Nine

Kim Patrick D.O. Endaya

Indonesian province’s annual ritual of digging up its dead to give them a wash, groom and dress them in new clothes

They say the dead live on in our hearts and minds - but in one Indonesian province, the deceased continue to walk the earth in a rather more literal, zombie-like fashion. 

Families in Toraja in South Sulawesi dig up the bodies of their dead relatives before washing, grooming and dressing them in fancy new clothes. 

Even dead children are exhumed - two of these photos show the skeleton of a baby wrapped in a print dress with a doll laid next to it. 

Damaged coffins are fixed or replaced, and the mummies are then walked around the province by following a path of straight lines. 

The ritual is called Ma'nene, or The Ceremony of Cleaning Corpses.

 According to the ancient Torajan belief system, the spirit of a dead person must return to his village of origin. 

So if a person died on a journey, the family would go to the place of death and accompany the deceased back home by walking them back to the village.

In the past, people were frightened to journey far, in case they died while they were away and were unable to return to their village.

Chrissa Marie Monis

Carrying Pregnant Women Over Coal

This is one of the weird Chinese culture. According to this culture, husband should carry his wife over burning coal before he enters into their home for the first time. They feel that following this custom will ensure that the bride will have an easy and successful delivery. They also feel that reading a good literature during pregnancy has positive effect on the unborn child and on the other side, it is very bad for the pregnant woman to gossip or laugh loudly.