Web Video / Ask A Mortician

“A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves.”

Ask A Mortician is a Youtube video series created and hosted by author and licensed, practicing funeral director Caitlin Doughty, which currently has over a million subscribers.

After spending her post-graduate years in a crematory, Doughty began to wonder if the way Westerners, and Americans in particular, treated their dead — such as pumping them full of carcinogenic formaldehyde and chopping down a forest the size of New Jersey every year to build caskets just to put them in the ground, all for enough money to bankrupt the majority of families — was really worth it, and in 2011 founded the Order Of The Good Death, a group of like-minded morticians who were seeking a cleaner, cheaper and above all, more personal way to interact with our dead. She later also founded the nonprofit funeral home Clarity Funerals to offer such services as biodegradeable coffins, natural burials, and the ability to be present with the body before burial or cremation.

Her web series explores not only her business and philosophy but also historical and current issues in the industry, so-called "iconic corpses"- deaths or dead bodies that have become legendary, and the biological process of decay. She has also written three best-sellng books: "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", about her time at the crematory; "From Here To Eternity", about the various death traditions from around the world, and "Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?", a compendium of questions asked of her by children.

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Her webseries provides examples of the following tropes:

• Affectionate Parody: Took a while, but she got one. She then posted her own reaction to it and found it hilarious.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Well, not all of them, but she certainly sees her fair share of cold shoulders from more traditional funeral directors.
• Book Ends: How Doughty views her education. Her oldest keepsake is an award from her elementary teacher for "a good witch story." Her Bachelor's thesis was entitled, "In Our Image: The Suppression of Demonic Births in Late Medieval Witchcraft Theory", which means her degree was, in effect, an award from her teacher for a good witch story.
• Burial at Sea: Offers a how-to if you want to do that.
  • In retelling the sad story of Charles Byrne, the "Irish Giant", Doughty noted that Byrne wanted to be buried at sea to avoid his corpse becoming a sideshow attraction. Unfortunately, John Hunter, of the Hunterian Museum, stole his corpse on the way to its final destination and propped it up in his museum. It's still there.
  • The survivors of the Essex shipwreck also initially disposed of their dead like this, before their lack of food drove them to...other options.
  • In her account of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Doughty recounts how most of the dead of the U. S. S. Arizona, a total of 1102 people, have been left in the wreck, considered buried at sea. Several of the survivors have had their cremated remains interred with their comrades upon death.
  • She describes this as the fate of everyone who drowns in Lake Superior, as recovering corpses from shipwrecks there is simply impossible due to how treacherous those waters are.
• Broken Pedestal: Caitlin seems to see H. P. Lovecraft in this light after modern interpretations of his works and actions painted him as an anti-Semite and racist. She still holds some level of respect for him due to the literary values of his writing, but would otherwise exercise a cautious approach complete with disclaimer whenever the author is to be mentioned.
• Burn the Witch!: Caitlin made a video about the Salem witch trials, though of course, as she notes, the victims were hanged, not burned.
• The Cameo: She doesn't do Youtube collabs very often, though she did one with The Brain Scoop, one with Doctor Mike, and five with her "sister", Anna Dhody, curator of the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia.
• Catchphrase: "The Middle Ages were magic!"
• Cheerful Funeral: While she believes you should mourn as you see fit, she does prefer that funerals be happier affairs than demanded in the US.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Believe it or not, she has her own group of truthers online who insist she doesn't have a funeral director's license. She does, for the record.
• Creepy Cave:
  • Caitlin has admitted that the only corpse she fears gazing upon is that of a drowned cave diver.
  • One of her videos discusses the burial site of Cuevo del Rio Talgua in Honduras, also known as Cueva de los Aranas (Cave of the Spiders) due to the foot-wide arachnids (not spiders) that live within it, or "the cave of the glowing skulls" because the bones interred there have been encased in glittery calcite.
