Grider, Sylvia Ann. “Spontaneous Shrines and Public Memorialization.” (2014).
As part of my coursework at Western Michigan, I took a course in Death and Dying and we were asked to review the article cited above and to reflect upon it.
Recap
Spontaneous Shrines and Public Memorialization starts with a description of the overwhelming public
display of grief that occurred after Princess Diana’s death in 1997. As Grider stated, “Cameras panned
relentlessly across the acres and acres of grief offerings—flowers, photographs, balloons, candles, teddy
bears—that cascaded across the London landscape, turning parts of the city into vast shrines dedicated
to the dead princess.” The article went on to note that although the scope of the public memorialization
might be unprecedented, this was not the first spontaneous outpouring of grief that resulted in a
spontaneous shrine as other such shrines had been created when John Lennon died in 1980 and at the
Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City after it was bombed in 1995. She also pointed out
that the Vietnam Memorial had become a place of public grieving after it was dedicated in 1982.
Spontaneous shrines are a subcategory of Shrines, according to Grider, because unlike more formal
shrines they are unofficial and created spontaneously on or near the site that a violent death took place
by people who are affected by the death(s). Although some reporters call them makeshift memorials,
Grider objects to the term because memorials are not always close to the incident they are
memorializing, such as the Korean War memorial in Washington D.C., and may or may not be sacred.
Additionally, these shrines are not makeshift as people who leave items take the time to carefully place
items.
Although Grider stated that scholars agree that the catalyst for recent spontaneous shrines was the
practice of leaving offerings at the Vietnam War Memorial, which was dedicated in 1982, she also said
that the Gates of Graceland became a public shrine when Elvis Presley died in 1977. What is unique
about the Vietnam War Memorial is that the offerings are collected each evening and catalogued with
some having been displayed at the Smithsonian. Interestingly, the exhibit at the Smithsonian sparked a
change in that now some offerings are left with a note that says whether or not permission is granted to
display the items. Significant spontaneous shrines have included those at the Alfred P. Murrah Building,
Columbine High School, Hillsborough Soccer Stadium, and the streets of New York City after 9/11. The
items left at these spontaneous shrines include traditional religions items, candles, teddy bears, and
items that some might find unsuitable such as unsmoked cigars, pacifiers, and cans of Spam. As Grider
said that although some may view some of the offerings as inappropriate, “Only the person who left the
item knows why it becomes part of the overall shrine.” All practices adjust themselves to the modern
world and spontaneous shrines are no different. Recent adaptations of spontaneous shrines include
cybermemorials, the Project AIDS Memorial Quilt Project, and Urban Murals.
Reflection
Death rituals are often segregated by religious custom, but public spontaneous shrines are something
that seem to cut across cultural boundaries come together to mourn an event, a group of people, or an
individual loved one. After 9-11, we saw people of many cultures and nationalities come together to
look into the photocopied faces of the missing, leave flowers, and make other spontaneous offerings to
dead they may have never met. The three facets of this essay that I’d like to explore further are the
urge to do something that drives the creation of spontaneous shrines and the phenomenon of ghost
bikes.
Shrines REL3180 Death, Dying, and Beyond
Raine Shakti (Bronc ID: RVW8477)
Do Something
After most deaths, people reach out to offer love and support to the loved ones. In many religious
traditions in the United States, there is a custom of bring food to the bereaved and of feeding people
after a funeral. These traditions were born out of the need to do something, to offer some form of
tangible support for the loved ones. Unfortunately, there are some scenarios, such as murders or largescale tragedies, where we can’t offer comfort with food because we may not know the bereaved or
there has been such a large loss of life that food alone seems inadequate. I believe that one reason for
spontaneous shrines is that we, as human beings, feel an urge to do something to bring comfort to the
living and tell the dead they are not forgotten.. Grider noted that after 9/11, “US Embassies around the
world were turned into shrine sites in sympathy and solidarity for what happened in the United States.”
I know that when I pass by roadside crosses, even on a highway, I take a moment to reflect on the life
lost and think about the pain that the family must be feeling.
