+
Pop Culture

Librarian is sharing her 'gravestone recipes' to help others find comfort with death

Rosie Grant has delighted folks with wholesome recipes for cookies, pies and more—all passed down from those who have passed on.

graveyard recipes
Photo used with permission from Rosie Grant

Apparently they're "to die for"

You really can combine any interests and make them into something truly unique. Such was the case with digital librarian Rosie Grant, who has somehow been able to blend cemeteries, social media and baking into a sweet way of sharing memories of those who have passed on.

Grant’s @ghostlyarchive TikTok is filled with video tours through gravesites, uncovering lesser known cemetery facts and stories from history. It was while she was traveling through the Greenwood cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, that she stumbled upon the grave of Naomi Odessa Miller-Dawson—along with a recipe for something called “spritz cookies” printed on her gravestone.

Grant had no idea what a spritz cookie was, other than it required seven basic ingredients. But she decided to follow the recipe as best she could to find out.


With the guidance of her followers, Grant was able to successfully bake what she describes as “if a sugar cookie and a shortbread cookie had a baby,” delightfully buttery treats that were “to die for.”

Grant soon discovered more gravestone recipes using various news reports, tweets and a graveyard archive site called Find a Grave. Grant told Today that she's been able to recreate “12 or 13” recipes, including fudge found on a grave in Utah, blueberry pie in Washington and snickerdoodles from California.

It should be noted that savory dishes are certainly not excluded from Grant’s cemetery baking journey. She has also made delicious cheese dip and apparently the “best meatloaf.”

Occasionally Grant is able to bring back treats to the graves that provided the recipe, as she was able to with Miller-Dawson’s spritz cookies.

As a library science student at the University of Maryland in 2021, Grant was given the assignment to start a TikTok account from scratch to better understand how networks work. Coincidentally, Grant was also interning at the historical archives of the nearby Congressional Cemetery.

A professor wisely suggested that Grant combine the two. And thus, the @ghostlyarchive TikTok Channel was born. Grant quickly found that others shared her passion—within a year, Ghostly Archive racked up more than 100,000 followers and millions of collective views. In an interview with BuzzFeed, Grant credited a lot of the channel’s popularity to the “death positive community” of #GraveTok, a TikTok subculture that celebrates the stories of those who have died.

@manicpixiemom Lottie ❤️ #gravetok#gravestonecleaning#history♬ original sound - manicpixiemom 🧽 🪦

"[It's] the idea that society is better if we understand our own mortality and change our mindsets so that [death is] like a celebration of our lives, rather than something to be feared or ignored,” she told BuzzFeed.

Folks have viewed the gravestone recipes in particular as an endearing way of connecting those who have passed to those in the land of the living. “When we’re in mourning, food is very comforting to us,” Grant told Today. “These recipes feel like a more tactile, all-senses-included way to remember someone rather than only using your memory. When you’re eating grandma’s special cake or cookie or whatever it is, you feel a little bit more connected to her.”

“People will comment what they would want to put on their gravestone if they had to pick a recipe, or some people say things like, ‘Oh, snickerdoodles, my mom made it this way.’ And so there’s just this whole nostalgic connection, which has been really cool,” she added.

Grant, who admits to having her own fears about mortality, has found that gravestone recipes can help make potentially hard conversations a little more lighthearted. “My family and I talk about it more regularly. What will our final resting place be? How do I want to be celebrated in life? How do I want to be celebrated in death? And it's made me personally feel a lot more comfortable with this, like the absurd thing that we'll all die someday,” she told NPR.

Death is not always an easy thing to embrace—whether it’s the grief of losing a loved one or coming to terms with our own impermanence. But as Grant’s recipes show, there are so many ways in which memories really do live on, especially through the things that made our time on Earth a touch sweeter.

By the way, if you've seen a gravestone recipe, you can reach out to Grant via Instagram or TikTok.

All photos courtesy of The Coca-Cola Company

Behind the Scenes Making Recycled Records with Mark Ronson

True

You’re walking down the sidewalk, earbuds in, listening to your favorite hip-hop beats. As your head bobs to the sounds, the sun warms your back. It’s a perfect day.

When the chorus hits, the empty Sprite bottle in your hand becomes a drumstick, passing traffic becomes a sea of concertgoers, and the concrete beneath your feet is suddenly a stage. Spinning on your heels, you close out the song with your face to the sky and hands in the air.

Keep ReadingShow less
@penslucero/TikTok

Pency Lucero taking in the Northern Lights

Seeing the northern lights is a common bucket list adventure for many people. After all, it ticks a lot of boxes—being a dazzling light show, rich historical experience and scientific phenomenon all rolled into one. Plus there’s the uncertainty of it all, never quite knowing if you’ll witness a vivid streak of otherworldly colors dance across the sky…or simply see an oddly colored cloud. It’s nature’s slot machine, if you will.

