I’ll Take Burial Two Please, by Nora B. Peevy

Usually, you die, your family has you cremated or stuffed in a casket after pumping you full of nonenvironmentally safe chemicals, and then you’re buried with the worms or if you’re lucky, you get a place of pride on the family mantel so you can glare disapprovingly for all eternity at your relatives and remind them of all the things they didn’t do well while you were alive…

But some people have managed to outdo themselves and take shuffling off the mortal coil to another level or are so famous we, the living and the curious just can’t stop ourselves from being nosey spectators. Here’s my top ten weird list of burials, which yes, you can visit and take pictures of, if you’re like me and you skulk in cemeteries because the dead are more polite and better conversationalists than most of the living. Plus, the landscaping is beautiful and it’s a quiet place to find a nice bench, visit with a stranger for an hour and eat tacos or an entire French silk pie for one, which yes, is a luxury I indulged in a lot during the beginning of the pandemic because there wasn’t much else to do. And I figured the dead appreciated the company.

This list is in no order of strangeness because they are all equally odd and exciting for a taphophile like me. In fact, I am such a serious taphophile, I always check out the cemeteries when I travel. That and the local libraries. I am a total nerd. Ah well … Everyone enjoys something, right?

1. If you go to lovely Park Ridge, Illinois, which I never have, though I live in Wisconsin and the state is just a short drive away … You can visit “Dirty Helen,” as it says on her unique Scrabble grave. I guess she lectured her children repeatedly on the rules and regulations of Scrabble. Don’t cross Helen in Scrabble in the afterlife. She might come after you!
2. In Tampa, Florida you can find the grave of a potential Cuban pirate at Oaklawn Cemetery. Argh, ye mateys! Hoist the gravestones! Okay, bad joke. I couldn’t resist. Sorry. Not sorry. Hehehe. Jose Perfina was killed in 1850.
3. There is the creepiest memorial I have ever seen in Louisville, Kentucky at Cave Hill Cemetery called “Sami Swings.” Sami rode her bike into the family swimming pool. The last time she was seen alive she was swinging and singing “Jesus Loves Me.” If you haven’t guessed her gravestone by now, you’re duller than an unsharpened knife. Yep, it’s Jesus holding the ropes of Sami swinging on her swing with a creepy smile on her face. Move over Chucky and cue Sami. Your nightmares are complete. You’re welcome.
4. In Brashears Cemetery in Combs, Arkansas there is a group of empty crypts that never held any bodies. What? Yep. It’s a memento mori to remind people that life is fleeting. Okay, they could have just put that on a Hallmark card or one of those cheesy framed sayings your relatives hang on their walls, and it would have been less expensive, but whatever. Make a big statement or go home, I guess?
5. Cascade Iowa Community Cemetery has an extremely sweet memorial. The Menster Christmas Cookie Grave is mom’s Christmas Cookie Recipe there for all to copy and make for the holidays. How thoughtful. Bring a pen and a recipe card when you visit.
6. This one isn’t a gravestone, but a graveyard and if I weren’t a starving writer, I would be buried here in the Neptune Memorial Reef three miles off the coast of Miami. People can have their ashes blended into cement memorials and marked with copper plates that are added to the artificial coral reef to support marine life. Memorials can even be made to look like sea creatures starting at $16,000, which is more than I have ever paid for anything in my life. You may think this is just a peaceful final resting place, but it’s a popular scuba diving destination for marine biologists and students. It currently spans one acre, but when it’s finished, it is expected to be sixteen acres and hold more than 250,000 memorials. Wowza!
7. If you travel to Goldfield, Nevada be sure to check out Goldfield Pioneer Cemetery and the grave of the unknown man who died while eating library paste on July 14, 1908. Yes, a vagrant found a jar of paste and found the sweet treasure too good to resist. Skeptics say this grave is fake, but it still reminds us of the lesson we learned in kindergarten class: Do not eat paste.
8. In Odd Fellows Cemetery in Lexington, Mississippi, there is an unidentified woman called “The Lady in Red” preserved in a glass coffin filled with alcohol and sealed. She looks as fresh as the day she died. She was discovered when workers were digging on the Egypt Plantation. She wears a red velvet dress, white gloves, and square toed shoes. Because of her attire, experts say she died before The Civil War.
9. Like UFOs? Well, then you’re in luck. Head to Aurora Cemetery in Aurora, Texas where a UFO pilot crashed in the 1800s after smashing through a windmill and the judge’s flower garden. Residents pulled a skinny Martian from the wreck and buried him/her/it. The alien headstone has been stolen, but a historical marker has been erected in its place.
10. And as the world turns, so does the 5,200-pound ball monument of the wealthy merchant Charles B. Merchant. His family had it repaired with tar, and it continued to revolve mysteriously. Is there a ghostly presence? Is it physics? Is it both? See for yourself at Marion Cemetery in Marion, Ohio.

Be sure you don’t wake the dead while you’re touring these odd sites. I hear they get cranky when they are disturbed. You might want to bring along beers and grilled cheese sandwiches as offerings. Why the grilled cheese sandwiches you ask? Well, that’s a simple one. Who doesn’t enjoy a grilled cheese sandwich? If you don’t like them, you must be  a monster.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Nora B. Peevy is a cat trapped in a human’s body. Please send help or tuna. She has a Bachelor of Arts in English Degree with a Concentration in Creative Writing from Cardinal Stritch University and is an Olympic champion sleeper, toiling away for JournalStone/Trepidatio Publishing as a submissions reader and a reviewer for Hellnotes. She is also reading screenplays for the Lovecraft Film Festival again this year. Her first novelette, For the Sake of Brigid was released in May of 2024 and her first novel, Flesh Eating Turtles! will be coming out later this year. Her quirky stories are published in Eighth Tower Press, Weird Fiction Quarterly, Obsidian Butterfly, and other presses. You can find her on Facebook (as Onyx Brightwing), her blog, She Writes Fast | A blog for writers and readers (wordpress.com), and on Slasher as @Sekhautet. She naps in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.