You know, I saw that the other day and I was about to get a bit creeped out. And I was. Then I thought about it.
I went to my grandmother's funeral deep in the Philippines in 1996. I showed up at their house and lo and behold, she was lying in a coffin in the house. She was embalmed, like this guy but lying in a coffin. In the outlying countryside, there's not a lot of services/tech. Hence not a lot of refrigeration for those kinds of purposes. And Catholic tradition calls for a lot of ceremony. I was a WAY uncomfortable to say the least but then everybody came by the house for prayers and visits over the course of 3 days. People would sit by her and talk to her and tell stories. After a while it was like she was just hanging out before we actually buried her. When we carried her coffin to the cemetery, per tradition, they opened the house windows so her spirit wouldn't get stuck in the house. Then we took off her shoes so her spirit wouldn't slip when she left the house. It was actually amusing, in an odd way. We even spun the coffin a few times to make sure the spirit was 'unstuck'.
Odd traditions but very interesting to actually experience them first hand.
That is intensely creepy.
This part of the article caught my eye...... if you didn't tell anyone ahead of time .. I could find some humor in this I would laugh about (if that's an after life option).
"The work was performed by the Marin Funeral Home in San Juan, which also made headlines two years ago for presenting the embalmed body of Angel Luis “Pedrito” Pantojas Medina standing up in the corner for his own funeral."
Heh. I wish I'd read OSB's reply before I posted mine. I can see how it would be comforting for the family in some ways. Strangely enough, I've been to very, very few funerals in my life.