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Cemetery Worker Breaks Legs Tumbling Into Grave

Middle Village cemetery was site of surprising fall

(Newser) - Mourners at a funeral in New York were shocked to see a cemetery worker plunge into a grave today and break both his legs, DNAinfo reports. The 49-year-old "was removing the strap from the casket at that time," says a cemetery official who suspected the man only hurt... More »

Oscar Wilde Lovers Can't Kiss His Tomb Anymore

Lipstick-covered monument now scrubbed, protected by glass

(Newser) - The days of puckering up to leave a lipstick kiss on Oscar Wilde's tomb are over for all but the most intrepid devotees. Hordes of adoring visitors have made their pilgrimage to the writer's final resting spot in the Pêre Lachaise cemetery in Paris and left their... More »

Historian Lived With 26 Female Corpses

Grave-robbing Russian was writing a book about cemeteries

(Newser) - Somewhere along the way, Russian historian Anatoly Moskvin's interest in cemeteries went from academic to twisted. Police probing grave desecrations found the corpses of 26 women in the 45-year-old researcher's apartment, the Telegraph reports. The skeletal remains had been dressed up in new clothes. Moskvin was in the... More »

JV Football Coach Makes Losing Team Lie on Graves

It does not work

(Newser) - A JV football coach in the Syracuse area falls a little short in the "Win-one-for-the-Gipper" department: After a loss this weekend, the Marcellus coach stopped the team bus at a cemetery and made his players lie atop graves for several minutes, reports the Syracuse Post-Standard . Jim Marsh's message:... More »

California Yanks Racist Tombstones

Negro Hill graves mislabeled in '50s

(Newser) - After more than 50 years, California is replacing 36 tombstones in an El Dorado Hills cemetery inscribed with a racial epithet. When the US Army Corps of Engineers relocated the cemetery from the Gold Rush-era settlement of Negro Hill to make way for a dam in 1954, markers for the... More »

China Cities Running Out of Room for Dead

With 9M Burials a Year, officials look for alternatives

(Newser) - The flip side of China's booming population: 9 million burials a year and packed cemeteries. Burial plots are getting so scarce that officials are urging a cultural shift by encouraging the scattering of ashes at sea, reports USA Today . Beijing, for instance, is destined to "become just a city... More »

In Greece, Graves Are Only for Rent

After that you have to watch while they dig up your relatives

(Newser) - If you’re looking forward to resting in peace someday, try not to kick it in Greece. The country is so drastically short on cemetery space that by law the dead may only rent graves, and then for a maximum of three years, reports Alex Mar of Slate , whose grandparents... More »

Tourists Flock to Penis Cemetery

Isolated border graveyard a growing destination in Iran

(Newser) - It's not exactly the naked and the dead, but an isolated cemetery is becoming a growing thrill for erotica-starved Iranians, who flock to the site to stare, agog, at giant moss-covered stone penises (and vaginas) posing as tombstones at the Khalid Nabi cemetery in northeast Iran. It's unclear why the... More »

Bag of Explosives Found at NYC Cemetery

Is there a Hells Angels link?

(Newser) - NYPD officers are trying to determine who left a sack of military-grade explosives buried near a 19th-century vault in a city cemetery. The bag, containing 10 pounds of C4 explosive, was found more than a year ago by a caretaker ... who left it sitting by a fence; a volunteer touring... More »

Town Orders Muslims to Shut Cemetery, Remove Bodies

Sufi group accuses town board of bigotry

(Newser) - A Muslim group in a tiny New York town has been told that it has to close down its graveyard and move both of the bodies buried there. Leaders of the outraged Sufi community say the cemetery, on land owned by the group, is perfectly legal and accuse the town's... More »

Woman Dug Up, Lived With Remains of Husband, Twin

The 91-year-old had help, say police

(Newser) - A bizarre and sad case from Pennsylvania: Police say a 91-year-old woman retrieved the bodies of her late husband and twin sister after their burials and lived with their mummified remains. The body of Jean Stevens' husband, who died in 1999, was found in a rug in the garage, and... More »

Japanese Dying to Get Into Highrise Cemeteries

High-tech facilities in demand as traditional grave prices top $100,000

(Newser) - High-tech, high-rise cemeteries are sprouting across Japan as a shortage of land drives up prices in ground-level graveyards. The cemeteries, typically five or six stories high, store the dead in urns which can be retrieved by robots and delivered to mourning rooms by visiting family members with a swipe of... More »

Arlington Mix-Up Creates Another Unknown Soldier

Unidentified remains found in plot listed as vacant

(Newser) - Arlington National Cemetery has buried an unknown soldier for the first time since 1984 because of bungled paperwork. Workers burying a service member in Grave 449 in 2003 found human remains in the ground when paperwork had marked the plot as vacant. The plot was left unmarked until recently when... More »

Hanged Census Worker Was Naked, Bound: Witness

Kentucky assailants used duct tape, gagged Bill Sparkman

(AP) - A part-time US Census worker found hanging in a rural Kentucky cemetery was naked, gagged and had his hands and feet bound with duct tape, said an Ohio man who discovered the body two weeks ago. "The only thing he had on was a pair of socks," Jerry... More »

In Tough Times, Families Reselling Burial Plots

Cemeteries report brisk sales of late

(Newser) - People struggling with bills and other earthly concerns are unloading burial plots at a fast clip. One Florida cemetery made as many “buybacks” in the first half of this year as in all of 2008, another in Ohio reports a similar spike, and ads are plentiful on funeral property... More »

Jacko Crypt Drives Up Plot Prices

New addition to the neighborhood sending Forest Lawn prices skywards

(Newser) - Michael Jackson has sent property prices soaring for the graves surrounding his final resting place, a sales rep at Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale tells TMZ. The cemetery has hiked the price of plots near the late singer's tomb as much as $3,000 from the usual $7,000 since ... More »

Honor Kennedy By Fixing Arlington

(Newser) - Ted Kennedy will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery today, but for many soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan the wait for an Arlington burial is a lot longer, writes Mark Benjamin at Salon. Kennedy himself once intervened for a Massachusetts family who was told they’d have to wait... More »

Desperate for Cash, People Sell Grave Sites

Final resting place is just another asset for the down-and-out

(Newser) - When she got sick, Debbie Jenkins lost her job, both her houses, and burned through her savings. Living in an unheated garage and still unable to pay rent, she discovered her last remaining asset: two cemetery plots. She posted them on Craigslist, declaring they “MUST SELL!!!” It’s... More »

Sleep With Marilyn: Wife Selling Hubby's Crypt Above Monroe

(Newser) - A former Beverly Hills resident is about to get a rude awakening when he's evicted from his crypt above Marilyn Monroe so his wife can sell it, reports the Los Angeles Times. Elsie Poncher says her hubby was a "helluva nice guy," but she needs the money to... More »

Babies' Graves Vanish From Ill. Cemetery

(Newser) - Police declared the whole of Burr Oak cemetery in the Chicago suburbs to be a crime scene last night, after hundreds of families reported empty or missing graves, including an entire section of the cemetery called Babyland, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Relatives will be barred from the site for about... More »

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