Episodes

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Join Jennie and Dianne as they unravel a tale of light from darkness in Landsberg am Lech, Germany. From the city's historical significance to the Jüdischer Friedhof, a small Jewish cemetery containing about 600 victims of the Nazi terror that were killed in one of the nearby concentration camps, discover the poignant journey of Holocaust survivors and how the celebration of Hanukkah took place ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Uncover the rich history of the second oldest rural cemetery in America on "The Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery" podcast! Join Jennie and Dianne alongside Laurel Hill Cemetery's President & CEO Nancy Goldenberg, Arboretum Manager Aaron Greenberg, and Volunteer & Tour Guide Sarah Hamill as they share Ordinary Extraordinary stories of those buried in the two burial grounds that make up Laurel Hill ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. On this episode of "The Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery" join Jennie as she journeys to the picturesque Toledo Cemetery in Lincoln County, Oregon to discover the history of this charming seven-acre resting place, founded in the 1880s by the generous donation of a local citizen. Uncover tales of early settlers, relocated graves, and the enduring spirit of a town shaped by lumber mills and a now vi...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Dive into a remarkable journey through time on the latest episode of "The Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery" podcast with Jennie and Dianne. This Thanksgiving, we're especially thankful for the wit and humor of Will Rogers. Join us as we celebrate the laughter-filled legacy of this iconic figure, along with the high-flying adventures of Wiley Post. In a tragic turn of fate, they bid farewell to lif...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne share three captivating stories of headstones found in unusual places and how they were restored to the cemeteries where they belong. They begin with the story of a WWII veteran's headstone discovered in a backyard in St. Petersburg, Florida. Next they journey to Pennsylvania to visit the oldest narrow gauge railroad in the U.S.; East Broad Top Railroad's mission to return a Civ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. In this episode Jennie and Dianne honor Veterans Day and celebrate National Native American Heritage Month along with guests Charlie Johnson and Connie Kellwood Pitt. Connie's father, Joe Hosteen Kellwood was one of the renowned Navajo Code Talkers of WWII. Connie has made it her mission to share not only her father's personal story, but the stories of the 420 Ordinary Extraordinary Navajo men wh...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Happy belated 3rd anniversary to the Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery podcast! In this episode Jennie and Dianne take a stroll down memory lane, celebrating three years of stories and inspiring discussions. They reminisce about how far the podcast has come, discuss some of their favorite episodes and guests from this past year, and share their hopes and ideas for the future of cemetery preservatio...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Join Jennie and Dianne for this very special Halloween edition of the Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery podcast. Grab your favorite warm beverage, turn the lights down low, and curl up with a cozy blanket as we delve into the enigmatic world of Bram Stoker, the genius behind the legendary novel "Dracula." Prepare to be transported into a chilling atmosphere, embracing the essence of Stoker's timele...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Just in time to help kick off the third annual Beyond the Grave: An Evening with Bram Stoker, Dianne and Jennie engage in a captivating conversation with Stanley Stepanic, an Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia who teaches a VERY popular course called "Dracula". With his vast knowledge of Slavic folklore and the origins and subsequent manifestatio...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. It's officially October which means many of us are feeling a bit spookier than usual! In this episode Jennie and Dianne unravel some of the secrets of omens and taboos lurking in the shadows of our minds. They delve into the Ordinary Extraordinary world of cemetery lore, uncovering eerie omens and ancient taboos that have stood the test of time. They also journey across diverse cultures, sheddin...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. "Hang down your head, Tom Dooley Hang down your head and cry Hang down your head, Tom Dooley Poor boy, you're bound to die." The murder ballad, 'Tom Dooley', made famous by the Kingston Trio in 1958, is the tale of a twisted love triangle that culminated in two sensational trials that both captivated and disgusted the people of North Carolina in the years following the American civil war. Dianne ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. "Come all good people, I’d have you draw near, A sorrowful story you quickly shall hear; A story I’ll tell you about Omie Wise, How she was deluded by Lewis’s lies." From the ballad Omie Wise. This week Jennie and Dianne begin a two part series exploring three folk songs that originated out of North Carolina. Each song relates a tragic narrative that has been spun out of real life events. In this...