468 Items Tagged

Gravestones

Kamakura, Japan

Grave of Yasujirō Ozu

The legendary Japanese filmmaker’s tombstone is marked by a single letter meaning “nothing," and bottles of sake.

Ferndale, California

Champion Cow Graves

Pay your respects to three butterfat queens.

Three concrete slabs with small, destroyed remains of headstones sit behind a V-shaped tree opening.

Taos, New Mexico

The Three Brujas

Three witches are said to be buried beneath these unmarked concrete graves.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The Grave of America's Unknown Child: Joseph Augustus Zarelli

A tragic mystery left this boy nameless for 65 years.

Hendersonville, North Carolina

Grave of World’s Largest Twins

Below this enormous headstone lie Billy and Benny McCrary, better known as the "McGuire Twins."

Italian tombstone carver Luigi Brusa knew he was dying from silicosis when he had a friend carve his impressive granite tombstone, known as "The Dying Man."

The Tombstone Sculptor Who Carved His Own Death in Granite

Nestled in Vermont’s Hope Cemetery, ‘The Dying Man’ tells the tragic tale of the area’s Italian gravestone carvers.

Alice Levitt October 3, 2023

Some 5,000 Ohlone Tribe members were buried in unmarked graves in San Francisco's Mission Dolores Cemetery. Today, many of those graves have been paved over and forgotten.

Honoring the Thousands of Forgotten Souls Buried Beneath San Francisco

Experts estimate some 50,000 people are buried beneath the sprawling metropolis.

Shoshi Parks September 28, 2023

Gravestone of a pirate

Lincolnton, North Carolina

Pirate Jean Lafitte’s Grave

Visit the secret grave of a legendary privateer who faked his own death.

Podcast: Hartsdale Pet Cemetery

The oldest pet cemetery in the U.S. is full of heartwarming memorials.

The Podcast Team August 10, 2023

Rushville, Indiana

Lova Cline's Dollhouse Grave

A father’s love is immortalized by a unique dollhouse marking a young girl’s grave site.

Framingham, Massachusetts

Graves of John Cloyce & Abraham Rice

In 1777, two men were killed after being struck by lightning at the same time.

Bruges, Belgium

Grave of Antoine Michel Wemaer

The spectacular and eerie moss-covered grave site of 19th-century Belgian merchant.

Digitizing gravestones from the colonial era preserves them for future study and makes them more accessible, but it also raises questions about how to study this period of American history.

Burial Hill's Historic Gravestones Are Coming to Your Screen

Digitizing markers at the Massachusetts cemetery makes them more accessible.

Anya Gruber May 8, 2023

The Boiling River, or <em>Shanay-timpishka</em>, in Peru was long thought to be a myth.

10 of Our Absolute Favorite Atlas Obscura Podcast Episodes

Wait'll you hear these wonders of audio storytelling.

April White April 12, 2023

The grave of Philip K. Dick.

Fort Morgan, Colorado

Grave of Philip K. Dick

The final resting place of a legendary science fiction author and his fraternal twin sister who died as an infant.

Vaslav Nijinsky’s Grave

A melancholy jester sits on the grave of a famous 20th-century ballet dancer and choreographer.

Bobb Ross's headstone, photographed in February 2021.

Bob Ross's Grave

Loyal fans of one television's most famous painters still come to pay their respects.

Bill Struth's Grave

Glasgow, Scotland

Bill Struth's Grave

The unconventional Scottish soccer coach required players to wear a collar, tie, and bowler hat for matches.