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Speaker 1: Six Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where we
Speaker 1: talk to the Internet's characters of the day see how
Speaker 1: their moment affected them and what it says about the
Speaker 1: Internet and US and today Halloween itself. We're revisiting the
Speaker 1: saga of the tumblr bone Witch. If you haven't listened
Speaker 1: to part one of this series, you will be very confused,
Speaker 1: because this is a rich story, one with internet drama,
Speaker 1: police state intrigue, and a witch who doesn't understand why
Speaker 1: grave robbing may in fact be illegal where they are
Speaker 1: robbing a grave aka bone Gazi twenty fifteen, and as
Speaker 1: you now know, it is a wild story, one that
Speaker 1: has quite a to say about how laws around human
Speaker 1: remains don't always really square with the bone crimes of today.
Speaker 1: To learn more about the history of these laws and
Speaker 1: why Ender Darling was destined to be uniquely fucked by
Speaker 1: the law, I spoke to Professor Tanya Marsh.
Speaker 3: I'm Tanya Marsh, the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Speaker 3: and a professor of Law at wake Forest University School
Speaker 3: of Law. My scholarship and my teaching centers around the status, treatment,
Speaker 3: and disposition of human remains.
Speaker 1: How did you first get involved or drawn to this
Speaker 1: area of law?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 3: I was a commercial real estate lawyer for ten years
Speaker 3: before I started teaching full time, and I thought I
Speaker 3: knew a lot about real estate and property law, and
Speaker 3: then I started reading some cases. So I was looking
Speaker 3: around for something to write about and started reading cemetery
Speaker 3: law cases and I realized that here was I mean,
Speaker 3: cemeteries are just a land use right, it's just property,
Speaker 3: it's just real estate. But there's this super specific set
Speaker 3: of rules and laws that surround cemeteries that I had
Speaker 3: no idea about. And then I realized nobody really was
Speaker 3: working in this space except for people who are like
Speaker 3: in the industry, but nobody in academia was like looking
Speaker 3: into these laws. And in fact, the last book describing
Speaker 3: what the laws were was published in nineteen fifty. It is,
Speaker 3: as you say, super necessary because you know, spoiler er,
Speaker 3: everybody's going to die right, and our bodies have to
Speaker 3: go somewhere, and everybody who died previously their bodies are somewhere,
Speaker 3: and so we need to deal with that, and you
Speaker 3: need to have legal structures that deal with that. So
Speaker 3: it's been a really interesting area to study.
Speaker 1: I kept like trying to characterize it to people as
Speaker 1: like an area of lot that you don't know is
Speaker 1: the most important thing in the world.
Speaker 3: Until it affects you absolutely.
Speaker 1: As you're going into this field for the layman, what
Speaker 1: do you wish the average person knew more about your
Speaker 1: field to study?
Speaker 3: Wow, well, let me turn your question around a little bit.
Speaker 3: Here here's the big problem with this area. The big
Speaker 3: problem with this area is in the American culture, we
Speaker 3: don't like to talk about death, and so as you say,
Speaker 3: it's like a really important area of law and that
Speaker 3: you ignore until you need it, the fundamental, like reoccurring
Speaker 3: problem is nobody engages with what are my options? What
Speaker 3: does the law forbid me from doing? What does the
Speaker 3: law permit me from doing? Until it personally affects us?
Speaker 3: And at the point it personally affects us, where it's
Speaker 3: sort of a heightened state of grief and stress. Anyway,
Speaker 3: and then once we get past those decisions, which are
Speaker 3: being made at a time of stress, we don't want
Speaker 3: to think about it anymore, right, We want to put
Speaker 3: it off to people. And so as a result, what
Speaker 3: we've got is a legal system that was developed in
Speaker 3: an ad hoc way over the years when there were
Speaker 3: crises that caused us to either have a court case
Speaker 3: to deal with the problem, or the legislature was getting
Speaker 3: a lot of public pressure to deal with a particular problem.
Speaker 3: So we have this like super scattershot approach. And what's
Speaker 3: frustrating to me is we have really predictable problems that
Speaker 3: come up over and over and over again, but the
Speaker 3: law hasn't thought about any of this in a systemic way. Right,
Speaker 3: So as a culture, we need to get past this
Speaker 3: whole death phobic thing, because we really do need to
Speaker 3: all get on the same page about what are our
Speaker 3: values and does the law protect and express those values.
Speaker 3: For the most part, I think most people in the
Speaker 3: United States are on the same page about what we
Speaker 3: don't want to have happen. And I think people are
Speaker 3: constantly surprised when it turns out the law doesn't expressly say.
Speaker 1: That a common decency thing is not actually formally against
Speaker 1: the law.
Speaker 3: Correct. For an example, you know, a case that has
Speaker 3: come up within the last year is a Harvard Morgue case.
Speaker 3: Right there, remains we're donated to Harvard Medical School. Allegedly,
Speaker 3: the head of the morgue, rather than sending them to
Speaker 3: be cremated as he was supposed to do, instead allowed
Speaker 3: collectors and folks to come in and take body parts,
Speaker 3: or he removed body parts and allegedly sold them to
Speaker 3: other people. I keep saying allegedly because he hasn't been
Speaker 3: convicted yet. From the public stories of what we've heard,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of evidence that certain types of things
Speaker 3: went on. But then the question is that illegal, right,
Speaker 3: Because it can't just be that we all think that's wrong.
Speaker 3: It has to be that there is a law that
Speaker 3: says describes behavior and says this is illegal, and here's
Speaker 3: the punishment for it. And so I think what people
Speaker 3: have been constantly surprised about. In that particular case, the
Speaker 3: folks in that case were charged under federal law. Does
Speaker 3: the federal law actually expressly make that behavior illegal? That's debatable,
Speaker 3: But there are only a handful of states that say
Speaker 3: that selling human remains is against the law, which is
Speaker 3: very surprising to many people that I talk to that
Speaker 3: that is not against the law. Clearly in every state.
Speaker 1: The laws around human remains from state to state seem
Speaker 1: to vary pretty wildly in their specificity.
