"Have a corpse in the basement"

Someone who has "a corpse in the cellar" may be to blame, but today this no longer means a murderer.

"Having a corpse in the basement" - the origin of the proverb

It is not known exactly when this proverb came about. Probably the origin lies in the Middle Ages.

• The term originated in connection with the strict Catholic faith. Thereafter, it was forbidden to bury the deceased in Catholic cemeteries if they were not baptized.
• The Catholics believed that apart from the cemetery, only the parental home was a blessed place where the dead could rest peacefully and were protected from evil spirits.
• If an unbaptized child died, it was therefore often buried in the cool cellar. This was the best place in the house to prevent the body from being discovered.


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• There could be several reasons why a child was not baptized. For one thing, child mortality used to be high. As a result, many babies died before baptism was performed. Children born out of wedlock were considered a mortal sin and were not baptized. Some mothers therefore killed their children out of desperation and buried them in the basement.

Today's meaning of the saying

• In today's sense of the word "a corpse in the cellar" means a guilt or burden of conscience, mostly from the Past that you want to keep secret - like no one from the real corpse in the basement used to be spoke.
• There is a general belief that people who openly accuse others of alleged or real offenses have the most "dead bodies" of their own. This distracts them from their own guilt.
• A few examples: If a partner is hiding an affair from the other, he has a corpse in the basement. The same goes for a politician who argues loudly against homosexual marriage and secretly leads a same-sex relationship. This also applies to a seemingly serious businessman who evades taxes on a large scale.
• There is another saying that has the same meaning: "dirty things are going on".
• The corpse in the cellar is also the colloquial term for a mental stress for which the persons concerned are not to blame. If someone was subjected to sexual abuse or other injustice in childhood, they may carry this "corpse" around with them for a lifetime.

Of course, one cannot completely rule out that some people still have "real" corpses hidden in the basement today!