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Paper short abstract

Ethnographic accounts from northeastern Slovenia describe encounters with unknown dead in forests and borderlands. Sudden stillness, unusual sounds, and environmental shifts trigger a sensed presence that shapes local moral geographies and perceptions of danger and place.

Paper long abstract

Cemeteries are commonly understood as primary deathscapes – material and symbolic spaces where the living encounter and remember their dead. However, ethnographic research in rural northeastern Slovenia reveals that some experiences of the dead occur far beyond the cemetery, particularly in liminal spaces such as forests, border paths, and remote village edges. In these places, people report sensing the presence of unknown dead – figures without biographical ties to the experiencer, whose presence is felt rather than recognised. Interlocutors describe sudden forest stillness, unusual sounds or shifting winds as moments when the unknown dead are experienced. These encounters are often unsettling and interpreted as warnings, reminders, or signs associated with the morally ambiguous character of borderlands – historically shaped by the Iron Curtain, dangerous crossings, military patrols, violence, and unmarked deaths. In such moments, natural environments become affective deathscapes: symbolic terrains where the boundary between the living and the dead becomes perceptible through sensory and atmospheric cues. Drawing on Maddrell and Sidaway’s (2010) conceptualisation of deathscapes as material and symbolic geographies, this paper examines how forests and border spaces in northeastern Slovenia are imbued with the presence of the unknown dead. These encounters reshape local narratives of place, danger, and memory, revealing a distinct moral geography in which the dead remain active presences that orient people’s emotions, behaviour, and spatial practices.

Maddrell, Avril, & Sidaway, James D. (Eds.). (2010). Deathscapes: Spaces for Death, Dying, Mourning and Remembrance. Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate.