323. HAUNTING TOMBSTONES | Most Shocking Graves in the World - From Fudge Recipes to Unsolved Codes

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There's so many tombstones that are like, "I told you I was dead. Let me be your guide through the cemeteries of the haunted, bizarre, wackiest tombstone." Wackiest wacky zany tombstones. Yeah. Very spooky. Hi. Hi. This is two girls, one ghost. Two girls, one ghost. And we are your ghostesses. That is Karen. Hello. I am Sabrina. And I need to give a shout out to one of our listeners and also admit fault. So, remember when not so long ago I did

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a two-parter on Bennington Triangle and I was like, how have we never talked about this before? And then I was like, I think we have, but only because I remembered something about the little boy. Yeah. So, you covered it in entirety basically. Okay. But it wasn't a two-parter, so you expanded upon it. No, but it was a 2-hour episode. I took screenshots. Okay. episode 148, which came out February 28th, 2021. Hey, I didn't remember either. I thought I covered a segment of it as part of a different and I will say I definitely did dive deeper, but you you covered it. And the topic was ghost towns. So, you specifically focused on Glastonbury, Vermont. And I think this is this is the error of our ways. So, the main focus of your episode was also the main focus of mine. Yeah, I copied you. So, shout out Wow. A shout out to Willow B53 who on YouTube was like, "Yeah, you guys talked about it in episode 148. I just started it today." Well, now you get it again and

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probably in greater detail with more information cuz things are always expanding. The internet's expanding. Our abilities are expanding. And now you got it in a different voice and our brains are shrinking. Yeah. But also, I bet that episode was so much better cuz now we have video. Have video and better microphones. Better mics. I don't know. This is our like full-time job now. So, I just thought that was so funny and I was looking at the transcript like I didn't relisten to the whole episode, but like yeah, you covered all the missing people. Um, and but you you say Bennington Triangle once. So, like Oh, well then that's my fault. It's not your fault. And it's also an error because I was talking about Glastonberry. And I think the issue is that you and I's recordkeeping and the way that we wrote the descriptions of episodes in the past extremely poor, vague. Like we we rely on you guys often. If you follow us on social media, you will often see posts being like, "Did we cover this? We can't find it." And then someone will be like, "Yeah,

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that was episode 81." So, but if you go to the description and the title, you will have no clue that that topic was covered in that episode. Yeah. If anyone here is like, "Oh my gosh, I want to restart from the beginning and I'm just going to be kind and write all of the topics in an email to Kern and Sabrina for the past eight years of their podcasting multiple times a week." We'd much appreciate. So, it took seven and a half years, almost eight years for us to repeat ourselves. That's actually very impressive. It is. Well, and also in your defense, all of that information felt new to me. Great. Hope it was listening. I was like, "What?" To all of you, too. Unless you're listening to episode 148 congentally. Oh my god, that is so funny. Now I want to go back and listen to both of them and just see like how synced they were. Oh, but it's also just so funny that our episodes used to be like that was a 2-hour long episode. Yeah, but I didn't do it solo, right? You had covered That's what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But still. Yeah. So again, like it was probably half the information you provided. But that a 2-hour long episode is that's long. And

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also we want to say to the people who comment and say, "Can you make your episodes longer?" No. No, we could make them shorter. I What we do is we do as much research as we possibly can and share it with you. So, with the Benington Triangle, like it was a two-parter. It could have been a one-parter and been two hours long. Mhm. But I feel like it's more digestible when it's two parts. Anyway, do you have another topic that I can steal someday later down the road for us to Yeah. Actually, you want to know what is you sent me, trying to be kind to me and help me with my research, you sent me a bunch of information on a particular place for this research, but we'd already covered it. I knew that we covered that cemetery, but I thought that one I think we went into some of

intro topic

the tombstones, which is our topic for today. The coolest, weirdest, wackiest tombstones. Wackiest wacky zany tombstones. Now I feel like a YouTuber. Like I feel

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like that's what And then it should be like a zoom in and like you twist. Yeah. Bring the dancing monsters. Okay. But I wrote some things so I'm going to read them because it's better than my brain just trying to regurgitate what I uh wrote last night. A lone tombstone stands crooked in moonlight. Its edges softened by moss and time. In the silence of the graveyard, you stand before the tombstones surrounded by the echoes of grief and love that remain here. Tombstones are more than stone and dates. They're emotional milestones. They're anchors for our morning souls and storytellers of the departed. that's really beautiful. I mean, that's true, right? I know, but I really like that. I just haven't heard it that way. Thank you for Yeah. You're welcome. painting a very poetic picture. Well, I don't think I wrote it that well, but the point that I was trying to make is Yeah. that Yeah, is what I said. That's the point I'm trying to make. Yeah. But since ancient times, we as humans

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have done something to honor the dead, to remember the people that we've lost. And burying our dead and like marking it in some sort of grave is something that has happened for centuries and centuries, millennia. The beginning of time, since the beginning of human existence, basically. And other animals in the animal kingdom do something similar. Crows have funeral services. I think elephants do too. Uh there's a story, it actually might have been in telepathy tapes where an elephant revisited this one site a year later to pay respect respect to the deceased. Oh my gosh, it is so yeah like migrated which is exactly what we as humans do, right? Like you go to your loved one's grave on the anniversary of their death or on their birthday or something like that. So yeah, this is this is something that it's just like a part of us and it's so natural for us to want to create some sort of remembrance for the people that we lose. And in part of that remembrance often times we have tombstones and on those tombstones they are engraved with certain sayings and

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information. It has an epitap and the word epitap comes from Greek meaning upon a tomb and for centuries people have used epitaps though they're not all the same. Sometimes you can find poems of love. Sometimes a final joke left for eternity. Oh, are we going to get some funny tombstones? We're going to get a couple weird interesting ones and then we're going to go into kind of more of the spookier stuff. Okay, great. Okay,

fun and mysterious headstones

so one of the most famous unique tombstones is that of Katherine K. Andrews, who left her famous fudge recipe on her tomb. Stop. Wait, are there photos? Yes. Okay. Can I be viewing along? Yes, you can. There is two squares of chocolate, 2 tbsps of butter. You melt on low heat. You stir in 1 cup of milk. Bring to a boil. 3 cup sugar. 1 teaspoon vanilla. A pinch of salt. Cook to softball stage, which I don't know what that means. Softball. Pour on marble slab. Is her tomb marble? She That was a missed opportunity. Have

