(swanky jazz music) - [Camera Operator] Where are we? - We're in New Or-leeans,
New Or-lunz, Naw-luns. We're not here just to wander the magnificent cities of the dead. I am on a quest for oven crypts, which are either more horrifying or less horrifying than
what you're thinking, so join me, y'all. The y'all isn't really
rolling off the tongue. I need to work on that. (campy piano chords) New Orleans cemeteries are full
of these above-ground tombs because the city is at sea
level and prone to flooding. You can't just bury a body
in the ground in New Orleans. Do you want a soggy coffin
floating down the streets? Cemeteries littered with bones. Corpses crawling with crawfish. Except that's not quite true. It's definitely part of the story but it's not the whole story. Yes, in the early 19th century, New Orleans residents and visitors were troubled by the watery
conditions in the cemetery. In 1801, John Pintard wrote
"water appears on digging "in any place one foot below the surface". And he found the wet conditions at St. Louis Cemetery Number One, New Orleans' oldest existing cemetery, to be repugnant.
(water gurgling) Also, I wasn't joking
about those crawfish. St. Louis Number One was
basically a crawfish habitat when it was established in 1789 and Pintard had a little freakout at the idea of crawfish
ravaging his dead body. Something about the crawfish eating him and then other people eating the crawfish and it's like a cannibalism
kind of situation? Anyway, what he wanted was for his body to be buried in terra firma,
solid earth, dry land. As for me, bury me in
the crawfish habitat. Chomp, chomp, my tiny clawed friends. So, burying people in the
swampy ground wasn't great. It was hard to manage and sometimes coffins would
stick up out of the ground. With diseases like yellow
fever sweeping the city, people were dying faster than they could be individually buried. There were stories of rotting corpses piling up outside the gates
of the earliest cemeteries and even with that, people continued to be buried one-by-one underground for many years. There are still historic
cemeteries in New Orleans where people are buried underground. Sure, the ground here is moist but bodies aren't washing away. Okay, fine, major floods
and Hurricane Katrina did set coffins adrift but that
happens in a lot of places, not just New Orleans. So if flooding isn't the only reason, why all this above ground burial? The answer is cultural and practical. (campy piano chords) New Orleans was founded in 1718. Until it was purchased by
the United States in 1803, it was run by the French and the Spanish, both Catholic countries and both countries that had experience burying their dead above ground. Both France and Spain
had been under Roman rule for hundreds of years and had therefore adopted
Roman burial traditions. The Romans buried their
dead in above-ground tombs, seeing such tombs as little temples. But like everything in life, there is status that was associated with burial with interment. If you were wealthy, you were buried in these big above-ground tombs but if you were poor or working class, you were buried underground in crematoria called the Kitchens. Nobody wanted to be
buried in the Kitchens. To avoid this, Romans would form societies that would build communal mausoleums for people of lesser means to receive this proper
above-ground burial. Those communal burial structures
were actually columbaria, which means they had a bunch
of niches for cremated remains. Fast forward to New Orleans in 1800. The Catholic church doesn't
allow for cremation. They won't allow for that until 1963. But if you can't cremate everyone and make them small and portable to fit in one above-ground tomb, what do you do with them all? Enter the oven crypts. (campy piano chords) You're probably asking yourself with all this grand, ornate splendor, why are we focusing on this? There are things about the oven crypts that make my black, little
eco-death heart sing. Here at St. Louis Cemetery Number Two, we're just lousy with oven crypts. They were called fours,
which is French for ovens, because, well, they looked like quaint, little brick-red ovens, not because they roasted the dead. Remember, Catholic church, no cremation. These oven crypts, or tombs, were above-ground burial chambers that were incorporated into
the walls of the cemeteries. Oven crypts have arched brick ceilings. Oven crypts are typically
stacked three to four high, with each chamber holding
one coffined body at a time. Oven crypts are the gift
that keeps on giving and by that I mean they're reusable. According to the rules of burial, a coffin had to remain in
here for one year and one day. That's the time period
that it was believed that diseases like yellow fever were no longer dangerous in the dead body. After the minimum one year
and one day has passed, this is opened up, the desiccated remains are
removed from the coffin, the coffin is disposed of, and the remains are pushed
to the back of the chamber, and the chamber's ready for
a whole new coffined body. Lather, rinse, repeat. If you were lucky enough to have a free-standing family tomb, the principle was sort of similar. The body would go in in the coffin and after a certain amount of time, the bones would be
pushed down in the back, falling through a shaft into a chamber below called a caveau, where you would hang out with
all your other family members, which maybe wouldn't be my choice. More of a visual learner? Here's a demonstration. (campy piano chords) (New Orleans brass band music) New Orleans was growing faster than cemeteries could keep up, so these oven crypts were a godsend. Underground burial space was limited but with oven crypts,
after the year was up, you could make room for
your new eternal roommate. Whose turn is it to buy toilet paper? A tablet would often, but not always, be mounted on the outside
of the oven crypt, listing everyone who had been
interred inside the chamber. But sometimes it would
just say something generic like my husband, which covered a lot. (campy piano chords) The reason Americans love
visiting New Orleans cemeteries is that they're so different than the cemeteries they have back home. Your typical American cemetery is a lawn or a park with
mostly underground burials. As much as we love recycling,
reusable graves are a concept that's completely foreign to Americans. Other countries in the world, not so much. Places like Belgium,
Spain, Germany, Singapore, yes, you buy a burial space but you only get 15 to 20
years to decompose in it. Once your time is up, you're out. Places in Germany, for example, if your family doesn't want
to repay for your grave space, you dig down deeper in the dirt, put your bones down there,
new person goes on top. But in America, it's the law that cemeteries must maintain
graves into perpetuity, that is, forever. (in warping, slow motion) Forever. Forever. Forever. Cemeteries have to make the absurd promise that your grave will be yours
forever and ever and ever. But New Orleans derived
all kinds of benefits from breaking that promise,
saving space for one. There are so many reusable oven crypts in these historic cemeteries and rather than seeing the
communal aspect as disrespectful, it actually allowed
everyone the opportunity for a proper burial. Laborers, immigrants,
and the working class could be buried in tombs
owned by benevolent societies, like this one here, typically, large structures
made up of 20 or so vaults or crypts at once. An individual could join
a benevolent society, pay monthly or weekly dues that, upon their death, would
ensure they got a funeral and that their body was
interred above ground in a respectful manner. I, personally, am all
about the oven crypt. Let's bring them to every big city, putting the needs of the community over the needs of the individual. In the spirit of community,
I will be eaten by crawfish. Take me, crawfish! I'm here! Come at me! This video was made
with generous donations from death enthusiasts just like you. (light jazz music) (laughing)
Video was great! Now I'll just twiddle my thumbs until the next one