The Bizarre Fate of Cremation Ashes

SVG rendition of the infamous Gonzo fist (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1. Fireworks

Gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson planned his funeral years before his death. When he took his own life in 2005, Johnny Depp, who had befriended Thompson while preparing to play his character in the 1998 film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, underwrote a memorial service that fulfilled Thompson’s wishes, which included a cannon that shot fireworks composed of Thompson’s ashes topped with Thompson’s “Gonzo fist” design.

2. Marvel Comic Book

To fulfill the final wish of Marvel Comics editor Mark Gruenwald, who died in 1996, the company reprinted a collection of Gruenwald’s 1985 Squadron Supreme in 1997 with special ink, mixed with his ashes.

3. Snorted with Cocaine…we thought.

In a 2007 interview with NME magazine, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards was asked what is the strangest thing he’d ever snorted. Richards replied, famously, “My father … He was cremated, and I couldn’t resist grinding [his ashes] up with a little bit of blow.” After the statement caught fire in the media, though, the Stones publicist released a statement that Richards’ remark had been a joke, and Richards later said that he had actually planted his father’s cremation ashes at the base of an oak tree.

4. The Pringles Can Cremation Vessel

When Fredric Baur, developer of the now-famous Pringles can, died in 2008, his children honored his wishes to be cremated and his ashes placed in a Pringles can before burial. His children debated what flavor can they should use briefly before settling on original.

5. Frisbee Golf

Edward “Steady Ed” Headrick, who developed a number of improvements to the frisbee and created the sport of disc golf, died in 2002, and his ashes were mixed with the plastic for a set of frisbees. The discs are collector’s items now, selling for almost two hundred dollars on Amazon.

6. Shotgun Ammunition

James Booth, a British vintage shotgun expert, died in 2004, and it was his wife’s request that turned his cremation ashes into ammunition for his friends’ next hunt. She had the Caledonian Cartridge Company craft a special set of 12-gauge shotgun cartridges that included Booth’s ashes mixed with gunpowder.

7. The Final Frontier

In 1997 the first rocket launched into space with cremated ashes onboard. Included in the maiden voyage were the ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and 60s icon Dr. Timothy Leary. Celestis, Inc. offers “space burial” services to anyone for a fee of between $2,000 and $10,000, depending on the depth of the launch. Celestis also performed the first lunar burial in 1999, depositing the ashes of geologist Gene Shoemaker into the surface of the moon.

8. Memorial Tattoo

After the death of their two-year-old son Ayden, Mark and Lisa Richmond sought a creative way of honoring the boy’s memory. The couple owned a tattoo parlor, so it was fitting when Mark got a portrait of Ayden tattooed on his chest with ink that had been mixed with the child’s cremation ashes.

(Look for Sunday’s upcoming Soulful Expressions for more on memorial tattoos.)