Speaker 3: Correct, there's very little federal law about human remains. There's
Speaker 3: almost none about the newly dead. There's some price disclosure
Speaker 3: requirements that the Federal Trade Commission has, the federal government
Speaker 3: owns some cemeteries, especially for veterans, but beyond those things,
Speaker 3: federal law has very little say about human remains. So
Speaker 3: then it's all state law. And you know, some of
Speaker 3: these state laws have been around for hundreds of years,
Speaker 3: and some of them are fairly new. But again because
Speaker 3: the way that governments have created these laws is in
Speaker 3: this hugely scattershot approach. It's not like anybody sat down
Speaker 3: and said, Okay, here's what we think about funerals and
Speaker 3: human remains, and how long are we going to protect them,
Speaker 3: and under what circumstances are we going to protect et cetera,
Speaker 3: And let's create a system that's like cohesive and makes
Speaker 3: internally coherent, right, And instead you have this, Okay, Massachusetts
Speaker 3: in the eighteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds probably thought about
Speaker 3: these issues very differently than New Mexico and the nineteen hundreds, right,
Speaker 3: because of the people who are there and the cultural
Speaker 3: background and the people making the rules, et cetera. So,
Speaker 3: because of that kind of like historical diversity in terms
Speaker 3: of when states made rules and also the people who
Speaker 3: were in those places at the time the rules were
Speaker 3: being made, you get a lot of differences from state
Speaker 3: to state.
Speaker 1: Have you encountered examples of American laws being in conflict
Speaker 1: with other cultures?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely. This is the part of the law when
Speaker 3: people are sort of newly dead.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Is the way the law is structured generally in the
Speaker 3: States says within X number of days after death, you
Speaker 3: people surrounding the dead body have to do particular things, right,
Speaker 3: Maybe you have to report the death to the government,
Speaker 3: you have to get a death certificate, things like that.
Speaker 3: In some states it's pretty clear you have to go
Speaker 3: hire a funeral director. In most states, families can act
Speaker 3: or religious organizations can act as a funeral director on
Speaker 3: sort of a nonprofit basis, But there has to be
Speaker 3: some kind of final disposition within a certain period of time.
Speaker 3: And then what that final disposition is is also dictated
Speaker 3: by statute. So until about ten years ago, I would
Speaker 3: have told you your only options are cremation, burial into mintnamausoleum,
Speaker 3: or donation to science. In the past ten years, we've
Speaker 3: had alkaline hydrolysis, which is basically dissolving people, and then
Speaker 3: natural organic reduction, which is composting people. Those two methods
Speaker 3: of disposition have been increasingly legalized in the States, still
Speaker 3: state to state, but there are a lot of other
Speaker 3: practices that are done around the world that aren't on
Speaker 3: that list, right because when we started, when America started,
Speaker 3: the only was burial. That was the only option because
Speaker 3: that was the only option that the Protestant Christians who
Speaker 3: wrote the laws would entertain. It took one hundred years
Speaker 3: to get cremation legalized, but cremation is widely practiced in
Speaker 3: other areas of the world. There's just a bunch of
Speaker 3: death rituals and methods of disposition that are expressly not
Speaker 3: legal in the United States, and so I think that
Speaker 3: creates some problems in an increasingly diverse society.
Speaker 1: And I think it's fascinating, just like hearing how much
Speaker 1: of the existing law is sort of connected to religion
Speaker 1: and commerce.
Speaker 3: It sounds like, yeah, I mean it started out I'd
Speaker 3: say at the beginning of American history, death was the
Speaker 3: province of families and religious organizations. And this is consistent
Speaker 3: with a lot of kind of trends in society.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: We used to grow our own food. Now we're increasingly
Speaker 3: divorced from that, and we have to go to the
Speaker 3: grocery store.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: People used to die at Homeeople die in hospitals or
Speaker 3: nursing homes. We used to take care of our debt
Speaker 3: at home. Now funeral homes handle that for us. So,
Speaker 3: I mean it's kind of part and parcel of like
Speaker 3: an industrialized society that we've taken a lot of these
Speaker 3: sort of fundamental processes out of the home and commercialize
Speaker 3: that activity. But then there's also a swing back, right, Okay,
Speaker 3: I don't like going to grow strong and go a
Speaker 3: farmer's market. I've got more of a direct connection with
Speaker 3: my food. I don't want my loved one to die
Speaker 3: in the hospital. I want them to come home and
Speaker 3: be in hospice care before they die. I don't want
Speaker 3: a funeral home to handle all these things. I want
Speaker 3: to do a home funeral. So there's there's sort of
Speaker 3: a move towards I call it the wall martizing of America,
Speaker 3: and then like a swing back to sort of more
Speaker 3: authentic practices.
Speaker 1: I'm going to kick it to Louisiana. Now, were you
Speaker 1: familiar with the bone Gazi story?
Speaker 3: Yes, I had heard of it. I had heard of it.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you call what you made of the story
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 3: So I am never surprised because I probably hear about
Speaker 3: more of these stories than most people do, because whenever
Speaker 3: something like this happens, like all my friends email me
Speaker 3: or text me and say, have you heard about the latest?
Speaker 3: So I wasn't super surprised. I yeah, also super illegal.
Speaker 1: It feels ridiculous to ask, But since I have you,
Speaker 1: I'm going to, yeah, why is this illegal?
Speaker 3: Well, this activity took place in Louisiana. You know, I
Speaker 3: teach the law, so I always tell my students I'm
Speaker 3: going to tell you what the law is, and I'm
Speaker 3: not going to tell you what the law is in
Speaker 3: Louisiana because Louisiana is always so different. Because yeah, in
Speaker 3: terms of the way the law is structured, because the
Speaker 3: United States is a common law country except for Louisiana,
Speaker 3: which has a lot of echoes of civil law because
Speaker 3: of the French history, So there are definitely some things
Speaker 3: that are unusual. But Louisiana also takes the dead very seriously,
Speaker 3: so there are a lot of laws that are very
Speaker 3: specific in Louisiana that do not exist in many other states.
