Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) - the tumblr bone witch, pt. 2

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

Of course the graverobbing episode couldn’t be one part! In part two of the Tmblr bone witch story, Jamie speaks with the leading voice in American human remains law, a New Orleans cemetery preservationist and of course, a real-life witch. Follow Tanya Marsh here: https://x.com/tmar22  Follow JV Hampton-Van Sant’s work and socials here: https://linktr.ee/RedBlaqueGolden  Learn more about Save Our Cemeteries here: https://www.saveourcemeteries.org/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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the podcast where we talk to the internet's characters of the day see how their moment affected them and what it says about the internet and us. And today, Halloween itself, we're revisiting the saga of the Tumblr Bone Witch. If you haven't listened to Part 1 of this series, you will be very confused because this is a rich story. One with internet drama, police state intrigue,

and a witch who doesn't understand why grave robbing may in fact be illegal where they are robbing a grade, a.k.a. Bone Gazi, 2015. And as you now know, it is a wild story, one that has quite a bit to say about how laws around human remains don't always really square with the bone crimes of today. To learn more about the history of these laws and why Ender Darling was destined to be uniquely fucked by the law,

I spoke to Professor Tanya Marsh. I'm Tanya Marsh. I'm the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a professor of law at Wake Forest University School of Law. My scholarship and my teaching centers around the status treatment and disposition of human remains. How did you first get involved or drawn to this area of law? So I was a commercial real estate lawyer for 10 years before I started teaching full time. And I thought I knew a lot about real estate and property law. And then I said, started reading some cases, so I was looking around for something to write about, and started reading cemetery law cases. And I realized that here was, I mean, cemeteries are just a land use, right? It's just property. It's just real estate. But there's this super specific set of rules and laws that surround cemeteries that I had no idea about. And then I realized nobody really was working in this space, except for people who are like in the industry. But nobody in academia was like

looking into these laws. And in fact, the last like book describing what the laws were was published in 1950. It is, as you say, super necessary because, you know, spoiler alert, everybody's going to die, right? And our bodies have to go somewhere. And everybody who died previously, their bodies are somewhere. And so we need to deal with that. And you need to have legal structures that deal with that. So it's been a really interesting area to study. I kept like trying to characterize it to people as like an area of law that you don't know is the most important thing in the world until it affects you. Absolutely. As you're going into this field for the layman, what do you wish the average person knew more about your field of study? Wow. Well, let me turn your question around a little bit. Here's the big problem with this area. The big problem with this area is in the American culture, we don't like to talk about death. And so as you say, it's like a really important

of law and that you ignore until you need it. The fundamental like reoccurring problem is nobody engages with what are my options. What does the law forbid me from doing? What does the law permit me from doing until it personally affects us? And at the point it personally affects us, we're at sort of a heightened state of grief and stress anyway. And then once we get past those decisions, which are being made at a time of stress, we don't want to think about it anymore, right? We want to put it off the table. And so as a result, what we've got is a legal system that was developed in an ad hoc way over the years when there were crises that caused us to either have a court case to deal with a problem or the legislature was getting a lot of public pressure to deal with a particular problem.

So we have this like super scattershot approach. And what's frustrating to me is we have really predictable problems that come up over and over and over again. But the law hasn't like thought about any of this in a systemic way. Right. So as a culture, we need to get past this whole death phobic thing because we really do need to all get on the same page about what are our values. And does the law protect and express those values? For the most part, I think most people in the United States are on the same page about what we don't want to have happen. And I think people are constantly surprised when it turns out the law doesn't expressly say that. a common decency thing is not actually formally against the law. Correct. For an example, you know, a case that has come up within the last year is a Harvard morgue case, right? Yes.

Their remains were donated to Harvard Medical School, allegedly the head of the morgue, rather than sending them to be cremated as they, he was supposed to do. Um, instead allowed collectors and folks to come in and take body parts or he removed body parts. and allegedly sold them to other people. I keep saying allegedly because he hasn't been convicted yet. From the public stories of what we've heard, there's a lot of evidence that certain types of things went on. But then the question is, is that illegal, right?

Because it can't just be that we all think that's wrong. It has to be that there is a law that describes behavior and says this is illegal and here's the punishment for it. And so I think what people have been constantly surprised about in that particular case, the folks in that case were charged under federal law. Does the federal law actually expressly make that behavior illegal? That's debatable. But there are only a handful of states that say that selling human remains is against the law, which is very surprising to many people that I talk to that that is not against the law clearly in every state. The laws around human remains from state to state seem to vary pretty wildly in their specificity.

