Day of the Dead

The post-Halloween letdown can be tough. Your sugar levels have crashed, your pillowcase is ruined with costume makeup, and you're not sure exactly what you did to win that contest last night. What you need now is a sensible, serious afternoon — an afternoon of mourning perhaps (you already feel like death warmed over, so you might as well go for it). The Chatillon-DeMenil Mansion (3352 DeMenil Place; 314-771-5828 or www.demenil.org) has just the thing: A Death in the Family: Death & Mourning Practices in the Nineteenth Century. This noon-to-5 p.m. event at the manse has a $10 admission fee, and for that price you will learn about everything morbidly Victorian, from post-mortem photography to embalming practices, and from mourning clothing to other grieving customs. Guests may also have their tarot cards read ($10), and they'll likely learn a lot from Leila Cohoon of Leila's Hair Museum in Independence, Missouri — people in the old days saved hair and made artwork and jewelry out of it, and Ms. Leila collects these pieces. Plus, the folks from the Paranormal Research & Investigative Studies Midwest group stop by, and you can even have lunch in Café DeMenil (from noon to 2:30 p.m.). Here's hoping the restaurant will be serving the oh-so-appropriate Death by Chocolate cake.
Sun., Nov. 1, 2009