Why do we fear the dead?

Question

I mean, they are just normal people, just like us except not living. What is scary about that? I am afraid of them, but I dont know why.

Answer 1

We have been brainwashed by too many horror movies in which the dead do all sorts of weird things instead of just staying quietly dead.

In the middle ages the dead were feared because dead bodies could cause breakouts of diseases.

Answer 2

I think that it is a conditioned response carrying over from times when dead bodies caused plagues or the spread of disease. That and the ever persistant horror tales surrounding dead bodies becoming reanimated.

Whatever it is the fear is not instinctual. Many cultures have elaborate death rites in which the dead body is carried to many different places. One culture has to carve a statue of the dead person and cannot have the funeral until that statue is done (about a month's time). If a person dies and the funeral or death rite is not done properly the person will not go into the afterlife, so this culture keeps the body in the house in its bed and pretends that it is alive until the funeral. They will set a place for it for dinner and say the person cannot make it to the table because they are not feeling well. One person will take food into the room and return and say the person did not feel like eating. No fear of dead bodies there...

Answer 3

I'm not afraid of the dead either. But one of the reasons people fear the dead is that they know that one day that will be them. Another reason is that some people are scared to admit that they are just normal people only in a dead form. They are not alive as the human race understands it. Its a complicated thing but humans are scared of everything we don't understand and we can't understand death without first going through it.

Answer 4

I dont fear the dead, they are no more scary than a leaf turned brown and fallen from the tree. There is nothing there, maybe thats what is scary for some people to look at a dead person where there was life and see nothing more animate than a chair.

Answer 5

Personally, I don't fear the dead. There are lots more scary LIVE people walking around than dead ones.

Answer 6

Death is just like changing clothes for a soul, if ones body has died then it searches for another, but the main motive of a body is , it has to do what soul says, in cut and short words we all have come in this world to cut down the sins made by our soul so that we can attain moksha, but we usually forget this and because of this we fear dead, as we are habbituated to the 5 senses and we feel that this is world.

Answer 7

I don't fear the dead. I guess I use to, but not anymore. Now I could put my coffee right down on a corpses chest and dunk my donut in it while dripping the excess on his clean shirt. Ya know what I mean?

Answer 8

Its all our mindset. We have been told perhaps that the dead can't and its all about how we have taken it. No one but the dead person can actually tell the truth. But the "scary" part of it is the stories we come across directly or indirectly....

Answer 9

Ecclesiastes 9:4-5:

For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.

Answer 10

I think it is just us fearing the unknown. We can't see them like you see alive spirits and you can't have a conversation with them. Society today in horror films and books it has alsways conditioned us to be afraid of ghosts and spirits so its only natural to fear those who are dead.