Key West, Florida: Grave of the Bound Woman
No one knows why Archibald John Sheldon Yates, who died in 1966, has a small statue of a nude, bound woman on his grave.
Key West Cemetery
- Address:
- 701 Pauline St., Key West, FL
- Directions:
- Key West Cemetery. Enter at the corner of Angela St. and Passover Lane. Bear left. At the end of that road, turn left. When you reach the fence at the Cemetery border, turn left again. You'll see a rusty-roofed shelter over some graves; the Bound Woman is next to it. And she's small.
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This headstone is about the size of a two-year-old child. The woman is nude, looking upward with her hands bound behind her back. There are two more nudes at the foot of the grave on both sides that are smaller. The man was 55 when he died, and nothing is known of why he has this on his grave. The caretaker told us that the grave was falling in and a local resident paid to have it restored. He said that a lot of people on the island are restoring old graves since relatives are long gone.
In this cemetery there is also the family plot of Dr Joseph Otto (1826-1885), that includes a pet Key Deer with a deer monument -- along with the graves of three pet Yorkies.
[Melanie Turner, 04/17/2021]Nearby Offbeat Places
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Archibald John Sheldon Yates died in 1966. His wife, buried next to him, didn't die until 2017, and she never explained the meaning of The Bound Woman.