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people feed you fudge? Make a little slab beneath your tomb. Yeah. Cool and beat and eat. And then it says, "Wherever she goes, there's laughter." I love that. Right. It's so nice. So, she lived until she was 97 years old cuz she ate fudge brownies all the time. She eat fudge brownies. Yeah. She fed her soul. Oh, I just It's like so in your face. Oh, it's huge. It's a huge tombstone. If you're watching on YouTube, you're going to be able to see it. That's amazing. Right. So, this is in Logan City Cemetery, Utah. and you'll find her headstone engraved with her signature chocolate fudge recipe instructing the living on how to create K's famous fudge. So cool. Another very unique grave is that of Paul G. Lind. It's out in Oregon and it is a Scrabble board tombstone. So Paul loved the game of Scrabble and so he didn't actually ask for this, but his family thought that this was a great way to commemorate him and just like honor him and his love of Scrabble. So they commissioned a

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headstone to be in the form of Scrabble and the letters etched in the granite are basically like depicting it Midgame. So it's like his soul isn't done like he's not but this is beautiful. Are you looking at the words that are included? Yes. This is such a smart idea, right? Okay. So they spelled out heartfelt descriptors like son, brother, fiance, young, and the titles all captured the roles that Paul cherished in his life. poker hard tired tired computer lovable football and at the base there's the on the rack it says the the child say we miss you have chills beautiful I had no idea what to expect going into this and it was not this well cuz there's so many tombstones that are like I told you I was dead you know like those funny ones but I was like what are the really unique ones like ones that people never also there's another tombstone that I'm just going to say right now that I did

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not write down but I found in my research where it was this woman and it said killed by the beast of 666 or something like that and everyone there was all these conspiracies around it being like what the is this some sort of like satanic cult basically her husband was like this anti-government guy and he called like big government the beast and so he basically was trying to say like the government he thought the government killed his wife for a moment And I was like, "Oh my god, did a did a crypted kill this lady?" And then she from Beyond the Grave chose Killed by the Beast of 666. Yeah. Well, okay. Now, this is giving me so much inspiration because I feel like my PE brain was limited to the options of a normal just realize that like you actually have the power and capacity to do whatever the hell you want. Yeah. Cuz I in recent times I've been leaning towards a backyard burial in your own backyard. Yeah. and in the mound that's already prepared for you in your backyard.

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Exactly. I want like an at home cemetery. I want to bring that back. But now I'm like, well, I can spread messages at cemeteries. Maybe I do want a cemetery burial so I can have something. I don't even know. I can't even think of what it is yet. But you're opening up my mind. I know. I was thinking at the end of this of my research, I was like, what do I want? What would I put? And I I have no idea. We can come up with some ideas. I have no idea. But you are reminding me right now that the people who lived here before me, they buried their dog out by like a split oak tree in the backyard. And I keep being like, "Oh, I need to message them and ask what their dog's name was and like when he lived and died cuz I want to get like a little plaque that I can put into the tree because then that can be our pet cemetery, too." Like we can just have a little pet cemetery. Have a little pet cemetery. Okay. There's another grave. the grave of Katherine Cross of Oklahoma who died October 1917 whose grave has this is kind of similar to like the beast of 666. It says murdered by human wolves chiseled into it. So here's the thing. We don't know what it means but it has spurred a lot of theories about

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werewolves. It could also just be commentary on the fact that humans are animals. That's originally what I thought. Yeah. I immediately thought about like being attacked by like a group of bad men. Right. And then also this brings up similar to the last one like the beast of 666 that you were talking about like we have to remember unless predetermined and prepicked out by the deceased most of these epitaps or graves are chosen by loved ones. Yeah. Okay. But it is clear that tombstones serve a dual role. They are monuments of mourning and storytelling. They capture grief but also personality and passion. Mhm. sometimes a fair bit of whimsy and also you get to see like you were saying the memories and opinions that the loved ones left behind have of these people. So you kind of get this glimpse of them as a whole like the perceptions others have of them and kind of who they themselves were and what they wanted in their own life. So it is really really special. So tonight or this morning on your drive to work let me be your guide

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through the cemeteries of the haunted bizarre and notable tombstones. This is going to be a long walk amongst the dead. Get your walking shoes on. Get

'sexiest' tomb in France

your hulkas. Our very first stop is going to be to the sexiest tomb in France. Sexiest. I have mixed feelings about it. Okay, so this is the grave of Victor Noir. He was a 19th century French journalist and he is buried in the famed Pere Lease Cemetery. Victor's life was cut short in 1870. He died tragically, shot dead in a duel. At the time he was, I think engaged, so he had a fiance and and left behind a future. The duel was actually uh an argument over arranging a duel. Ironically, the the existence of duels generally just play Russian roulette. Like it just feels like you're asking to die. Yes. Bring back a fist fight. 30 seconds. How many slaps can you get in? That's what

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it should be. Fight. You should just we should instead of duels, let's go back in time and introduce the the tortilla challenge where you have water in your mouth. That's how they should have fought. That's how they should have fought. Or like the provolone cheese where you just like throw a proolone and see if you can get it smacked on their face. Better ideas for them based on other people's ideas of present time. What's better than embarrassing someone in front of everyone, right? Yes. Let's bring back shame. So at 22 years old, Victor became a martyr for press freedom and his death sparked public outrage because the duel and the argument was originally supposed to be arranged by the prince of Bonapart's family. So I I didn't go into the history here, but there was some like political weirdness going on. Yeah. Public outrage. Everyone was so pro Victor and he was buried with great honors for the work and I guess like what he stood for when he died. But it wasn't the politics of his death that made his tombstone famous worldwide. It was the way the statue was sculpted.

