Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Time Expired
• With Friends Like These
• The Tombstone Generator
• I Told You I Was Sick
• Tombstone ATM
• The Grave of Santa Claus
• Lester Moore
• Anna Died of a Banana
• A B C D E F G!
• He Done His Damndest
• Miscellaneous Epitaphs

Introduction

Tombstones are a surprisingly popular site for humor. In past centuries stone cutters and jocular relatives used tombstones as a place to leave final humorous remarks about departed ones. But some of the classic tales of tombstone humor turn out to be more fanciful than fact, and with the advent of photoshop it’s made it easy for any prankster to dream up epitaphs that should have been.

Below we separate some of the real tombstone humor from the fake.

Time Expired

In 2006 an email began circulating showing the picture (to the right) with the accompanying text:

“I got this from a woman online. A friend of hers died, who had a great sense of humor and always used to say that when she died she wanted a parking meter on her grave that says “Expired”. So her nephew got her one on ebay! She said that her grave is right by the road so everyone can see it and many people have stopped to get a chuckle.”

This grave marker really can be found in Highland Cemetery, Okfuskee County, Oklahoma. It marks the grave of Barbara Manire, who died on April 29, 2005.

With Friends Like These

An email that began circulating around 2002 showed a picture of a tombstone bearing an inscription that, at first, appeared to be standard sentimental verse, but on closer inspection revealed an insulting message. The inscription read:

JOHN,

FREE YOUR BODY AND SOUL
UNFOLD YOUR POWERFUL WINGS
CLIMB UP THE HIGHEST MOUNTAINS
KICK YOUR FEET UP IN THE AIR
YOU MAY NOW LIVE FOREVER
OR RETURN TO THIS EARTH
UNLESS YOU FEEL GOOD WHERE YOU ARE!

MISSED BY YOUR FRIENDS

This tombstone really does exist. It is located in Montreal’s Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery. (The email mistakenly placed it in the nearby Mount Royal Cemetery.) It marks the grave of John Laird McCaffrey, who died on August 14, 1995, aged 54.

To find the insulting message, you need to look at the first letter of each line.
Reading downwards, they spell F - U - C - K - Y - O - U.

Kristian Gravenor, writing in the Montreal Mirror, provided some of the backstory to this tombstone:

The cryptic message occurred to the monument maker after he finished sandblasting it into stone. “Afterwards, as I’m done, I’m looking at it and I’m like, ‘Wow.’ I noticed it just like that,” says John, whose full name won’t be published here for professional reasons. “This guy’s ex-wife and mistress came in together and ordered the stone. They said the message represented him. It was a thing between the three of them.”

The Tombstone Generator

A website called the Tombstone Generator allows people to create a picture of a tombstone bearing a “custom tombstone message.” Simply enter your message into the form and click submit. This site has been the source of several satirical tombstone photos that have made their way around the internet.

For instance, after lawyer Johnnie Cochran (who famously defended O.J. Simpson) died on March 29, 2005, a prankster created an image that bore the epitaph:

JOHNNY COCHRAN
O.J. DID IT

Even if you didn’t know that it came from the tombstone generator, you might have known it was fake because the prankster misspelled Cochran’s first name.

Likewise, after former Enron CEO Ken Lay died on July 5, 2006, someone created a tombstone with the epitaph:

KENNETH LAY
(1964-2006)
SON OF A PREACHER
HE WAS A BAD LAY

The prankster got the date of Lay’s birth wrong. Ken Lay was born in 1942, not 1964.

I Told You I Was Sick

A popular humorous epitaph is the phrase, “I told you I was sick.” It can be found on a number of grave markers:

However, its most famous use is on the tombstone of the comedian Spike Milligan who died in February 2002, aged 83. He is buried at St. Thomas’s Church in Winchelsea, East Sussex. As a tribute to his Irish heritage, the phrase is written in gaelic on his tombstone: “Duirt me leat go raibh me breoite” [Source: BBC News]

Tombstone ATM

The following story was carried by Wireless Flash News in August, 2002:

LONG ISLAND, N.Y. (Wireless Flash)—A deceased cattle rancher in Bozeman, Montana, took care of his heirs by installing an automatic teller machine in his tombstone.

Cattle rancher Grover Chestnut died earlier this year at the age of 79. However, before he cashed in, he installed an ATM at his tombstone and gave ten heirs debit cards, and told them were allowed to withdraw $300 per week from the grave.

Chestnut apparently figured the tombstone ATM was the best way to make sure his grave had regular visitors.

It seems to be working. Joel Jenkins, who helped create the “cashing-out” machines, says one of Chestnut’s granddaughters recently gave up a promising acting career in New York in order to cash in on Grandpa’s money-making tombstone.

Although Chestnut’s grave is currently the only one with an ATM, Jenkins thinks others will be trying it soon.

