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[ManaUser]

So I started my first game after a multi-year break, and mostly things are going OK, but I had a few dorfs go missing mysteriously early on. I don't know what the original tragedy was, but an announcement finally pinned, the continuing deaths on a ghostly baby! Anyways, I took care of that, but with that background in mind, I'm naturally pretty cautious about making sure the dead can rest peacefully. Now I've had my first invasion (oddly mostly elves and humans, though there was at least one goblin among them) and things got complicated. I think I only only suffered two losses, from my green marksdwarf squad, and if so there should be plenty of coffins, but I didn't want to chance it, so I checked the engrave slab list... Only now all the invaders are listed too!

So first of all, I don't really need to memorialize my enemies, do I? They won't haunt me, will they?

Second, how am I supposed to tell whether I have any actual unremembered dead with all that junk on the list? Any advice?

Finally, there may have been an evil dwarf. There's one body out there that looks like us but isn't getting buried. Any special handling required?

[PatrikLundell]

You don't need to memorialize enemies. You can do it if you want to create a hall commemorating the defeat of your enemies, but that's purely role playing.
If the remains exist and are available, providing coffins will allow dorfs to sort things out themselves by burying those that need to be buried, and skipping those who don't. Thus, slabs are needed only when the body of your* citizens are destroyed or otherwise inaccessible.

In 0.42.X bodies of all sapients** are hauled to the corpse stockpile (previously reserved for the dwarven race only, regardless of being friend or enemy), with no means provided to separate friends from foes. In 0.40.X all non dwarves were hauled to the refuse stockpile (where a lot of manual tedium allowed you to separate (most) sapients from non sapients.

*The distinction of "your citizens" isn't fully known, I think. It seems visitors entering or leaving (i.e. before anyone has spoken to them and after they display the info they're ready to leave) are not under your protection, possibly with the exception of some(?, definitely not all) dwarven ones. It seems some (?) visiting dwarves may be possible to bury. It's probable those granted residency need burial/slabbing.
I had a goblin resident who was murdered by a visiting vampire, for instance, and the body was promptly buried. I've also had non citizen dwarven (?) casualties of sieges being buried, while some were not. There are forum reports of non dwarven ghosts. I have no intention to interfere with the dwarves' burial handling to experiment with non dwarven ghosts, so that !!science!! is left for others. I try to have a slab at hand in the case of an emergency need for slabbing, though.

**It's probably a bug, but currently undead remains of sapients are hauled to the refuse stockpile rather than the corpse one. It's also possible to use "naturally" butchered bone from undead corpses for bone carving, while "normal" sapient corpse bone cannot be used. It seems undead corpses in the refuse stockpile no longer spook caravans, though.

[ManaUser]

Thanks for the detailed answer. So it sounds like in general, I needn't be concerned as long as there are burials waiting. Can anyone think of specific situations where I should go ahead and do a slab?
Obviously if there's already a ghost, if I know one of my dwarves has fallen in magma, been atom-smashed etc, I guess maybe if they're "missing" too, that would seem to imply their body hasn't been seen, right?

[PatrikLundell]

When they've been missing for two weeks they've usually died. However, most of the time their bodies are "found" fairly shortly thereafter, quite often up in a tree. The dorfs are stupid enough not to tell if someone is in trouble, and so they're not "lost" until they die, which means a dorf may have passed right by the dying one seconds before the death, but the body isn't "found" until the next time someone passes that way. Also, the dorfs are very slow in reporting death, so they quite frequently haul a dead body to the corpse stockpile and let it sit there for a while before reporting the death (happened with my vampire victim, for instance, so it took some time before they reported the body was drained of blood). So when the report is received, I'd look around the map and wait for a few weeks to see if they're located before engraving a slab. If the bodies are in water you may need to slab them as well, since it may take some time to recover the bodies, if it's even worth the effort. Under normal circumstances you have plenty of time between the death and a ghost appearing to make slabs and engrave them. Since I want mine to be masterworks, however, I try to keep one prepared beforehand.

[Bumber]

If they're missing, and the corpse survived, you can find the body from the corpses section of the stocks screen. Press Tab to expand, find the missing person's corpse by name, then press z to zoom to it.

The engravings order does let you see who hasn't been memorialized yet. You may have to press F12 (TrueType) to see for the longer names.

[Corona688]

So I started my first game after a multi-year break, and mostly things are going OK, but I had a few dorfs go missing mysteriously early on. I don't know what the original tragedy was, but an announcement finally pinned, the continuing deaths on a ghostly baby! Anyways, I took care of that, but with that background in mind, I'm naturally pretty cautious about making sure the dead can rest peacefully. Now I've had my first invasion (oddly mostly elves and humans, though there was at least one goblin among them) and things got complicated. I think I only only suffered two losses, from my green marksdwarf squad, and if so there should be plenty of coffins, but I didn't want to chance it, so I checked the engrave slab list... Only now all the invaders are listed too!

Bug.  My engrave list also features a few antmen blowgunners who must have kicked the bucket in the caves sometime in recent worldgen.

[Bumber]

Bug.  My engrave list also features a few antmen blowgunners who must have kicked the bucket in the caves sometime in recent worldgen.

I doubt it was worldgen. They can get killed by other stuff after you embark. Most likely an by an FB, which you don't get an announcement for until they enter a revealed tile.

[PatrikLundell]

I more often than not have at least some of the cavern animal men dead when I discover them. On my current map there are a bunch of bat women, a bunch of dead troglodytes, and a dead bat man/woman which all were there as I breached that cavern.