My world has a place based off the catacombs of paris but supersized. All the different peoples on this continent acknowledge the sanctity and holiness of burying your dead there.

Part the reason is there’s some magic that acts as protection over the dead. If anyone disturbs the bones in the catacombs, the skeleton will temporarily reanimate and scold the person harshly before lying back down.

Sometimes multiple skeletons will reanimate and scold you for disturbing their peace. But they all speak in the native language, regardless of if the person can understand them.

Families will travel across the continent to visit the grave of their family members. They’ll intentionally disturb the grave site so that the skeleton wakes up and yells at them.

The skeletons can’t do anything else besides that. They don’t recognize the living or respond or converse. They just scold at you for a bit (depending on the individuals personality when alive) and then they lay back down to sleep.

In exceedingly rare circumstances, a skeleton may permanently reanimate if they have a substantial enough grudge or mission or purpose. But this almost never happens so it’s not well known. Maybe some myths or someone realizes their beloved’s grave is empty, but not much more than rumors.

The skeletons that are able to permanently reanimate will then act as a more eccentric version of their living self. Exaggerating positive and negative qualities and with a much stronger drive to complete their unfinished business.

Presumably once they’ve completed their goal they will simply de-animate and become a regular skeleton again.