Culture and The Fear of The Dead

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Generally speaking, death is something that brings fear so much that once it happens, even someone you so much loved while alive becomes an alien. To prove exactly what I mean here, a young University student who enrolled to study medicine in Makerere University Kampala, was taken to a mortuary on his first orientation at the Medical School. They were exposed to dead bodies; each of them was assigned a newly dead body to study before a post mortem would be conducted. Unfortunately for this particular student, the corpse assigned to him was probably not completely dead, because the supposed dead person rose and sat up on the operating table. This sparked off such an avalanche of fear that the student ran away from the Mortuary like a mad man. It took so many policemen and other security agents to constrain him. He later left the Medical School and studied education.

 In my culture, it is believed that proper burial of the dead is of paramount importance to the peace and well being of the affected families. People who die and do not get appropriate praise and recognition at their burials would be angered in death and their souls would torment the family members who did not accord them the befitting burial they so deserved. Infact, anything short of a decent burial is a recipe for more deaths and other afflictions coming to the family concerned.

 Because of such cultural beliefs, there is good cause to fear the dead and as much as possible, people avoid angering the dead. It is not enough among the Acholi where I come from, to bury the dead, you must actually complete this burial ritual with a last funeral rite, which involves praying for the spirits of the dead and feasting. Again, families members of people who have died but have not had these ceremonies performed often live in the perpetual fear of the dead. Any misfortunes that strike members of the family of the dead is often attributed to the anger of the dead. The reasons why people fear the dead is partly due to the belief that in death, humans do not really die. This explains why in ancient times, the death of Kings such as the Pharaohs would be followed by the killing of a number of servants who would be buried along with him so that they continued serving the King in his death.

 There are people who have confessed to having been harassed by the souls of the dead. In Africa especially, people who kill fellow men for no good reason continuously report this harassment and that explains why murderers try to seek ways and means of appeasing the spirits of the people they murder. Some simply drink a bit of the blood of the people they murder either in contract killings or in a war situations so that they are kept free of the torments of the dead.

 In many circles however, Christians especially believe that the dead are conscious of nothing at all and should not be feared. Infact the Bible says the dead are impotent in death, but with all these said, I personally believe the fear of the dead is still going to be around among men for a log time.