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. In this episode Jennie and Dianne are joined by the delightful Kathleen Maca who shares the stories of the Broadway District cemeteries on the island of Galveston off the gulf coast of Texas. Kathleen is a member of the Association for Gravestone Studies, a cemetery historian, cemetery restorationist, Certified Tourism Ambassador, genealogist and just completed a two-year project for ancestry.com...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. In this episode, Jennie and Dianne are joined by Annalisa Heppner, Cemetery Director of North Burial Ground in Providence, Rhode Island. North Burial Ground was officially recognized as a burial ground in 1700 and is the largest municipal cemetery in the region at around 110 acres and with more than 40,000 gravestones. From its inception North Burial Ground has welcomed all people of the Provide...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Join Jennie and Dianne as they delve into the intriguing world of Fisk metallic burial cases, also known as Fisk coffins. Unearth the remarkable story of Almond Dunbar Fisk, the visionary behind the cast iron coffin, whose innovation forever changed the way we lay our loved ones to rest. From first lady Dolley Madison who made the cast iron coffin fashionable among the leaders in Washington D.C. ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. A Google search for Martha's Chapel Cemetery will lead you down a reportedly haunted road where any number of ghostly spirits and demons are said to roam unsettling the living who pass through this desolate corner of Eastern Texas. But what happens when a cemetery’s main attraction is only about its ghosts and otherworldly atmosphere? We tend to lose sight of why the cemetery even exists, as a bu...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Children in many parts of the U.S. gathered their supplies and donned their backpacks, as they headed back to school. Many more will be doing so in the next coming weeks both here in the U.S. and around the world as summer comes to its official end. This inspired us to share the stories of some teachers from the past and some of the challenges they faced. Join us for the Ordinary Extraordinary st...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. On the western side of Paris, France, not far from the Eiffel Tower, is Cimetière de Passy, a small cemetery where a simple mausoleum whose doors are topped by an owl sits among its fellow graves in a most unassuming manner. Yet the story of the man who rests inside this mausoleum is one straight from the Gilded Age and had fate delt him a different hand, his remains may have been laid to rest in...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne are joined this week by a favorite returning guest, Dr. Sharon Pajka, to discuss her new book being released on August 21st, The Souls Close to Edgar Allan Poe: Graves of his Family, Friends and Foes. In her book Sharon helps readers to visit the graves of the people with whom he worked and socialized, who he loved and at times loathed and gain a fuller understanding of Poe's li...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne are joined by first time guest Dr. Joy Giguere to learn how American burial grounds changed from merely Ordinary Extraordinary places of interment, to rural landscapes meant to appear natural and ease the burden of grief, to the streamlined lawn cemeteries we often see today. Dr. Joy M. Giguere is an associate professor of history at Penn State York where she teaches courses in ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. "Be kind, be kind because kindness may always help out someone who is suffering." These words of advice were written from a mother to her daughters when she feared that her time on earth was growing short, that mother was Mary "Queen" Mellen Palmer. She was mother to three daughters whom she adored and loving wife to the founder of Colorado Springs, General William Jackson Palmer. But she was so ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. The New York Times called him "the foremost citizen of Colorado." William H. Spurgeon said he was "the soldier, the builder of an empire, the philanthropist, the friend of the people, whose life was a blessing." At his funeral in 1909 Colorado College president William Slocum told more than 3,000 mourners that gathered in the snow at Evergreen Cemetery, "A great man has passed, but the influence ...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. This week on the Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery podcast...Nestled in the Bitterroot Valley beneath St. Mary’s Peak, a mountain in the northern portion of the Rocky Mountain range that runs through the state of Montana, is a small, simple churchyard where rests the body of Father Antonio Ravalli alongside approximately 329 other souls whose resting place is part of historic St. Mary’s Mission. Je...

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. Jennie and Dianne are joined by Rick Hendricks, PhD to learn about a series of fascinating witch trials that took place not in New England, but in the border town Abiquiu, New Mexico beginning in 1756 and spanning over the course of ten years ending in 1766. Governor Tomás Vélez Cachupin had a plan to bring peace to the early settlers of New Mexico by granting land to the Genizaros, who were ind...