I’d Love To Read About: Watery Places And The Afterlife

Have you ever learned a strange fact or seen an unusual place and thought, I wish there were more books about that? It happens to me all the time. Authors, if you’re listening, here are four unusual things that I wish somebody would write about. (Or take inspiration from. I’m not picky!)

I’d Love To Read About . . .

Great Dismal Swamp, USA

First, Great Dismal Swamp is the best name ever for a swamp. I like when names are extremely literal. This swamp is full of dense vegetation, blood-sucking bugs, venomous snakes, and black bears. It really is dismal.

The swamp is located on the East Coast of the US, in the states of Virginia and North Carolina. Even though the swamp is dismal, it has been inhabited by humans for 13,000 years. The most interesting inhabitants were the Maroons, refugee slaves who escaped from slavery and mingled with tribes of indigenous people. The swamp is awful, but it’s a good hiding place. Between the 1600s and the 1860s, thousands of people lived in the swamp’s hidden villages. Maroons were rarely captured by white slavers because their settlements were so difficult to find. Generations of people were born and raised in secret villages deep in the swamp.

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(If you’re interested in the Great Dismal Swamp Maroons, check out Dread: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp by Harriet Beecher Stowe, "The Slave in the Dismal Swamp" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, or A Desolate Place for Defiant People by Daniel Sayers.)

Cenotes

I’ve actually seen a cenote in real life. You can find them all over the world, but the one I saw was in the Yucatàn in Mexico. A cenote is a natural pit or sinkhole that’s full of water. The water is usually very clear and blue from being filtered slowly through limestone. Oftentimes, cenotes are connected by labyrinths of water-filled caves.

The Yucatàn has very few natural lakes or rivers. That’s why ancient Mayan cities were built around cenotes. The Mayans believed that the cenotes were gateways to the afterlife, so they tossed valuable objects (and a few human sacrifices) into the holes. It’s believed that many ancient cities were abandoned after the local cenotes ran dry.

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Cliffside Coffins

One of the problems for any society is what to do with the corpses. Some societies burn their dead on pyres; others bury their dead in cemeteries or store them in crypts. In some parts of China, Indonesia, and the Philippines, the dead are hung from cliffs. The coffins are set on beams that have been pounded into the cliff face. In Southern China, the Bo people believed that placing the bodies high up on the cliff would make it easier for the dead person to find heaven. Hanging the dead also has a practical purpose: It protects the bodies from scavenging animals.

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Haesindang Park, South Korea

Art is weird.

In South Korea, there’s a park that’s famous for its penis statues. According to legend, a virgin woman drowned in the ocean near the park. After that, the villagers were unable to catch fish. They blamed the dead virgin for their problems. Starvation was thwarted when a well-endowed fisherman took a piss in the ocean. The virgin was so impressed by his genitalia that she allowed the fish to be caught again. The village was saved. Phallic statues were put in the park to keep the virgin happy.

Art is weird. Legends are weirder.

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Is there an unusual place that you think would make a good book setting?