Storytime with MrBallen | Rosie Grant

0:00Appliance breakdowns happen and repair expenses add up. Help protect your wallet with an American Home Shield warranty. AHS can help fix major appliances and home systems, no matter how old. And if they can't repair the cupboard item, they'll replace it. Plus, as a benefit to select plans, you can video chat with a live repair expert. American Home Shield. Don't worry, be warranty. Get 20 % off any plan at ahs.com slash MrBallen and see promo details. See ahs.com slash contracts for coverage details, including service fees, limitations, and exclusions.

0:58months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required,$15 per month equivalent, taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only, greater than 50 gigabytes, may slow when network is busy. See terms. Time slowed down as I'm watching this grenade hit my shoulder. As it hit my shoulder, I actually actively thought, okay, you're about to die. There's no escaping it. And I was told I was maybe 30 seconds from death. From my experience, growing up, death is a pretty taboo topic. Now I'm around people talking about death all the time. Are you a big cemetery person yourself. I don't know if I'm a big cemetery person.

1:28That's a weird way to phrase it, yeah. I do think about death. I want to do more with my life with the second chance. I do have that feeling, but it's not nearly as pronounced as I don't have a fear of death. On today's episode of Storytime with Mr. Ballin, we have a truly unique guest. You'll see in a minute what I mean when I say unique, because what they do, I didn't even know this was a thing, but it definitely is, because when she made her first post back in 2021 about sort of what she does, it went super viral. And sure enough, what she's discovered really is a phenomenon, but it's one that I promise most of you have never heard of.

2:07It's fascinating. Not only do we cover what she does, but it also sort of led us to this really deep discussion around death, mortality, and what happens when you die. I didn't expect the conversation to go that way, but that's the way it went, and it was great. It was an amazing conversation. I think you're really going to enjoy it. Also, side note, my voice is terrible, but I was just so excited to get this interview in that we decided to push forward. So I apologize for my voice, but it's because I love all you fans of The Strange, Dark, and Mysterious. And so without further ado, let's get into today's episode.

3:02I am Rosie Grant, a.k.a. Ghostly Archive, and this is Storytime with Mr. Balan. Alright, so Rosie Grant, I know what you do. I mean, what you do is one of the more unique things I've seen, certainly on the internet or just at large. It's you find recipes on gravestones and you make those recipes and you post about it online and you get in touch with the families and the relatives and it's gone super viral. But I guess now I've explained what you do, but tell me how the heck you got here. How did you start doing that? Well, I got started with this when I was trying to become a librarian. I was living in D.C.

3:39and I went to library science school. It was pretty much, I think, 2020 is when I started the program. In 2021, I had to do an internship. So it was early days of COVID. All libraries were closed to new people. And so I interned at the only place that I could find, which was in a cemetery. Of course. Of course. Yeah. And you're trying to become a librarian. Yeah, really. Yeah. They were busier than ever. And I mean, it was wonderful. And I should say my parents are both ghost tour guides. So like being in a cemetery wasn't that weird from things that I did growing up as a kid. Are you a big cemetery person yourself?

4:17I don't know if I'm a big cemetery person. That's a weird way to phrase it, yeah. Have you gone to cemeteries? I frequented cemeteries. You frequented cemeteries. I think I was very similar going into this. I frequented cemeteries. Yeah. But I didn't know anything about the death industry or how that worked, and so I got to basically do digital archives with their archivist, and I would take photos, and I'd go on these site visits to geolocate different gravestones, and I made this sort of online tour of the cemetery. and in the process I started a TikTok of like what's it like to intern at a cemetery and pretty much everything came from there.

4:54I didn't learn about my first gravestone recipe until maybe five or six months after starting the account. It was just at first different gravestones and memorials and then I found a spritz cookie recipe on a gravestone in Brooklyn, New York. And so you actually brought me some of your spritz cookies. Yeah. And in full candor. I've already tried them and they're quite good. And actually, as I'm tasting this, so did you know it was like a thing that people literally engraved recipes on gravestones? Did not know it was a thing. I was surprised to find one. So like in the early days of it, they're good, right?