• Creepy Child: Doughty admits she was one, and often says she feels that children have to be educated out of an interest in death and decay. One of her favourite stories to begin her lectures is when she rediscovered her diary from 3rd grade: a Hello Kitty notebook with a single entry: "Today is Halloween. Finly its come" [sic].
• Creepy Mortician:
  • Played straight with malfeasant funeral directors such as David Sconce and Raymond Cantrell II, who stored corpses in appalling conditions in disregard for industry standards or basic ethics.
  • Subverted big time with Doughty herself. Even though she may sometimes drum this up deliberately for comedic purposes, she's actually one of the happiest, most positive representations of her occupation on Youtube. This is intentional, as her channel is meant to show her audience that death actually has a lot to teach the living and is not something to be creeped out by.
• Creepy Souvenir: She has no problem with this, and offers people advice on how to get them if they want them. She draws the line at keeping skulls though, since there is literally no point in that chain that isn't illegal.
• Dead Guy on Display:
  • As noted above, the sad fate of Charles Byrne. And Elmer McCurdy.
  • Per his will, English philosopher Jeremy Bentham had his dead body mummified and dressed in his usual attire, and put on display at University College London for future generations to gawk at. Also present is his infamously less well-prepared head, detached from his body and placed between his feet.
  • A more brief case was the "homegoing" party of the (then-recently) deceased rapper Goonew, who was embalmed, then taken to a nightclub and propped up on the stage in full clothing, as if he's alive and performing to the partygoers who were there to celebrate his life.
• Death by Irony: On several occasions, the crew of the Essex shipwreck decided against coming onto land because they feared they would be killed and eaten by cannibalistic tribals. They ended up eating each other after their piddly ration stores ran out.
  Caitlin: The irony is that, if they had only chanced those alleged "scary cannibals" in the Society islands, perhaps they themselves wouldn't have to become the cannibals.
• Desecrating the Dead:
  • Several videos in her "iconic corpse" series involve people who have had their bodies stolen, dismembered or otherwise violated after death.
  • Her video "Protecting Trans Bodies In Death" recounts the story of a trans woman who died suddenly, and whose body was made up to look like a man at the behest of a transphobic estranged relative (who was technically next of kin because she was too young to have written a will). The video goes on to give advice on how trans folk can make arrangements to avoid this.
  • Defied by Peter Stephan, a Massachusetts-based Funeral Home Director. He'll take and do everything he can to care for bodies no other funeral home wants, even if they're dead terrorists or if he doesn't have the space to refrigerate them. Caitlin openly admires Peter for this quality.
  • Discussed in her video "Is it Legal to Mummify Your Cult Leader?" She acknowledges that as far as she can tell, it does appear to have been Amy Carlson's genuine wish that Love Has Won treat her body as they did (taking it with them as they traveled and then setting it up in a shrine), so it's just weird, not desecration. However, she points out that there are many other issues with the situation even so—we have rules about what to do with corpses for good reasons (like getting coroner's reports so we can be sure if someone was murdered or not).
• Didn't Think This Through: In her original video on mortuary makeup back in May 2019, Caitlin made a dare to her viewers where if said video accumulated at least fifty thousand likes, she would return for a part 2 where she herself would be the "corpse" in place of the dummy for her colleague to beautify. Not a whole month later, the fans delivered.
  Cailin: Sometimes in life, we make promises. Promises that, maybe, we don't think through all the way...
• Don't Fear the Reaper: She believes that fear of death lies at the heart of many of America's wrongheaded funeral traditions, and even global warming denial.
• Drop Dead Gorgeous: One of her videos offers a tutorial in corpse makeovers.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Many of her earlier videos actually had a short animated intro to segue into the topic. This intro seems to have been dropped by 2016, as a significant backlog of her videos now just go straight into the talking points, usually with a short title card at most.
• Enfant Terrible: One of her videos gives a summation of her college mediaeval history thesis, "In Our Image: The Suppression of Demonic Births in Late Mediaeval Witchcraft Theory".
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She made a video about the strangely impassioned battle for the corpse of Charles Manson.
• Fan Community Nickname: She calls her followers "Deathlings".
