Crematory Research for Book 3 of The Bone Cutters Series

On Halloween, I spent 2 1/2 hours interviewing a crematory technician and getting a tour of the Laurel Hill Crematory and Cemetery in Saco, Maine. Why, might you ask? This is part of the research I need for writing Book 3 in The Bone Cutters Series. Slug Man is returning for the third book, and I feature him at his job working at a crematorium. After all, there’s no better place to get a bone dust fix.

When I sat down to write the first scene showing Slug Man working at the crematory, I realized—I have no freaking idea what a crematory looks like inside or how their operations work. I needed to find out the details of the day-to-day operations of a crematory in order to write realistic scenes. What does the Crematory Technician use for equipment? How hot do the ovens burn? How many ovens are there? What do the ovens look like? How do they get the bodies in the oven? How long does it take to burn a body to ash? What is the process for removing the remains? Does the cremator have to remove all unnatural items from the bodies: pacemakers, artificial hips, artificial kneecaps, metal rods, etc.? How many bodies can they burn in a day? Is there a risk of mixing the remains of one person with the remains of another? (When my mother was cremated in 2014, I had an unsettling fear that her remains would get mixed with someone else’s and I wouldn’t get all of my mom back. Or maybe even worse—I’d get the remains of someone else back—maybe someone not so kind who would haunt my home and property. Yes, I believe in the supernatural. Just roll with me on this.) I had so many questions.

Since I used to work as a gravedigger and groundskeeper at a local cemetery, I have a connection to a local owner of a funeral home—Chad Poitras of Chad E. Poitras Cremation & Funeral Service, Buxton, ME and Poitras, Neal & York Funeral Home & Cremation Service, Cornish, ME. Family-owned and operated. Full burial and cremation services. Chad is a wicked nice guy and the best funeral director I have ever encountered, so I contacted him. I asked if he was willing to do an interview with me and give me a tour of the crematory because I mistakenly thought that he conducted the cremations himself right at the funeral home. I always imagined that the crematory was in the basement of the funeral home. Well, I was completely wrong, which goes to show how necessary this research is for the writing of Book 3.

Chad informed me he uses Laurel Hill Cemetery Crematory Services to conduct all of his cremations, and he gave me the phone number for the Crematory Technician, James “Jimmy” Free. When I contacted Jimmy, he was more than happy to do an interview with me and give me a tour of his facility. When I scheduled my visit with him, he said it would be hard to schedule the visit because he didn’t know if he would have a body to burn on the day I would be there. I immediately cringed when he said he wanted to show me how the body burns. I told him, “No, that’s okay. I don’t need to actually see the body burn. You can just bring me through a mock burning, and that will suffice.” I was so relieved when he told me he didn’t have any bodies to burn on the day of my visit—Halloween.

On the day of the interview, as I drove through the cemetery, I could see the crematory in the distance, way at the back of the cemetery where Jimmy told me it was. And the first thing I noticed as I slowly approached the windowless building—smoke billowing out of the chimney.

Jimmy was wrong. He did have bodies. And they were burning just in time for my arrival.

Within the first ten minutes of entering the crematory and starting the interview, Jimmy reached for the handle of the metal door of the oven and asked if I wanted to see the body while it was burning. My stomach dropped. I didn’t know what to say. So, I dodged the question, following it up with more interview questions. Honestly, I didn’t think I could handle seeing a dead body, let alone watch it burn. Yes, I’ve been to funerals and viewings at wakes, but seeing a burning body at a crematory is nothing like that at all.

Jimmy told me that when Chad comes to drop off a body and he has one of his young apprentices accompanying him, she always says to Jimmy, “I don’t know how you do this work, Jimmy. I could never do what you do.”

Jimmy’s response to her comment helped me see his line of work in a whole new light. Because, honestly, I had been thinking the same thing she thinks before meeting him and conducting this interview.

Jimmy said to me, “My work is easy compared to hers, easy compared to a funeral director’s job. They have to go pick up the bodies: the suicides, the drug overdoses, the car accidents…They have to deal with the grieving family of the deceased. That, to me, seems like the toughest part of this line of work. I would never want to do their job. Doing what I do here, I never have to see the bodies. I never have to see the grieving family.”

Yes, that’s right: a Crematory Technician—or Cremator, as Jimmy calls himself—never has to see the bodies. The dead arrive either in a box or a casket, and the entire packaging, for lack of a better word, goes into the oven; it’s not just the body that goes under the flame. So, it’s like Jimmy is just burning a box, that is…until that box burns to ash.

Later into the interview, after Jimmy had revealed all of this, and more, to me about the process of cremations, I finally felt prepared to look inside the ovens. I was finally able to see all of this through Jimmy’s perspective. Plus, I’m sure it helped that I did not have an emotional connection to who I was looking at under the flames. The other thing that tremendously helped make this not the traumatic experience I had imagined—

When Jimmy pulled that handle and opened the oven door, all I saw was a massive flame shooting down from the ceiling onto the skeleton and the remaining ash of the box. And believe it or not, rather than feeling horrified or disgusted, I felt fascinated. The whole process of cremations is nothing like I had imagined, and I wanted to learn everything I need to know in order to bring the scenes of my novel alive with realistic details. So, I stared and analyzed and discussed how the burning process progresses from beginning to end, from rolling the box containing the dead body into the oven, to what burns the quickest, to how the body and the bones break down during the burning, to how to separate the ashes of the box from the ashes of the body, to how not all the bones burn to ash in the oven and what needs to be done with those pieces after cleaning the remains from the oven—the entire process, from large box containing a fully intact dead body to the small box in the end that contains nothing but the ashes of the deceased. 

This all may sound morbid to many people, but it was absolutely necessary for me to learn all that I learned about cremations in order to write the best scenes I can for Book 3 in The Bone Cutters Series. Death is a fact of life. Many people don’t like to think about death, many people don’t like to imagine any of this happening, but it does, and we need to face it. As a horror writer, that’s exactly what I do every day—I face my fears.

Now, you might be curious to find out all the other details I learned about the cremation process, but that will have to wait until you read Book 3 in The Bone Cutters Series. I haven’t quite nailed to title yet, but stay tuned for more to come.

I must end this newsletter by saying thank you to both Chad and Jimmy for helping me conduct this valuable and necessary research. You are both so kind and accommodating, a couple of really great guys. And a couple extra thank yous go to Jimmy for telling me that I can go back to see him any time if I have any more questions and for giving me a tour of his beautiful cemetery! I can’t wait to visit again and to take pictures of the tulip gardens in the spring. Thank you very much!