Six Feet Under

Author: Karl Smallwood / Source: Today I Found Out

Nick C. asks: How did they settle on six feet deep for graves?

If there’s one thing everyone knows about graves other than the fact that they’re really spooky at night, it’s that they’re always six feet deep.

In truth, despite “six feet under” being synonymous with the very idea of death, it has little to no relevance in burial customs.

For starters, the rules on exactly how deep you’re legally supposed to bury someone when they die are by no means universal. One of the few general rules today is that a coffin can be covered by no less than 18 inches of dirt, which you may notice means you can technically bury a person less than two feet deep in many areas, if you discount the amount of space displaced by the coffin itself. However, it’s often standard practise to bury people deeper than this so that there’s room to bury another person in the same grave, often loved ones. As such, in some regions, even as deep as twelve feet isn’t unheard of.

Of course, as with most things in life, there are exceptions to even this loose guideline and it’s technically possible to bury a person in an even shallower grave in some rare circumstances. For example, the graves of children and babies are often much shallower than those of adults. (In some regions, like the UK, the fees for burial of a child can even be waived.)

In regards to location, this too can effect the depth at which a body can be buried. For example, in areas of land prone to flooding or high water tables, bodies can’t typically be buried any deeper than the supposedly traditional six feet due to the risk of them becoming waterlogged and even rising from the Earth like terrifying wooden icebergs. If you think this sounds far fetched, we feel compelled to point out that early American settlers had to resort to burying their dead above the ground in what is now New Orleans because heavy rains would make coffins explode out of the ground. This remains a problem for New Orleans even to this day.

Further, several regions in the United States, such as Connecticut, have no hard rules…

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