Handsets get taken to the grave

More people than ever are asking to be buried or cremated with their mobile phones when they die, say researchers, reports the BBC.

"The trend, which began in South Africa, has now spread to a number of countries, including Ireland, Australia, Ghana, and the US.

Martin Raymond, director of international trend-spotting think-tank, The Future Laboratory said that this had started off "in the realm of the urban myth", but was fast becoming fact.

... The first cases of people asking to be buried with their phone originated in Cape Town, where some people's belief in witchcraft meant they feared that "they could fall under a spell, be put to sleep and actually be buried.

"In fact, they were asking for the phones to be put into the coffins with them in case they woke up.

... In some cases, they are even taking their mobiles into cremation.

"We came across this in places like South Carolina in the US - people were being burned but unknown to the crematorium, they had left the phones in their jackets," Mr Raymond said.

"If you heat a mobile phone battery, it tends to explode, and the first reports were about explosions, and that's how they started noticing this trend."

Some funeral parlours will now arrange for the phone put into the box with the ashes following the cremation.

And one service in South Africa will put a number of batteries in the coffin just in case the dead person wakes up much later and finds their own battery has run out."

Related articles on mobile phones and death rituals:

-- The "Phone Angel"

-- Japan's camera phone craze spreads to funerals

-- The cellphone gravestone

-- In Ghana, you can take your Nokia with you

-- Dead people in Slovakia are buried with their mobile phones

-- Irish are taking their cell phones with them to the grave

-- Mobile phone started ringing inside coffin

emily | 7:05 AM | |
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2006/03/011965.htm