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About 20 years after his death, a life-sized bronze statue of Victor was laid at top his grave. The artist depicted him as he fell, laying flat on his back, his top hat knocked to the side and his coat unbuttoned. This is morbid. Mhm. However, there's also something else. A bulge. A visible bulge in his pants. The artist gave Victor a big old dick. Why is it look bloody? Okay. Well, this is this is why I said I have really mixed feelings about this. So, for reasons lost to history, this single artist made an artistic choice to give Victor a rather large endowment. And over the years, local lore transformed Victor Noir from tragic figure into this sort of fertility symbol because here's this like statue of a young handsome man with a noticeable penis. Yep. Mhm. So, legend now says that if a woman is seeking enhanced fertility, a husband or blissful love, she should pay a visit to Victor's resting place. Not just pay a

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visit, but like essentially grope his grave. This is why I was like, I have mixed feelings about this cuz this like imagine if this was like a woman's grave. Like people would be this would be absolutely not okay. So, the ritual is to kiss Victor's bronze lips, to rub the bulge on his trousers, and to leave a flower in his upturned hat beside him. And so, if you're looking on YouTube at the pictures, you can see that there is like most of the sculpture has been patinaed over time, but his nose and lips and chin, and then his bulge area, his like groin area is quite bronze from basically being polished non-stop. Disturbed. Yeah. No, it's extremely disturbing and all the articles like no one's pointing out that this is up. He very clearly looks dead. Like he he's laying the way he fell when he was shot to death. So everyone goes, "Let's molest him." I'm like angry by this, right? It made me think a lot of Marilyn Monroe when I was researching this, you know, cuz her body went missing for like

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a period of time after her death. Oh, yeah. Oh, I I'm at it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't support that. I don't love this. No, no, no, no. I know. And it it is messed up because like I was saying the all the articles like everyone's like, "Oh my gosh, do you want to get pregnant?" Like rub the bulge. The concept of it just Yeah. penis crystal instead, right? Okay. But it they say if you want to get pregnant, you can touch his right foot. To find a great lover, you touch his lips. To have twins, you rub the left foot. And there's just like a bunch of iterations of this, but it's all back to like touching him. And according to the myth, a woman who does all of this will soon conceive. And a single woman who performs it will soon find herself engaged within the year. And people take this very seriously. You can see evidence of how seriously people take it because you can see the patina versus non- patina parts. I've never heard that term before. Patina. Yeah. Oh, it's like when a metal like a bronze or something gets weathered over time or like copper. I like that word. Just

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never heard of it. You're going to hear a lot about it now. Patined. Patined. Hundreds, if not thousands of people visit the grave every year. And for decades, women struggling with infertility or looking for love have quietly visited Victor, making him perhaps the most groped tomb in Paris, maybe in the world. The phenomenon grew so notable that in 2004, the cemetery briefly erected a fence around Victor to discourage this activity, to stop people from touching him. But the outcry was immediate and people were like no you can't keep us from our love and so the barrier had to be reouched because people what right human killed by wolves that makes sense we humans are monsters and animals and yeah they should change his epitap to that jeez yeah so this was a very disturbing thing but this is a bronze journalist turned fertility icon in the heart of Paris you know what's disturbing about it is like the part that is not patinaed makes it look even more like a bloody murder cuz it almost looks like blood

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has when like spewed from his nose and his mouth in the death. Yeah, you're right. And that he peed his pants while he did it while he died. Also, when they say like, "Oh, there's a bulge in his pants." Like, not really. It's the wrinkle of his trousers, right? So, people were making it out to be what they wanted it to be and like blaming the artist for it. But also a bulge doesn't necessarily mean a well-endowed wien. No, it's just human anatomy, right? They have testes. Yeah. So, it is quite sad. The parts it's his like face, his groin region, and then the tips of his boots. Yeah. Huh. Okay. I know one thing I will definitely not do when I die is get a sculpture of yourself put on top. Well, he didn't choose that. This is 20 years after his death. No, I know. Well, anyone listening, please help make sure that that doesn't happen for my grave. All

black angel

right, so now we're going to go across the Atlantic back to America, to the

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American Midwest, where there's another statue with a darker hue and a dark legend. It watches over the dead with wings outstretched and a reputation steeped in fear. This is Iowa City's Oakland Cemetery, home to the Black Angel, which you've definitely seen pictures of the Black Angel. I almost feel like we've talked about this. I kind of thought so, too, but I couldn't. When I was reading it, I was like, I don't really remember this completely. Whoa. It's seeped in like darkness. Well, because it's been patinaed. Is it P or B? Pined. Okay. But patina. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, it's just like when the metal oxidizes over time, it turns different colors like when you go to like a capital building, you know how the dome on it would they're originally like bronze and bright gold and now they're kind of like brownish dark gray. Yeah. Green or whatever. Yeah. And like you can do that like if you buy like a bronze light fixture, you can get special oils to rub on it to like make

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it look that way. And then you can also reverse patina. You can like clean it. Yeah. Anyway, talks about patina. Few statues in America are as ominous looking or as steeped in creepy lore as the black angel of Oakland Cemetery. This towering bronze monument looms about eight and a half feet tall. Wings spread wide and her head is bowed as if she's in mourning. Originally gleaming and golden, this angel has long since oxidized to a more haunting black green patina, hence the moniker black angel. I still think she's very pretty. I think she's beautiful, too. Especially when the sunlight hits her just so. But it's not just her appearance that sends shivers down the spines. It's the myriad of legends that have attached themselves to her over the last century. So, first, a little bit of backstory about who the Black Angel is. So, the Black Angel was commissioned by an immigrant named Teresa Denzel Felder. Yikes. I need to utilize AI like a speech to text and just insert that. Will that go dubbed

