Death…it is the single oldest, most pervasive fear in human history. Since death is an intangible force with no single method of action, we have a tendency to focus the terror that it inspires on the only physical evidence it leaves behind; dead people. Here is your guide to the weirdest death rituals in the world.

7. Fantasy Coffins

Where: Ghana

What It Is: The Ga tribe of coastal Ghana believes that a person’s coffin is their home for eternity. While we tend to see coffins as really expensive boxes for people to rot in, they believe that an elaborate, unique casket is a necessary precursor to a happy afterlife. They pick something central to the person’s lifestyle, like a spinning wheel for a seamstress or a cigarette for a hardcore chain smoker, and build the coffin around that.

If We Did Things This Way: About 90% of coffins would be either MP3 players or cell phones. High school kids would either get ostentatious, borderline sacrilegious crucifixes or big fat joints, depending on whether or not they were religious nutjobs or dumbass teen stoners. What’s better than getting cremated with a ton of blow and people actually paying for it?

6. Chinese Stripper Funerals

Where: China…read the header!

What It Is: In Chinese culture, having a metric assload of people show up for your funeral isn’t just a status symbol. The more people who show up for your funeral, the better luck your family will have in the years to come. While having oodles of people come to see you off to the great beyond is important, whether or not any of those people knew you isn’t.

It is a universal fact that nothing gets people in seats like huge, gorgeous tits. Take this, for example:

Case in point.

That’s why the Chinese have taken to hiring strippers and ‘exotic dancers’ for their funeral processions. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5280312.stm) Despite the fact that it’s technically illegal, the practice still flourishes. It doesn’t matter if you’re a dirt poor farmer or a wealthy businessman. If your family cares, they’ll hire pretty ladies to wiggle their meat-melons at the crowd. It’s a good thing.

In China, the Funeral Erection is a sign of respect, not a precursor to social ostracism.

If We Did It Here: Here in the Land of the Free, people wouldn’t get prosecuted for hiring funeral strippers. God bless America, and her flesh-tone mountains majesty. For once our homeland gets something right.

5. Buddhist Sky Burials

Where: Tibet

What It Is: The Buddhists believe in being one with nature and all that hippy bullshit. While we prefer to pump our dead friends up with chemicals and stick them in non-biodegradable containers, they try to make sure their remains go back into the circle of life. It’s a perfectly rational position to take; decay is a natural and necessary part of the natural order of things.

But it’s also really gross, and so are Buddhist sky burials. If the phrase ’sky burial’ made you imagine hang-gliding corpses, you’re about to be very disappointed.

That wouldn’t be a bad tradition to start, though.

Here’s how it goes. A monk and some guys called “body breakers” place the corpse on a slab, and chop it into tiny pieces. Then they grind the bones and flesh into a powdery goo, and feed it to vultures. Carrion birds are seen as sacred by the Buddhists because they live without preying on any other creatures or doing harm. It may be a perfectly sensible way to handle death, but it still seems a little more Hannibal Lector-ish than you expect a bunch of peaceful monks to be.

Buddha hungers for flesh.

If We Did It Here: Anything that involves dismembering the corpses of loved ones probably won’t be very popular in this country. Stuffing dead people with preservatives, painting their faces, and having all their friends come by and stare at them is perfectly normal and sane. Using them to feed animals and contribute to the local ecosystem though, that’s just wrong.

It’s probably a good thing we don’t do sky burials here. Vultures have it hard enough in this country without being fed the ground-up remains of someone who subsisted on Big Macs his entire life and lived in a house covered with lead paint.

Or as my momma called it, wall candy.

4. Fiji Murder Ceremonies

Where: The Island of Fiji

You know, where overpriced bottled water comes from.

What It Is: One of the worst things about dying is leaving all of your friends and family behind. I mean, who knows what kind of cool things those moochers are going to get up to once you’re gone. They’ll probably throw tons of parties and give away all of your stuff. Kinda like when you moved off to college.

When a male died in Fiji, it was tradition for his survivors to pay tribute, or loloku, to his memory. They do this by hosting an elaborate feast at his death, dressing up his corpse, and burying him with the strangled bodies of his wives, mother, best friends, servants and, in some cases, children.

Sometimes Pagan traditions are hot.

While this all sounds terrible, the Fijians did it with the kindest intent. They didn’t want anyone to have to go into the great hereafter alone. If you had a really close buddy, they figured breaking up the friendship would be crueler than a little bit of murder. Wives, young children, and servants were comfort items. We wouldn’t want to go to heaven without either porn or free angel-sex, and neither would they.

The coolest part of the ceremony is the fact that murder is a part of the whole funeral spectacle. They literally strangled the dead man’s family, kinfolk, and dear friends while standing over his body. You’d think they’d go for poison, or beheading, or some other relatively quick, painless method. But nope; strangling it is.

