Funeral director busts major myth after showing what really happens to coffin in crematorium

At some point in your life you are likely to end up at a crematorium, first to attend a cremation ceremony for other people and then one last time when it's your turn.

It's like a second funeral where the coffin rolls out of sight at the end and the family are eventually presented with the ashes that come as a result.

However, with much of the process kept away from the public eye, there are some myths and false beliefs which had sprung up around cremation.

Funeral director Simon Savage took to TikTok to explain the whole thing and set right a few misconceptions as he drew on his experience with his company Otter Valley Funerals and showed people the process.

Savage explained that the coffin did contain the remains of a human being, and that he'd been given full permission to show the moment it was put into the furnace.

The major myth

Since many people don't get to see what actually happens during the process there's a major myth that the body of the deceased is set on fire.

As the crematorium is provided with bodies and gives ashes to loved ones, it's easy to see why the assumption would be that they were burned.

However, that's not the case and the funeral director took to the internet to explain what was actually going on behind the scenes.

The process was a simple as the wooden box being pushed inside a chamber just large enough to contain it, with the body not removed from the coffin as part of the process, while it was also not set alight.

"It’s as simple as that. I hope that answers a lot of questions," the funeral director said as he addressed people's curiosity about this part of the cremation process.

The cremation process

When someone asked him what the chamber looked like once the process was finished he added that 'without being crass it's just a pile of bones'.

That's because the coffin with the body in it goes into the cremator for between 60 and 90 minutes and is subjected to incredible temperatures between 1000 and 1300 degrees Celsius, according to DFW Europe.

The bone fragments are then placed inside a machine called a cremulator, which reduces them to the ashes that are then provided to the family.

While some people wondered why the coffin goes in, the temperatures are so high that the only things left afterwards to reduce to ash are the bones.

Oliver J. Knapman funeral home explains: "Coffins are built to be completely destroyed during the cremation process.

"It takes a lot of heat to cremate a body – so much, in fact, that there’s normally little or nothing left of the coffin among the ashes at the end. The ashes themselves are actually fragments of bone."

Other people were curious as to whether they check if the person in the coffin is really dead or not, and Savage explained that any final checks are done by the funeral director and take place before the coffin is closed, so 'the crematorium then trust the nameplate'.