5:29They're like nice and buttery. Really good. In the early days of TikToking about different memorials, it was just different, interesting gravestones. In Baltimore, there's like a Ouija gravestone. And in other places, there's like these like, you know, Edgar Allan Poe has an interest in gravestone. So I was just featuring like unusual gravestones around D.C. And so when it came to gravestone recipes, I learned about Naomi, who has the spritz cookie recipe in Brooklyn. And I thought, like, what do those cookies taste like? They're on a gravestone. And like it didn't just say like she liked baking or cooking was important to her.

6:02It like literally is the ingredients to make her recipe. So when I posted it on TikTok, it went like super viral. like overnight like NPR called me the next day and they're like what's what is what's going on with this and I was like I have no idea like I've just learned about this woman and even more so the number one comment that I was getting from people you know of course people were like you know this is so interesting I've never heard about this but even more so I was getting comments like you know my mom died a few years ago and I make her cake every year when I miss her or my dad died 10 years ago and I make his chili every Sunday and it helps me feel like he's closer to me.

6:41And it was just these like really personal food stories of like using food and death and they blended together when they miss their person. And I was like, there's something here. Like, what is this of like connecting to the lost loved ones through food? And so I was learning more about Naomi when I learned about a woman named Kay who has a fudge recipe. And then I learned about a woman named Maxine who has Christmas cookies. And that kind of started the journey of learning about gravestone recipes. You speak about these folks like you clearly have put a lot of time into learning about them, not just their recipe.

7:13And it seems like you also have a pretty deep connection with some of the family. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I would say, and I, you know, through the process of it, it didn't begin that way. And the first three folks who I learned about, they were already very viral and online before I came along. Facebook groups had posted about them, lots of online cemetery groups in the world and they had all featured these three over the years but then as I started learning about more folks and I think when I was at about eight recipes families started reaching out and they were starting to say like I thought my mom was the only one crazy enough to do something like this like try her cheese dip recipe and so from there I was like oh I need to start interviewing people and so it became a community archive in the sense of like I would reach out to the family members I have this crazy google map of like where each of the gravestone markers are I have this insane google doc I have a spreadsheet this is the library science in me of like the data behind each person but then with each that would be oral histories so I would interview the families um it would just be like who is this person who's the person behind the recipe what does this recipe mean to your family still and things like that And I mean, at this point now, it's also included traveling.

8:26I visited all of the recipes in North America. So I went up to Nome, Alaska, and down to Florida, and New Orleans, and Nova Scotia, and the Midwest, and up and down California. And New York State actually has the most gravestone recipes. So I've been all around New York for that reason. Yeah. And so you were studying for your library sciences degree. My mom actually got her library sciences degree. Get out! I'm very familiar with how technically difficult it is to get one of those degrees. That's incredible. Oh, I love that. Is she a librarian or does she work anywhere in that? She's also a writer and she pioneered writing our podcast.

9:00Oh my gosh, I'm obsessed with that. Yay, librarians. Yeah, that degree is gnarly. But so did you, you have this cemetery internship. You go viral with this really unique idea, like basically posting about these spritz cookies from Naomi. How do you go from, well, what I'm doing is I'm getting my library sciences degree on a course to be one of the most, like introverted, like quiet, private lives, being a librarian, to now you have this amazing new book called To Die For, a cookbook of gravestone recipes. This is incredible. It is all the, is this all the recipes that you've done? All the recipes with all the family approvals.

9:42There's a few more that I haven't gotten approvals from the family yet, but these are the ones that I was able to connect with, visit, photographed, and of course, learn their stories. So that was kind of, it did become a lot more public and social than I think I was expecting. Yeah. So how have you responded to this new life path? Or do you feel like you're still sort of like, what's going on? I am still, I think every time I find a new gravestone recipe, I'm like, and that's it. The door is shut. I have no more people to research. But now it's kind of turned into this it's grown almost beyond me i'm getting phone calls some of the folks featured in this book they learned about it from the project so they like had seen a tick tock and then their parent they decided to do a gravestone recipe for their parent one of the women who was featured in it when i connected with her daughter and i was like hey your mom has this gravestone recipe this really good kosher vernishka's she's buried in new jersey and i was like can i include your mom in the project and she was like well like what are you exactly planning to do with like this information and I was like well I'm working on a book could I include your mom in the book and she's like are you the right person to be doing this and I was like I had this like whole moment I was like I'm just a library science person like maybe I'm not the right person to be doing this and I should say I didn't really play up the TikTok side because I wanted to like show my other credentials and I was like well I was an English major and I was a creative writing minor and I love food writing and all of this stuff.

