If let's say a couple were on their way to lay a spirit to rest by trying to first locate a village, then find the corpse and then burying it, what could be the stumbling blocks they could face throughout the journey ? I thought of them getting in trouble with the local police but all the fisticuffs and gunshots will turn this into an action movie/novel instead of a supernatural horror.
This reminds me of Nightmare of Elm Street pt 3: Dream Warriors. They have to find Freddie's remains, which are somewhere in a vast junkyard in the trunk of a car, and they have to bury them in sacred ground. Craig Wasson walked into a church while a sermon was in progress (I think, at least there were people there including clergy) with an empty whiskey bottle and filled it with holy water from the font. He also took down a cricifix off the wall but was caught by one of the clergy. He said "I'm sorry, I'll bring it back, but I NEED it!!" He gave him his driver's license as collateral and ran out with the holy water and the crucifix. Then he brought the drunken ex cop (Nancy's dad from the first movie—the whiskey bottle was his) into the junkyard, had to rough him up a bit and remind him of his guilt in killing Freddy and hiding the remains, and got him to finally help find the car where the remains were hidden. Then he had to dig a hole to bury the remains in and sanctify it with the holy water. And just as he was almost finished with this Freddy's remains fleshed out and came back to life and started attacking him. This at least gives some ideas that could be modified to your situation.
Dig into your premise. How did this person die? Why is their spirit not at rest? Burying the body is probably too simplistic as a solution, as it suggests the only reason the spirit isn't at rest is because the body wasn't buried. Did this person do something wrong in life that needs to be made right? Did someone do something wrong to the dead person (beyond killing them) that needs to be avenged? Did this person in some way offend the god(s)? Figure that stuff out, and from that, find the challenges that your protagonists will face.
The ghost of the deceased joins them on their mission. You can have all kinds of fun with this, depending on the character you give to the ghost.
First question: do they have body/object? If not, stumbling blocks are: Locating the body/object Depending on when the body was buried, one might have trouble recovering it because the plot is no longer there Ethnicity/social standing Unfortunately, depending on ethnicity and social status, its likely the body wont be buried in a cemetery or that cemetery wouldnt have been maintain (i found the "cemetery" my great great great grand parents were buried at. It was a historical african american cemetery and it os now in shambles. The headstones were removed, the bodies scrounged over. It looks more like an empty field now. Some of the bodies were moved to another cemetery, but my relatives were not in the records of bodies uncovered...) Low income people tended to be buried in mass graves The wealthy dead, depending on the time period, were often dug up and "repurposed" for science or wealth Exotic dead (native american, egyptian, south american, etc) were kept as treasures and for science. Bodies that have been moved Sometimes a corpse will be exhumed and reburied at a different location. That location is not always documented (ive come across a burial record with an addition written in the margins "exhumed. No longer buried at X" If object/body HAS already been located, stumblings blocks include Corpse Laws. Please look up Corpse Laws. I cant cite them off the top of my head, but they are laws in place protecting corpses and remains.
