The thirty-first of October is just a few days away. At this time of year, a lot of people’s thoughts turn to scary things and spooky places. Graveyards, in particular, seem to get a lot of attention.
So I thought I would post a humorous piece today that I recently came across. It is a collection of funny epitaphs from real tombstones found throughout the world.
On the grave of Ezekiel Aikle in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:
Here lies Ezekiel Aikle
Age 102
The Good Die Young.
In a Thurmont, Maryland cemetery:
Here lies an Atheist.
All dressed up
And no place to go.
In a London, England cemetery:
Here lies Ann Mann,
Who lived an old maid
But died an old Mann.
Dec. 8, 1767
In a Ribbesford, England cemetery:
The children of Israel wanted bread
And the Lord sent them manna,
Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.
Playing with names in a Ruidoso, New Mexico cemetery:
Here lies Johnny Yeast.
Pardon me for not rising.
Memory of an accident in a Uniontown, Pennsylvania cemetery:
Here lies the body
of Jonathan Blake.
Stepped on the gas
Instead of the brake.
In a Silver City, Nevada cemetery:
Here lays Butch,
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger,
But slow on the draw.
A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery:
Sacred to the memory of
my husband John Barnes
who died January 3, 1803.
His comely young widow, aged 23,
has many qualifications of a good wife,
and yearns to be comforted.
A lawyer's epitaph in England:
Sir John Strange
Here lies an honest lawyer,
And that is Strange.
Someone determined to be anonymous in Stowe, Vermont:
I was somebody.
Who, is no business
Of yours.
Lester Moore was a Wells, Fargo Co. station agent for Naco, Arizona in the cowboy days of the 1880's. He's buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona:
Here lies Lester Moore
Four slugs from a .44
No Les No More.
In a Georgia cemetery:
"I told you I was sick!"
John Penny's epitaph in the Wimborne, England cemetery:
Reader if cash thou art
In want of any
Dig 4 feet deep
And thou wilt find a Penny.
On Margaret Daniels grave at Hollywood Cemetery Richmond, Virginia:
She always said her feet were killing her
but nobody believed her.
In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:
On the 22nd of June
- Jonathan Fiddle -
Went out of tune.
Anna Hopewell's grave in Enosburg Falls, Vermont has an epitaph that sounds like something from a Three Stooges movie:
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.
More fun with names with Owen Moore in Battersea, London,
England:
Owen Moore.
Gone away
Owin' more
Than he could pay.
Someone in Winslow, Maine didn't like Mr. Wood:
In Memory of Beza Wood
Departed this life Nov. 2, 1837 - Age 45 yrs.
Here lies one Wood
Enclosed in wood
One Wood
Within another.
The outer wood
Is very good:
We cannot praise
The other.
On a grave from the 1880's in Nantucket, Massachusetts:
Under the sod and under the trees
Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
He is not here, there's only the pod:
Pease shelled out and went to God.
The grave of Ellen Shannon in Girard, Pennsylvania is almost a consumer tip:
Who was fatally burned March 21, 1870
by the explosion of a lamp
filled with "R.E. Danforth's
Non-Explosive Burning Fluid"
Oops! Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:
Born 1903--Died 1942
Looked up the elevator shaft
to see if the car
was on the way down.
It was.
Many people do fear cemeteries; mostly because they fear death. And, of course, it goes without saying that death itself is no funny thing. Just ask anyone who is facing it; or anyone who has recently lost a loved one.
But praise God, we need not fear death. While physical death is inevitable and awaits each of us, spiritual death is another matter altogether.
In the Old Testament (Job 14:14), miserable Job asks the ultimate question: "If a man dies, will he live again?"
Later on, in the New Testament (John 3:16), the Apostle John gives the definitive answer to that question: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." This is why Jesus Himself said (in John 10:10): "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."
If you fear death today, why not read a little further on what the Bible has to say on the subject? I think you will find it very helpful. And then you too can focus less on dying and more on living. As a result, while you might not laugh at death, you might just have a joyous smile on your face whenever it does cross your mind!
