to tradition the skeleton had been "rescued" from a biology lab on campus in the 1890's and kept in the dorm ever since. "Herc" was still there at my last class reunion and no one has ever clamored it should be buried with honors even though it originally belonged to a living person.