Correct. There's very little federal law about human remains. There's almost none about the newly dead. There's some price disclosure requirements that the Federal Trade Commission has. The federal government owns some cemeteries, especially for veterans. But beyond those things, federal law has very little say about human remains. So then it's all state law. And, you know, some of these state laws have been around for hundreds of years and some of them are fairly new. But again, because the way that governments have created these laws is in this hugely scattershot approach, it's not like anybody sat down and said, okay, here's what we think about funerals and human remains and how long are we going to protect them and under what circumstances are we going to protect them, et cetera. And let's create a system that's like cohesive and make internally coherent, right? Right.

And instead you have this, okay, Massachusetts in the 1800s and 1700s probably thought about these issues very differently than New Mexico and the 1900s, right? Because of the people who are there and the cultural background and the people making the rules, et cetera. So because of that kind of like historical diversity in terms of when states made rules and also the people who are in those places at the time the rules were being made, you get a lot of differences from state to state. Have you encountered examples of American laws being in conflict with other cultures? Yeah, absolutely. This is the part of the law when people are sort of newly dead, right? Is the way the law is structured generally in the states says within X number of days after death, you people surrounding the dead body have to do particular things, right?

Maybe you have to report the death to the government. You have to get a death certificate, things like that. In some states, it's pretty clear you have to go hire a funeral director. In most states, families can act or religious organizations can act as a funeral director on sort of a nonprofit basis. But there has to be some kind of final disposition within a certain period of time. And then what that final disposition is is also dictated by statute. So until about 10 years ago, I would have told you your only options are cremation, burial, entomintment in a mausoleum or donation to science. In the past 10 years, we've had alkaline hydrolysis, which is basically dissolving people. And then natural organic reduction, which is composting people. Those two methods of disposition have been increasingly legalized in the states, still state to state. But there are a lot of other practices that are done around the world that aren't on that list, right? Because when we started, when America started, the only option was burial.

That was the only option because that was the only option that the Protestant, Christian, who wrote the laws would entertain. It took 100 years to get cremation legalized, but cremation is widely practiced in other areas of the world. There's just a bunch of death rituals and methods of disposition that are expressly not legal in the United States. And so I think that creates some problems in an increasingly diverse society. And I think it's fascinating just like hearing how much of the existing law

is sort of connected to religion and commerce, it sounds like. Yeah, I mean, it started out, I'd say at the beginning of American history, death was the province of families and religious organizations. And this is consistent with a lot of kind of trends in society, right? We used to grow our own food. Now we're increasingly divorced from that and we have to go the grocery store. People used to die at home. Now people die in hospitals or nursing homes. we used to take care of our debt at home. Now funeral homes handle that for us. So, I mean, it's kind of part and parcel of like an industrialized society that we've taken a lot of these sort of fundamental processes out of the home and commercialize that activity. But then there's also a swing back, right? Okay, I don't like going to the grocery. I'm going to go to farmer's market. I'm going to have more of a direct connection with my food. I don't want my loved one to die in the hospital. I want them to come home and be in hospice care before they die. I don't want a funeral home.

to handle all these things. I want to do a home funeral. So there's, there's sort of a move towards, I call it the Walmartizing of America and then like a swing back to sort of more authentic practices. I'm going to kick it to Louisiana now. Were you familiar with the Bongazi story? Yes. I had heard of it. I had heard of it. Okay. Do you recall what you made of the story at the time? So I am never surprised because I probably hear about more of these stories than most people do because whenever something like this happens, like all my friends, email me or text me and say, have you heard about the latest? So I wasn't super surprised. I, yeah, also super illegal. It feels ridiculous to ask, but since I have you, I'm going to.

Yeah. Why is this illegal? Well, this activity took place in Louisiana. You know, I teach the law. So I always tell my students, I'm going to tell you what the law is, and I'm not going to tell you what the law is in Louisiana because Louisiana is always so different. Because in terms of the way the law is structured, because the United States is a common law except for Louisiana, which has a lot of echoes of civil law because of the French

history. So there are definitely some things that are unusual. But Louisiana also takes the dead very seriously. So there are a lot of laws that are very specific in Louisiana that do not exist in many other states. In general, it is illegal to disturb graves. So if a body has been placed in the ground or in a mausoleum, almost every state has a criminal statute that says you cannot disturb that grave, right? Now, the exact wording of those rules differs from place to place, but Louisiana says it's unlawful to knowingly disturb an unmarked burial site or any human skeletal remains. So even if you didn't dig, even if you just picked up human skeletal remains out of a cemetery or from the burial site, that's expressly legal in Louisiana. In Louisiana,