In the event of national or large-scale tragedies, this urge to “do something” also changes in the days
after the tragedy as instead of individuals making their spontaneous offerings to the dead, the
government or other organizational body steps in to formalize the memorial to the dead. The creation
of a public memorials, changes the nature of the shrine as it moves from a spontaneous way of
remembering the dead to something that speaks of history and formality. I visited the site of the flight
93 crash in 2007 at twilight on a summer day and it was haunting looking over the raw earth where 40
innocent people lost their lives and who seemed to still linger just beyond the veil. There were
impromptu gifts left to the dead including stones, flowers, rocks, and other random offerings. Many of
these offerings seemed to be what people had in their pockets, it was as if people pulled out offerings to
say, “You are not forgotten. Your sacrifice mattered.” I visited the Flight 93 formal memorial in 2017 on
an Autumn day and it different. This was a public declaration telling these individuals that they
mattered and that their sacrifices would not be forgotten, but it had lost its immediacy and the personal
nature of the earlier spontaneous shrine. It was as if Flight 93 was now a part of history instead of
memory. I firmly believe that we need to codify our memorials to people who die from tragedy, but
doing so does take away the spontaneous and raw feelings of grief.
A close cousin of the spontaneous shrine is the candlelight vigil to commemorate those who have died
suddenly and violently. These often take place at spontaneous shrines and are a way for individuals to
come together to mourn the dead. Although some candlelight vigils have underpinnings of a particular
religion, others are non-religious and simple offer a chance for individuals to come together and offer a
prayer for the dead. Sadly, Americans are intimately familiar with the candlelight vigil as it is one of the
first responses after a school shooting. People in the immediate vicinity of the incident, gather at a
spontaneous shrine and remember the victims of the school shooting and sometimes victims of other
school shootings as well. Additionally, there are often vigils held at other schools as a show of solidarity.
It is haunting to see the images of hundreds of young people mourning their peers.
Ghost Bikes
A more recent kind of spontaneous memorial is the Ghost Bike. I was first introduced to Ghost Bikes
when I lived in Chicago and an acquaintance and I were talking with a mutual friend. The woman
mentioned putting flowers on her son’s Ghost Bike and after she left, I asked our mutual friend what she
Shrines REL3180 Death, Dying, and Beyond
Raine Shakti (Bronc ID: RVW8477)
meant. Her young adult son had been killed by an automobile while biking and she and her friends had
created a memorial for him at the site of his death using a bike painted white. According to
GhostBikes.org, “Ghost Bikes are small and somber memorials for bicyclists who are killed or hit on the
street. A bicycle is painted all white and locked to a street sign near the crash site, accompanied by a
small plaque.” In addition to the plaque, these Ghost Bikes are often decorated with flowers and often
contain one or more photos of the deceased. The first Ghost Bike was created in St. Louis in 2003 when
a passerby saw a car strike a cyclist. He painted it white and put a sign on it that said “Cyclist Struck
Here.” Ghostbikes.org states that there are now 630 Ghost Bikes in 210 locations (Note: This statistic
did not have a date).
Ghost Bikes are not only a shrine for the dead, they are also a form of activism. Andrew Small in his
article Ghost Bikes, Infrastructure of Grief at CityLab.com said, “The all-white bikes, placed at locations
of fatal crashes, serve as an infrastructure of grief—part memorial, part protest symbol—marking the
individual lives lost and the remaining challenges that cities face as they aim to eliminate traffic fatalities
altogether through Vision Zero plans.” While some of these shrines are created by the loved ones of the
deceased, others are placed by fellow cyclists who want to do something to point out the lives lost by
bike/car collisions. Small pointed out in his article that you often see people walk over and touch the
shrines and take a moment to grieve for someone they don’t know. He said the bikes were a way of
humanizing the bikes and reminding people that humans rode them.
Ghost Bike installations are sometimes accompanied by a dedication ceremony. Small quoted Reverend
Laura Everett, who has written liturgies for Ghost Bike dedications as saying, ““Regardless of one’s
religious background or tradition, finding ways to gather, to grieve, to lament, to honor, to mourn well
are universal. One of the things that happens when we gather to grieve that a life has been lost is that
we learn that we do not grieve alone. There’s something communal in ghost bike ceremonies.” It is this
need to grieve, to share our grief, and to remember our dead that drives us to create spontaneous
shrines. As Grider said, “At the same time, many families no longer feel that the traditional space for
private grief—the cemetery is an adequate space to express their grief.” This was certainly true for my
acquaintance as the couple of times that the topic of her son’s memorial came up, she talked about
“visiting Cliff” at his bike. It seemed that that where she felt closest to him and that was where his
presence was.
Questions for Future Research
Grider said that spontaneous shrines happened worldwide, but occurred more frequently in the
US and Europe, it would be interesting to know why that is.
The Internet has made it easier to spontaneously invite people to a candlelight vigil, it would be
interesting to see if spontaneous shrines have gotten bigger or more prevalent in the Cy