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over me? Just move your mouth. Yeah, I think I said this weird, but the Black Angel was commissioned on behalf of the woman who died, which was the immigrant named Teresa Denzel Felivert. I think I did way better that time. Mhm. Teresa moved from Bohemia to Iowa City in the late 1800s with her young son Eddie. And tragically, Eddie died of menitis at 18 years old in 1891. And Teresa was extremely gracen, right? Like she lost her child. So she erected a simple tree stump headstone for him which was I don't know if this was something that like people were just noting the symbolism of it later when writing articles on this or if this was something that she intended but basically they were saying like the tree stump headstone was symbolic of a life cut short. Oh yeah. So I don't know if there was intention poetic. Yeah. But but very poetic. So she later left Iowa. She then remarried and then was widowed again in Oregon and then she returned to Iowa City around 1912. And wanting a proper memorial for her family, Teresa

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hired the renowned Czech American sculptor Mario Corbel to create this majestic angel statue to stand watch over the remains of her son and her second husband. Wow. Just like hiring a sculptor, right, is such a loss some money, right? Well, that and also I just feel like that's not as accessible these days. Yeah. So Mario Corbel created this angel to watch over the second husband and the late son of Teresa. And by 1913, the angel was installed at top a pedestal that holds the ashes of Teresa's husband and would later hold Teresa's own ashes when she died in 1924. At the time of its erection, the angel was this really bright, beautiful bronze. And it still does have like a hint of bronze when the sun hits it just so which we did include a picture in the YouTube video of kind of like the I don't know if it was like twilight or dusk, but like when the sun is low in the sky, it does hit it and it Well, it's interesting cuz bronze is

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already a darker color. Like it's not marble or a white stone. So, so fast forward a few decades and the angel's appearance started to change because obviously it's outside. It's in a cemetery. there are elements that it's exposed to and it starts to patina and starts to turn more of like a deeper black. So that is when the legend took over and this became sort of like the black angel. According to the local lore, the black angel turned dark not just because of chemistry but because of sin. So who was sin? Because Teresa seemed pretty cool. I love the beginning of an urban legend. Right. Yeah. So there are a few versions of like whose sin it is, why this happened. One popular version claims that when Terresa Felder died, her ashes were placed beneath the angel in 1924 and then a thunderstorm rolled through that very night, striking the angel and turning it black as a sign of God's judgment.

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Another version suggests that Teresa was an evil woman or a witch, which and that her wickedness caused the statue to mysteriously darken over time. Another example of how it's so clear why women were accused of being witches. Like it's just like let's just point fingers. This is like Bath Sheba. The conjuring Bath Sheba. Yeah. Yeah. Horrible. Don't create your own story about someone being evil when they're not. What the hell? Okay. And then another tale tells that Teresa's son was actually murdered or that Teresa herself had cursed the angel due to heartbreak causing it to blacken. There's just like people are just throwing anything out there to to explain away the natural process of oxidation of a metal. So, none of these stories have evidence. In reality, by the time Teresa died, the angel likely was already darkening from normal oxidation, but logic rarely stops a good spooky tale, right? The drama. The drama. Whatever the reason, by the midentury, the Black Angel's sinister

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reputation was wellestablished and it became the centerpiece of every Iowa City teenager's campfire lore. So, there's a few legends that go with this. I just picturing like so many teenagers going to the cemetery late at night with a Ouija board. Oh, 100%. And like you dare people to come up and touch the statue or whatever. For sure. Yeah. Okay. So, here's what happens if you do touch the statue and like certain things. It is said that if you kiss the black angel, you will die. Some say immediately, others say you are granted just a few days. Touch the angel at midnight, you'll die within 7 years. Touch it on Halloween at midnight, and that timeline speeds up. One version insists that you'll drop dead on the spot. Another mercifully extends it to one year. So, there's like all these different like, touch it at this time, touch it on this day, blah blah blah, like you're going to die. But then it's like the this brings up a conversation then when there's so many people pouring their energy into this. Is it now becoming this more haunted object even

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though it never was? Well, I think we'd also hear if Iowa City had a sudden teenage death surge and they're all dropping dead beneath this dark angel. Yeah. So, I think that we might be in the clear. It's said that if a virgin kisses the angel, it will return to its original bronze color. Yet, it's still darkly patinaed. I guess no virgins have ever kissed it. I guess not. Also, I won't go into details, but if you're pregnant, don't walk under it. Also, it said that each Halloween the angel turns a darker shade. Just new shade of black. Adorns a costume. Mhm. Just for the evening or like each year that passes, it gets darker and darker. Yeah. But it said like the darkness just like suddenly it's not like a natural progression. It's like a it's like the next morning you wake up color is a new shade. She's darker. She's a whole shade of black darker. Okay. So in short, the black angel became a right of passage for the local youth and also for some of the college students at the University of Iowa which is nearby. People would sneak into the cemetery at night daring each

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other to touch or kiss the statue. And the bravest might even climb up to sit on the angel and try to chip a piece off, which has been an issue with some like vandalism that's been happening. And the angel actually lost some fingertips to time over the damage of people like touching and climbing and getting onto the statue. That's so disturbing. And that's a thing that happens with famous or infamous people's graves. Like even I think it was Ed Gene or Keer, one of I always get those two confused. And this might even happen with like Gayy, but like I think people were stealing pieces of their tombs as like a prized possession, which is just disturbing in its own right. And I feel like there's like this weird gross market and Zach Bagens contributes to it of buying objects that belong to killers. Import. Yes. So some people think that the Black Angel is haunted. One common claim is that you'll see small orbs of light or this like glowing aura around

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the angel at night, which some people are like, "Okay, well, is that real? Is that not I don't know. It's also a cemetery. There could totally be orbs, whether it's attributed to the black angel or just someone else buried in the cemetery." Totally. Some visitors, especially those who go in kind of skeptical with a reverent attitude, they report feeling overwhelming sadness as they're near the angel, as if sensing Teresa's grief embodied in the bronze. Others who come in with some high energy, the rowdy crew, they report said nausea or panic, which is attributed to the angel's curse trying to ward them off. Because the rowdy people are probably the ones that are trying to climb the statue. It also could just be Teresa's spirit being like, "Leave me alone." Right. I would feel anxious if I were a spirit and all these teenagers are coming to my grave and being hooligans. Totally. Like, please leave me be. And this was supposed to be like this beautiful sentiment, like this wonderful piece that she constructed and like existed for a long time when she

