This Indonesian village follows a strange custom of living with their dead relatives before burying them

Life after death takes on a whole new meaning for the Toraja community, who live in the mountains of South Sulwawesi in Indonesia.

Instead of burying a dead family member, this community waits for weeks and sometimes months before they put them to the grave- in the process living in the same house as their dead family member.

The Toraja people think that people aren’t really dead when they die and a human connection still exists between them which is why a corpse is still treated like a living, breathing member and is fed, washed and groomed regularly with a solution of formaldehyde and water.



Additionally, no burial happens until all the relatives from distant areas have gathered in one place.

Their custom makes them believe that the process between death and burial is a long one and hence seeing, talking to and feeling the presence of a deceased loved one is fairly common in every house here.



The funeral typically begins a few months of the death, when all the family members are gathered in one place and comprises meals, meetings, prayers and entertainment. They also follow a bizarre practice of sacrificing buffaloes and pigs during a funeral as they are of the belief that the higher number of animals sacrificed, the faster is the journey to the afterlife.

It gets even stranger.

Once the funeral ceremony is over, the body is prepared for burial but is not buried in the ground. Instead, the dead body is placed in a wooden box and then put inside a naturally formed cave.

The process doesn’t end here.



Every year in August, families follow a tradition called the ‘The Ceremony of Cleaning Corpses’ as per which they remove the bodies, bathe and change the corpse’s clothes and then walk it to the place of death, then put it back in the coffin and eventually take it back to the burial cave.

Bizarre, isn’t it?

Image credit: www.dopeshop.in