Seeing as this strange tradition has been upheld for more than 2,000 years, one might think there’d be even more coffins hanging from these cliffs than are visible. The problem is that, eventually, they all deteriorate and fall off!
The upside is that this cycle makes more room for other hanging coffins to be added to the cliffs over time. As a matter of fact, some of the hanging coffins are well over a century old!
One of the other fascinating things about these coffins—perhaps more than the fact that they hang over mountains—is that each of these caskets is carved out of hollowed logs, usually by their elderly inhabitants themselves before they die.
stevepb / Pixabay
While it seems macabre, it’s a long-standing tradition for the people of Sagada. That said, the younger, more able-bodied members of the family will step in to build coffins for their elders if they are too sick or weak to do it themselves.
Once the loved ones have passed and they’re ready to be buried, the process of suspending them isn’t an easy one. Sometimes, the corpses won’t properly fit in the coffins, so their bones have to be broken in order to squeeze the bodies in.
