Mortician at the Mütter Museum: Meeting Caitlin Doughty & Reminders of My Own Mortality

I’ll be honest: I used to have panic attacks about the thought of dying. (And my interest in horror suddenly makes more sense, right?)

And then a friend clued me in to mortician Caitlin Doughty’s YouTube channel—known as Ask a Mortician. 

The channel was—and continues to be—a treasure trove of information, covering topics like iconic corpses, confronting your own death, and what happened to those who died on the Titanic. Doughty’s channel—now backed by the strength of a significant Patreon presence and a team working on these videos—has become an invaluable asset for so many. It is difficult to quantify how hugely influential her engaging, informative approach to these potentially difficult topics has changed my own views. Suffice to say that I have gone from panic attacks about my own mortality to visiting cemeteries on the regular and becoming deeply passionate about their history and preservation. Doughty’s presentation encourages thoughtful discussion about death and dying: It’s okay to be scared, and it’s okay to be curious. It’s okay to ask questions and hang out in cemeteries to think things over, all in equal measure.

Doughty herself, hailing from Hawaii and now living in Los Angeles running her own funeral home, has her bachelor’s in medieval history, producing at the time a thesis titled, “In Our Image: The Suppression of Demonic Births in Late Medieval Witchcraft Theory.” After graduating, she jumped feet-first into getting experience in funeral homes, though she was not a certified mortician at the time. That came some years later, when she earned her certification in mortuary science. 

Along with the YouTube channel, Doughty also founded The Order of the Good Death, an association of people from a variety of disciplines that seeks to address and reform Western ideas around death and funerals. This has also given rise to the death positivity movement, an idea that revolves around openly discussing death and dying. To date, she is the author of three books: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory, From Here to Eternity; Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: Big Questions from Tiny Mortals about Death. Doughty was on tour for Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? when I had a chance to meet her at Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum on September 14.

The Mütter Museum, which boasts a collection of antique medical equipment, specimens and wax models, is part of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The collection was donated by Dr. Thomas Dent Mutter in 1858. 

(Museum curator Anna Dhody opened with a comment on how the Mütter was one of the most popular places in the U.S. to get married, and between the heavy, dark wood present throughout what I saw of the museum, along with marble—and, oh yeah, the extensive, fascinating collection of human specimens—I can completely understand why.)

In Doughty’s engaging three-part talk—which consisted of a personal introduction, a reading from her new book selected specifically for her presentation at the Mütter, and a Q&A session at the end—she took the audience through what felt to be a presentation that flew by for how enthralling and informative it was.

In the opening of the talk, Doughty jokingly pointed out that her parents said they hadn’t really “seen the signs” of her inclination toward the morbid as she was growing up. In one instance, she mentioned finding a diary from her childhood in which the sole entry was a celebration of Halloween finally having arrived. 

The premise of Doughty’s new book is answering a series of questions asked by children, the tiny mortals who are generally unafraid to speak up and ask the questions that might make adults uncomfortable. The selection for her Mütter presentation covered the topic of conjoined twins: Do conjoined twins always die at the same time?

The Q&A session was peppered with a diverse array of questions, but, in light of the book’s focus, I was lucky enough to hear a little boy ask what happens if someone dies on the moon. (A similar question is covered in the book, and I am remaining intentionally vague about her answers to encourage readers to go buy her book. And you can absolutely expect a review over the next few weeks.)

Doughty’s presentation style on YouTube translates incredibly well to a real-world context through her forthrightness, humor, and openness. When I had a chance to meet her, I quickly expressed my thanks for her work, and how between her background in medieval history and her mortuary work, she makes people like us feel incredibly seen. She was as gracious on a personal level as she was in her presentation.

They say never meet your heroes because they’ll disappoint you. I say meet the ones who have used their own humanity to reach out and in turn make you a better person.

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Article Written by Laura Kemmerer

Laura tuned into horror with an interest in what these movies and books can tell us about ourselves and what societies fear. She is most interested in horror focused around the supernatural, folklore, the occult, Gothic themes, haunted media, landscape as a character, and hauntology (focusing on lost or broken futures).