• Genuine Human Hide: "Were Books Really Bound In Human Skin?". (Short answer: yes, and usually by doctors). Caitlin describes the history of a few specific books, and also looks at the controversies surrounding them, usually revolving around whether the skin donor consented to the process.
• Grave Robbing: One of her videos discusses when archaeology becomes this.
• Halloween Episode: Several, though they are surprisingly understated. Except this one.
• Heh Heh, You Said "X":
  • She got a lot of mileage out of "Mocha Dick", the real-life white whale who inspired Moby-Dick, in her covering of the wrecking of the whaleship Essex, due to her being sponsored by Audible for that particular video and thus wasn't beholden to YouTube's monetizing guidelines.
  • Likewise, in her video on Iowa representative Dick Hamm's crusade against aquamation (and cremation in general), she makes sure to use his full name at every opportunity.
• Hime Cut: This is how Caitlin does her hair to hide her Forehead of Doom.
• Human Resources: Discusses this in one of her videos, and concludes that it's more trouble than it's worth.
• Inherently Funny Words: Caitlin seemed to derive a lot of giggles out of mentioning Jeremy Bentham's mummified head, as indicated by the constant audio bits of her saying "Bentham's head" in a deadpan manner while talking about said topic. Joseph Haydn's head would later receive its own cut-ins.
  Bentham's head...
• I Love the Dead: Discussed in several of her videos.
• Lame Pun Reaction: The pinned comment on her video on human skin book bindings has Caitlin being stunned into speechlessness at the lameness of the pun made.
  Rosa: Please tell me it's called a Skindle.
  Caitlin: Rosa I...
• Medieval Morons: Played with. Doughty has a degree in medieval history, and so is presumably aware that not everyone in the Middle Ages was a gullible, superstitious witch-burner; but given her areas of interest she tends to focus on subjects that highlight this trope, such as corpse trials and, of course, witch persecution.
  • Downplayed in The Grave of the Secret Porpoise *ssshh*, which highlights a peculiar and whimsical episode of medieval history.
  The Middle Ages were magic!
• Mood Whiplash: Caitlin would occasionally narrate especially grim and macabre stories with a strangely cheerful and comedic tone of voice, like her video on the Essex whaler incident. The silly, cartoonish sound effects and illustrations only further drive it into Bathos territory.
  • Some of her ad reads can cause this such as the inclusion of a plush chicken in an Audible ad read whilst discussing a massive flood which devastated California in the 1920s.
• No Dead Body Poops: Subverted. Big time.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Caitlin frequently has to make this disclaimer when describing old, historical contexts that may seem unrealistic to modern audiences. Her video on the Essex shipwreck has her saying something along this line almost every time she quoted something the sailors said.
  Caitlin: [...]Then, between Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, the lookout cried "There she blows!"...Yes, they really said that.
• No Party Like a Donner Party:
  • Caitlin did an entire episode on the Trope Namers.
  • The story of the wrecked whaling ship Essex was an even more grim example. And you thought Moby-Dick was bad.
  • She then completed her cannibalism trilogy by discussing the famous Uruguayan rugby players incident.
• Only in America: She believes that the American death industry is uniquely bad at providing necessary after-life care to its clients, living and dead.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: This video from January 2021, in which the usually upbeat, sunny Caitlin nearly breaks into sobs while detailing the horrific conditions swamping the funeral homes of Los Angeles after the Governor of California lifted lockdown restrictions while the coronavirus was still raging, before any kind of serious vaccination program had been rolled out. The desperation and grief in her voice is a stark contrast to her usual demeanor, and this hammers home the dire seriousness of the situation.
• Our Vampires Are Different: She did a video on the New England vampire panic and the various vampire myths involved, with a few common factors such as a corpse not decaying properly, people claiming to see visions of the deceased attacking them at night, and mysterious deaths in town. The inciting incident in Serbia was even the result of two myths colliding: a man believed he had been attacked by a vampire in Kosovo and smeared the blood on himself to prevent turning, then went back home where the belief was that smearing the blood had turned him.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: She claims that the "Apache Death Cave" is one of Trip Advisor's top ten death caves to visit in Arizona.
• Perky Goth: She admits to being a morbid child, even while growing up in Hawaii, but is almost always chipper and positive.
