Hello, dearies, and welcome to the first installment in an eternal series where I post the little oddities my friend and I discover while tromping through graveyards. Today’s findings come from the beautiful and rustling, haunted and lumpy, Salt Lake City Cemetery.

“But wait!” you might say. “Isn’t it disrespectful to the dead, photographing their gravestones and injecting your own bit of humor and myth?”

Well . . . no. We don’t think so. We aren’t making fun of the dead but exploring the myriad ways the living choose to remember them. We have no ill will toward the dead themselves. If they do take umbrage with what we do, they’ll have plenty of opportunities to have their revenge, as we visit the cemetery often.

Also, and this is true, my friend and I make a point of cleaning the graves as we go. All headstones get bogged down with soggy leaves and curious weeds and the backsplash of moles. This is what makes the stone crack and crumble, the engraved name fade to a ghostly image so as you no longer know the name of the soul resting six feet below.

All cemeteries are in dire need of a good dusting off, and my friend and I are eager volunteers. You should pay a visit to your local cemetery and see if you can’t free some of the headstones there. You’ll find some interesting things, we promise.

Here are a few we found.