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was alive to honor her son and her late second husband. So, the Black Angels legend is now inseparable from the reality of it. And on Halloween night, you will still find plenty of kids, teens, college students hanging around the cemetery, hanging around this grave. So, while the Black Angel looms ominously over a century of whispered

unsolvable cypher

curses and legends and rumors, the next grave tells a quieter story. One with no statue, no superstition, just a man found dead in a field and two cryptic pages in his pocket that have baffled the FBI for two decades. Wait, so this isn't even like a tombstone? It's like a man found. Yeah, this is the mystery of Ricky McCormack's code. So, it's 1999. 41-year-old Ricky McCormack is found dead in a cornfield in Missouri. Now, Ricky's grave itself is just a simple marker in St. Louis, but it was what was found in his pocket, which were two pages of handwritten coded notes, an

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indecipherable string of letters, numbers, and dashes that to this day have FBI's top crypto analysts scratching their heads. Wait, what? And there's photos of these two pages in the YouTube video. So, the presence of this undeciphered code has effectively turned Ricky's death into a modern tombstone mystery. People visit his burial site with fascination, wondering if this is the key to the bizarre end. And if there's like other hints at his tombstone and in his burial site to crack the code. I feel like it wouldn't be at his burial site. It'd be like wherever he lives, right? I don't know. But like this is the big mystery. Interesting. So, he lived a very difficult life when he was alive. He struggled with chronic heart and lung issues. He was functionally illiterate according to family, which makes coded notes even stranger. And in June 1999, his decomposed body was discovered in a rural field 30 m from his home. No

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obvious cause of death could be determined. No foul of play was suspected. I mean, obviously he had lung and heart issues, but only two clues emerged. Those two pages of cipher found on him, and these notes were just like a sequence of letters strung together that made no sense. It was like f R S E P R S E O N D E71 N like it just goes on and on and on. It's interesting on the second one. There's like one in kind of in in the second circled area, there's one block of dashed words and t r s e is repeated twice. And it's like cuz I'm no codereaker, but I feel like when you look at things like this, you try to find what would be the what would be a and try to find and but there's no you can't even totally tell where there's spaces between what could be words. I know. Well, and it's also it's in his handwriting. So, the family confirmed that they believe that that's his handwriting. And also, it was believed that he had been in the field for a little bit of time because his body had

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been decomposing. And I don't know how they figured this out, but supposedly they think that this code was written up to 3 days before his death. So, he like kept these papers on him. Interesting. Investigators were left with no real explanation. And also if Ricky was functionally illiterate, if he struggled to read and write, then like what are these? Is this like a secret shortorthhand that he would use to try to understand things and try to like keep his own notes? Were these directions? Was this record of like a meeting, a transaction, a plea for help? Some people were like, "This is part of the occult." Some people were like, "This is a spell, this is a curse." And for 12 years, the FBI had worked quietly on the case. And actually like I pulled these images from the FBI's website like they have it like can you crack this code on the FBI's website which is also like why were they so involved in this? I mean just out of intrigue I guess you'd be like I want passion project. So then in 2011 they went public and

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they released the images of the notes hoping crowd sourcing might help solve them. codereers of all types and regions and seasoned cryptographers and armchair puzzlers. Like everyone went to try to unlock. I'm getting really into ciphers recently and now I'm well cuz they are fascinating especially something like this where it's uncrackable, unsolvable. Just intrigue alone you're like although some could argue that I started ciphering before I even covered them on the podcast. Remember I sent you? Oh yeah, when you sent me a freaking postcard with what was the font type? Webdings. And I was like, I'm sorry. How am I supposed to even translate? I had to like type out every letter in Webdings in order to figure out what was what letter. And I think it said like hello Yeah, that's it. I'd do it again any day. So basically what I'm trying to say is all types of people who have any level of experience of codereing attempted to figure out what

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the cipher was cracked the case but no one has succeeded to date and the notes remain one of the FBI's top unsolved cipher cases. And this has led to a ton of intrigue around Ricky's death to a lot of people going and visiting this like simple marker of his grave for any clues. And naturally some theories came about. One was that and this is like such a rumor mill, right? Like this is the same thing with the like black angel where people are trying to figure out. It could be absolutely nothing. It could be nothing. Yeah. It could be like he was having a medical emergency and didn't have his wits about him and was just scribbling things nonsensically, right? Which is probably what happened, right? So, one of the theories was that he was meeting a mystery woman and that it's a love cipher. Another is that he got tangled in something dangerous and left a coded message anticipating foul play. So like trying to tell what he thinks would happen to him before his death. And then another theory is that and this reminds me of the Voyage manuscript is that he was writing down

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something he heard aliens say and this was somehow like chneled ET code. Well, I mean, I'm not going to lie, not to perpetuate and add to this conspiracy, but being found in a corn field does send alien alarm bells in my head cuz like crop circles and stuff and 30 miles from his home, right? And then it's like, did he try to write down what he was seeing? And I don't believe it, but this is just like my conspiracy hat real quick. Was he abducted and on a spacecraft and trying to write down things that he saw? Yeah. and then or even on like the outside, you know, like if he was in the field observing something because so many people have who've gotten close to these spaceships have talked about like different codes in or or just like symbols on the outside of spaceships. Yeah. So, it does make me curious and obviously if he was like super scared. It's almost like you know when a suspicious car comes up and you you try to write down the license plate. Yep. Maybe that was it. Just given the context of him being

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functionally illiterate and it sounds like they didn't find anything else at his home. So it makes me think that we're reading into something that isn't something. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, probably. And if he did have all these medical conditions, like let's say he was walking for 30 because he was found 30 miles from his house. Let's say he was walking that length of exertion or that amount of exertion that would probably be required lungs and heart. Yeah. He could have had some type of issue and died in the cornfield. Right. Which is really sad. But it's one of those things where it's like in the middle of the cornfield too. Like the chances of there being a witness too is like tough. You we're searching for answers and clearly there might not be any. There might not be any. Yeah. Yeah. Another theory was that perhaps this was the result of some disordered thinking. Some people have mentioned schizophrenia. I was just thinking, you know, like some sort of medical emergency. It could have been like a stroke or something, you know,

