She only comes around once in a lifetime. Travel to any small village in Sardinia, and you may still hear hushed tales of the accabadora; “angel of death”; the women chosen by their community to live out their days veiled in black, and charged with the task of ending the lives of others at the mercy of their cudgel. In other words: a lady Grim Reaper…
Only, there was no shame for the townsfolk in an accabadora’s work. They saw it as a noble form of euthanization, which the accabadora exercised with the utmost precision. In fact, some will tell you they remember hearing of accabadoras still going strong into the 1970s.
These days, you can explore just the kind of home the angel of death would’ve lived in at a house-turned-museum in Luras, Sardinia…
The three story house safeguards its greatest, and sometimes grimmest traditions. The first floor features a dining room, while the second showcases halls with fabric, cork, and various tools from the region that the women and men would’ve used. Yes, there are guns. Lots.
The most infamous of those tools is the accabadora’s cudgel, which comes from the word acabàr, “to end,” and measured about 40 cm long and 20 cm in thickness. A femina accabadora was usually middle aged, and it often doubled as a walking stick so villagers could spot their local Lady Reaper around town. The one you’ll see displayed on the pillow is one, if not thee, last in existence:
Another means of inducing death used by the accabadora was strangulation, either by applying pressure to the neck or by placing the victim’s neck between her knees. She’d always come at night to set a terminally ill or dying citizen on the right path into the afterlife, and for Sardinians that meant no family members could stay inside, nor any religious objects, for they feared the departing soul would latch onto them and haunt the house forever. The house today still has small crosses and Virgin Mary statues inside the bedroom, like a room in waiting of death…
To learn more about visiting this unusual little museum, head to their website.
