Pursuing an approach called “morphological” (laid out by Carlo Ginsburg and Georges Didi-Huberman in particular) the author undertakes here to follow up on the variations of a basic shape that has been haunting the history of Death in the Occident. Christ risen as a figure of light, phantoms whose billowing veils are nonetheless empty, souls that the painters depict as children clad in shifts resting in the arms of angels, translucent silhouettes of ghosts that present-day spiritists watch on their television screens: the iconography of the hereafter illustrates the way Christian tradition deals with the question of material traces left behind by the departed and also expresses the difficulty of imagining what remains of the living. The author places these images into perspective. They exhibit a common mental effort at healing in which the mourners unwittingly exude a “common skin” which is to link them with the departed. In this way, symbolic shrouds come into being which render death acceptable by weaving intermediate forms of “life”.