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right? There's just a lot of possibilities. But in a way, the grave has become a pilgrimage site for codereers and people who are just immensely curious. Mhm. There's even a community of online sleuths who occasionally visit and leave tokens like pencil a note with their best guess at the solution like the code break. And one urban legend says that one man left a mirror on the grave believing that maybe the cipher could be read in the reflection but that yielded nothing except perhaps maybe an interesting metaphor. Sometimes the answer we seek reflects more about us than the departed. Yeah. Like humans, we want to believe in things and we want to find answers and sometimes it's okay that

a killer's cursed tombstone

there are none. Yeah. Okay. We have one last grave and this is a grave that holds no riddle but it is a mystery waiting to be cracked. H this is Carl Puit's grave and it is about a curse that is already in motion like actively I guess so. And it's a very scary curse

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because there are deaths involved. Okay. So Carl Puit in life was a very jealous man. In death, he became something far worse. A name that locals feared to speak in a tombstone that is said to kill. So the story of Carl Puit's grave is an Appalachin ghost tale passed along over campfire stories and front porches. The tale of a man that was so vengeful in life that even in death, he continued to do harm. And he will strangle victims from beyond the grave. Carl. Carl, you murderous mother trucker. Keep your hands to yourself. Yes. So, true or not, the legend of Carl Puit is one of the most chilling cursed tombstone accounts that I've ever heard. And it begins in June 1938. And this is Carl being alive. He hasn't died yet, but he's certainly on a murderous path here. It is rural Pilaski County, Kentucky. Carl Puit was an ordinary man, and apparently he had an extraordinary temper. One evening, Carl

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came home to find his wife in bed with another man. And he was so enraged that he grabbed a chain, this like heavy logging chain, so super big and and you know, like just whacking someone with this chain would probably do some intense harm. But he wrapped it around his wife and strangled her to death with it. Oh my god. and realizing after like the rage settled in his body, realizing what he'd done, Carl then took his own life, shooting himself almost immediately. Jeez. So, it was this very gruesome murder suicide. Yeah. Understandably, Carl was not given a kind burial. His wife's family refused to have him interred near her, so he was buried in a separate, maybe somewhat neglected cemetery very far from town. One would think that that was the end of Carl's awful story, but according to the lore, it was just the beginning of his post-mortem wrath. Not long after Carl Puit was laid to rest, visitors who went to the cemetery would notice something really unsettling. The grass around his

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gravestone wasn't growing normally like the rest of the cemetery. It would begin to wither in in this like really weird, peculiar pattern. And when they started looking at the pattern more closely, it resembled the chain, the chain he used to strangle his wife. That's wild. And it also just makes me think that beyond bitterness and anger tainting the soul and your ability to reincarnate or whatever it might be postmortem that it physically alters the chemicals of your body. Mhm. Which does make sense if you think of like gut bacteria and good and bad bacteria and how it can contribute to brain issues and mental health and whatnot, but like Yeah. Does burying a body of someone who was so angry and hateful and spiteful create a toxic soil? Yeah. But also like the pattern of it being I know that in

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chain form like the looped chains but also this is making me think of like fungi and just how memory works and it's like is memory absorbed into the soil and fungi and just like the different bacteria in the soil absorbs that and like reflects it on top. I don't know. Am I talking out my butt? Probably. Maybe not though. Are there any soil experts? Tell us. Dirt dirt dirt people. Dirt people. Fun guys. The fun guys. We need them to tell us. Okay, so people are saying like this is clearly an omen that Carl's spirit is not at rest, right? And so soon a string of bizarre deaths began. Each of them supposedly connected to Carl's grave and this sort of like chain motif that keeps following Carl and his story. Interesting. So first there was a group of boys riding bicycles past the cemetery and one of the kids, James Collins, bragged that he wasn't afraid of this haunted grave. James, you should be. He should have been because James is no longer with us.

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No. So to prove it, he chucked some stones at Carl Puit's tombstone and even chipped it. So nothing happened immediately. All the boys were like, laughing it off. Biked away. Very normal. I feel like hooligan for little kids, right? Biker gang. The biker. The biker gang of the neighborhood. But mere minutes later, Jake's bike chain inexplicably snapped mid ride. The chain flew off. Somehow it wrapped around James' neck and he crashed. The chain strangled him to death on the spot and I was like this like such like right like this article like this it's got to be made up. So then I researched it and there were like are many apparently that feels so Final Destinationy. Like I can't even fathom how that accidentally happens. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, maybe maybe I just kept looking at the same story regurgitated online, but I was like, "This doesn't feel real." Yeah. And yet and yet it is. Here's some stuff suggesting that it is. Wow. See, this I

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totally understand why it would turn into this whole believed to be curse because that is so tied together. Whereas with the Black Angel, people are reaching people aren't dropping dead at her at that grave, you know? That's just like high school rumors. But this one seems real. So his terrified friends swore the broken chain tightened like a noose on its own around their friend's neck. That reminds me of the San Pedro Poltergeist when Jeff is up in the attic and being strangled. Oh my god. Yeah. Jeez. Okay. So, when people went to investigate Carl's grave after this happened, the chip that James had caused when he was throwing rocks at it was gone. The tombstone appeared whole again. It was like perfectly intact. like nothing had ever hit it. So people were like, "Is this kind of like him getting payback?" And like his tombstone is like, "Don't you dare touch his or he will murder you." Interesting. So not long after, James' grieving mother

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understandably believed her son's friend's story that Carl Puit's spirit was behind the accident. And in fury, she took an ax to Carl's gravestone, smashing it in vengeance. She left the site presumably feeling like she had got her like sadness and anger out a little bit and set some things right. But on her walk home, something horrible happened. No, she somehow either tripped or she was startled and she became entangled in the clothesline on her property. The cord wrapped around her neck and strangled her and she was found dangling in her yard lifeless. The axe that she used on Carl's grave was laying on the back porch. And when they went to Carl's grave, witnesses say that the stone showed absolutely no signs of being attacked. There were no marks indicating that an ax had been taken to the stone at all. Somehow it had repaired itself yet again. Okay. Is that like cuz even cuz rationally I'm like I just can't fathom how that happened.