Traveler and content creator Pency Lucero was willing to take that gamble. After thorough research, she stumbled upon an Airbnb in Rörbäck, Sweden with an actual picture of the northern lights shining above the cabin in the listing. With that kind of photo evidence, she felt good about her odds.

However, as soon as she landed, snow began falling so hard that the entire sky was “barely visible,” she told Upworthy. Martin, the Airbnb host, was nonetheless determined to do everything he could to ensure his guests got to see the spectacle, even offering to wake Lucero up in the middle of the night if he saw anything.

Then one night, the knock came.

Keep ReadingShow less
Democracy

Reporter reveals she's a school shooting survivor on air and offers advice to Covenant parents

Even while struggling through her own grief, she was able to provide guidance to parents.

Photo by Heather Mount on Unsplash

Tennessee reporter and school shooting survivor gives advice to parents.

On March 27, the Covenant School, a private elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, experienced a school shooting where three 9-year-old children and three staff members lost their lives. The news of the event took over the airwaves as more details were released.

But for one reporter covering the shooting live, the event hit close to home in more than one way. Joylyn Bukovac, a local reporter for WSMV 4, was reporting live from the scene at the Covenant School when she revealed that she was a survivor of a school shooting herself. Bukovac explained that when she was in the eighth grade, someone opened fire at her school.

"About 380 school shootings have happened since Columbine, my middle school being one of them, this school being one of them," she said. "Some people have been reaching out to me saying, 'Enough's enough. When is all of this gun violence going to change?'"

Keep ReadingShow less

Delivering packages AND safety.

Amazon delivery drivers don’t have the easiest job in the world. Sitting through traffic, working in extreme temperatures, hauling boxes … not exactly a fun time. So when a driver goes out of their way to be extra considerate—people notice.

One delivery driver has gone viral for the way she delivered a little bit of safety education, along with some lighthearted advice. The TikTok video of the encounter, which now has more than 4 million views, was shared by Jessica Huseman, who had only recently moved into her new house.

Keep ReadingShow less
Education

Germany's most famous castle isn't a real castle. It's an elaborate 'work of fan fiction.'

Though it looks medieval, it was built in the 19th century by an eccentric "fairy tale king" who spent much of his life constructing his own elaborate fantasy world.

Neuschwanstein Castle sits atop a rock ledge in the Bavarian Alps.

Even if you haven't heard of Neuschwanstein Castle, there's a good chance you've at least seen pictures of it. Set atop a tree-covered rock ledge in the Bavarian Alps, the picturesque castle looks like it was conjured straight out of a fairy tale. In fact, it served as inspiration for Disney Imagineers as they designed "Sleeping Beauty's Castle" in Disneyland, and it's regularly named the top castle to visit in Germany.

There are estimated to be around 25,000 castles in Germany, but Neuschwanstein is unique among them. Most notably, it's not a real castle and never was. While it bears the look and feel of a well-preserved medieval castle, it was actually built in the 19th century, and rather than serving as a fortress, it served as the fantasy castle of an eccentric king obsessed with Richard Wagner's operas and medieval mythology.

Ludwig II came to the Bavarian throne in 1864 at age 18 with no experience in government or politics. Two years later, Prussia conquered Austria and Bavaria, and Ludwig's powerful status as king was greatly diminished. Not that he was particularly interested in governance anyway; he was more drawn to the romantic idea of having his own kingdom.

Keep ReadingShow less
Image by sasint/Canva

Surgeons prepared to separate 3-year-old conjoined twins in Brazil using virtual reality.

The things human beings have figured out how to do boggles the mind sometimes, especially in the realm of medicine.

It wasn't terribly long ago that people with a severe injury had to liquor up, bite a stick, have a body part sewn up or sawed off and hope for the best. (Sorry for the visual, but it's true.) The discoveries of antibiotics and anesthesia alone have completely revolutionized human existence, but we've gone well beyond that with what our best surgeons can accomplish.

Surgeries can range from fairly simple to incredibly complex, but few surgeries are more complicated than separating conjoined twins with combined major organs. That's why the recent surgical separation of conjoined twin boys with fused brains in Brazil is so incredible.

Keep ReadingShow less
Pop Culture

People share the 18 things that are a 'subtle sign' someone is really smart

"They effortlessly communicate complex concepts in a simple way."

Albert Einstein

One of the strangest things about being human is that people of lesser intelligence tend to overestimate how smart they are and people who are highly intelligent tend to underestimate how smart they are.

This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect and it’s proven every time you log onto Facebook and see someone from high school who thinks they know more about vaccines than a doctor.

The interesting thing is that even though people are poor judges of their own smarts, we’ve evolved to be pretty good at judging the intelligence of others.

Keep ReadingShow less