The article was a hoax. There is no record of a “Grover Chestnut” being buried in Bozeman, Montana.

In 2005 a similar story circulated alleging that a Jewish businessman, Morris Gorski, had installed an ATM at his gravesite:

Following the death of Morris Gorski earlier this year, he put in his will a clause that his heirs would only be entitled to get their share of his money by visiting his grave in River Path Road on a weekly basis.

Mr Gorski was a popular businessman who owned a number of businesses including property company Gorski Holdings plc, the UK’s largest builder of three bedroom flats and apartments.

Working with ATM North Europe Services, the cash machine will allow his heirs to collect up to £750 a time when they turn up. A special debit card has been issued to 25 of Mr Gorski’s heirs which they can use at the graveside as well as being able to use elsewhere.

“When Uncle Morris said he was going to do this, we thought he was joking,” said niece Jane Gould. “But when we were read the will, we soon realised he wasn’t. I would visit his grave anyway, but I guess Uncle Morris wanted to make sure that other family members got a worthwhile incentive to visit him.”

Again, the story was a joke. It was originally posted at a satirical site, The Board of Guardians of British Jews.

The Grave of Santa Claus

Since at least 2002 an image has circulated showing a child crying in front of the grave of Santa Claus.

The image is a fake. There is no such “grave of Santa Claus.” The image of the child was cut-and-pasted from a stock photo service and has, in fact, appeared in various advertisements.

Lester Moore

In Boot Hill cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona there stands a wooden grave marker that bears the inscription:

HERE LIES LESTER MOORE
FOUR SLUGS FROM A .44
NO LES
NO MORE

No one doubts this marker really can be found in Boot Hill cemetery. What people doubt is whether Lester Moore was a real person. Information supplied by the cemetery identifies Moore as a Wells Fargo agent who was shot during a dispute with a man over a package. However, historians have been unable to locate any record of such a man.

In Wild and Wooly: An Encyclopedia of the Old West, Denis McLoughlin writes: “The aroma of the prankster emanates from this plot of ground, no date of death accompanies the verse, and had the latter originated during Tombstone’s lead-swapping period, ‘four balls from a .44’ would have been apt for the time.”

Anna Died of a Banana

The following epitaph has been included in collections of humorous epitaphs for many years:

Here lies the body of our Anna
Done to death by a banana
It wasn’t the fruit that laid her low
But the skin of the thing that made her go.

Anna’s grave has been variously identified as being either in Enosburg Falls, Vermont, or East Texas, but a search for the stone has turned up nothing. It is probably non-existent.

A B C D E F G!

The following description of a humorous epitaph appeared in Stone, an Illustrated Magazine, in 1892:

A Mr. Anderson, Provost of Dundee, having shuffled off this mortal coil, it was resolved that an epitaph should be composed by his four surviving colleagues. They decided upon a rhymed stanza of four lines, one to be contributed by each. They put their heads together and with great labor produced the following:

Here lies John Anderson, Provost of Dundee,
Here lies him, here lies He.
Hallelujah, Hallelujee!
A - B - C - D - E - F - G!

This remarkable joint composition was engraved upon the tombstone of the defunct provost, and the composers received a vote of thanks from their delighted fellow townsmen.

Similar accounts subsequently appeared in other publications. However, it remains unconfirmed whether a tombstone with such an epitaph really exists anywhere.

He Done His Damndest

President Harry S. Truman was fond of telling the following anecdote:

“I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: ‘Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest.’ I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have. When he gives everything that is in him to do the job he has before him. That is all you can ask of him and that is what I have tried to do.”

No record of such a tombstone has yet been found.

Miscellaneous Epitaphs

The following epitaphs appear often in collections of tombstone humor. However, it has not been confirmed whether any of them actually ever appeared on a grave marker.

“Tears cannot restore her. Therefore do I weep.”
-Machias Cemetery, Maine.

“While on earth my knee was lame, I had to nurse and heed it. But now I’ve gone to a better place, where I don’t even need it.”
-Ithaca, New York. Pleasant Grove Cemetery.

“Sacred in the memory of Jared Bates, who died Aug. 6, 1800; His widow, aged 24, lives at 7 Elm St. and possesses every qualification for a good wife.”
-Lincoln, Maine.

“It was a cough that carried him off; it was a coffin they carried him off in.”
-Greenwich, Massachusetts.

“Stranger, tread this ground with gravity. Dentist Brown is filling his last cavity.”
-Edinburgh, Scotland.

“Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake. Stepped on the gas, instead of the brake.”
-Uniontown, Pennsylvania.

“At rest beneath this slab of stone Lies stingy James A. Wyett. He died one morning just at ten And saved a dinner by it.”
-Falkirk, England.

Categories

• Death