Speaker 3: In general, it is illegal to disturb graves, so if
Speaker 3: a body has been placed in the ground or in
Speaker 3: a mausoleum, almost every state has a criminal statute that
Speaker 3: says you cannot disturb that grave right now. The exact
Speaker 3: wording of those rules differs from place to place, but
Speaker 3: Louisiana's says it's unlawful to knowingly disturb an unmarked burial
Speaker 3: site or any human skeletal remains. So even if you
Speaker 3: didn't dig, even if you just picked up human skeletal
Speaker 3: remains out of a cemetery or from the burial site,
Speaker 3: that's expressly legal in Louisiana. In Louisiana, it's unlawful to
Speaker 3: knowingly buy, sell, barter, exchange, give, receive, possessed, display, discard,
Speaker 3: or destroy human skeletal remains. They're like, we mean it.
Speaker 1: It sounds like there may be wasn't a worse to
Speaker 1: have done this?
Speaker 3: In Yes, that I would agree with that.
Speaker 1: Were you surprised about the online reaction to this and
Speaker 1: the way that we sort of interact with death and
Speaker 1: specifically with human remains in online discussion, I.
Speaker 3: Mean no, because I think you see echoes of this
Speaker 3: same kind of disagreements in the Harvard More case, right,
Speaker 3: and and then John's Bones was another thing. Every once
Speaker 3: in a while, these things sort of pop up. There's
Speaker 3: definitely folks who don't have a problem with this. I
Speaker 3: think that they're in the small minority. They exist, and
Speaker 3: they're very active online. So I'm you know, I'm not
Speaker 3: surprised that there's some people who who think that that
Speaker 3: it's okay to use the dead in whatever way sort
Speaker 3: of the living want to do it. But what I
Speaker 3: thought was interesting about this particular case was sort of
Speaker 3: the layers and the waves right of reaction because the
Speaker 3: initial right, there's no shaming in this group, and then
Speaker 3: talking about what cemetery the remains were being taken from.
Speaker 3: I mean, it is absolutely true that you know, there's
Speaker 3: a ton of bones and human remains in private collections,
Speaker 3: in museums, in academic collections all over the country, and
Speaker 3: it is not people of wealth and privilege whose remains
Speaker 3: end up in those collections. It is marginalized people, largely largely,
Speaker 3: largely without their consent, whose remains end up that way.
Speaker 3: So what's fascinating. One of the fascinating things about American
Speaker 3: attitudes towards death is, on the one hand, we have
Speaker 3: expressed in the law these super absolute statements right once
Speaker 3: placed in the ground or in a mausoleum, human remains,
Speaker 3: the remains themselves, the deceased person has a right to perpetual,
Speaker 3: undisturbed repose. And that makes sense historically because the Christians
Speaker 3: believe that if you move the remains from consecrated ground,
Speaker 3: then you jeopardize their chances of eternal salvation. From a
Speaker 3: historical standpoint, it makes sense why that is sort of
Speaker 3: baked into the law. But then on the other hand,
Speaker 3: we have, well, unless you want to do something with
Speaker 3: the land, and then we can move the remains right
Speaker 3: in an organized kind of way, but we don't throw
Speaker 3: them out. So we have these incredible expressions of respect.
Speaker 3: But then you got all these human remains everywhere, right
Speaker 3: where did these bodies in the museums and private collections
Speaker 3: come from? And see that kind of tension play out
Speaker 3: in the Internet.
Speaker 1: Is there a place where what they did is legal? No?
Speaker 3: Okay, well let me say it this way. What they
Speaker 3: did was walk past a burial ground and see skeletal
Speaker 3: remains on the surface, and they picked them up and
Speaker 3: took them home. If a person has no legal right
Speaker 3: to exert control over human remains, they have no legal
Speaker 3: right to exert control over human remains. Right, So it's
Speaker 3: the next of kin or a person appointed by the
Speaker 3: deceased who would have the legal rights. And then those
Speaker 3: legal rights are con strained in particular ways. You have
Speaker 3: to dispose of them finally within X number of days
Speaker 3: after death. That kind of thing, right, you have the
Speaker 3: law making it expressly illegal to do that kind of
Speaker 3: activity in Louisiana. Most other states don't have a law
Speaker 3: that's that specific, but they don't create a legal path either. Right,
Speaker 3: So there are some activities that are not expressly legal,
Speaker 3: but they're not expressly illegal either. You can't find permission
Speaker 3: in the law to do a thing, but you also
Speaker 3: won't get punished if you do it. I mean, first
Speaker 3: of all, Louisiana has a lot of graves in the ground.
Speaker 3: There's a ton of flooding, the water table is high.
Speaker 3: Graves wash up every year in various places in the state,
Speaker 3: and it is a nightmare to try and identify remains
Speaker 3: and get them back in the ground where they're supposed to.
Speaker 3: So I think that they probably have because of the
Speaker 3: natural circumstances of the land, they have more problems than
Speaker 3: many other places do.
Speaker 1: Where is this area of law headed? Is the Harvard case?
Speaker 1: Do you do you anticipate there being any significant change
Speaker 1: or have you felt a shift in awareness or willingness
Speaker 1: to talk about death since you've begun studying this area
Speaker 1: of law.
Speaker 3: I have not. I mean culturally, at the edges you
Speaker 3: see more willingness to talk about death. I don't know
Speaker 3: that that will filter through, you know. The problem is
Speaker 3: when you have law of state level, you really need
Speaker 3: interest groups who are willing to go in and lobby
Speaker 3: the state legislatures to adopt particular laws. The issue with
Speaker 3: making it more clear about what we can and cannot
Speaker 3: do with human remains, like in these sorts of cases,
Speaker 3: right like after disposition, is who's the interest group who's
Speaker 3: going to go lobby the state legislatures to change the laws?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: The public is really bad at mobilizing, So if a
Speaker 3: couple state legislators read the news and get really disturbed
Speaker 3: by it and want to push it. But you just
Speaker 3: don't have any sort of organized group that's saying, let's
Speaker 3: make this more clue. It's only expressly illegal in let's
Speaker 3: say nine states to buy and sell human remains, it
Speaker 3: should be illegal in every state. Let's go into the
Speaker 3: state legislatures and make that happen. I don't know who's
Speaker 3: going to do that. Yeah, so I'm not super optimistic
Speaker 3: that this is going to happen anytime soon.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time. This was fascinating.