It's unlawful to knowingly buy, sell, barter, exchange, give, receive, possess, display, discard, or destroy human skeletal remains. They're like, we mean it. It sounds like there maybe wasn't a worst state to have done this in. Yes, that I would agree with that. Were you surprised about the online reaction to this and the way that we sort of interact with death and specifically with human remains in online discussion? I mean, no, because I think you see echoes of this. same kind of disagreements in the Harvard Morg case, right? And, and then John's Bones was another thing. Every once in a while, these things sort of pop up. There's definitely folks who don't have a problem with

this. I think that they're in the small minority. They exist and they're very active online. So I'm, you know, I'm not surprised that there are some people who think that it's okay to use the dead in whatever way, sort of the living, want to do it. But what I thought was interesting about this particular case was sort of the layers and the waves, right, of reaction because the initial, right, there's no shaming in this group. And then talking about what cemetery the remains were being taken from. I mean, it is absolutely true that, you know, there's a ton of bones and human remains in private collections, in museums, in academic collections, all over the country. And it is not people of wealth and privilege whose remains end up in those collections.

It is marginalized people, largely, largely, largely without their consent, whose remains end up that way. So what's fascinating, one of the fascinating things about American attitudes towards death is on the one hand, we have expressed in the law these super absolute statements, right? once placed in the ground or in a mausoleum human remains the remains themselves the deceased person has a right to perpetual undisturbed repose and that makes sense historically because the Christians believe that if you move the remains from consecrated ground then you jeopardize their chances of eternal salvation in from a historical standpoint it makes sense why that is sort of baked into the law but then on the other hand we have well unless you want to do something with the land and then we can move the remains right in an organized kind of way, but we don't throw them out. So we have these incredible expressions of respect, but then you got all these human remains everywhere, right? Where did these bodies in the museums and private collections come from? See that kind of tension play out in the internet. Is there a place where what they did is legal? No. Okay. Well, let me say it this way. What they did was walk past a

burial ground and see skeletal remains on the surface and they picked them up and took them home. If a person has no legal right to exert control over human remains, they have no legal right to exert control over human remains, right? So it's the next of kin or a person appointed by the deceased who would have the legal rights. And then those legal rights are constrained in particular ways. You have to dispose of them finally within X number days after death, that kind of thing, right? You have the law making it expressly illegal to do that kind of activity in Louisiana. Most other states don't have a law that's that specific, but they don't create a legal path either, right? So there are some activities that are not expressly

legal, but they're not expressly illegal either. You can't find permission in the law to do a thing, but you also won't get punished if you do it. I mean, first of all, Louisiana has a lot of graves in the ground. There's a ton of flooding. The water table is high. Graves wash up every year. in various places in the state. And it is a nightmare to try and identify remains and get them back in the ground where they're supposed to. So I think that they probably have, because of the natural circumstances of the land, they have more problems than many other places do. Where is this area of law headed? Is the Harvard case, do you anticipate there being any significant change? Or have you felt a shift in awareness or willingness to talk about death since you've

begun studying this area of law? I have not, I mean, culturally at the edges, you see more willingness to talk about death. I don't know that that will filter through, you know, the problem is when you have law at a state level, you really need interest groups who are willing to go in and lobby the state legislatures to adopt particular laws. The issue with making it more clear about what we can and cannot do as human remains like in these sorts of cases, right? Like after disposition is who's the interest group who's going to go lobby the state legislatures to change the laws? Right. The public is really bad at mobilizing. So if a couple state legislators read the news and get really disturbed by it and want to push it, but you just don't have any sort of organized group that's

saying, let's make this more clear. It's only expressly illegal in, let's say, nine states to buy and sell human remains. It should be illegal in every state. Let's go into the state legislatures and make that happen. I don't know who's going to do that. Yeah. So I'm not super optimistic that this is going to happen anytime soon. Thank you so much for your time. This was fascinating, truly. Oh, good. Well, thank you. Thanks so much to Tanya Marsh. You can buy her book at the link in the description. And when we come back, Insight from a Real Life Witch. we all know right genius is evenly distributed opportunity is not it's black business month and black tech green money is tapping in i'm will lucas spotlighting black founders investors and innovators building the future one idea at a time let's talk legacy tech and generational wealth i don't think any person of any gender race ethnicity should alter who they are especially on an intellectual level or a talent level to make someone else feel comfortable just to feel comfortable just to

because they are the majority in the situation and they need employment. So for me, I'm always going to be honest in saying that we need to be unapologetically ourselves. If that makes me a vocal CEO and people consider that rocking the boat, so be it. To hear this and more on the power of black innovation and ownership, listen to Black Tech Green Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How serious is youth vaping?

