Today’s Vengeance-Seeking Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
In olde England, it was common for the Church to deny an individual who committed suicide burial in consecrated ground, and the custom grew up of interment at night at a crossroads with a stake driven through the heart. The last person to suffer such degradation was a man named Griffiths who was buried at the junction of Grosvenor Place and the King’s Road, Chelsea, in 1823. Such bizarre practices are thought by some to have had their origins in primitive beliefs and taboos, and to have been aimed at pre-empting the vengeance of the suicide’s ghost – because it was assumed that, since society had driven a man to suicide, his ghost would return to seek retribution and punishment for those responsible for his death. This need for society to protect itself explains many of the diverse indignities perpetrated upon the corpse: the complete annihilation of the body in order to render the ghost harmless; the amputation of a suicide’s hand, on the assumption that one-handed ghosts were less formidable; the stake driven through the heart to prevent the ghost from ‘walking’; and burial at a crossroads to confuse the ghost about direction.
Culled from: Death: A History of Man’s Obsessions and Fears