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It's confusing. It's like what's lore and what's not in this story. Is this story dramatized to, you know, portray more of the curse or was this a griefstricken mother who did take her own life? Right. That's what I was thinking when it said the clothes line. Yeah. Yeah. Either way, it's tragic and horrible. It is. Yeah. What is is this grief and mourning or is there something strange that we can't quite understand going on? Okay. Okay, so now folks are terrified when passing the cemetery. But one farmer, perhaps emboldened by some little drinky drinks or some skepticism, he scoffed at the curse. He didn't believe it. He was like, "What the hell? This is, you know, kind of like what we were saying, like this feels, you know, yeah, too strange to be true." So while driving his horsedrawn wagon by the graveyard with his family, he boasted that he has no fear of ghosts. And to prove it, he fired his pistol at Puit's tombstone from the road and the shot chipped the stone of Carl Puit's grave.

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The noise spooked the horses and they bolted. The wagon careened off and the farmer was thrown from his seat. And if we can guess where this is going, the reins of the wagon and of the horse whipped around, wrapped themselves around the farmer's neck, and the panicked horses kept running, dragging the poor man behind them, the rains strangling him to death before the family could get the horses under control. When the family later approached the grave, lo and behold, the bullet chip was gone. Tragic, and I feel so much sympathy and sorrow for this family and what they endured. But like let's also acknowledge some just disrespect here. Yeah. Like even if you don't believe in ghosts, even if you don't believe in a curse, why disrespect why go out of your way to disrespect someone's burial site, right? Like no, you don't deserve to die. But also like why? Like what what are you getting out of that? Right. It's just not worth it. No. Okay. So by this point, Carl Puit's grave is definitely infamous and

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everyone's terrified of it and local authorities were finally pressured to act. So, two policemen were dispatched to check on the site and perhaps put the rumors to rest. And these officers joked about Puit's ghost as nonsense, and then they concluded their uneventful inspection, and they drove away. Something appeared in the rear view mirror as they drove. A bright ball of light or an orb that seemed to be chasing their car. So, the story goes, the tail, which again, this is hard cuz it's like this story of Carl Puit. It does like there are news articles, but it's mixed embedded. so much with like local lore and what people are just writing about it. So, it is hard to tell like exactly what happened and what is just legend. So, the police officers are hitting the gas and the orb continues to follow them. Wow. The police then veer off of the road and smash into a fence and apparently one of the officers is thrown free. He's injured but he's alive. But the driver that was left in

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the wreck, part of the car's chain linked steering wheel broke off and wrapped around his neck, nearly decapitating him. Oh my gosh. I have no idea if that's actually true. Like you couldn't find other articles about this? No. Okay. I hope it's not. They should for sure put some type of protection around this, right? Yeah. Like it should be Does it avoid anyone who wants to test it from doing anything? They should do something like that. Yeah. So finally the town's folk, they had enough. They essentially abandoned the cemetery containing Carl Puit's grave. Some even relocated their relatives remains to other cemeteries out of fear of just like going to the cemetery and encountering Carl or like doing something wrong and accidentally losing their lives because of it. But then there was one night where one person was like, "You know what? Why are we all living in fear? I'm going to end this freaking curse on behalf of everyone." And so this man was named Arthur Lewis. He believed that the only way to stop the killings was to destroy the headstone entirely, which I mean, one woman already tried. Have you not learned an axe? So, he snuck in after dark with a hammer and a chisel and

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started pounding away. Neighbors heard the clang of metal on stone echoing. And then they heard a scream. So, they rush over with their lanterns and they find Arthur dead by the cemetery gate, the chain that secured the gate wrapped around his neck. The tombstone of Carl unharmed. after Arthur's death in the 1940s, which again, like these stories are like basically hundred years old, so it's like right really hard to tell what's going on here. And it seems like way too many strangulations to not be lore and legend. Yeah. However, after that, people were like, "Okay, yeah, no, we like actually are not going near Carl's grave." The cemetery fell to ruin and eventually said that in 1958, the area was stripmined and the cursed gravestone of Carl Puit was finally destroyed once and for all. I don't know how it was destroyed, who destroyed it, and how they got their lives saved, but the curse seemed to die with the rubble of Carl's gravestone being removed. So, were like all of the graves in that

51:00

cemetery removed? You know what? I don't know. But there have been a lot of researchers who've tried to verify the story in newspapers and records, and for the most part, like it is pretty empty. they've come up empty-handed, just kind of like what I was like, there's a lot that's just like regurgitated and like, is this photoshopped, is this real, is this an actual newspaper article, or is this just the same thing like being regurgitated over and over again? There's also no death certificate for Carl Puit by suicide in the 1938 Palaski County, nor the supposed victims. So, it's very likely just like a tall tale. However, like the the biking one, it was confusing to me because I was seeing like newspaper article clippings, but again, like was that just someone on Photoshop making something that was just copied and pasted into different articles or did that kid die in that tragic horrible way and then so be the

conclusions

legend? Yeah. Mhm. So, there you have it. Four graves, three kind of wacky ones that I told you about in the

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beginning. Four wildly different legacies, each whispering something unforgettable from beyond the veil. A bronze journalist whose tomb turned into a fertility shrine. A winged angel blackened by grief and rumor. A man who may have died with a code that still defies the FBI. And a tombstone that may have strangled more than just the truth. Whether etched in metal, carved in stone, or scrolled in indecipherable ciphers, these graves prove that death doesn't always mean silence. Sometimes it means secrets, superstitions, and a whole lot of haunted happenings. Damn. Well, now I want your help, everyone who's listening, coming up with inspiration of cool ways that we can have unique graves. I know. Cuz there were so many. And like I literally had like a list of like 25 that I wanted to research and there were like pet cemeteries. There was like an elephant named Ruthie that was that was a hard one. I couldn't find like any photos and there wasn't much. Like there were like two articles on Ruthie. So I was like, "Is this real?" Which is Yeah, there were just so many things. But are there

