Didn’t hit all the links so someone may have beat me to it but ----------- I always loved the Madden tombstone with the Jaws-like image.
Willie was a scientist but now he is no more
What Willie thought was H2O was H2SO4
[okay, I admit I saw this graffiti on a university bathroom stall, not a headstone, but couldn’t resist]
Woodlawn Cemetery in Forest Park, IL has a mass grave for circus workers killed in a train wreck in 1918. It’s marked by five elephant statues.
That reminded me of the grave of Norma Jean Elephant, in Oquawka, Illinois.
In 1972, a thunderstorm blew up while they were setting up a circus in the town square, and Norma Jean died when a lightning bolt struck her manacle. The townspeople decided to bury her where she fell, and a local businessman eventually put up the money for a marker. There’s even a sign on the highway that passes through this small town.
Sorry, this one is sad. It’s near my mom’s and it’s for two girls (Chloe and Siobhan) who lived for one day.
Yes, the cemetery in Barre is right down the hill from Rock of Ages quarry. I’m sure I’ve told this before, but here goes. My parents came to visit in September 2009 and on the last day of their visit (and I had thought they were leaving the day before) we go out for Chinese. After lunch I say we should pick out a flyer from the tourist stand by the restaurant, and Mom picks Rock of Ages.
We go and it’s cool – there’s a tour of the quarry with us as the only attendees, and we can observe the carving in the big production floor. Mom sees the display of granite colors and says she’d like her tombstone to be Laurentian Rose. OK, Mom, whatever! Four months later she dies (she had been sick for years and not told me) and we go to the cemetery in Connecticut to pick out the headstone. “Oh, we get our headstones from Rock of Ages.” “Well, then I know what color she wants!”
My favorite tombstone reads “Every Other Inch a Gentleman”
I love Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery to begin with - one of those 19th century park/cemeteries, with lush gardens and Spanish moss, set on the banks of the river. But poet Conrad Aikens’ bench is a particular favorite: “Cosmos Mariner Destination Unknown.”
My father died young, and my mom purchased a whole family plot at the cemetery where most of his family was buried. It was a church yard, and as near as we can discover, no one had ever previously been charged for a plot. And that was okay. Land isn’t free. But this new section was alleged to be perpetual care. Instead of a vertical stone, my mother was told that Daddy’s marker should be a flat stone, to facilitate lawn care. Again, okay. Within a year, the surrounding plots were adorned with vertical markers, and there were tire marks across Daddy’s grave, and the stone was cracked from people driving across, and the whole section was infested with sandspurs. Not okay. When my middle aunt dies*, I’m gonna put up a giant concrete bare-breasted goddess and plant kudzu. I have the title, and the church broke the contract!
So years from now, maybe the Hindu goddess at the Baptist cemetery will win a future thread like this!
*Edit/clarification: Aunt Irma had her own plot. I’m going to decorate our plot, but I can’t do it without scandalizing her to death, so I have to wait.
I’ve mentioned this before.
When I was a kid we had a patio behind the house, with three marble steps leading down to the lawn. For whatever reason I lifted up one of the stones, to discover that it was actually the tombstone of a 10-year-old boy named Madison Hurd, who died in the 1830s. It showed the dates of his life and his parents’ names. We checked with the local historical society, and were told that the family was relocating to the West, and the boy died as they passed through this area. They have a complete history of the family, including the boy’s death. I have no idea where he’s actually buried.
It’s going on my tombstone someday.
The mind boggles at the tomb of Dame Mary Page (d. 1729) in Bunhill Fields, London:
In 67 months she was tap’d 66 times, had taken away 240 gallons of water, without ever repining for her case, or fearing the operation.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/patricklondon/2856094525/in/set-72157594204710194/
Have you placed a new marker for your father?
Okay. This is eerily similar to me. My parents had a place in Michigan that had a marble step to a garden-type thing on the side of their house. Upon closer inspection, we realized it was the base of a tombstone. They had an old barn/garage that burned down, and sifting through the rubble, my brother found a few tombstones, one of which belonged to a 1 year old named Frederick Acker, died around 1857. The stones were used as part of the foundation and not part of a hidden cemetery. I like to think these were rejected stones just being recycled.
My favorite one is the man who was “killed by a desperado.”
Moral of the story: don’t stick your head out the door when you hear shooting in the street.
True dat. One of the few foreign deaths during the bloody May 1992 violence in Bangkok was a Swedish tourist who ventured out to take a gander at the commotion occurring a block from the backpacker haven of Khao San Road.
My grandmother had several gravestones in her yard; not sure why they were there, but my stepgrandfather, who died when I was 6, owned a monument company. They were in a weedy area by the garage. I’m guessing that they had typos, if you will.
Sounds to me like she had ascites or some similar condition. (Qadgop?)
I’ve heard about a stone that was captioned:
Beneath this stone our baby lies
He neither cries nor hollers
He lived on earth just twenty days
And cost us forty dollars
That one strikes me as being an urban legend.
No, not yet. My oldest aunt will likely be buried there, because my mother gave her two of the eight spots when her husband died. I won’t waste the money until I can add a pagan naked goddess and then plant kudzu, and maybe wisteria, just to be difficult.
Another cool set of graves that I just remembered: in the middle of the runway at the Savannah Airport. If you don’t feel like clicking the link, the family refused permission to move the bodies, so the airport paved over them to extend the runway, and then added flat markers above the graves.
Bumped.
And similarly: https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/19/us/iowa-headstone-profanity-controversy-trnd/
I’ve seen plenty of weird tombstones in Ripley’s Believe it or Not collections and more recent books of Weird Facts, but the only odd gravestone I’ve personally seen is one in my hometown cemetery:
DRAGULA
Whether you take it as “Dracula” incorrectly spelled or as “Drag”-ula, it’s still pretty weird.
My sister-in-law’s gravestone has a bicycle engraved on it. She was a passionate cyclist.