25 Creepiest Tombs From Around The World

This gravestone of Herman Harband was eerily specific about his wife. He commissioned it before he died, and it was placed in Beth David Memorial Gardens when he died in Hollywood. The tombstone read: My wife Eleanor Arthur of Queens, NY lived like a princess for 20 years traveling the world with the best of everything. When I went blind, she tried to poison me, took all my money, all my medication and left me in the dark alone and sick. It’s a miracle I escaped. I won’t see her in heaven because she’s surely going to hell!

This final resting place of the New Orlean’s powerful voodoo priestess is a popular tourist destination for occultists. They leave all kinds of dark paraphernalia at the tomb and mark the tomb with black X’s. While alive, she’s said to have sold potions and charms for people wanting love and money.

In Sicilian catacombs, the embalmed and well-preserved corpse of two-year-old Rosalia Lombardo lies. She died of pneumonia in 1920, and her grief-stricken father wanted her embalmed. To this day, her internal organs are still intact and some believe she briefly opens her eyes if you look at her.

Buried at Natchez City Cemetery in Natchez, Mississippi, this 10-year-old girl was said to be scared of storms and would run to her mother for comfort. When she died of yellow fever, her mother constructed her grave to have a stairway down to her casket so she could visit her and comfort her during storms.

In 1977, two fishermen saw a garbage bag floating down the river and picked it up. Inside, they found the body of an infant baby girl. She was never identified and was buried at Oskaloosa’s Pleasant View Cemetery. Her tombstone it eerily reads, “Unidentified Baby Girl Found In Delaware River May 1977.”

First buried 186 years ago surrounded by trees and overlooking the Raritan River, this woman’s grave saw great transformation in a short time. At the dawn of the 20th century, all the land around her gravesite was turned into a parking lot. Her gravesite is mostly a plot of land surrounded by cement. It’s now in front of Loews Theatre.

The Toraja people view death very differently than most of the world. Among their funeral ceremonies is called the “Baby Trees.” Corpses of babies that have not teethed are placed inside the hollowed out trunk of a tree and covered with a palm fiber door. It’s believed the child’s essence will be part of the tree.

After the death of her husband, Mary Shelley, author of the book Frankenstein, had him cremated but his heart wouldn’t burn, so she carried around his literal heart with her wherever she went. Eventually, the heart passed on to their son. His tomb is nothing eventful except for the fact it carries the heart of his father.

Underneath the city streets of Paris lies one big tomb of death. Called the Catacombs of Paris, it houses 6 to 7 million dead Parisians. Skulls and bones are stacked and lined up like a wall of despair. Some parts of the Catacombs are available to the public, but other parts are not.

The ancient Chinese went all out when burying their first emperor, creating an eerie and bizarre tomb in the process. Guarded by many Terracotta warrior statues, the tomb is also protected by a river of flowing mercury. On top of that, many booby traps lie in wait to anyone who decides to enter. It’s unlikely we’ll be going in anytime soon.

These catacombs literally pin their dead corpses to the walls. It holds around 8,000 corpses, sitting on benches, laying on shelves, and resting in open coffins for the entire world to see.

Also known as “The Bone Church,” this tomb in the Czech Republic has a chandelier made of almost every bone in the human body. Roughly 40,000 to 70,000 skeletons are housed in this ossuary. In 1870, František Rint had the macabre task of arranging the bones in unusual ways, including the chandelier.

To get to Dargavs, Russia, also known as The City of the Dead, you have to take a three-hour drive down a dangerous and hidden road. Most of the village is a cemetery and quarantine houses from when a bad plague swept through. The ill would be forced to stay inside their houses and die.

This woman’s tomb in Salt Lake City has quite a bizarre tombstone. It reads, “Victim of the Beast 666.” This brewed plenty of myths and legends about it, making it quite an attraction. For years, many didn’t understand what it meant until it was finally revealed to be the “government.”

When his wife died in 1893, this man decided his oath “til death do you part” didn’t apply. He was so devoted to her, he moved into her tomb with furniture, portraits, playing cards, and even their parrot. Thousands of people came to visit him within the first year, and he stayed there for 10 years until he died and was laid to rest in the coffin he had installed next to hers. Their tomb can be found at the Evergreens Cemetery in New York City.

A tombstone at St. Paul Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia, is famous for a mysterious Jane Doe that entered a tavern in 1816 severely ill. She and her husband demanded anonymity and the people in the tavern kept their word not to reveal their identities. Her tombstone reads, “To the memory of a Female Stranger whose mortal sufferings terminated on the 14th day of October 1816 Aged 23 years and 8 months. This stone was placed here by her disconsolate Husband in whose arms she sighed out her latest breath and who under God did his utmost even to soothe the cold dead ear of death.”

This family vault located in Barbados is mostly an unremarkably normal tomb. Except, the coffins mysteriously are said to move. Cemetery workers discovered the vault seal removed and three coffins thrown around violently. They found no evidence of human tampering. Years later, when they were about to add another body to the vault, they found the coffins were in disarray. When this kept happening, they moved the coffins and buried them elsewhere.

We don’t really know much about this tomb except the statue is creepy and unsettling. Located in Barcelona, Spain, this man was buried in 1930, and his inscription reads, “His young heart is thus extinguished. The blood in his veins grows cold. And all strength has gone. Faith has been extolled by his fall into the arms of death. Amen.”

There’s nothing traditionally creepy about this grave, but that doesn’t negate its eerie features. First, it’s the grave a notorious Russian mafia boss. It has a marble stone with the etching of his life-size image. Many other mafia henchmen have the same kind of tombstones, some smiling, others stern. But, craziest of all, is they have CCTV video cameras at their tombs, watching on-lookers.

Located in Chicago, Illinois, at Graceland Cemetery, this grave is shrouded in mystery. First, no one named Inez Clarke died on August 1, 1880, like her tombstone says. On top of that, myths and legends surround the girl, including that she died from a lightning strike during a picnic and that her statue disappears in a thunderstorm because she’s afraid of lightning.

Buried in Devon, England, at Exercise Tiger Memorial, this woman grew up as an orphan and was mocked, raped, and tormented most of her life. After she was raped, she became pregnant and, labeled a whore, couldn’t find employment. With nowhere to turn, she hung herself in a barn. Since she committed suicide, no church would allow her to be buried on their land, so she was buried at the crossroads of three parishes. Myths, legends, and sightings of her ghost wandering the area continue today.

This Russian noblewoman originally was born and married in St. Petersburg, but after her divorce, she moved to Paris. She was buried there inside a massive mausoleum. It’s rumored that in her will she challenged anyone to spend a year in her tomb. If they could survive the challenge, they’d receive her entire fortune.

During the Salem Witch Trials, this man was told to confess while having heavy stones pressed on top of him. His final words were, “More weight! More weight!” He was falsely accused of being a wizard and executed for it. His grave now stands as an eerie testament of the cruelty of his time.

This cave in Israel is the burial site of a 12,000-year-old Shaman woman. When researchers found her, they also discovered the bones of several different kinds of animals, including tortoises, marten skulls, a wild cow tail, a boar’s forearm, an eagle’s wing, and a leopard’s pelvis. The burial was a planned 6-stage funeral process with several layers of bones.

This tombstone that simply reads, “Specimens” is at the Training Institute of Central Ohio. Previously, it was Columbus State Hospital Asylum Cemetery. What’s eerie about this tomb is no one really knows what’s buried there. Additionally, this institute was a detention center for serious juvenile felony offenders. Many unsettling stories have swirled around the institute, including rapes, severe beatings, and children reportedly released but who actually died there.