Most comforting skull. Very good. Yes. Inviting.
It’s also excellent that his tomb appears to be desecrated.
I’m sure he’s pleased.
It’s so good that there’s a door-knocker. Excellent.
Always polite to let inhabitants know when you are planning on visiting.
They can hear you.
Yes, it looks friendly and pleasant here, definitely very comforting.
Just the place for a trapdoor.
Nothing is slowly but inexorably scraping away at the wood every night. No.
This is all fine. Up to code.
The doors are are always like this.
We did this on purpose, definitely. Nothing escaped.
This is like this for a reason. For extra comfort.
These bricks are here for your comfort.
Notice how it’s bricked almost all the way up
but not all the way up?
There’s still a peephole.
That’s for comfort.
Another peephole. Yes. Good.
Very safe. You feel safer now.
What? No, there’s not a face there sometimes.
Ah, here you can see our wonderful painting of —
hmm. The frame is empty. That’s — no. That’s good.
It’s good that It’s not contained anymore.
Such a helpful skull. He’s there to comfort you.
If there were anything dangerous inside his house —
but there’s definitely not. Nothing seeping or decaying.
There’s just helping and comfort.
I don’t know why you’re upset about this. It’s not like that hole is perfectly arm-sized.
Nothing can reach out and grab you.
We wanted it just like this.
It’s more comforting with the holes.
Ah, here you can see our abyss.
The abyss is always comforting.
All photos are from the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires and taken by Jacqueline Steiger except for the final photo, which is by Elizabeth Simonian.
Photo 1 has not just been desecrated, it’s now a skull themed junkyard.
Although, I have family members who might appreciate the extra storage space a family crypt would bring.
My post-life goals include bringing back skulls (preferably winged) and creepy poems on my memorial architecture. This has given me some more good ideas for maximum memento mori freak outs. Thanks.
I’d like to bring back the explanation on the headstone about the manner of death. In old timey cemeteries in mining towns, they’re all like “Died from Exposure” or “Hit by a Rock” something equally macabre.
This is amazing.
I love cemetaries. I went into raptures when I visited Old Burying Point in Salem, Mass. But this IS creepy. Reminds me of this old building near my first apartment. There was a little courtyard, and the door was chained shut, but some of the windows were broken… you always had the impression someone might have just been looking through the glass in the door, or standing in one of the windows, just seconds before.
(All my photos of that here… I haven’t looked at them in so long, that was fun.)
My husband and I were just in Salem last week (afternoon trip during a vacation in Boston). We didn’t entirely realize what Salem would be like on a Saturday in October (i.e. completely insane–half the town was turned into an extremely tacky street fair).
Mostly it was annoying but harmless, but at one point we stopped in a cemetery–I’m pretty sure it was Old Burying Point, but it might have been a different, equally old one. And it was just as raucous as the rest of the town–people strolling around, ignoring the paths, sitting on crypts, etc. And better yet, just beyond the boundary of the cemetery were carnival rides. We’re not superstitious people, but it was genuinely upsetting to see people disrespecting a cemetery like that. We got the hell out as quickly as we could.
I know that in this economy people have to make a living however they can, but the Salem Witch Kitsch kind of makes me :/
As Terry Pratchett says, the Witch Trials in our world were not fun.
To be fair, I think that Witch Kitsch predates this economy. But still, yes, it’s very :/
That skullface in the first photo is amazing. “Even in death, I’m still a boss,” it says. In a post otherwise filled with horror, this one is somehow genuinely comforting.
Helpful Skull, if looked at indirectly out of the corner of your eye, looks very much like Pennywise from the movie adaptation of Steven King’s It and I am NOT okay with it.
You know when a post is so great you have nothing to add, but you have to comment anyway so that the author knows you loved the post so much? Yeah, that.
PRECISELY
Yes, exactly this. My comment would just be quoting one of the many delightful lines of the piece. I can add nothing to the sense of comfort it brought me.
ME TOO
That’s pretty much always me on the Toast. “I HAVE NOTHING TO ADD EXCEPT I LOVE THIS”
And then someone makes a comment like this that you agree with so much that even replying to it seems like adding less of nothing, so you just frantically upvote it in the hopes that you click that little thumb so hard that they will feel a strange vibration in the force.
Yes, exactly.
I’m scared so easily. I have goosebumps and am really glad it is not late at night all alone in my apartment.
Very well done.
I’m certainly comforted.
*turns on every light in the house*
Oh wow, I have been to this place! It is an excellent cemetery.
My favourite cemetery though is the one in Brockwood in Surrey. A.K.A the ‘London Necropolis’. No, really:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Necropolis_r…
My grandmother, who I am named after, is there. I refused to go and visit her grave because we have the exact same name and I really didn’t want to see it on a gravestone.
I live next to a cemetery and right up next to the fence where you can’t help but see it is a stone with my mom’s name. If she’s visiting we have to take the long way around to get anywhere because she refuses to go by it.
It’s good that It’s not contained anymore.
Oh god I didn’t notice that the I was capitalized until I posted this.
I got a genuine shiver when I noticed the capital I. Possibly the creepiest most comforting part of the entire post.
Oh… that I is genuinely capitalized. I thought it was just the new font. That’s… that’s special. How wonderful for It.
Right at the first picture I thought “This has GOT to be at Recoleta; surely there aren’t a lot of cemetaries like this.” Sure enough. That place is fascinating. So many elaborate tiny palaces for dead people, a whole city of them, and then the ones that are falling apart and have big holes and zombie escape routes and you can totally see into the rotting caskets. And then you see some cubby holes where the doors have fallen off and there are tiny baby coffins and that’s just sad.
Cemetery. I used to be so good at spelling.
DAMMIT JACQUELINE.
there’s a cemetery i drive by on the way home from work that has a large monument with just the last name of DEADY on it
i prefer my cemeteries to have amusing names rather than haunted decay
I used to live across from a cemetery with a sign over the gate saying, “The Dead Shall Rise.”
No, thank you.
I can’t get over this.
If you think that was comforting, it’s because you haven’t met Chacarita Cemetery yet (same city)
This seems like as good a time as any to share a photo of a child’s grave I happened across this summer. The single – and very fresh – red rose, and the inscription reading, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so,” were supremely comforting.
Cripes. Please excuse my terrible quality cell phone photography.
I just love this so much. It is so, so comforting. Yes.
One I went to the Père Lachaise cemetery for a walk, and a black cat sprung out of an old, broken tomb. I was very comforted.
My that does sound comforting!
One I went to the Père Lachaise cemetery for a walk, and a black cat sprung out of an old, broken tomb. I was very comforted.
There's a cemetery next to my workplace so I'll walk there at lunchtime (b/c otherwise, we're in the middle of nowhere and if you want to go anywhere, you have to drive at least 10 minutes to hit the mall). It's not as …creepy (yes, let's go with that) as this one but I get insanely curious about the graves and guessing things about them. Like who's buried next to you, which spouse outlived the other, this guy died at the age of 24 in 1948 so do you think he succumbed to PTSD from the war, etc? Then there are the graves of people my age, who died when I was like, 20, and I get even more sad
i think you meant comforting, not creepy 😉
Photo 1 has not just been desecrated, it’s now a skull themed junkyard……
If I am going to design my on tomb, I would want them to be like the third photo. Doors. That literally means i am not open for anything anymore. I find these very artistic!
I have been at Recoleta Cemetery and can confirm that it is very comforting. So comforting indeed.
I have been at Recoleta Cemetery and can confirm that it is very comforting. So comforting indeed.