The BBC reports on a weird trend of people taking their mobile phone to their grave. The origin of this idea was fear of being buried alive, according to Martin Raymond, director of international trend-spotting think-tank, The Future Laboratory. However, that does not explain cremations with cell phones:

“We came across this in places like South Carolina in the US – people were being burned but unknown to the crematorium, they had left the phones in their jackets,” Mr Raymond said.
“If you heat a mobile phone battery, it tends to explode, and the first reports were about explosions, and that’s how they started noticing this trend.”
BBC NEWS | Handsets get taken to the grave, Wednesday, 29 March 2006.

Besides the exploding crematorium, wouldn’t it be weird if you were walking alone in a graveyard past a fresh grave, and you’d start hearing the beeps or a chirp or ring-a-ling of a phone from the general direction of that grave?

This entry was posted on Friday, March 31st, 2006 at 10:21 pm and is filed under geeks, useless info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.