Speaker 3: Truth well, thank you.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much to Tania Marsh.
Speaker 3: You can buy her.
Speaker 1: Book at the link in the description. And when we
Speaker 1: come back, Insight from a Real life witch Welcome back
Speaker 1: to sixteenth minute. Everything I know about witchcraft I learned
Speaker 1: from my uncle Dennis. Here he is talking in my
Speaker 1: last podcast, Ghost Church.
Speaker 5: I don't try and get any ready to believe anything.
Speaker 5: I don't care what you believe. It's your business. For
Speaker 5: those that believe, no proof is necessary. For those that
Speaker 5: don't know, proof is sufficient. I can't make you believe
Speaker 5: something you don't want to believe. I can only tell
Speaker 5: you my experiences.
Speaker 1: And today we're talking about the Tumblr Bone Witch. So
Speaker 1: now we understand how the law in Louisiana and across
Speaker 1: the US ranges considerably, making Darling's conviction all but inevitable.
Speaker 1: But again, while there is no world where I would
Speaker 1: condone stealing the bones of a disenfranchised stranger and putting
Speaker 1: them in the US mail, I do feel bad that
Speaker 1: this essentially derailed Darling's life because while it's true that
Speaker 1: they broke the law, my anticursoral heart can't help but
Speaker 1: think that part of why this happened was for the
Speaker 1: entertainment of the Internet masses. And that's complicated too, because
Speaker 1: within those masses were a number of black and Indigenous
Speaker 1: witches who were understandably angry with Ender Darling for, in
Speaker 1: many people's view, completely misconstruing their spiritual practice. But let's
Speaker 1: be honest, there were plenty of people watching Bone Gazie
Speaker 1: who were strictly there for the weirdness and the spectacle
Speaker 1: of it all. So listener, I needed to speak with
Speaker 1: a witch who had a background in the magic that
Speaker 1: Darling claimed to be working with. And not to brag,
Speaker 1: but I know someone. Here's my chat with my pal
Speaker 1: the wonderful. JV.
Speaker 6: Hampton van Sant Hello everyone, I am JV. Hampton Van Sant.
Speaker 7: I am a voice actor, a drag queen, and a
Speaker 7: witch of some several types, honestly just a witch generally
Speaker 7: a witch about town.
Speaker 1: What is your memory of encountering this story for the
Speaker 1: first time?
Speaker 7: So I didn't encounter this while it was happening, But
Speaker 7: Tumblr history is so fascinating. There's so many why things
Speaker 7: like this that just happened on there, and I'm like,
Speaker 7: what what?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 7: I was raised Unitarian, which I feel like is the
Speaker 7: reason I don't have religious trauma just point blank period.
Speaker 6: I just don't. The whole thing that they let you
Speaker 6: do is like.
Speaker 7: Okay, so you can stay here if you want, but
Speaker 7: you can also like make a decision to not be
Speaker 7: here if you don't want. I was at that point
Speaker 7: just drawn to paganism in all its different forms. At thirteen,
Speaker 7: I made the decision to like not go to that
Speaker 7: church all the time. I still go there on occasion.
Speaker 7: Because of that, and because I'm now thirty four, I
Speaker 7: have now been I've now been pagan for over twenty
Speaker 7: one years.
Speaker 6: I remember my early years.
Speaker 7: And the like the things I would think about and
Speaker 7: get up to. And this entire controversy was feeling very
Speaker 7: much like, oh, this is your like first second, third
Speaker 7: year of this where you're not quite sure of all
Speaker 7: of what this is, so.
Speaker 6: There's some stuff to work out there.
Speaker 1: When you were exploring paganism, were you using the internet
Speaker 1: a lot? Where were you going so of what were
Speaker 1: your resources as you were learning.
Speaker 7: There's a small shop in my town called Crystal Essence.
Speaker 7: They had a very robust like book section, and I
Speaker 7: started working literally at like twelve, because I wanted to
Speaker 7: be out in doing things rather than and earning money
Speaker 7: a little bit too, so I bought some books from them,
Speaker 7: and it was very much like, congratulations, you've decided you
Speaker 7: want to do witchcraft and things. Let's go through the
Speaker 7: basics and also tell you some shit not to do
Speaker 7: because you're teenagers and you don't you don't need to
Speaker 7: be messing with shit on this level on these huge,
Speaker 7: powerful thingies.
Speaker 6: There's a part of the post where.
Speaker 7: She starts talking about like I work with death and
Speaker 7: I work with death magic, and part of me was.
Speaker 6: Immediate like why what are you doing?
Speaker 7: Not Necromance are very clear about that, but also what
Speaker 7: the fuck are you doing with this?
Speaker 1: Sounds silly, but could you walk me through why this
Speaker 1: is wrong? Specifically in the context of having been a
Speaker 1: witch for so long?
Speaker 7: All right, So all of these are like wildly practical concerns.
Speaker 7: If you think about what bones are, they are things
Speaker 7: that were in the body that was that housed a
Speaker 7: human soul. Right, That's what they generally speaking are, and
Speaker 7: that's why bodies are kind of sacred and viewed as
Speaker 7: sacred and important across literally every religion. Anything that was
Speaker 7: tied to a specific human soul thing. Number one, whatever
Speaker 7: you're going to do with that thing, that soul also
Speaker 7: has to be on board with whatever you're doing. I
Speaker 7: highly doubt whatever they were planning on doing, whoever they
Speaker 7: were doing it with was probably not on board with it.
Speaker 6: Just for curse work specifically, I don't think so.
Speaker 7: So just on a practical level, it's gonna fuck up
Speaker 7: whatever you're gonna do because they aren't on board with
Speaker 7: whatever you're trying to do because you've not asked them
Speaker 7: and you've not shown them any level of respect in
Speaker 7: like the use of their bones in any way. So,
Speaker 7: point blank period, you've disrespected somebody. So they're not going
Speaker 7: to want to help you.
