Roadside Grave Of A Man Killed By A Tree
Marion, Ohio
This ancient American roadside attraction has puzzled passersby for nearly 200 years. John Grimm, age 52, was killed by a falling tree here on October 6, 1833. His white marble gravestone slab, set flush with the ground, lies at the edge of a peaceful back road.
Grimm's tombstone is so old that its inscriptions were re-chiseled at some long-ago date, and now even those re-chiselings are almost worn away by time. The extra effort suggests that someone felt that it was important to remember Grimm's grim fate, which is also apparent in the upright limestone slabs, loosely bolted together with rusted bars, that form a protective box around the grave.
To ensure that no tree will ever fall on John Grimm again?
There's an assortment of other oddities to inspect in nearby Marion, including Napoleon's Horse, the Popcorn Museum, and a Mysterious Moving Tombstone. But John Grimm's grave is one-of-a-kind, and its stature in our "Trees That Kill" category rose in direct proportion to how many little county roads we had to crisscross trying to find it.