Dan Madden, Stark Memorial Funeral Home owner, has gone viral across social media platforms with his “danthefuneralman” accounts. (Photo by Morgan Ahart)

SALEM — The owner of a local funeral home is challenging the taboo around talking about death and increasing awareness of the benefits of funeral pre-planning through their viral social media videos.

Dan Madden, the owner of Stark Memorial Funeral Home, said he has always maintained an active social media presence for Stark Memorial since purchasing the funeral home six years ago.

In the past, those efforts have been focused on Facebook. However, within the last year Madden updated his personal Instagram handle to “danthefuneralman” and created a TikTok account of the same name.

It was on those platforms that his light-hearted educational videos have taken the internet by storm with his recurring series like the “FashUrn” show, which highlights the wide array of unique urns available, gaining international attention.

“Within the last month, on Instagram particularly, I did this trending audio of a runway walk with a product and thought ‘let me just pick up an urn from our showroom and do this,’ and it really kind of blew up. It really was encouraging people to talk about the subject of death and loss, and people were wanting me to do more of these types of videos, so I did it for a week and it was so successful we trademarked the FashUrn Show,” said Madden. “One of those videos (recently) broke two million views. It’s getting attention from celebrities. I’m selling urns nationwide now. I opened fashurns.com because people are wanting to buy these urns I’m talking out with to meet that demand. It’s pretty amazing that people are not only trusting me with their funeral, but that people I don’t even know want to buy an urn from me because it’s never been presented that way.”

He said that the FashUrn Show in particular has been helping people to learn the wide range of bespoke and artistic urns that are available, and that many commenters tell him they didn’t know non-traditional urns existed. He said that the most popular of these non-traditional options have been the leopard print urn, butterfly urn, and a biodegradable ‘living urn,’ which mixes ashes with soil for a tree sapling.

Madden said that his social media videos were “designed to make funeral services less taboo and let people have conversations about death they might not otherwise have felt comfortable doing.” He said that the fun factor of participating in viral trends and presenting information in a way that is fun, he can disrupt the taboo and “provide education on serious topics like the process of cremation, and embalming” and humanize funeral directors.

“People really seem to enjoy that. Being able to see that, we as funeral directors, are normal people. We can have fun; we don’t need to always be serious, and it just makes us more relatable to people,” said Madden.

Madden said that often people think of funeral homes as “dark dreary places” and that their association with death makes people reticent to learn about post-life services despite their curiosity. He said that he feels presenting the answer to those questions and showing the realities of the work done at funeral homes in a way that is both respectful and fun helps to “make people think about death in a different way and break down that barrier.” He also said that his videos have allowed him to educate people about the actual work done by the staff of funeral homes like preparing a casket for a service, and demystify typically “behind-the-scenes processes” by showing what the inside of a crematory actually looks like and how it functions, or by talking about the chemicals used during embalming.

“People wonder what goes on behind the closed doors, like the cremation process, embalming, how those processes work. We want to be as transparent as possible and educate people because they’re curious but do it in a respectful way. I wanted to break up that stigma, and the wondering of what goes on behind closed doors and doing it in a way that is relatable and fun at times,” said Madden.

In addition to challenging the taboo around discussing death, Madden also works to educate his social media viewers about the values of pre-planning post-life services. He said that the actual process of pre-planning involves gathering the necessary information for a death certificate and obituary in advance, deciding whether the body will be buried or cremated, and even making decisions about individual elements of funeral services like choosing a coffin or urn. He said the by pre-planning the funeral can be paid for in advance or over time with a payment plan, and that the cost of those services is locked in and cannot increase due to inflation.

“It’s much better to do it in advance to take the burden off their loved ones because otherwise these decisions are made at a very difficult time on one of the worst days of the family’s life. With pre-planning, and all it really takes is a call to the funeral home, everything is written down it can be paid for or the prices can be locked in for those services, so really it is a gift for their loved ones to do this in advance,” said Madden.

Madden said that despite its benefits, pre-planning is not especially common, estimating that approximately 40% of services at Stark Memorial are pre-planned. Madden also said that the pre-planning process also helps people to realize the wide range of options available to them.

“An average person might only be at planned funerals a couple of times in their life. A lot of these people have just never been through this process or heard people talking about it so it’s shocking that there are so many choices,” said Madden.

Madden said that with the international reach of these social media platforms he’s excited to see how many people he may be able to reach and educate as he continues making videos.

“I’m just excited to see where this is all going to go, because we’re getting local attention here but with these platforms. Just to see where all of this ends up. We’re just getting started here and I’m excited to see the impact of all this,” said Madden.

mahart@mojonews.com