Cemeteries aren’t conventional tourist destinations, but they’ve become essential stops for history buffs looking to learn more about the community they’re visiting, writes Scottie Andrew for CNN travel:

“‘Tombstone tourists” are always encouraging more to consider a cemetery’s the macabre beauty”.

“For me, a cemetery is like an art museum,” said Joy Neighbors, an author who writes about her cemetery obsession in the blog A Grave Interest. “It’s always an adventure and always an experience to go in, dig around and see what you can find.”

Philip Stone, founder and executive director of the Institute of Dark Tourism Research at the University of Central Lancashire in the United Kingdom, likened tombstone tourism to “sightseeing the mansions of the dead.”

The term Tombstone Tourist has been most notably used by author and biographer Scott Stanton as the title of his website and book The Tombstone Tourist. He has spent the last 25 years travelling over 1,000,000 miles (1.6mill km) to visit the final resting places of thousands of the famous, infamous and notorious. His website provides cemetery maps, exact directs to the grave (with GPS) and videos for every featured celebrity. You can even search along a road trip you are taking to see if there are any fascinating graves along the way.

Below you will find a selection of some of the more bizarre graves from around the world …