What do you do when your dead loved one's burial request can't be honored? For a man who goes by Prince Midnight, the answer is build a guitar with the skeleton.
Prince is from Greece — a country thats Orthodox church looks down upon cremation. When his uncle Filip died in a car accident 20 years ago, he asked for his remains to be donated to a local college for educational purposes. The school was no longer in need of skeletons, and his family refused to cremate the body. After filling out extensive paperwork, Prince decided to get his uncle's bones shipped to his home in the United States instead of pay for a cemetery plot.
“I got the box of bones from Greece and didn’t know what to do at first. Bury them? Cremate them? Put them in the attic? All seemed like poor ways to memorialize someone who got me into heavy metal," Prince explained to MetalSucks. “So, I decided to turn Uncle Filip into a guitar, which proved to be challenging. I did a lot of research and no one has ever made a guitar out of a skeleton. So, I did it. I started out consulting with two guys in Dean Guitars’ wood shop in Tampa but they got cold feet."
"Anyways, now Uncle Filip can shred for all eternity. That’s how he would want it. I’m super proud of the project and how it serves to honor him, his life and his influence on me,” he added.
Watch a video of the instrument at work above.
Photo: Getty Images