Speaker 4: Thing.
Speaker 7: Number two, items that are like tied to a specific
Speaker 7: person tend to also link whatever you are doing to
Speaker 7: that person. So if you are attempting to do a
Speaker 7: curse on somebody, you have bones of a completely different
Speaker 7: person that's going to fuck up where the energy goes.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know it's obviously illegal, but it also
Speaker 1: is impractical as far as which craft goes exactly.
Speaker 7: This speaks to me of like you were going for
Speaker 7: an esthetic and you weren't going for the practicality, because
Speaker 7: the practicality of that would have you consider energy, and
Speaker 7: energy is specific and it's specific to each person. You
Speaker 7: would then just be muddling everything up with that energy.
Speaker 7: So like, if what this person wanted, and here's where
Speaker 7: I'm going to be slightly controversial and give alternative options,
Speaker 7: and I will use myself as like a sort of
Speaker 7: reference for this. A friend of mine a few months
Speaker 7: ago was having issues with an ex who kept like
Speaker 7: contacting them. This ex had abused them, so it was
Speaker 7: like kind of a bit of a serious thing. So
Speaker 7: in addition to just socially surrounding him constantly with like
Speaker 7: people that would keep him.
Speaker 6: Safe, I decided to throw in a little bit of
Speaker 6: cursework on my own.
Speaker 7: What I used for that rather than like, I don't
Speaker 7: know anything bone related. I used the dirt from a
Speaker 7: gravesite of a civil rights leader whose legacy is such
Speaker 7: that she has a domestic violence center named after her.
Speaker 7: So like it made the energy was tied there, and
Speaker 7: I knew that that was the type of work. Also
Speaker 7: I attempted to commune with her a bit, so like
Speaker 7: I could ask for permission for that, and like offered
Speaker 7: something in exchange for the little bit of dirt that
Speaker 7: I was taking from that little graveyard. Another sort of
Speaker 7: alternative to that is to leave a quartz bristle, something
Speaker 7: that absorbs energy anyway, leave that above the grave that
Speaker 7: you of the person you are specifically you want their
Speaker 7: energy and their help with this. You leave that there.
Speaker 7: You let that charge a little bit. People tend to
Speaker 7: not take things from graveyards generally, So if you do
Speaker 7: go and visit like respectfully, and you leave that there,
Speaker 7: it'll take up the energy that is needed. And then
Speaker 7: you come back after a few days, you bring that
Speaker 7: home with.
Speaker 1: You, okay, And then that way there's no you know,
Speaker 1: explicit quote unquote disturbance of the site.
Speaker 7: Exactly, yes, because like I will own the part that
Speaker 7: I did, technically would also have disturbed a little bit
Speaker 7: of the site I took basically like a little bit
Speaker 7: of grass and like a small bit of dirt, but
Speaker 7: like not a noticeable chunk, just like those specific sort
Speaker 7: of plots that I like, know what legacy they have
Speaker 7: and I know what their life's work was, So you
Speaker 7: also have to know where this is coming from.
Speaker 6: They have a.
Speaker 7: Good a good system generally around keeping these things safe
Speaker 7: in places where this is a huge concern. There's a
Speaker 7: way to handle all of this that is so much
Speaker 7: more respectful of the dead, respectful of the people that
Speaker 7: were at one point there, who to some degree are
Speaker 7: still there in terms of energy and spirit. Their consent
Speaker 7: is also important in everything that we do. Consent is
Speaker 7: always important, and this entire situation was devoid of that consent.
Speaker 7: And part of that is the poverty of it, Like
Speaker 7: if I recall correctly, it's the paupers grave that they
Speaker 7: had said, at least in the initial post.
Speaker 1: What was the tenor of online which in communities as
Speaker 1: you've experienced them.
Speaker 7: So I have had very limited sort of experiences with
Speaker 7: online which communities but I have had a lot of
Speaker 7: experience with online communities in general. It's unfortunate that that's
Speaker 7: the case, because I do think that the Internet should
Speaker 7: have safe spaces, but like in a community that is
Speaker 7: that large and full of that many people, yeah, that's
Speaker 7: gonna happen, particularly if you start doing something like a
Speaker 7: little fucking.
Speaker 6: Crazy for lack of a better way to refer to it, like.
Speaker 1: They did something that I sort of think they didn't
Speaker 1: understand quite how illegal it was, and then instead of
Speaker 1: taking the criticism, got very defensive and double down and
Speaker 1: double down and double down.
Speaker 7: My go to instinct, and I think on Carly said
Speaker 7: it in her video as well, which is I would
Speaker 7: straight up just delete my Tumblr and I would leave
Speaker 7: like I just like, I'm gonna ditch Tumblr, and I'm
Speaker 7: going to also leave that Facebook group and then I'm gone,
Speaker 7: like no one will like, no one will know that
Speaker 7: that is me, no one will be able to talk
Speaker 7: to me about this, and I'm not going to respond
Speaker 7: about this further. And I'll also delete that post in
Speaker 7: that group because at that point, like, well, people have
Speaker 7: taken this out of context and have taken it elsewhere.
Speaker 7: The aim is just remove posts so that no one
Speaker 7: can continue to contact me wherever possible. Scorch just baseline
Speaker 7: safety reasons. Also, a nobody need to go around threatening
Speaker 7: and threatening people's children. That's stupid, That's that's corny, that's tired,
Speaker 7: this plate out, We're not doing that. I did appreciate
Speaker 7: the line, I'll.
Speaker 6: Put your teeth on my altar. That was good, that
Speaker 6: was kind.
Speaker 7: I love that they had me with that. That said,
Speaker 7: the reliance also on like indigenous practices to some extent.