Irreversible lung damage serious. one in ten kids vape serious, which warrants a serious conversation from a serious parental figure, like yourself. Not the seriously know-it-all sports dad or the seriously smart podcaster. It requires a serious conversation that is best had by you. No, seriously. The best person to talk to your child about vaping is you. To start the conversation, visit talk about vaping.org.

Brought to you by the American Lung Association and the Ad Council. Hello, puzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. The answer is, Ken Jennings' appearance on The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs. The question is, what is the most entertaining listening experience in podcast land? Jeopardy-truthers who say that you were given all the answers believe in... I guess they would be Kenspiracy theorists. That's right. Are there Jeopardy-truthers? Are there people who say that it was rigged?

Yeah, ever since I was first on, people are like, they gave you the answers, right? And then there's the other ones which are like. They give you the answers and you still blew it. Don't miss Jeopardy legend Ken Jennings on our special game show week of The Puzzler podcast. The Puzzler is the best place to get your daily word puzzle fix. Listen on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Adventure should never come with a pause button. the movie pass era, where you could watch all the movies you wanted for just $9, it made

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Welcome back to 16th Minute. Everything I know about witchcraft I learned from my uncle Dennis. Here he is talking in my last podcast, Ghost Church. I don't try and get anybody to believe anything. I don't care what you believe. It's your business. For those that believe, no proof is necessary.

For those that don't, no proof is sufficient. I can't make you believe something you don't want to believe. I can only tell you my experiences. And today, we're talking about the Tumblr Bone Witch. So, now we understand how the law in Louisiana and across the U.S. ranges considerably making Darling's conviction all but inevitable. But again, while there is no world where I would condone stealing the bones of a disenfranchised stranger and putting them in the U.S. mail, I do feel bad that this essentially derailed

darling's life. Because while it's true that they broke the law, my anti-carceral heart can't help but think that part of why this happened was for the entertainment of the internet masses. And that's complicated too, because within those masses were a number of black and indigenous witches who were understandably angry with Ender Darling, for, in many people's view, completely misconstruing their spiritual practice. But let's be honest, there were plenty of people watching Bone Gazi who were strictly there for the weirdness and the spectacle of it all. So, listener, I needed to speak with a witch who had a background in the magic that Darling claimed to be working with. And not to brag, but I know someone. Here's my chat with.

with my pal, the wonderful J.V. Hampton-V. Van Sant. Hello, everyone. I am J.V. Hampton Van Sant. I am a voice actor, a drag queen, and a witch of some, several types, honestly. Just a witch generally, a witch about town. What is your memory of encountering this story for the first time? So I didn't encounter this while it was happening, but Tumblr history is so fascinating. There's so many wild things like this that just happened on there. And I'm like, what? What?

So I was raised Unitarian, which I feel like is the reason I don't have religious trauma, just point blank period. I just don't. The whole thing that they let you do is like, okay, so you can stay here if you want, but you can also like make a decision to not be here if you don't want. I was at that point just drawn to paganism in all its different forms. at 13, I made the decision to, like, not go to that church all the time. I still go there on occasion. Because of that, and because I'm now 34, I have now been, I've now been pagan for

over 21 years. I remember my early years and the, like, the things I would think about and get up to. And this entire controversy was feeling very much like, oh, this is your, like, first, second, third year of this, where you're not quite sure. of all of what this is. So we, there's some stuff to work out there. But when you were exploring paganism, were you using the internet a lot? Where were you going?

What were your resources as you were learning? There's a small shop in my town called Crystal Essence. They had a very robust book section, and I started working literally at like 12 because I wanted to be out in doing things rather than, and earning money a little bit, too. So I bought some books from them, and it was very much like, congratulations, you've decided you want to do witchcraft and things.

Let's go through the basics and also tell you some shit not to do because you're teenagers, and you don't need to be messing with shit on this level, on these huge powerful thingies. There's a part of the post where she starts talking about, like, I work with death, and I work with death magic. And part of me was immediately like, why? What are you doing? Not necromancer, very clear about that, but also, what the fuck are you doing with me?