(http://books.google.com/books?id=1kxCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA499&lpg=PA499&dq=fiji,+strangling+friends+and+wives&source=bl&ots=Jga-0QR-rr&sig=pIIcliqy9PhRXJJfwpwqckmOPb0&hl=en&ei=dYuZSuy1Lt2c8QaDlYiyBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false)

If We Did It Here: I’m not in favor of this tradition becoming a regular custom, but I think it’d work great for celebrities and other famous figures. Imagine how much better off we’d all have been if David Spade had been buried alive with Chris Farley? Thought so.

Star of Joe Dirt and Dickie Roberts – the worst films of 2001 and 2003.

3. Famadihana, Where Death and Sex Meet

Where: Madagascar

What It Is: Once every seven years or so, families in Madagascar will gather together to go grave robbing. They exhume their dead relatives, rewrap their bones with fresh cloth, and throw huge parties with live music where they dance around with the corpses of their loved ones. It’s a heartwarming and sort of disgusting tradition that binds families together across generations and miles.

They’re not big on sanitation in Madagascar.

Like every ancient human custom, sex plays a big role in Famadihana. It’s not just about respecting the dead and family togetherness. When the dead person’s shroud is replaced, the old one is divided up and given to married couples who are trying to conceive children. They put the shrouds under their mattresses and fuck like nasty pigs until they get a baby.

Compared to actually getting laid, this ritual seems pretty lame. But for a lot of people on the Internet it represents the closest they’ll ever get to actual sex.

Dead people in Madagascar get more action than this guy.

If We Did It: The sex shroud stuff is up to whatever freaky shit you folks are into. It’s not my place to judge your borderline necrophiliac tendencies.

What our society should look into adopting is the tradition of digging up corpses and throwing lavish parties. It doesn’t even need to be a family affair. Just have the cops chill out for like, a night, while people dig up dead people and dance and eat cake. It’ll be just like Mardi Gras, but the tits probably have have maggots coming out of them.

Light my fire.

2. Self-Mummification

Where: Japan

Japan.

What It is: The ancient Egyptians built history’s largest funeral industry around mummifying their leaders. Over in Japan, a bunch of Buddhist monks have figured out how to do it to themselves. Considering the average funeral here costs $6500, and the average Buddhist self-mummification is, well, free, it seems like a pretty good deal overall.

Of course, you have to spend the last years of your life meditating and denying all earthly pleasures before you can do it. Some Japanese monks follow a tradition called Shugendo, which roughly translates to “becoming Abbott and Costello’s worst nightmare”Only two-dozen monks at most have ever actually gone through with this process, which should tell you something right there.

The only way to prepare is by eating a special nut and seed diet for three years, without fail or slip-up. No splurging because it’s Friday and you’re in the mood for a change. The monks also have to embark upon a strict exercise regimen, designed to strip their bodies of all fat. Once they’re down to bathing-suit slim, they spend the next three years eating only bark and roots and drinking a poisonous tea. The tea contains a natural lacquer, which coats the monk’s insides after years of regular use. Basically, they’re painting their own insides with sealant.

Once they’re all lacquered up, the monks crawl into a stone tomb to die. They sit in the lotus position and meditate, ringing a bell once a day to let their fellows know they still live. When the bell stops ringing, the tomb is sealed. They let the body sit awhile to dry, open up the tomb and, boom, instant Buddha statue!

I WANT BRAINS!

If We Did It: Let’s be honest folks, nothing that requires six years of self-denial and meditation is ever going to catch on in America. We’d have better luck convincing people to commit suicide by drowning themselves in great big buckets of shellac.

Shellac seals in the flavor.

1. SPACE Burials

Where: The Twenty-first (and some of the 20th) century

What It Is: This is the modern world and specifically modern America’s entry to the “badass funeral customs” Olympics. And it wins the Gold goddamn medal. Want to know why?

Because space is f’ing awesome. THAT’s why.

It just doesn’t get any more boss than having your final earthly remains stacked in a giant missile and shot out into the black. That’s the textbook definition of awesome. To date, only 150 people have been badass (or wealthy) enough to be buried in this supremely kick-ass manner. They include Dr. Timothy Leary (wrote a bunch of books about LSD), Gene Roddenberry (brought homo-eroticism to science fiction), and Eugene Shoemaker (he was a famous astronomer who was buried on the moon).

If you’re in the market for a space funeral, some companies (http://www.celestis.com/) now can do it for as little as a grand. That’s pretty affordable, and it ensures you a ceremony that not even pyramids filled with riches can equal in ridiculous opulence.

How Our Descendants Will Do It: One word: Corpse-pedos.