Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with remains

final resting place?

Max Power — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 08:37:11 -0800

Okay, my girlfriend, while walking the dog, found 3 odd boxes... It turns out they are the cremated remains of some folks.

She had seen a local homeless guy placing them next to a neighbors trash.

They've been out all night so she picked 'em up.

one has a cemetery sticker on it, what should we do with these?

Who do we contact?

Can I Get In Trouble Regarding My Donation of a Human Skull?

Modus Pwnens — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 11:32:27 -0800

SkullCourierFilter- My fiancee's family had a human skull that her father had somehow procured. I donated it to our school and they said they may have to report it to the police. Do I have anything to worry about? The skull is clearly some sort of archaeological artifact. It is varnished and had some partially erased writing on the top of it detailing where (we believe) it was dug up, and by whom it was dug up. My fiancee's father (the original possessor of the skull) who passed away quite a while ago, left it with some friends who were moving. They passed it back to to my fiancee's family, who were creeped out by the prospect of having a human skull in their home, so I agreed to be its caretaker.

My fiancee called up the anthropology department at my university, and they agreed to accept it as a donation. They said they believed they might have to report it to the police, and I told them that was fine and I left my information in case I needed to be contacted.

My feeling is that since I haven't done anything wrong (and certainly haven't killed anyone and kept their skull!), I don't have anything to fear from the law. Am I wrong in believing that?

ZomBay Critical Mass

Ambrosia Voyeur — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:51:17 -0800

AquaticNecromancyFilter: Combined, the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley employ about 3500 uniformed police officers. Do they outnumber the army that could be raised by dark magic from the floor of the San Francisco Bay? Approximately how many entire sets of human skeletal remains are there in that body of water, considering disasters, shipwrecks, bridge jumpers, tidal movement of sediment, etc.? Yes, I'm sure a reanimated skeleton warrior with a missing digit or patella could probably still serve well in the zombie army, but I'm going for an approximate head count, here, so that the skeletons can mix and match parts to create as many complete horrors from the deep as possible.

Practical steps to take after a person dies

nickyskye — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 17:26:44 -0800

Can anyone tell me about the legal, practical steps of dealing with a person who dies, their dead body? I live in NYC but imagine the steps must be pretty similar all over the US and Europe too. I'm trying to know the step-by-step actions to take both for the event of my own death, to leave convenient instructions for my relatives/friends and also to know for myself because I've been lost about what to do practically when people I knew died.