Speaker 7: One of the things that I've been researching more just
Speaker 7: as time has gone on is root work and things
Speaker 7: like that. So root work and conjure are not an
Speaker 7: aspect necessarily a voodoo, but something related to it in
Speaker 7: that this is the folk magic of the American South,
Speaker 7: as it were. I have looked into it. A lot
Speaker 7: of it does come from the blending of multiple cultures,
Speaker 7: including Indigenous American cultures and Indigenous African cultures, and just
Speaker 7: these different roots and has all these different roots in
Speaker 7: different medicinal practices. Honestly, more than anything else, medicinal was
Speaker 7: the primary thing that I when I look at the
Speaker 7: qualities of different herbs and items that are produced by
Speaker 7: the earth, better than used in this way. It's use
Speaker 7: has been medicinal or spiritual within that and looking through
Speaker 7: that lens of those things, yeah, these people still wouldn't
Speaker 7: tell you to use the bones of a random stranger,
Speaker 7: least of all a poor stranger who probably has had
Speaker 7: a difficult ass life and does not need some random
Speaker 7: people doing some weird shit that's going to get them
Speaker 7: cursed and probably their whole family lineage cursed because they're
Speaker 7: not careful enough. I just ultimately would be like, hey,
Speaker 7: this isn't the way. This is not a good idea.
Speaker 1: Where the story kind of comes full circle is black
Speaker 1: witches within the group were like, well, hold on, how
Speaker 1: do we factor in here? Because we're not okay with this?
Speaker 1: And if the way that the group is structured means
Speaker 1: we can air our genuine concerns, then how is it
Speaker 1: a safe space if we're being asked to kind of
Speaker 1: quiet down when this was very likely the grave of
Speaker 1: a poor black person living in New Orleans? What now?
Speaker 1: And the group kind of self implodes from there because
Speaker 1: no one could come to an understanding.
Speaker 7: That is the only way that I would see that going.
Speaker 7: And the mod response to that, I think is a
Speaker 7: fair one of like, well, yeah, we generally try not
Speaker 7: to criticize each other because everyone has different practices, Like
Speaker 7: there is a local witch group out here and that
Speaker 7: we have that same general rule. Everyone is welcome at
Speaker 7: any of our practice, at any of our ceremonies at
Speaker 7: any point unless you are bringing like extremely negative ass
Speaker 7: energy and then we don't have to kick you out.
Speaker 6: But that's like that was an energy related thing.
Speaker 7: You do have to like check in with people because
Speaker 7: once again, within every aspect of life and everything, consent
Speaker 7: is important. So like sometimes people are just not straight
Speaker 7: up going to be consenting to death related magic, like
Speaker 7: I just at a certain point, people just aren't necessarily
Speaker 7: going to all be on board with that because that's
Speaker 7: a lot, that's a lot to do, and that's a
Speaker 7: lot of energy and it drains a lot out of you.
Speaker 7: Maybe don't bring that to the larger coven. That's just
Speaker 7: not what the larger coven is able to handle. You
Speaker 7: can find other people that will be able to handle it,
Speaker 7: and that is then your your smaller coven, your smaller
Speaker 7: circle of people. But also at that point, this person,
Speaker 7: we're probably doing it in like a solo practice, which
Speaker 7: again I would caution to them is like pretty dangerous.
Speaker 7: One of the most misunderstood things about voodoo and root
Speaker 7: work generally is that there's a principle of balance and
Speaker 7: working with both hands, as it were. So whatever you
Speaker 7: do that is good, you might be called upon by
Speaker 7: people to do something possibly a little bit negative, but
Speaker 7: you are only in ways that restore a balance of
Speaker 7: some type or restore peace in some way. I feel
Speaker 7: like at that point, if you're thinking about things karmically
Speaker 7: and thinking about the level of energy you are attempting
Speaker 7: to pool and to pull from at a certain point,
Speaker 7: doing things then with death is maybe a little bit
Speaker 7: too far. And it isn't just necessarily that your own
Speaker 7: beliefs are the things that are going to affect you.
Speaker 7: It also if you are doing something that involves another
Speaker 7: person is going to involve their beliefs as well. So
Speaker 7: if you are violating someone's consent and they believe that
Speaker 7: if you violate their consent with one of these workings
Speaker 7: that that will reflect poorly back on you, that's when
Speaker 7: you have to be concerned, because that's then how that
Speaker 7: energy is going to be directed.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 7: My whole thought is like, yeah, this is a young
Speaker 7: person doing a young person thing, and as a person
Speaker 7: who's been doing this for over twenty years, I would
Speaker 7: literally just want to tell them, hey, one, you just
Speaker 7: doing too much, honey, you're just doing way too much.
Speaker 6: This is too much.
Speaker 7: I will say, keep going and helping keep the graves. Like, Okay,
Speaker 7: that's a good thing to do. That was a proactive
Speaker 7: and good thing to do. If you find bones when
Speaker 7: you do this, first of all, take note of where
Speaker 7: it is. Take a photo so that you can show
Speaker 7: it to whoever is in charge of maintenance of that
Speaker 7: place so that they can deal with it. It's weird,
Speaker 7: it's strange. I'm personally not okay with that as a thing,
Speaker 7: but the government seems to never actually care about the
Speaker 7: bodies of people of color. Just ask any museum ever.
Speaker 7: Consent is always the thing that I look to first
Speaker 7: for literally everything, but specifically for something like this. Is
Speaker 7: every party consenting to this, and yes, even the dead,
Speaker 7: even the day. If the dead are not consenting, things
Speaker 7: going and take a turn, and it's never going to
Speaker 7: be for the better.
Speaker 1: Thank you so so much to JV for their time
Speaker 1: and for sharing their practice. It was genuinely enlightening to
Speaker 1: hear from someone who has experience in traditionally Black American
Speaker 1: forms of spirituality and witchcraft. And also JV's just really
Speaker 1: funny and cool. You can follow their work at the
Speaker 1: links in the description. And when we come back, what
Speaker 1: can we learn from bone Gazi? Can we learn from
Speaker 1: bone Gazi? Have we as a culture recovered from bone Gazi?
Speaker 4: More?
