Tomb of the Unknown Body

Summerville, Georgia

One of the strangest sights at folk artist Howard Finster's Paradise Garden is the Tomb of the Unknown Body, a concrete sarcophagus built by Howard for the corpse of a teenaged girl. The body was unearthed by a local doctor who was digging a foundation for his house -- he guessed that the teenager was 200 years old and might have been a slave -- and then given to Howard by the town undertaker. Jordan Poole, who helped restore Paradise Garden after Howard's death in 2001, told us that, "It just made sense that Howard would take it and give it a dignified burial."

Well, kind of dignified. Initially Howard built the sarcophagus with a glass window so that Garden visitors could see the girl's teeth, but when the glass cracked, Howard sealed it over.