People Travel From Everywhere to this Brooklyn Cemetery to a Tombstone to Bury Their Secrets
Do you have a secret that's been weighing your down? Lay it to rest forever inside a special tombstone at a nearly 200-year-old cemetery in New York state.
Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn was one of America’s first rural cemeteries, founded in 1838, and a National Historic Landmark. The 478 acres serve as the final resting place for over 570,000 permanent residents including baseball legends, politicians, artists, entertainers, inventors, and Civil War generals. It's also home to 'Here Lie the Secrets of the Visitors' tomb. The monument doesn't mark someone's grave. It marks the place to bury your deepest, darkest secrets.
Artist Sophie Calle created the monument that invites visitors to write down their most intimate secrets or bad memories on paper and lay them to rest. There's a slot at the base of the gravestone to lock it away.
Calle has pledged to return periodically over the next 25 years to exhume and cremate the confessions in a ceremonial bonfire service and moment of remembrance.
The 'Here Lie the Secrets of the Visitors' monument can be found near the main entrance of the cemetery that a half-million people visit every year. The Revolutionary War historic site features the largest outdoor collections of nineteenth-and twentieth-century statuary and mausoleums.
The Battle of Long Island was fought in 1776 across what is now its grounds.