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While graveyards are always creepy, there are some tomb-stones and memorials within the graveyards that are spookier than the graveyards themselves.
Epitaphs have a bit of bad rap as far as attractiveness is concerned, but these ones go overboard; they will definitely send a chill down your spine at first look.
The epitaphs and headstones with simple inscriptions were just not enough.
Josep Llaudet Soler
Tucked at the back corner of Poblenou cemetery in Barcelona is Soler’s grave. He was a well known textile manufacturer. It is unclear who sculpted the tombstone, but the inscriptions on it are what make it ghostly:
“The blood in his veins grows cold.
And all strength has gone.
Faith has been extolled by his fall into the arms of death.
Amen.”
Inez Clarke
Inez was a six year old girl killed during a storm in 1880 while at a family picnic. Her grave is in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois. The parents decided to have a sculpture of her made, and they enclosed it in glass to protect it from the effects of weather. You might wonder why such a sculpture is among this list in the first place.
It is said that a lot of mysterious activities take place around that place. Word has it that during thunderstorms, the sculpture momentarily disappears only to appear afterwards. Weeping has also been heard around the graveyard.
Interestingly, no one has been able to prove that Inez was actually buried there. On the contrary, it is believed that Amos Briggs, an 8 year old boy is the one buried there.
Fernand Arbelot
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Fernand was an actor as well as a musician who was born in 1880. He passed on in 1942 in France, and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery. The marker at his grave is quite bizarre. It is one of a person holding a disembodied head of another and glaring at it.
The intentions behind this statue however seem well-intended. It is meant to represent Fernand staring at the face of his wife for eternity. One wonders, though, why her body is not a part of it.
Lilly E Gray
The epitaph may look normal at a first glance. In fact, one might even miss the inscriptions at the bottom. Lily died of natural causes in 1988 at the age of 77. In spite of that, written at the bottom is the following phrase: “Victim of the Beast 666”. This is quite a contentious statement to some people, and many wonder why it is there in the first place. The husband’s grave is also within the same cemetery but the two are very far apart from each other.
The Tazacorte Martyrs Memorial
The memorial may look like a grave site that was submerged under water. However, it is there by design. The memorial is made up of a couple of cross epitaphs representing each of the 40 missionaries massacred by French pirate Jacques Sourie in 1570. The pirate hijacked the ship in which the Jesuits were travelling in from Portugal to Brazil and killed all except the cook. It is said that the massacre was so terrible, that even some of the priests had their limbs cut off before being tossed into the ocean.
Georges Rodenbach
Georges was a Belgian writer and poet, who utilized his poetic license to his grave, literally. He was born in 1855 and died in 1898 an established poet. He was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. The sculpture depicts a man breaking out of his grave. It was meant to symbolize the fact that he could not even be held down by death or hades. Despite the poeticism behind it, a man breaking out of his grave is not a good sight to behold, let alone think of.
St. Vitalis of Assisi
St. Vitalis, also known as ‘the patron saint of genital disease’, was a Benedictine monk who lived a great deal of his life in absolute poverty. He was born in 1295 and died in 1370. He is said to have a lavish life full of ‘sins of the flesh’, sexual immorality in this case, and that was probably the cause of his venereal diseases. After his call, he lived in the outskirts of Asisi a miserable man. After his death, his skull was apparently preserved as a relic. The religious hermit’s head has since been sold for $5000 at an auction, with over a hundred bids on it.
The Mafia Cemeteries of Yekaterinburg, Russia
The mafia is said to be one of the most brutal gangs in the world. In the town of Yekaterinburg Russia are two cemeteries, on each side of the city. Two rival mafia gangs are buried in each of the graves. It seems like there arose wrangles in between them, and the gangs took their beef to the grave, and refused to be buried in the same graveyard. As a matter of fact, the graveyards are under 24 hour surveillance. The tombstones are weird, with most of them made up of pictures of the youth who died in the violence. Some tombstones are even 10 feet tall, and the pictures are so elaborate, you can make out every individual feature on their faces.
The Child’s Bed
In Mount Auburn Cemetery in Boston is a very unique looking tombstone that was modeled into the shape of a child’s bed, complete with a beddings and two pillows, one on the bed, and another on the ground. Weather has made the tombstone look creepier than it should.
Harry Thornton
Harry Thornton was a talented pianist who entertained the British troops during the First World War. He however lost his life during the flu pandemic that hit the world in 1918. A sculpture of a piano was made to decorate his grave. While it may have looked so stylish and beautiful in the early days, it has been degraded into a horrendous image by weather.