20 Great Headstones You Need to Take a Look at

#9. Victor Noir (Paris, France)

Victor Noir led quite the 19th-century political life. The journalist ended his time on earth in the same sort of style – shot dead in a duel with Prince Pierre Bonaparte in 1870. He quickly became a symbol of imperial injustice and a martyr for the Republic, with thousands attending his funeral.

He’s depicted elegantly in death, his top hat tipped over his side. You might notice that two spots – his lips and his nethers, are rubbed shiny and bronze while the rest has succombed to years of oxidation.

That’s because his grave remains one of the most popular at Pére Lachaise Cemetery to this day, and generations of women have come to believe that kissing his lips and rubbing his, um, bulge, will bring them good luck.

#8. Steven Allan Ford (West Valley City, Utah)

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This headstone, which reads “Steven Allan Ford, April 7, 1980-September 7, 2010, MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU – ALWAYS,” belongs not to an overzealous fan, but to the first ordained Jedi priest in the Mormon-heavy state of Utah.

Seriously.

#7. Charles M. Higgins (Brooklyn, New York)

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Charles M. Higgins was a history buff who believed the Battle of Long Island – the first Revolutionary War battle fought after the Declaration of Independence – didn’t get enough attention. So, he built a monument topped with a statue of Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom.

Now she stands, one arm outstretched toward the Statue of Liberty’s raised torch exactly 3.5 miles away. Their friendship, and the connection between past and present, has remained intact as their line of sight to each other remains unobstructed to this day.

#6. Lycian Rock Tombs (Fethiye, Turkey)

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The ancient Lycians buried their dead in geographically high places, like cliffsides, to facilitate their ascent into the afterlife. Despite the ornate, carved columns protecting the entrances to the tombs, some of which date back to the 4th century, the interiors are spare chambers featuring a simple monolith. They did hold other treasures, once, before hundreds of years of looting left them bare.

#5. Davis Memorial (Hiawatha, Kansas)

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Was John Davis, the patriarch of a highly successful Kansas farming family, hateful and greedy, or merely a tad strange and permanently broken-hearted?

That’s the question people in Hiawatha tried to answer during the Great Depression, as they watched one of their most prominent citizens build expensive statue after expensive statue to honor his late wife while they lived without even a hospital to cater to their many needs.

Sarah Davis passed away in 1930, her grave originally marked with a simple stone that reflected the way the family had lived their lives until then. But it wasn’t long afterward that her husband replaced it with a marble statue – then another and another, until there were 11 increasingly haphazard and bizarre tributes to Sarah dotting the cemetery.

Those who don’t believe the gestures were done out of a desperate desire to feel close to his late wife speculate that John was attempting to spend all of their money in an attempt to keep it from Sarah’s family, who had never approved of him.

#4. Circus Train Wreck Victim’s Memorial (Columbus, Georgia)

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On the morning of November 22, 1915, the Kennedy Carnival Show train collided with a steel passenger train in Georgia. The powerful crash fused the engines together, and while the passengers on the sturdier steel train were able to escape alive and mostly uninjured, the Kennedy performers were not so lucky.

Pinned in their bunks, the cars on fire, at least 50 performers were injured or killed. The final number was never known, due to the transient nature of “show people,” but a mass funeral was held at the First Baptist Church in Columbus, Georgia before the bodies were interred at Riverdale Cemetery.

Con T. Kennedy chose a monument appropriate for the circus folk before heading back out on the road. The show must go on, after all.

#3. Jules Verne (Amiens, France)

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If anyone deserves an awesomely creepy grave, it’s the father of science fiction. The sculpture atop his grave marker utilizes a real death mask of Verne himself, and depicts Verne breaking his own headstone as he crawls from his grave.

The iconic tomb has been featured in several issues of the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, including the first issue in 1926.

#2. Ämari Pilots’ Cemetery (Ämari, Estonia)

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In this air base graveyard, Soviet airmen are buried beneath the fins of the very aircraft many of them died inside – the graves are topped with actual parts from Russian aircraft. The memorials are dedicated to pilots who flew and died when Estonia was still part of the Eastern Bloc, making the site not only a haunting memorial to the men who died, but for Estonia’s past, as well.

#1. The Snow Tomb of Captain Robert Falcon Scott

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In 1911, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the leader of the Terra Nova Expedition, vanished into the snow as he set off in search of the South Pole. Scott never returned, and a year later the rest of his crew went searching for him and found a “small object projecting above the surface of the snow.”

It turned out to be part of a tent, and inside it they discovered the remains of Scott and two of his men, Henry Bowers and Edward Wilson. Scott’s final diary entry ended with the words, “It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. For God’s sake look after our people.”

Their bodies were not returned to England, the crew instead deciding to honor them with a mound in the snow, topped by a stark cross, all of which was quickly buried in snow and ice. There is a permanent monument to the men on Observation Hill near McMurdo Station.

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h/t: Atlas Obscura