11:07And so she's like, well, there's this TikToker who does gravestone recipes and I think she should be doing this. That's me. And I was like, yeah, I'm like, she should be doing this. Also, that's me. Yeah. What has this experience of becoming the go-to person to, you know, talk to these families and make these recipes and sort of connect with the dead in a sense, what has that done for, I guess, your relationship with mortality? That's a great question. And I would be curious to hear what your kind of entry point is because like death from my experience growing up death is a pretty taboo topic I think my parents are ghost tour guides and we go to cemeteries all the time we love visiting cemeteries and death is still really taboo and my parents don't want to talk about where do they want to be buried how do they want to be remembered it's just like a very uncomfortable topic because it implies that we will die which we will well unfortunately yeah Yeah, exactly.

12:03And I think growing up, I remember my first like awareness of that I would die and my loved ones would die. I went to my great grandmother's funeral. I think I was maybe like seven. And right afterwards, my cousins were planning a trip to Disney World and they invited me and I said no, because I was like, what if my parents die? So I didn't go to Disney because I was so scared of like my parents just randomly dying while I was gone. But I was really freaked out by it as a kid. And I was so like consumed. I remember reading books and just like I was so freaked out by it. And I think moving into adulthood, like I had a girlfriend die in college.

12:41We were English majors together. And I just did not know how to process it, didn't know how to talk about it with friends. And my whole little friend group who this girl was a part of just kind of fell apart. And so we had no idea how to process it and talk about it. So then flash forward to now where I feel like I'm around people talking about death all the time. And it honestly has taught me that it gets easier the more you talk about it, which is kind of why I like gravestone recipes in the sense of like it's easier to talk about food to be like, what meals do you like? Like, how do you want to be remembered?

13:14Like, you make really good cookies. Do you want that to be served at your funeral? Like, maybe you don't even want a gravestone. and maybe you want your ashes scattered somewhere that's important to you. Maybe you like the song and you want this played at your funeral or you want this on your deathbed. So there's just like a lot of things and like the idea that it's healthy to talk about these things. This is also, I should say, based in the death positive movement. Are you familiar with it? I saw a reference to that in one of your interviews. Oh, no way. I'm not familiar with. I wasn't either until this.

13:42It started in hospice, basically this idea that people and society are better off if we talk about these things. It's not like, yay, death, like, woohoo, we're going to die someday. But it's healthy if we, like, talk about these things with loved ones of, like, how do you want to be remembered? And again, I think food to me is a much easier access point to it rather than, like, the sense of, like, failure or whatever that we'll all die. So, yeah, in any case, I think I feel a little bit better about it. But I think I still have a journey to go for getting more comfortable with my own mortality.

14:17I'll tell you a quick story about my own feelings around mortality. So I was in the military before I started telling spooky stories on the internet. Hell yeah. A natural crossover. Yeah, you know, it is. It is. And when I was overseas in Afghanistan, we effectively were ambushed and a grenade actually detonated quite literally next to me. Oh my god. Yeah. And in fact, when the grenade came over the wall, it's nighttime. I'm on night vision. And so the way there was a drone overhead that was shining down on us with infrared light. You can only see it on night vision. So like to the world, it's pitch black.

14:58But in this circle of light that we're in, we can see. And on night vision, the light began to strobe, which is actually a targeting system. It means the drone is saying we're going to attack here. It was a mistake. But I'm basically in a strobe light, okay? Suddenly I'm in a strobe light as this grenade comes over the wall. It's like chaos. And the grenade kept coming in and out of focus because the light cast on it over and over. And this took a matter of less than a second for the grenade to literally... But there's this flashing thing coming? It was like time slowed down as I'm watching this grenade like appear, disappear, appear, disappear, it hit my shoulder.

15:32And as it hit my shoulder, I actually actively thought, okay, you're about to die. there's no escaping it. And I remember thinking what a bummer it was that it was going to detonate at this point and that my head will be blown off, which is really graphic. But it's like you experienced that, yeah. And I was thinking about how I won't be able to, like my mom won't be able to see me again. And I was like, oh my God, that was the pain. It wasn't, I'm going to die. It was my poor mom. And then as the grenade is falling in this fraction of a second, it reached my torso. And again, it's just falling.