This sounds silly, but could you walk me through why this is wrong, specifically in the context of having been a witch for so long? All right. So all of these are like wildly practical concerns. If you think about what bones are, they are things that. were in the body that was that housed a human soul right that's what they generally speaking are and that's why bodies are kind of sacred and viewed as sacred and important across literally every religion anything that was tied to a specific human soul thing number one whatever you're going to do with that thing that soul also has to be on board with whatever you're doing

I highly doubt whatever they were planning on doing, whoever they were doing it with was probably not on board with it, just for curse work specifically. I don't think so. So just on a practical level, it's going to fuck up whatever you're going to do because they aren't on board with whatever you're trying to do because you've not asked them and you've not shown them any level of respect in like the use of their bones in any way. So point blank period, you've disrespected somebody so they're not going to want. help you. Thing number two, items that are like tied to a specific person tend to also link whatever you are doing to that person. So if you are attempting to do a curse on somebody, you have bones of a completely different person. That's going to fuck up where the energy goes. I mean, I know it's obviously illegal, but it also is impractical as far as witchcraft goes. Exactly. This speaks to me of like you were going for an aesthetic and you weren't going for

the practicality, because the practicality of that would have you consider energy. And energy is specific. And it's specific to each person. You would then just be muddling everything up with that energy. So, like, if what this person wanted, and here's where I'm going to be slightly controversial and give alternative options. And I will use myself as like a sort of reference for this. A friend of mine a few months ago was having issues with an ex who kept like contacting them. This ex had abused them. So it was like kind of a bit of a serious thing. So in addition to just socially surrounding him constantly with like people that would keep him safe, I decided to throw in a little bit of cursework on my own. What I used for that rather than like, I don't know,

anything bone related, I used the dirt from a grave site of a civil rights leader whose legacy is such that she has a domestic violence center named after her. So, like, the energy was tied there, and I knew that that was the type of work. Also, I attempted to commune with her a bit, so, like, I could ask for permission for that and, like, offered something in exchange for the little bit of dirt that I was taking

from that little graveyard. Another sort of alternative to that is to leave a quartz crystal, something that absorbs energy anyway, leave that above the grave that you, of the person you are specifically, you want their energy and their help with this. You leave that there. You let that charge a little bit. People tend to not take things

from graveyards generally. So if you do go and visit, like, respectfully and you leave that there, it'll take up the energy that is needed. And then you come back after a few days. You bring that home with you. Exactly. And then that way there's no, you know, explicit, quote unquote, disturbance of the site. Exactly. Yes. Because like I will own the part that I did technically would also have disturbed a little bit of the site. I took basically like a little bit of grass and like a small bit of dirt, but like not a noticeable chunk. Just like those specific sort of plots that I like know what legacy they have and I know what their life's work was. So you also have to know where this is coming from. They have a good, a good system generally around keeping these things safe in places

where this is a huge concern. There's a way to handle all of this that is so much more respectful of the dead, respectful of the people that were at one point there, who to some degree are still there in terms of energy and spirit, their consent is also important in everything that we do. Consent is always important. And this entire situation was devoid of that consent. And part of that is the poverty of it. Like, if I recall correctly, it's the Popper's Grave that they had said, at least in the initial post. It was the tenor of online witching communities as you've experienced them. So I have had very limited sort of experiences with online which communities, but I have had

a lot of experience with online communities in general. It's unfortunate that that's the case because I do think that the internet should have safe spaces. But like in a community that is that large and full of that many people, yeah, that's going to happen, particularly if you start doing something like a little fucking crazy for lack of a better way to refer to it they did something that I sort of think they didn't understand

quite how illegal it was and then instead of taking the criticism got very defensive and doubled down and doubled down and doubled down my go-to instinct and I think Uncarly said it in her video as well which is

I would straight up just delete my tumbler and I would leave like I just I'm going to ditch Tumblr, and I'm going to also leave that Facebook group, and then I'm gone. Like, no one will know that that is me. No one will be able to talk to me about this, and I'm not going to respond about this further. And I'll also delete that post in that group, because at that point, like, well, people have taken this out of context and have taken it elsewhere.

The aim is just remove posts so that no one can continue to contact me wherever possible. Scorch the damn earth. Just baseline safety reasons. Also, ain't nobody need to go around threatening people's children. That's stupid. That's corny. That's tired. That's played out.

We're not doing that. I did appreciate the line. I'll put your teeth on my altar. That was good. That was kind. I love that. They had me with that. That said, the reliance also on, like, indigenous practices, to some extent, one of the things that I've been researching more just as time has gone on is root work and things like that.

