Is This a Christianized Version of a Pagan Story?

Many of the european paganisms involved burnt offerings, and sometimes human beings. This suggests that this is a deliberate form of worship to them. And it's also consistent with other pagan influenced mediaeval tales of the societies of the dead who are said to lead full lives. So there's even more weird stuff about how the dead are saying that they procreate,. that they have their children and they have neighbouring communities of dead. Yes? There's like a separate world of geo politics entirely among the dead?"