53:00

any digital gravestones yet? Like Oh, that's interesting. Like if you can go to my grave and play the podcast. I have no idea. But this is reminding me of the one viral video that came out a few years ago where that one like Irish guy had his burial and he had a recording of himself that he had pre-recorded play as they were like burying his casket where he was like knocking and he was like, "Hey." Oh yes. I've Oh my gosh. Wait a second. I'm in here. I'm in here. Yeah, that's hilarious. There are a few that I saved for a future episode. Oh my god, there are just so many. The pet cemetery ones. I know that we did. There were a few that I was like, "Oh, this is so beautiful." And then I remembered we actually did cover a few of the like heroic dog ones already. So, that exists deep within our podcast. We won't repeat that one. Yeah. But although I might have repeated the the black angel. I don't remember that whole story. I don't. And you know, sometimes we repeat ourselves and hopefully and that's okay. I mean, you enjoy it still still fresh and fun for some of us, including me,

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who did the original research and forgot and no one else commented on the fact that we had already done it. So like clearly people who had listened didn't remember it. Yeah. Grant wasn't saying Bennington like to your point, it wasn't supposed to be like the Bennington triangle. It was just the disappearances of one mountain.

listener story

Now you get it twice. Yeah. I have a story with a ghost photo attached. Okay. And it takes place in a cemetery. It's from our listener, Christina. And Christina says, "Hey ladies, I hope you're both doing well. I've already sent an email about an encounter I had on my college campus, but I was listening to episode 27 about graveyards and wanted to send another email. I did attach a picture with a ghost." So during the summer of my senior year of high school, a few of my friends and I would go to local cemeteries pretty often to go read the names on tombstones to try to find the oldest grave. This random Friday night, me and about four or five of my friends went to a local cemetery and did just that. One of my

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friends decided she would walk around away from the rest of the group and take pictures on her phone with the flash on trying to find a ghost. We all rolled our eyes, none of us actually believing she would find a ghost on her iPhone camera. So, the rest of us kept walking around looking at the names while she did her thing. After about 5 minutes, she came running back to us, visibly shaken up. Oh my god, it only took her 5 minutes. She was pointing towards a specific area of the cemetery, asking if any of us saw someone standing there. There was no one else in the cemetery, so obviously we did not see anyone in the area she was pointing. So, then she hands me her phone to show me a picture she had taken. In the picture was a shape of a man who looked like he was standing in front of a grave. I got immediate chills when I saw this picture and kept looking around to see if there was anyone else around us. Who could this have been who was there when she took the picture? There was no one. And it was definitely not any of us in the picture. Throughout the years since this happened, I've shown this picture to so many people and none of them have been

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able to come up with another explanation other than it's a ghost. Even when I showed it to my dad, who is the biggest skeptic of them all, he just stood there silently, couldn't give me an explanation. Some have tried to say that it's just a tree or another tombstone. But if you zoom in, you can very clearly see the shape of a head, a torso with a little stomach that sticks out, and legs. I attached the photo to this email, the only one I have is with the yellow circle around the figure I'm talking about. When I first looked at this, I thought it was just a tombstone. Yeah. But when you zoom in, it is so clearly. It almost looks like a child. It does look like a child. You could see like cuz you know like the little belly. Yeah. And like up. Yeah. It looks like it's just looking off into the distance. Yeah. This looks like it's like a seven-year-old boy. Yeah. Because it's also so much thicker than the other tombstones. Like they are extremely thin, skinny stones that you'd find in like one of those really old cemeteries. Yeah. Oh my god. Christina says, "I don't get any bad vibes from the

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picture, and I don't think that this ghost followed any of us home or had bad intentions. After looking at the picture many times, it seems like he just wanted to visit a friend who might have been buried at that cemetery. I like to imagine that it was his wife who was buried there and he was visiting her or his mommy or his mommy or his friend. You never know. I would love to see all the explanations people have. If you don't think it was a ghost caught on camera, what else is it?" Thanks for listening to my story. Happy spooky season. I will see you on the other side. Best, Christina. I mean that. Yeah, I agree. I didn't get any weird vibes from looking at the photo, but it does look like a kid. It just looks like It looks like a child. Looks like a child. Also, 5 minutes in a graveyard and you already got a a photo of a spirit, right? The way that the spirit is standing and looking, it doesn't seem like it was consciously appearing to them. Like the camera just picked up a moment, right? cuz he Yeah, he didn't seem aware of them. Yeah, he's not interacting or looking at them. Unless actually I'm

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curious where Christina and the rest of her friends were in the cemetery. Like is the little boy looking at them? Yeah. And the friend is taking a picture like this way and then like if it were you and you're looking that way at the group. Oh, interesting. I don't know. That's so fun. Help us pick out what we're going to be buried, how we're going to be buried, or tell us how you would like your grave to look, and send us your ghost photos and evidence of spooky cemetery happenings. Send us everything to two girls one ghost podcast@gmail.com. And if you want episodes ad free and one week early, plus bonus episodes every month and campfire stories and book club and so much more, please join us on Patreon. You can follow us on social media. We're everywhere. We're everywhere. We are everywhere and nowhere in your homes haunting your dreams. I love earlier in the episode you said yeah like I was trying to say. Yeah. Yeah. Just Yeah. Yeah. I need this part written out too cuz my brain isn't functioning and I had 3 hours of sleep

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last night. So dependent on my research. Uh but not dependent on my research for this part. Thank you Jamie Ryan for editing and producing our podcast. We are eternally grateful for you. And that's what should be on our grave. Thank you to Jamie Ryan. Thank you, Jimmy Ryan, for making our lives immensely easier. Jeez Louise. And thank you to all of you. We love you so much and we will see you on the other side. Very spooky.