So root work and conjure are not. an aspect necessarily of voodoo, but something related to it in that this is the folk magic of the American South, as it were. I have looked into it. A lot of it does come from the blending of multiple cultures, including indigenous American cultures and indigenous African cultures and just these different roots and has all these different roots in different medicinal practices, honestly, more than anything else. Medicinal was the primary thing that I, when I look at the qualities of different herbs and items that are produced by the earth that are then used in this way. It's use has been medicinal or spiritual within that and looking through that lens

of those things. Yeah, these people still wouldn't tell you to use the bones of a random stranger. Least of all, a poor stranger who probably has had a difficult-ass life and does not need some random people doing some weird shit that's going to get them cursed and probably their whole family lineage cursed because they're not careful enough. I just ultimately would be like, hey, this isn't the way. This is not a good idea. Where the story kind of comes full circle is black witches within the group, we're like, well, hold on. Like, how do we factor in here? Because we're not okay with this. And if the way that the group is structured means we can't not err our genuine concerns, then how is it a safe space? If we're being asked to kind of

quiet down when this was very likely the grave of a poor black person living in New Orleans, what now? And the group kind of self implodes from there because no one could come to an understanding. That is the only way that I would see that going. And the mod response to that I think is a fair one of like, well, yeah, we generally try not to criticize each other because everyone has different practices. Like there is a local witch group out here and that we have that same general rule. Everyone is welcome at any of our practices and any of our ceremonies at any point unless you are bringing like extremely negative ass energy and then we don't have to kick you out. But that's like that was an energy related thing. You do have to like check in with people because

once again, within every aspect of life and everything, consent is important. So, like, sometimes people are just not straight up going to be consenting to death-related magic. Like, I just, at a certain point, people just aren't necessarily going to all be on board with that, because that's a lot. That's a lot to do, and that's a lot of energy, and it drains a lot out of you. Maybe don't bring that to the larger coven. That's just not what the larger coven is able to handle. You can find other people that will be able to handle it, and that is then your smaller coven, your smaller circle of people. But also at that point, this person would probably do it in like a solo practice, which again, I would caution to them is like pretty dangerous.

One of the most misunderstood things about voodoo and root work generally is that there's a principle of balance and working with both hands, as it were. So whatever you do that is good, you might be called upon by people to do something possibly a little bit negative, but you are only in ways that restore a balance of some type. or restore peace in some way. I feel like at that point, if you're thinking about things comically and thinking about the level of like energy you are attempting to pool and to pull from, at a certain point, doing things then with death is maybe a little bit too far.

And it isn't just necessarily that your own beliefs are the things that are going to affect you. It also, if you are doing something that involves another person, is going to involve their beliefs as well. So if you are violating, someone's consent, and they believe that if you violate their consent with one of these workings, that that will reflect poorly back on you, that's when you have to be concerned, because that's then how that energy is going to be directed. I don't know. My whole thought is like,

yeah, this is a young person doing a young person thing. And as a person who's been doing this for over 20 years, I would literally just want to tell them, hey, one, you're just doing too much, honey. You're just doing way too much. This is too much. I will say, keep going and helping keep the graves like, okay, that's a good thing to do. That was a proactive and good thing to do. If you find bones when you do this, first of all, take note of where it is, take a photo, so that you can show it to whoever is in charge of maintenance of that place so that they can deal with it.

It's weird. It's strange. I'm personally not okay with that as a thing, but the government seems to never actually care about the bodies of people of color. Just ask any museum ever. Consent is always the thing that I look to first for literally everything, but specifically for something like this, is every party consenting to this.

And yes, even the dead. Even the dead. If the dead are not consenting, things don't take a turn, and it's never going to be for the better. Thank you so, so much to JV for their time and for sharing their practice. It was genuinely enlightening to hear from someone

who has experience in traditionally black American forms of spirituality and witchcraft. And also, JV's just really funny and cool. You can follow their work at the links in the description. And when we come back, what can we learn from Bonesa? Can we learn from Bonesi? Have we as a culture recovered from Bongazi? More when we come back. we all know right genius is evenly distributed opportunity is not it's black business month and black tech green money is tapping in i'm will lucas spotlighting black founders investors and innovators building the future one idea at a time let's talk legacy tech and generational wealth

i don't think any person of any gender race ethnicity should alter who they are especially on an intellectual level or a talent level to make someone else feel comfortable just because they are the majority in the situation and they need employment. So for me, I'm always going to be honest in saying that we need to be unapologetically ourselves. If that makes me a vocal CEO and people consider that rocking the boat, so be it. To hear this and more on the power of black innovation and ownership, listen to Black Tech Green Money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Puzzler is the best place to get your daily word puzzle fix. Listen on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Adventure should never come with a pause button. Remember the movie pass era where you could watch all. all the movies he wanted for just $9, it made zero cents and I could not stop thinking about it. I'm Bridget Todd, host of the tech podcast, there are no girls on the internet. On this new season, I'm talking to the innovators who are left out of the tech headlines. Like the visionary behind a movie pass, Black founder Stacey Spikes, who was pushed out of movie

