2025 | A Grim Review
Season 2 Episode 19
Descend into reflection as The Grim closes the gates on 2025, a year that saw this niche podcast defy brutal industry statistics—where 47% of shows never reach episode three and only 8.5% make it to 50 episodes. Host Kristin marks episode 73 with gratitude, looking back at the cemeteries that fascinated her most and the stories that asked to be told, while acknowledging the listeners who made survival possible in a landscape littered with abandoned feeds and forgotten voices.
Featured Cemeteries & Stories:
Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument – Custer's Last Stand opened the year with uncomfortable questions about whose stories get told and how celebrated narratives look different through Indigenous eyes. A place that sits heavier now, asking visitors to slow down and think about who was allowed to tell the story.
Ross Bay Cemetery, Canada – A Victorian masterpiece that felt familiar yet foreign, beautiful and weathered and very haunted. The first journey north of the border, sparked by listener requests that will continue into 2026.
Presbítero Matías Maestro Cemetery, Peru – A cemetery that embraces its haunted side while telling its story, offering night tours that honor both the dead and the curious.
Montmartre Cemetery, Paris – Overshadowed by Père Lachaise but equally rich with history, including a mass grave from the French Revolution that textbooks rarely mention. A hidden gem where you stumble across stories waiting to be discovered.
Portuguese & Italian Bone Chapels – An exploration of heritage through the host's husband's first-generation Portuguese background, uncovering stunning sites whose history often gets forgotten. The fascination continued with two Italian chapels later in the fall.
Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin – Meet Me at the Gravediggers—a favorite episode featuring Irish history's brutal survival tales. The story of a historian who spent his life educating visitors and planned to rest on the very grounds he loved stayed with Kristin long after research ended.
Bennington Centre Cemetery, Vermont – Picture-perfect New England with beautifully carved Puritan headstones. Home to the Redcoat Skeleton, a British soldier whose bones were preserved for medical study, stowed in an attic for years, then finally returned to burial ground.
Asylum Cemeteries – Two episodes exploring patients who were ignored, silenced, buried without names. Many weren't even mentally ill—just inconvenient, different, or unwanted by families who could afford to make them disappear.
Friedhof Ohlsdorf, Germany – Complicated history tied to both World Wars and the Nazis. History doesn't give us the luxury of omission—even the villains shaped the world we live in today, and cemeteries reflect that truth.
St. Paul's Cathedral Crypt, London – Where the cathedral's WWII protection story casts quiet glow over the crypt below, and you can enjoy a latte next to some of Britain's most legendary figures.
Also Featured: Père Lachaise, Recoleta, Granary Burying Ground, Tophet of Carthage, true crime episodes where violence touched cemetery grounds, and the reminder that death keeps no calendar—The Grim will always return.
Looking Ahead: 2026 promises more graveyards, continued exploration of historic burial grounds worldwide, and stories driven by listener engagement.