Speaker 1: When we come back? Welcome back to sixteenth minute. The
Speaker 1: closest I've been to being a grave robber was taking
Speaker 1: a taxidermy class last year, and I have no regrets,
Speaker 1: and I have one more conversation about the Tumbler bone
Speaker 1: witch saga that I'd like to share. Speaking with Tanya
Speaker 1: and JV was extremely helpful in terms of placing this
Speaker 1: moment along both legal and spiritual lines, where there was
Speaker 1: more ethical crossover than I would have expected. But I
Speaker 1: still felt that speaking with someone from New Orleans was
Speaker 1: crucial because New Orleans relationship with death and the occult
Speaker 1: is extremely unique. It's the home of Louisiana Voodoo, an
Speaker 1: African diasporic religion that to this day is organized and
Speaker 1: practiced autonomously. You may have heard of its most famous practitioner,
Speaker 1: Black Indigenous, which Marie Leveaux. There's also who DOOO practitioners
Speaker 1: through Harria Practitioners. Basically, the city's association with the occult
Speaker 1: is both extremely strong and unlike places like Salem, connected
Speaker 1: specifically to predominantly non white cultures, and this, combined with
Speaker 1: the climate, makes for a very unique culture around graves
Speaker 1: and death rituals as well. And there were a number
Speaker 1: of groups dedicated to preserving and respecting this wide diversity
Speaker 1: of practices. So I reached out to an organization that
Speaker 1: was one of the earliest to condemn under Darling's actions
Speaker 1: at Holt Cemetery, a nonprofit group called Save Our Cemeteries,
Speaker 1: and I was lucky to speak with their vice president,
Speaker 1: Shanna Hudson Stowe, about why this was not just a
Speaker 1: harmful act, but uniquely harmful in New Orleans.
Speaker 6: Here's our talk.
Speaker 4: My name is Shane Stowe. I am currently the vice
Speaker 4: president for Save our Cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana. Save
Speaker 4: Our Cemeteries is a nonprofit organization that was founded in
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy four by Mary lu Kristovich, who was a
Speaker 4: formidable person in New Orleans who also led the charge
Speaker 4: of the founding of the preservation Resource Center and was
Speaker 4: a major funder for the Historic New Orleans Collection, hence
Speaker 4: the name Save Our Cemetery. She succeeded, and her legacy
Speaker 4: is that Saint Louis Member one is now one of
Speaker 4: the most famous cemeteries in the United States. A different
Speaker 4: approach in care and attitude by cemetery owners of particularly
Speaker 4: historic cemeteries.
Speaker 1: I've spoken with a few different people about this story,
Speaker 1: and everyone says that New Orleans has a very multicultural
Speaker 1: population and history. Something I hadn't considered was that that
Speaker 1: would of course interfere with cemeteries, with rules, with customs,
Speaker 1: and with death rituals. So when you're working in preserving
Speaker 1: such a unique area with regards to its culture towards death,
Speaker 1: what are things you find yourself bumping up against her
Speaker 1: having to manage as the organization sort of evolves.
Speaker 4: We took a stance very early on that we would
Speaker 4: be historically accurate and that we would also respect the
Speaker 4: dignity and the integrity of the cemeteries and the structures
Speaker 4: within it. We did not always find that other tours
Speaker 4: businesses or guides took that approach. Human ring remains, you
Speaker 4: don't want to breathe that in. You really don't. It's
Speaker 4: just not good for you.
Speaker 1: The subject of the show that I'm working on is
Speaker 1: the tumblr bone Wich saga from almost ten years ago. Now,
Speaker 1: I know you said when we were emailing that you
Speaker 1: vividly recall this, So could you sort of walk me
Speaker 1: through what your experience with this was and what save
Speaker 1: our cemeteries experience with learning that this had happened.
Speaker 4: I was doing my normal Facebook kind of scroll saying
Speaker 4: and a friend of mine said, holy crap, what is this?
Speaker 4: And my friend was a gas and appalled and horrified
Speaker 4: by it, and I was like, oh my, and I
Speaker 4: had a very visceral similar reaction to it. Holds some Harry,
Speaker 4: is what you would call a potter's field. There's two
Speaker 4: elements of a potter's field. One is that the city
Speaker 4: used this ground for unidentified people and also people who
Speaker 4: died incarcerated in their jail system. And also when there
Speaker 4: was mass death events such as or a terrible flooding event,
Speaker 4: they were buried on masks, so they're basically buried in
Speaker 4: a probably in a shroud which is essentially just wrapped
Speaker 4: in a sheet, put into a grave with maybe other individuals,
Speaker 4: and then they were covered over. They did bury them
Speaker 4: fairly deeply. This is a part of town where the
Speaker 4: elevation is a little higher, so they can do in
Speaker 4: ground burials and hold is all in ground burials. There
Speaker 4: are no tombs.
Speaker 1: You come across this store organically and you're horrified by
Speaker 1: what happens.
Speaker 4: Then well, I started making some phone calls and sending
Speaker 4: some emails, and one of them was to Amanda Walker,
Speaker 4: who was the executive director of Save Our Cemeteries at
Speaker 4: that time, and I said, we need to do something
Speaker 4: about this because this cannot continue. And also it should
Speaker 4: be noted that it is illegal to sell human remain
Speaker 4: to cross day line. It is a federal crime if
Speaker 4: you sell them across day line. So it makes sense
Speaker 4: in the fact if you think of people who were
Speaker 4: not necessarily inturd boxes or maybe not buried very deeply.
Speaker 4: I'll say very deeply. Because the other element of whold
Speaker 4: cemetery is that it's what you would call it diy cemetery.
Speaker 1: Okay, what do you mean.