SOURCE:
http://www.et.byu.edu/~tom/jokes/Funny_Epitaphs.html.
So I thought I would post a humorous piece today that I recently came across. It is a collection of funny epitaphs from real tombstones found throughout the world.
On the grave of Ezekiel Aikle in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:
Here lies Ezekiel Aikle
Age 102
The Good Die Young.
In a Thurmont, Maryland cemetery:
Here lies an Atheist.
All dressed up
And no place to go.
In a London, England cemetery:
Here lies Ann Mann,
Who lived an old maid
But died an old Mann.
Dec. 8, 1767
In a Ribbesford, England cemetery:
The children of Israel wanted bread
And the Lord sent them manna,
Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.
Playing with names in a Ruidoso, New Mexico cemetery:
Here lies Johnny Yeast.
Pardon me for not rising.
Memory of an accident in a Uniontown, Pennsylvania cemetery:
Here lies the body
of Jonathan Blake.
Stepped on the gas
Instead of the brake.
In a Silver City, Nevada cemetery:
Here lays Butch,
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger,
But slow on the draw.
A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery:
Sacred to the memory of
my husband John Barnes
who died January 3, 1803.
His comely young widow, aged 23,
has many qualifications of a good wife,
and yearns to be comforted.
A lawyer's epitaph in England:
Sir John Strange
Here lies an honest lawyer,
And that is Strange.
Someone determined to be anonymous in Stowe, Vermont:
I was somebody.
Who, is no business
Of yours.
Lester Moore was a Wells, Fargo Co. station agent for Naco, Arizona in the cowboy days of the 1880's. He's buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona:
Here lies Lester Moore
Four slugs from a .44
No Les No More.
In a Georgia cemetery:
"I told you I was sick!"
John Penny's epitaph in the Wimborne, England cemetery:
Reader if cash thou art
In want of any
Dig 4 feet deep
And thou wilt find a Penny.
On Margaret Daniels grave at Hollywood Cemetery Richmond, Virginia:
She always said her feet were killing her
but nobody believed her.
In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:
On the 22nd of June
- Jonathan Fiddle -
Went out of tune.
Anna Hopewell's grave in Enosburg Falls, Vermont has an epitaph that sounds like something from a Three Stooges movie:
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.
More fun with names with Owen Moore in Battersea, London,
England:
Owen Moore.
Gone away
Owin' more
Than he could pay.
Someone in Winslow, Maine didn't like Mr. Wood:
In Memory of Beza Wood
Departed this life Nov. 2, 1837 - Age 45 yrs.
Here lies one Wood
Enclosed in wood
One Wood
Within another.
The outer wood
Is very good:
We cannot praise
The other.
On a grave from the 1880's in Nantucket, Massachusetts:
Under the sod and under the trees
Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
He is not here, there's only the pod:
Pease shelled out and went to God.
The grave of Ellen Shannon in Girard, Pennsylvania is almost a consumer tip:
Who was fatally burned March 21, 1870
by the explosion of a lamp
filled with "R.E. Danforth's
Non-Explosive Burning Fluid"
Oops! Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:
Born 1903--Died 1942
Looked up the elevator shaft
to see if the car
was on the way down.
It was.
Many people do fear cemeteries; mostly because they fear death. And, of course, it goes without saying that death itself is no funny thing. Just ask anyone who is facing it; or anyone who has recently lost a loved one.
But praise God, we need not fear death. While physical death is inevitable and awaits each of us, spiritual death is another matter altogether.
In the Old Testament (Job 14:14), miserable Job asks the ultimate question: "If a man dies, will he live again?"
Later on, in the New Testament (John 3:16), the Apostle John gives the definitive answer to that question: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." This is why Jesus Himself said (in John 10:10): "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."
If you fear death today, why not read a little further on what the Bible has to say on the subject? I think you will find it very helpful. And then you too can focus less on dying and more on living. As a result, while you might not laugh at death, you might just have a joyous smile on your face whenever it does cross your mind!
SOURCE:
http://www.et.byu.edu/~tom/jokes/Funny_Epitaphs.html.