Some time ago we published an article about a ceremony in Tana Toraja Regency of South Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, in which the deceased, having died outside their place of birth, are miraculously (and temporarily) revived so that they may walk back to their birthplace to be properly laid to rest. This was all sparked by a photo (to the left) that has been circulating around the net, that appears to show a corpse of a woman standing and about to be helped into a waiting casket.

Much speculation, of course, was abound, including that the photo was a hoax, or depicted at the very least something other than a walking dead person about to lay down in her final resting place.

Some further investigation uncovered another funeral ritual performed on the dead by the Toraja people that makes a lot more sense, and I have also managed to track down a video of this ritual.

When the people of Tana Toraja die, they are often placed in boxes which are then placed in tombs carved out of solid rock, high up on limestone cliffs. So they are, in fact, generally not buried in the ground. This is what makes the following ceremony possible. The ceremony is called Ma ‘Nene’ (The Ceremony of Cleaning Corpses). Out of tremendous respect for their dead and afterlife, the boxes are removed from the tombs (every few years), the corpses are removed from the boxes, and are cleaned and re-dressed. Damaged boxes are fixed or replaced.

It is without doubt that it is this ceremony that is depicted in the photo above, and in the following video.

Note, the video appears to have been shot by someone who has never used a video camera. It swings around wildly at times, and was in fact sideways (as if the person was holding the video camera on its side the whole time). I have rotated the video, so you won’t get a nasty kink in your neck while watching. You might want to take some motion sickness pills though. Nevertheless, this is 5 minutes of this very unusual ceremony!

But what is additionally fascinating is how this ritual came about, why this is still so widely believed and performed, and how it has migrated half way around the globe.

In Toraja society, death rituals (funerals) are more important than life rituals (births and marriages). So the funeral ritual is a most elaborate and expensive event than even a marriage. The richer and more powerful the individual, the more expensive the funeral. And in this animism belief system, only nobles have the inherent right to have an extensive death feast (which can include the ritual slaughter of many buffaloes).

Animism is the worldview that natural physical entities—including animals, plants, and often even inanimate objects or phenomena—possess a spiritual essence.Many animistic cultures (including that of the Toraja people) observe some form of ancestor reverence. Whether they see the ancestors as living in an other world, or embodied in the natural features of this world, animists often believe that offerings and prayers to and for the dead are an important facet of maintaining harmony with the world of the spirits.

As this ritual is so important, it can take, in some cases months or even years for the family to save enough funds to pay for the elaborate ritual. The deceased are wrapped in cloth and preserved (in their “sleeping stage”), usually using formalin (essentially formaldehyde)– though a variation of leaves was used historically.