THE CRAZIEST GRAVEYARDS IN THE
WORLD
K. Thor
Jensen Apr 28, 2016
Mandatory
Why do we humans insist on locking our dead bodies in boxes and
putting them in the ground forever? The rest of nature is content
getting eaten by vultures and contributing their nutrients to the
soil after they pass on, but not humans. No, we have to get all
fancy with our dead people and put them in special places called
graveyards. In this feature, we'll travel the world and visit 10 of
the most over-the-top and weird repositories for human remains,
from live-in mansions to an underwater paradise made from human
ashes.
Hanging Coffins
Why exactly do we think that the ground is the best place to put
dead bodies? That is, aside from keeping them away from raccoons or
whatever. In some parts of China, corpses
are hung out to
dry -- literally -- in coffins
tenuously lashed to the faces of cliffs. In the Sichuan province,
the Bo people who lived there several centuries ago left behind one
of the most perplexing graveyards ever. Attached to the steep sides
of several mountains are a number of coffins, each carved from a
hollowed-out tree trunk. Some archaeologists believe the Bo thought
that this weird form of burial would make it easier for the gods to
collect their spirits.
Khalid Nabi
The Middle East's attitudes towards sex and sexuality are
notoriously restrictive, which is why it's deeply weird that the
cemetery of Khalid
Nabi exists. Located in the
Golestan province of northern Iran, Khalid Nabi has become a
tourist attraction due to the curious shape of its tombstones.
About 600 of the site's grave markers resemble nothing more than
erect human penises jutting forth from the soil, and others look
like the outline of women with huge breasts. Some archeologists
pooh-pooh that theory, claiming that they're actually designed in
the shape of men wearing turbans, but they really look like dicks
to us. Many tourists visit the graveyard every year, much to the
chagrin of the Iranian government who are a bit embarrassed by
it.
Dargavs City Of The
Dead
Sometimes a simple cemetery isn't enough to satisfy the dead.
Sometimes they need a whole city. The odd little village of Dargavs
in the North Ossetia region of Russia looks pretty charming from a
distance, a smattering of 99 stone huts and
houses on a grassy hillside over the
Fiagdon River. But nobody lives in those houses -- they're
mausoleums, built by the native people in the 17th century. Legend
has it that a plague ravaged the area back then and the residents
had to build the houses to quarantine their relatives. When they
died inside them, they simply walled up the doors and turned them
into makeshift crypts rather than take the risk of burying them and
exposing themselves to the plague.
Shirokorechenskoe
Cemetery
After the collapse of communism, the next natural step for Russia
was the rise of organized crime. We've all heard stories about the
brutal ways of the Moscow mafia, but if you want to see where they
wind up, take a trip to the town of Yekaterinburg. Located in the
Ural Mountains, it's the fourth-largest city in Russia and is known
for metal processing and machine work. It's also known for crime,
as theShirokorechenskoe
Cemetery aptly illustrates. Some of
the region's most notorious Mafia bosses are buried in an alley
here, with massive black marble tombstones laser-etched with
photorealistic portraits of the gangsters in their prime. Beneath
them are descriptions of their skills like "expert in
knife-throwing."
Neptune Memorial Reef
Burial at sea is a common practice for sailors far from home (and
Osama Bin Laden), but this is a little ridiculous.
The Neptune Memorial
Reef located off the coast of Florida
is a unique way to dispose of your mortal remains. The structures
of this massive man-made complex are made of concrete mixed with
human ashes. Memorial plaques with the names of "residents" are
affixed to the objects, and the grand design is of an underwater
city with roads and benches that divers can relax on. The project
has fallen on hard times in recent years, and it's unknown as to
whether it will ever expand to its proposed final size of 16
undersea acres.
Eklutna Graveyard
Religious traditions play a big part in how people get buried, but
what happens when those traditions get weird? Take a trip up to
remote Eklutna, Alaska, for a pretty amazing example. This region
was inhabited by the native Danaina people, but when Russian
Orthodox migrants settled there in the 1800s their two cultures
merged in an interesting way. One of the best examples is in
the graveyard of St. Nicholas
Orthodox Church. When a local dies, their body is placed
in an unmarked grave and covered with a blanket. Forty days later,
their family constructs a "spirit house," a brightly colored wooden
structure that looks like a Barbie doghouse, and puts it over the
plot. Over the next few decades, the spirit houses rot away and are
absorbed into the earth.
Merry Cemetery Of
Sapanta
Typically gravestones are pretty sedate affairs -- a slab of stone,
maybe a few lines carved on it, and we call it a day. But at one
unusual cemetery in Romania, the dead get a little more style.
The Merry Cemetery of
Sapanta is famous worldwide for its
ostentatiously decorated grave markers, courtesy of one nosy man.
Stan Ion Patras was a local woodcarver who loved gossip, and when a
town resident died he would carve them a wooden cross for their
grave that depicted their life in all its glory, from triumph to
tragedy. Patras passed on in 1977 but his apprentice is carrying on
the bizarre tradition.
Manila Chinese
Cemetery
Known as the "Beverly Hills Of The Dead," the
notorious Chinese
Cemetery in the capital of the
Philippines is the place for that country's super wealthy to retire
in style. The cemetery was built during the Spanish colonial period
when non-Catholic Chinese were forbidden from being buried, and it
not only contains the island's oldest Buddhist temple but many
other monuments to the famous dead. The weirdest residents, though,
are still alive. Mausoleums are common for burial due to the humid
climate, and rich Filipinos have built enormous burial structures
for their dead family members. In keeping with Chinese tradition,
the mausoleums are equipped with beds, bathrooms and other
conveniences for the dead person to use. These buildings are so big
that in some cases living relatives have also moved into them to
save money.
Sedlec Ossuary
Not all cemeteries bury their residents in the ground. Sometimes,
they use them for construction. The Sedlec Ossuary in
the Czech Republic town of Kutna Hora shows exactly how much
mileage you can get out of a bunch of old bones. Somewhere between
40,000 and 70,000 dead people are represented in the chapel and its
grounds. Pretty much everywhere you look there's furniture made
from human bones, including a huge chandelier that contains at
least one of every bone in the body and the coat of arms of the
Schwarzenberg family who commissioned the ossuary's
decoration.
New Lucky Restaurant
The problem with burying people in the ground is that you can't
really do anything with that space afterwards. Well, not usually.
Welcome to the New Lucky
Restaurantin Ahmadabad, India. Owner Krishnan Kutti
bought an old Muslim cemetery with about a dozen graves in it and
decided to just roll with it and open a cafe where you can eat with
corpses. Each of the grave areas is blocked off with waist-high
iron fencing, and tables fill the rest of the floor space. Every
morning, Kutti and his staff honor the original occupants by wiping
down their graves and replacing the flowers on them, then they open
for business. He says he's doing well financially, and patrons
don't seem to mind the unique experience.
