Indonesian family lives with dead relatives for 2 years

In a bizarre incident, an Indonesian family was found living with the bodies of two of their relatives in the hope that they would come back to life.

According to reports, a medical officer on a routine visit became suspicious after 77-year-old Neneng Hatidjah refused to let him inside the house. The medical officer then tipped off authorities who found the nearly skeletal bodies of the septuagenarian's husband and daughter in the home in Cimahi, West Java.

Hatidjah's daughter had been dead for nearly two years and her husband died in December aged 85. Both of them died of illness.

"She said she heard whispers that if she took care of the dead bodies, they would come back to life," local police spokesman Hari Suprapto told AFP on Wednesday.

Interestingly, living with the dead is an ancient custom among the Torajan people in Indonesia. The bodies of the dead are injected with a preservative to stop them from decomposing, and the dead are kept in a room where relatives bring them food and drinks. The bodies are washed regularly and they even have visitors.

Mamak Lisa, a Torajan woman who spoke to the BBC, said she has kept the body of her father for 12 years, and added that preserving his body helped her deal with his death.

"If we buried him straight away, we would also feel the pain very suddenly. We wouldn't get time to deal with the grief and adjust to the separation," she said.

While preserving the dead is a custom for many, there are others who do it just to avoid loneliness. Take for instance Jean Stevens. When her husband died in 2000, she turned to her twin sister June for company. But when June passed away in 2009, Jean became lonely as she did not have anyone to talk to. That's what prompted her to get the graves of both her husband and her sister exhumed.

She brought their bodies back home and gave June a spare room in her house. Jean dressed up the two corpses and even spritzed them with perfumes so that they would stink less.