a one must be buried with the grave facing north and south. This belief also existed in England and there are graves facing north and south to be seen at Cowden (Kent) and Bergholt (Suffolk), which are locally said to be those of persons who have destroyed themselves, for it is almost universally declared that Christian burial should be with the head in west, looking eastward[31]. As is well-known, in England until the time of George IV, it was the general practice to bury suicides at the cross-roads, where a stake was driven through the body. In the year 1823, it was enacted that the body of a suicide should be buried privately between the hours of nine o’clock and twelve at night with no religious ceremony. In 1882, this law was altered, and the body may now be committed to the earth at any time and with such rites or prayers those in charge of the funeral think fit or may be able to procure. In certain country places it is still supposed that the spirit of the last person buried in a graveyard has to keep watch lest any suicide should be interred there. One explanation of the reason why persons who had taken their own lives should be buried at the cross-roads was that the ghosts of murdered persons were supposed to walk until the bodies had been recovered and committed to the churchyard with Christian rites, and since this was impossible in the case of suicides, a stake was driven through them when deposited at the cross-roads in order to keep the ghost from wandering abroad.[32] It is certain that the idea here is the same as that of driving a stake through the vampire, for sometimes this precaution was taken in the case of persons who might perchance become vampires, an operation performed not as an indignity but as a preventitive. Burchard of Worms tells us: “Cum aliquis femina parere debit, et non potest, in ipso dolore si mortem obierit, in ipso sepulchro matrem cum infante palo in terram transfigunt.” And again: “Fecisti quod quaedam mulieres instinctu diaboli facere solent, cum aliquis infans sine baptismo mortuus fuerit, tollunt cadauer paruuli, et ponunt in aliquo secreto loco, et palo corpusculum transfigunt, dicentes, si sic non fecissent, quod infantulus surgeret et multos laedere posset.” The reason for the selected spot of the suicide’s grave being a cross-road is further explained by the belief that when the ghost or the body issues from the grave and finds that there
