Most people consider burial the same as going six feet under, except for the one eccentric man years ago who had such a fear of being buried underground that he opted to be entombed exactly six feet above the ground. Leaving phobias aside, burial rituals can vary in strange ways across the world.

If you had desired to see the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, then add the Hanging Coffins of Sagada to your list; this is certainly much more fascinating. The people of Sagada in beautiful Philippines have followed a strange burial ritual for centuries- instead of burying the coffins of the dead, they are instead hung on the limestone cliffs and entombed in the cliff caves. Even more weird than the burial form is what happens before the burial, what happens even before the death of the person. The Sagada elderly carve the coffins they would even eventually be buried in, delegating the task to their son or a close relative only if they were too frail for the task.

The coffins are made with minimal space and the corpses are pushed into them in the foetal position, despite sometimes having to break a few bones in the process. The cliff sides are overflowing with coffins of Sagada ancestors, although perhaps the trend is losing its novelty since a new coffin hasn’t been hung in the past ten years. Visitors to some of the caves find it a pleasing idea to carry away pieces of bones of corpses jutting out of the coffins as souvenirs, though this might hitch you a Filipino ghost. Perhaps, I’ll opt to be buried there, and then you could come over and drop me a line!

Via: FunnBee