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In this revisit from Season 1, Amy hosts a Halloween edition of the Talkin’ Appalachian Podcast featuring education specialist Burke Greer from the Southwest Virginia Museum and Historical State Park, exploring historic Appalachian death and mourning rituals. Topics include church bell tolling to announce deaths and the deceased’s age, the “death watch,” wakes, and premonitions through dreams or visions. Burke describes home-based practices before embalming: cooling boards, binding the body, salt to absorb moisture, sitting up with the dead, fears about cats, and seasonal concerns like keeping bodies frozen in winter. The episode covers the rise of embalming and funeral aesthetics, post-mortem photography, grave digging as a community task, outdoor funeralizing, the origin of “pallbearer,” ridge-top cemeteries versus church graveyards, early markers and symbols, wreaths and flowers, hair weaving and graveyard quilts, Victorian mourning customs, and home superstitions like stopping clocks, covering mirrors, and corpse-bird omens, ending with an excerpt from Ron Rash’s “The Corpse Bird.”

00:00 Halloween Episode Intro

01:00 Bells and Death Notices

01:16 Death Watch and Wake

02:10 Family Roles After Death

02:43 Premonitions and Visions

04:09 Cooling Boards and Rigor

05:54 Sitting Up With Dead

06:19 Embalming and Funeral Industry

07:20 Post Mortem Photography

09:01 Funerals and Pallbearers

10:39 Cemeteries and Grave Markers

12:50 Mourning Symbols and Hair Art

14:29 Victorian Mourning Clothes

15:56 Patreon and Bonus Photos

16:43 Home Death Superstitions

18:34 Ron Rash Corpse Bird

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Unless another artist is featured, acoustic music on most episodes: "Freight Train" written by Elizabeth Cotten and performed by Landon Spain