KIWI COFFIN CLUB

It’s just a box until there is someone in it.”

Most people have little or no thought about coffins. They only enter mass consciousness through horror stories and films. A coffin is the daytime resting place of the famous vampire Dracula and they also provide cold homes for zombies who come and go from them in their never ending quest for living flesh. However, a lively group of elderly folk in New Zealand have embraced coffins as a way to socialize and have some fun.

There are currently4 coffin clubs around the North Island after the original one was founded in Rotorua in 2010 by 77 year old former palliative care nurse Katie Williams. “Because of my work and my age, I had seen lots of people dying and their funerals were nothing to do with the vibrancy and life of those people. You would not know what they were really like, that they had lived and laughed and loved. I had a deep-seated feeling that people’s journey’s deserved a more personal farewell.” read more