- From rotating stones to darkened angles, there’s something off about these graves.
Eventually, we all end up in a box. But what stands above that box can vary wildly.
Not every grave in America is marked with your usual stone slab with a name and lifespan carved onto it. Some gravestones include more puzzling engravings, or they might be at the center of unexplainable paranormal activity.
Or they may just look plain weird.
Here are 7 of the strangest graves all around America.
1. The Paste Eater’s Grave
Remember how your parents told you not to eat glue as a toddler? Well, here’s one man who clearly never learned that lesson.
The paste eater’s gravestone stands in Goldfield, Nevada. According to local reports, in it lies an unknown vagrant who reportedly died in 1908 after eating library paste.
A newspaper clipping from the time states the starving man’s corpse was found with an empty paste jar. Hopelessly hungry, he had eaten the toxic concoction as what would become his last meal.
Despite not knowing who the lonely wanderer was, the townsfolk gave him a burial and a simple headstone. But did they really need to write this particular cause of death on it, though?
2. St. Omer Witch’s Grave
The town of St. Omer in Illinois is no more, but its old cemetery remains to this day. In it, you will find the strange gravestone of the Barnes family.
The stone is carved into the shape of a giant ball sitting on top of an unlit wooden pyre. On the ball are carved the names and dates of birth and death of Marcus Barnes and his wife, Caroline.
Caroline’s date of death is a bit odd, though. It’s marked as February 31, 1882—a date that never existed.
Local stories claim that Caroline was a witch and the locals intentionally put an erroneous date on the gravestone so she couldn’t return to haunt the living on the anniversary of her death. To go with the witchy rumors, the grave is supposedly still used as a site of eldritch rituals to this day.
3. The Grave of the Lady in Red
In 1969, farmhands working on the Egypt Plantation in Cruger, Mississippi, made a gruesome discovery. Digging the ground, they happened upon a coffin lying in an unmarked grave.
This wasn’t just any coffin, though — it was a cast iron and glass box filled with an alcoholic preservative solution. In the liquid floated a woman’s corpse in pristine condition, clad in a red velvet dress, white gloves, and boots.
Her clothes indicated that the woman may have died before the Civil War. The alcohol-filled coffin had preserved her body perfectly.
Despite local historians’ best efforts, no one has been able to figure out the woman’s identity. After her accidental exhumation, she was reburied in the Odd Fellow’s Cemetery in Lexington, Mississippi.
4. The XYZ Grave
A gang of four criminals was about to break into a bank in Deep River, Connecticut, on December 13, 1899. Unfortunately for the robbers, somebody had tipped the bank off about their heist.
The bank’s security guard Harry Tyler stopped the robbery, and the man leading the criminals died in the ensuing exchange of fire. With no idea who he was, he was buried in an unmarked grave.
Shortly after, Tyler received a letter penned in what he took for a woman’s handwriting. The letter requested the dead robber be given a gravestone engraved with the letters “XYZ.”
Well, that’s what the deceased criminal got. For the next 40 years, locals reported seeing a woman in black visiting the grave every December, leaving behind one carnation.
5. The Merchant Ball
Charles B. Merchant sure lived up to his surname — he was a successful, wealthy businessman from Marion, Ohio. When he died in 1896, his family erected a striking gravestone, featuring an enormous polished stone ball sitting on top of a pedestal.
One spot on the ball was left rough, as the family assumed it, together with the ball’s weight, would keep it stationary. For some reason, though, the ball began rotation, exposing its “bald spot” to the world.
The ball has been reoriented a couple of times but to no avail. It always begins rolling again, showing off the one rough spot on its smooth surface.
No one knows exactly why the ball rotates, although it probably has something to do with vibrations traveling along the ground. Or maybe it’s Mr. Merchant, who can no longer keep the wheels of his business turning — so he turns the ball on his grave instead.
6. The Aurora Alien’s Grave
The Roswell incident is probably the most famous UFO case in American history. But there was another similar story in Aurora, Texas, some 50 years earlier.
In 1897, a supposed “mystery airship” crashed into a windmill of Aurora Judge J. S. Proctor. The accident killed the craft’s pilot — a “petite Martian” creature.
The locals gave their extraterrestrial visitor a Christian burial (despite not knowing the alien’s actual religious convictions) under a tree in the town’s graveyard. They reportedly erected a small headstone for the being, etched with a simple drawing of his wrecked airship.
Eventually, the gravestone disappeared from the graveyard. At some point, a replacement was put in place — until someone stole that as well.
Frankly, there’s no evidence that there ever was an alien grave in the Aurora graveyard. Nonetheless, a state historical marker at the site mentions the spaceship and its dead pilot, so maybe it did happen.
7. The Black Angel
A large sculpture of a winged angel stands guard atop the grave of Teresa and Nicolas Feldevert in the Oakland Cemetery in Iowa City. This isn’t your usual angel, though — the statue is pitch black.
It wasn’t always that way. According to local legends, the originally light-colored angel turned black overnight due to the sins of the Feldevert family.
Yet, the angelic being doesn’t seem satisfied with judging only Feldeverts. Stories claim that certain and quick death awaits anyone who kisses the statue, or even touches it.
In reality, the angel’s discoloration is a natural result of its bronze surface oxidating over time. Do you think the locals may have had some beef with the Feldeverts to come up with this story?