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I mean, listen, the whole aim is to be accessible and inclusive for all tennis fans, whether you play tennis or not. Tennis is full of compelling stories of late. Have you heard about Icon Venus Williams' recent wildcard bids or the young Canadian, Victoria Mboko, making a name for herself? How about Naomi Osaka getting back to form? To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an Iheart women's sports production in partnership with deep blue sports and entertainment

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Welcome back to 16th Minute. The closest I've been to being a grave robber was taking a taxidermy class last year, and I have no regrets. And I have one more conversation about the Tumblr Bone Witch saga that I'd like to share. Speaking with Tanya and JV was extremely. helpful in terms of placing this moment along both legal and spiritual lines, lines where there was

more ethical crossover than I would have expected. But I still felt that speaking with someone from New Orleans was crucial, because New Orleans's relationship with death and the occult is extremely unique. It's the home of Louisiana voodoo, an African diasporic religion that, to this day, is organized and practiced autonomously. You may have heard of its most famous practitioner, Black Indigenous witch Marie Laveau. There's also Houdoo practitioners, Ruharia practitioners. Basically, the city's association with the occult is both extremely strong, and, unlike places like Salem, connected specifically to predominantly non-white cultures.

And this, combined with the climate, makes four, a very unique culture around graves and death rituals as well. And there were a number of groups dedicated to preserving and respecting this wide diversity of practices. So I reached out to an organization that was one of the earliest to condemn Ender Darling's actions at Holt Cemetery, a nonprofit group called Save Our Cemetery. And I was lucky to speak with their vice president, Shanna Hudson Stowe, about why this was not just a harmful act, but uniquely harmful, in New Orleans. Here's our talk.

My name is Shayna Stowe. I am currently the vice president for Save Our Cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana. Save Our Cemetery is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1974 by Mary Lou Christovich, who was a formidable person in New Orleans, who also led the charge of the founding of the Preservation Resource Center and was a major funder for the historic New Orleans collection. Hence, the name Save Our Cemetery. She succeeded. And her legacy is that St. Louis No. 1 is now one of the most famous cemeteries in the United States.

A different approach and care and attitude by cemetery owners of particularly historic cemeteries. I've spoken with a few different people about this story, and everyone says that New Orleans has a very multicultural population and history. Something I hadn't considered was that that would, of course, interfere with cemeteries, with rules, with customs, and with death rituals. So when you're working in preserving such a unique area with regards to its culture towards death, what are things you find yourself bumping up against or having to manage as the organization sort of evolves. We took a stance very early on that we would be historically accurate and that we would also respect the dignity and the integrity of the cemeteries and the structures within it.

We did not always find that other tours, businesses, or guides took that approach. Human remains, you don't want to breathe that in. You really don't. It's just not good for you. The subject of the show that I'm working on is the Tumblr, Bone Witch Saga from almost 10 years ago now. I know you said when we were emailing that you vividly recall this. So could you sort of walk me through what your experience with this was and what Save Our Cemetery's experience with learning that this had happened? I was doing my normal Facebook kind of scroll thing. And a friend of mine said, holy crap, what is this? And my friend was aghast and appalled and horrified by it.

And I was like, oh, my, and I had a very visceral similar reaction to it. Holt Cemetery is what you would call a potter's field. There's two elements of a potter's field. One is that the city used this ground for unidentified people and also people who died incarcerated in their jail system. And also when there was mass death events such as or a terrible flooding event, they were buried on mass. So they're basically buried in a, probably in a shroud, which is essentially just wrapped in a sheet, put into a grave with maybe other individuals, and then they were covered over. They did bury them fairly deeply. This is a part of town where the elevation is a little higher, so they can do in-ground burials. And Hold is all in-ground burials. There are no tombs.

You come across this story organically and you're horrified by it. What happens then? Well, I started making some phone calls and sending some email. And one of them was to Amanda Walker, who was the executive director of Save Our Cemetery at that time. And I said, we need to do something about this because this cannot continue. Right. And also, it should be noted that it is illegal. to sell human remains across day line.

It is a federal crime if you sell them across day line. So it makes sense in the fact, if you think of people who were not necessarily interred boxes or maybe not buried very deeply, I'll say very deeply, because the other element of Holt Cemetery is that it's what you would call a DIY cemetery. Okay, what does that mean? do it yourself so just bury bury B-Y-O-B bury your own body you know bury your own well

DIY you know do it yourself so you would take care of your and and I think you can still do that and carolson has a little section you can do that too so if you have a loved one and you could hire somebody to dig a burial spot and you pick a spot and the rest is up to you Wow, okay. And you enter your loved one and you make your own coping, you make your own marker and, yeah, yeah.