Speaker 8: Do it yourself, very very own, bury your own well,
Speaker 8: d I Y, you know, do it yourself, so you
Speaker 8: would take care of your you. And I think that
Speaker 8: you could still do that and Carrollton has a little
Speaker 8: section you can do that too. So if you have
Speaker 8: a loved one and you could hire somebody to dig
Speaker 8: a burial spot and you pick a spot and the
Speaker 8: rest is up to you. Wow, you enter your your
Speaker 8: loved one and you make your own coping, you make
Speaker 8: your own marker and yeah, yeah. It is a place
Speaker 8: where people who did not have the means to have
Speaker 8: a formal funeral or a formal burial service or owned
Speaker 8: a family tomb, and so there are fairly recent burials there. Hold,
Speaker 8: it's still an a cemetery. You know, a human body
Speaker 8: can once it starts to degrade at any number of
Speaker 8: different rates, So it depends. There's a lot of different
Speaker 8: factors involved with it, which is one of the reasons
Speaker 8: why it is a study of several different places to
Speaker 8: measure how things affect people. In terms of forensic science,
Speaker 8: you know, when they find somebody who has died and
Speaker 8: is unintended and being able to figure out how long
Speaker 8: they were out there or to date a burial that
Speaker 8: might be one hundred years old or five hundred years old.
Speaker 1: Based on everyone I've talked to it and particularly this
Speaker 1: conversation that having a permanent resting place seems to be
Speaker 1: kind of a class issue, and it very much though.
Speaker 4: But I think it's it really speaks to your question
Speaker 4: about human dignancy and also race and class. In the
Speaker 4: United States and not just in Louisiana, there was a
Speaker 4: commission enacted by state law to address African American burial
Speaker 4: that are located on private property that may not be
Speaker 4: identified or being properly cared for by the owners. And
Speaker 4: this came about, I'm going to say twenty seventeen. This
Speaker 4: commission met once. There hasn't been any activity on that
Speaker 4: since that time. And African American enslaved burial places, you know,
Speaker 4: that's a national issue, particularly in the Eastern and southeastern
Speaker 4: United States, and there has been a lot of discussion
Speaker 4: about being able to make these properties accessible, perhaps in
Speaker 4: some cases removing remains and placing them in a place
Speaker 4: that is more secure for longevity and proper marking. The
Speaker 4: level of care and concern is really led by citizens.
Speaker 1: Say I am walking around a graveyard and I see
Speaker 1: that there have been remains that have surfaced from a grave.
Speaker 1: What should your average person do?
Speaker 4: I think my first, first and foremost answered that is
Speaker 4: leave it alone. Leave it alone, particularly you know, in
Speaker 4: a place like cold, I would say, definitely leave it alone.
Speaker 4: If it happens in a place that needs to be managed,
Speaker 4: then I would bring that to the attention of the
Speaker 4: owner of the cemetery or the proctor or what they
Speaker 4: call the sexton, which is a term for somebody who's
Speaker 4: basically caretaker of the cemetery. So if you bring that
Speaker 4: to the attention of them and say, hey, look, you know,
Speaker 4: there's something not quite right. And also one of the
Speaker 4: things possible in my personal experience, it could have been
Speaker 4: an animal bone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just can't be sure.
Speaker 4: Depending on the situation you're in, but don't pick it up,
Speaker 4: don't move it. And whether you notify somebody or not,
Speaker 4: I would say it depends on the situation.
Speaker 1: What can we take away from this incident? Leave it alone,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 4: And also to real life, this was a part of
Speaker 4: a human being. The thing is about human relay remains
Speaker 4: is that this was a person. This is somebody who
Speaker 4: had a mother and a father. Maybe they had children,
Speaker 4: but this was somebody who had a life and that
Speaker 4: life should be respected and their life is just as
Speaker 4: valid as your it is. Now to me, that's at
Speaker 4: the core of that. Most of the people that I
Speaker 4: encounter who work in the funeral industry, they really do
Speaker 4: have a deep understanding of that it was inhumane and
Speaker 4: the most it was just it was it was really deplorable.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much to Shanna for her time. And you
Speaker 1: can learn more about Save our Cemeteries at the link
Speaker 1: in the description. So what can we learn from the
Speaker 1: Bone Witch saga after all these discussions. I really think
Speaker 1: it has to do with who you are and what
Speaker 1: your views are. Tanya, JV, and Shanna all had slightly
Speaker 1: different approaches to this story because they're individuals and they
Speaker 1: have their own relationships with death. Tanya's is very legal,
Speaker 1: JV's is very spiritual, Shanna's is community minded. And that's
Speaker 1: just the surface. I won't pretend that any one law
Speaker 1: or faith tenant will have an answer that works for everyone.
Speaker 1: It definitely won't. But here's what we all agreed on
Speaker 1: the bone Witch maybe missed the mark. It really depends
Speaker 1: if we're talking witchcraft. I think there's a lesson to
Speaker 1: be learned about really getting educated and listening to longtime
Speaker 1: practitioners instead of just acting alone. If we're talking human remains,
Speaker 1: there's a lot to be said about how none of
Speaker 1: these laws, for the most part, have been updated in
Speaker 1: the last century, making the punishments associated with disrespecting human
Speaker 1: remains kind of more of a slap on the wrist
Speaker 1: if we're talking Internet. The lesson of the Tumblr bone
Speaker 1: Witch saga is that when shit hits the fan and
Speaker 1: you did it, stop posting. My God. And on that note,
Speaker 1: the Tumblr bone Witch and bone Gazi, we're putting this
Speaker 1: in the ground for real this time. Your sixteenth minute
Speaker 1: ends now, and I know exactly what we're going to
Speaker 1: do for our moment of fun this week. This is
Speaker 1: the Halloween media that haunts my soul personally, the haunted
Speaker 1: cassette tape form McDonald that used to play on my
Speaker 1: aunt's porch until my ears bled. Happy Halloween, Motherfucker's see
Speaker 1: you next week.
Speaker 6: Watch that.
Speaker 1: I think it's the ghost.
Speaker 3: It's gang closer.
Speaker 1: Look cool.
Speaker 6: A panic, look bok, who's Thereoooo?
Speaker 1: Don't cry, It's all leave me. Gramma sixteenth Minute is
Speaker 1: a production of Full Zone Media and iHeart Radios. It
Speaker 1: is written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Ossis. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans. The amazing.
Speaker 1: Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our
Speaker 1: theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is from
Speaker 1: Grant and Pet. Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson,
Speaker 1: my cat's fleeing Casper, and my pet rock Bird, who
Speaker 1: will outlive us all Bye.