Zombie chic: Indonesian province’s bizarre annual ritual of digging up its dead to give them a wash, groom and dress them in new clothes

They say the dead live on in our hearts and minds — but in one Indonesian province, the deceased continue to walk the earth in a rather more literal, zombie-like fashion.

Families in Toraja in South Sulawesi dig up the bodies of their dead relatives before washing, grooming and dressing them in fancy new clothes.

Even dead children are exhumed — two of these photos show the skeleton of a baby wrapped in a print dress with a doll laid next to it.

Damaged coffins are fixed or replaced, and the mummies are then walked around the province by following a path of straight lines.

The ritual is called Ma'nene, or The Ceremony of Cleaning Corpses.

 According to the ancient Torajan belief system, the spirit of a dead person must return to his village of origin.

So if a person died on a journey, the family would go to the place of death and accompany the deceased back home by walking them back to the village.

In the past, people were frightened to journey far, in case they died while they were away and were unable to return to their village.