It is a place where people who did not have the means to have a formal funeral or a formal burial service or owned a family tomb. And so there are fairly recent burial there. Hold is still an active cemetery. You know, a human body can, once it starts to degrade at any number of different rates. So it depends. There's a lot of different factors involved with it, which is one of the reasons why it is a study of several different places to measure how things affect people in terms of forensic science. You know, when they find somebody who has died and is unintended and being able to figure out how long they were out there or to date a burial that might be 100 years old or 500 years old. Based on everyone I've talked to and particularly this conversation that having a permanent resting place seems to be kind of a class issue.

Very much so. But I think it really speaks to your question about human dignity and also race and clouds in the United States and not just in Louisiana. There was a commission enacted by state law to address African American burial that are located on private property that may not be identified or being properly cared for. by the owners and this came about, I'm going to say 2017. This commission met once. There hasn't been any activity on that since that time. And African-American enslaved burial places, you know, that's a national issue, particularly in the eastern and southeastern United States. And there has been a lot of discussion about being able to make these properties accessible, perhaps, in some cases, removing remains and placing them in a place that is more secure for longevity

and proper marking, the level of care and concern is really led by citizens. Say I am walking around a graveyard and I see that there have been remains that have surfaced from a grave. What should your average person do? I think my first and foremost answered that is leave it alone. Leave it alone. Particularly, you know, in a place like Holt, I would say definitely leave it alone. If it happens in a place that needs to be managed, then I would bring that to the attention of the owner of the cemetery or the proctor or what they call the sexton, which is a term

for somebody who's basically caretaker of the cemetery. So if you bring that to the attention of them and say, hey, look, you know, there's something not quite right. And also, one of the things possible in my personal experience, it could have been an animal bone. Yeah, you just can't be sure. Depending on the situation you're in, but don't pick it up. Don't move it.

And whether you notify somebody or not, I would say depends on the situation. What can we take away from this incident? Leave it alone. And also to realize this was a part of a human being. The thing is, about human remains, is that this was a person. This is somebody who had a mother and a father. Maybe they had children, but this was somebody who had a life. And that life should be respected.

And their life is just as valid as yours is now. To me, that's at the core. Most of the people that I encounter who work in the funeral industry, they really do have a deep understanding of that. It was inhumane. And the most, it was just, it was, it was really deplorable. Thanks so much to Shanna for her time, and you can learn more about Save Our Cemetery at the link in the description.

So, what can we learn from the Bone Witch Saga? After all these discussions, I really think it has to do with who you are and what your views are. Tanya, JV, and Shanna all had slightly different approaches to this story because they're individuals and they have their own relationships with death. Tanya's is very legal, JVs is very spiritual, Shana's is community-minded, and that's just the surface. I won't pretend that any one law or faith tenant will have an answer that works for everyone. It definitely won't. But here's what we all agreed on. The Bone Witch maybe missed the mark.

It really depends. If we're talking witchcrafts, I think there's a lesson to be learned about really getting educated and listening to longtime practitioners instead of just acting alone. If we're talking human remains, there's a lot to be said about how none of these laws, the most part, have been updated in the last century, making the punishments associated with disrespecting human remains, kind of more of a slap on the wrist. If we're talking internet, the lesson of the Tumblr Bone Witch saga is that when shit hits the fan and you did it? Stop posting! My God! And on that note, the Tumblr, Bone Witch and Bone Gazi, we're putting this in the

ground for real this time. Your 16th minute ends now. And I know exactly what we're going to do for our moment of fun this week. This is the Halloween media that haunts my soul personally, the haunted cassette tape from McDonald's that used to play on my aunt's porch until my ears bled. Happy Halloween, motherfuckers. See you next week. What's that? I think it's a ghost. It's getting closer. No, sir. Knock, knock. It's here.

Ronald, what do we do? A panic? Knock, knock. Who's there? Boo. Don't cry, Ronald. It's only me. Oh, grimace.

Grammar. 16th minute is a moment. production of Cool Zone Media and IHard Radio. It is written, hosted, and produced by me, Jamie Laughness. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichten and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad 13. Voice acting is from Grant Crater. And pet shoutouts to our dog producer Anderson, my cats Flea and Casper, and my pet rock bird who will outlive us all. Bye. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime.

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