In the American imagination, a traditional cemetery, complete with manicured lawns and symmetrical headstones, remains the standard image for a burial site. Around the world, however, people have been put to rest in some unusual spots. Whether or not it was the person's wish to lie for eternity in the place they wound up, the following is a look at some standout plots.
Casket of Fries
Restaurateur Krishnan Kutti purchased the site for his eating establishment, New Lucky Restaurant, sight unseen. He quickly discovered that the piece of land in this Indian town was home to a cemetery. Not to be put off, Kutti built his eatery around the green sarcophagi that are now a distinguishing feature of the restaurant. Business is lively.
Tree Burials
In Indonesia, the Toraja culture takes great pains with their funeral rites. They engage in complex rituals, which include digging graves into cliffs and hosting mummy parades. When a baby or a child dies, the Toraja take to the trees. The body of a child is interred within a hollow tree, and the opening of the trunk is covered with a rustic door. The practice is both a poignant and beautifully eerie memorial.
Another Kind of Small House
The Burial Spirit Houses on the land outside of the St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Alaska bridge Native Alaskan and Russian Orthodox memorial practices. When a person in the community dies, a blanket is used to cover the gravesite. Shortly thereafter, a tiny house is installed on top of the blanket, painted in colors specific to the loved one's family. In contrast to the high maintenance of the typical American cemetery, the little house is left to fall apart and decay back into the earth.
Just Hanging Around
In the Sagada area of the Philippines, the dead are literally left hanging. Members of this culture have been carving their own caskets for centuries. When the time comes, loved ones who have died are placed in coffins that they made for themselves. The coffin is then secured with rope and strung up onto a cliff to hang with the other ancestors. Every casket has the personal stamp of the person who made it and who rests inside. The coffins stay suspended for generations.
Attention Wal-Mart Shoppers
A lot has changed in the past hundred years or so in Decatur, Georgia. Through it all, one graveyard and its inhabitants has stood, or lain, firm. The Crowley family cemetery was established in the 19th century on what was then a remote hilltop. The hill was eventually plowed to make a parking lot for a mall. The family plot, which rested dead center in the middle of the lot, was protected at the time by a mausoleum. Today the spot hosts a Wal-Mart, and the Crowley plot remains, out by the dumpsters.
Fly Around Me
Two headstones rest at an angle on the runway of the Savannah Airport in Georgia. Richard and Catherine Dotson are the remaining inhabitants of a cemetery that was relocated when the airport was constructed. The couple's loved ones refused permission for the graves and headstones to be moved. They maintained that their ancestors had worked hard to acquire the property in life, and would not want to be moved off it in death. Perhaps unsettlingly, many travellers at takeoff may view the headstones, although the graves themselves have been paved over.
Anonymous, and Infamous, Graves
The Oise Aisne Cemetery in France may look fairly conventional, but it contains the graves of a little-known sector of American soldiers. The cemetery is closed off, and closed to the public. Admittance is allowed solely through special permission of the caretaker's office. It is the resting place of 94 American soldiers who were executed for capital crimes during World War I and World War II. In Plot E there are no adornments and no headstones, simple a small, flat marker that bears only a number, no name.
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