• Pun: From "Is It Legal to Mummify Your Cult Leader?": "Mother God had become Mummy God." Possibly better if you're British, and don't have to translate "mummy" to "mommy."
• Previously on…: She did the opening for her "Mortician Does My Makeup for the Casket" video this way.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: As if she could be anything else.
• Running Gag: Several of her history videos have Cold Opens or brief interstitial scenes in a melodramatic, faux-period-drama style, often complete with a silly accent.
  • The Romanov Family
  • The Real Moby-Dick
  • The Bubonic Plague in... San Francisco?
  • The Doctor, The Mortician, and the Murder
• Sarcasm Mode: In "Is It Legal to Mummify Your Cult Leader", when she's explaining why Love Has Won had to leave (read: was driven out of) Hawaii, she says that "Mother God" had started claiming to be the goddess Pele, and then puts on a high-pitched faux-cheerful voice to add that if there's one thing Native Hawaiians just love, it's white mainlanders co-opting their deities.
• Secret Ingredient: A non-culinary example. Some of the morticians Caitlin mentions have their own secret embalming fluid formulas.
• Shout-Out:
  • "The Grave of the SECRET PORPOISE" begins with a segment of "Binging With Brother Doughty."
  • The opening of "The Doctor, the Mortician, and the Murder" parodies the opening animation from Mystery!, and segues into Caitlin giving her best Diana Rigg impression. (She drops the act quickly, though, before it starts to clash with the episode's horrific subject matter.)
• Signing Off Catchphrase: "Remember, you will die."
• Shrunken Head: Yep, she has a video about them too.
• Spooky Photographs: She relates their history in one of her videos, including a reproduction featuring Caitlin being visited by the ghost of... herself.
• Statuesque Stunner: Doughty is over six feet tall and strong with it; traits that helped her get her job at the crematorium.
• Tempting Fate: In a mild example, her second "week in the life" video started on Saturday, with her being mildly worried about boring her viewers. Sunday found her at Hamburger Mary's^note a very loudly LGBT-friendly restaurant chain, having brunch with a group that included Lindsay Ellis. Viewers were quick to point out the discrepancy.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Doughty admits to feeling conflicted about the theft of Gram Parson's corpse by two of his friends. While this was done in accordance with Gram's wishes, Doughty can't bring herself to encourage the stealing of corpses. Ultimately she does criticize the heist ... because it involved drunk-driving and starting a fire in a national park.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: For the Essex shipwreck tragedy, the First mate Owen Chase. Much of the terrible things that happened to the survivors could be traced back to Chase naysaying and disagreeing with the captain's plans on no other grounds than a hunch. On at least five occasions, his decisions only made things far worse, such as his objection when captain Pollard suggested the crew seeking refuge on the Society Islands, where the local English mission could have saved everybody. The rest of it is history. When drawing on the events of the Essex as inspiration for his book Moby-Dick, Herman Melville later speculated that had Owen Chase not objected to Pollard's plans, everybody could have made it to Tahiti alive and well.
• Valley Girl: She would frequently invoke this trope to lampoon the individual(s) in question, or to indicate that Sarcasm Mode is on.
• Viking Funeral: Averted; Caitlin explains that as cool as it looks, it's not actually possible to build a pyre that will fully cremate a body on a boat. Plus, your local municipality might object to having your scorched remains wash up on shore.
• Warts and All: Her history videos tend towards this tone. For example, her videos about cases like the Donner party, Columbine, or the Aokigahara forest try to dispel some of the sensationalism that has grown around them in popular culture, and to remind viewers that the people involved had actual lives of their own, with the complexity that that entails.
  • Some of her videos about present-day mortuary scandals (particularly Graham, Putnam and Mahoney) take this approach as well, but Doughty doesn't hesitate to call out unambiguous incompetence or corruption.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
  • As revealed in her coverage of the whaler Essex incident, Caitlin is afraid of whales, considering them "unnaturally large".
  • Of all the macabre topics she's covered, her only admitted death related phobia is coming across a corpse while underwater cave diving.
• Younger Than They Look: A frequent occurrence in the comment sections of her videos is her viewers being surprised at how much Caitlin is younger than they were believing her to be. Despite her mature, motherly look, Caitlin is not even 40.

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