16:06You know, the speed it takes to fall, but everything really did slow down. And I thought, okay, I'm still definitely going to die, but at least my face will be intact. And my mom will see me again. And then by the time it reached the ground, I was like, oh, it might just hit my legs, blow my legs off. I might live. This is pretty good, right? Shoot. And so it detonates, and I was with six other guys that I was in the unit with, and it was honestly horrific. I mean, everybody's down. There's a gunfight going on. And I basically was immobile. and I was literally under fire, dragged out to this other alleyway where I'm not safe.

16:41There are combatants literally firing rockets and just shooting arbitrarily in our direction. I'm watching tracer rounds, which you can see every period, like when you shoot like five rounds in a row, one shows up. It's like a bright light. I'm seeing tracer rounds skipping all over the place and the people we've just attacked who are attacking us, they're like 15 feet away. At any moment that could come into this alleyway and I'm alone in this alleyway because they're dealing with this huge contact down there. And so I have this, like, I've been mortally wounded. I can't pull my tourniquets to stop the bleeding off of my kit because I just was so weak from blood loss.

17:18And so I can't take off the life-saving equipment. I know I'm dying and it's not sad. This is where I'm getting to with mortality. And I tell people this story for this reason. I was not sad. It was shockingly matter of fact. I was sitting in an alleyway anticipating that I'm like, okay, I should have died down there at the contact site. Now I'm bleeding to death for sure. Or if I don't bleed to death, the people that we are in the middle of a gunfight with are for sure going to come over here and kill me. And so it was just factual. Like my brain process that is like, you are about to die. Hard stop.

17:53This is in 2014. I was 26 years old. Oh, my God. And the thought that was going through my mind, in addition to the matter-of-factness, as my vision actually went completely gone, I couldn't hear anymore. So I'm like in this black void, but I'm still alive. All I thought about was my wife, Amanda, and we had made the decision to wait on having children before I went on this deployment. I'm like, oh, we'll have time, right? And I was like, man, like, I guess we don't have time. And I pictured her on the couch in our home in Virginia, just like with our cats, just watching TV. And like probably tonight someone's going to tell her that I'm dead.

18:29And what I also thought was like, we don't have kids. She's young. She'll be devastated, no doubt. But what's going to happen here is time's going to go on. And she's going to marry somebody else and have a different life. She'll respect me and honor me, but I'm gone. And then I also thought, I wonder what the newspaper will say about my death. Not the story. just, will they write Jonathan Allen? Like killed in action Jonathan Allen. Or killed in action John Allen. It was just like, I wonder if it'll say my full name or John Allen. These are the things that you're going in through, like fire and everything.

19:07One year death experience after another. That's so crazy. And so the one guy who was not gravely injured on this contact, there was like seven of us. He was our medic, sort of luckily. Oh, my gosh. He's up for all sorts of awards. He came over to me, and I could feel him. I couldn't hear or see him, and he put tourniquets on me, and they literally whisked me out, carried me out to a helicopter, and they saved my life. Amazing. So I survived. Obviously, I survived. Here I am. Not a ghost. But, you know, the reality for me is that, of course, there was, you know, I had to process this thing, which I really didn't do a good job of.

19:48For a while, I actually ignored it. I just never talked about it. It took me four years after coming out of Afghanistan to just talk to the guy who saved my life. We're at the same team. We see each other in the halls. We didn't talk. Because you never recognized that. Yeah. But eventually, when I sort of came around to maybe the death positive side of things, I was like, I need to look at this. I looked at it as like a tremendous gift. And it wasn't that like now I have a second chance. It's definitely that. The lasting impression it gave me was right now we are living and we don't think about it.

20:25You don't wake up and think, oh, I better make sure my heart beats and I got to breathe, circulate my blood. You just live. You're like, I got 100 emails to whatever. Yeah. You just live. Yeah. But what I felt in my almost certainly had I not been rescued, I would have died. I was in the final stages. I was told I was maybe 30 seconds from death. Oh, my God. You are ready to die. You just don't know it. And for me, I was very badly injured. I didn't feel anything. If anything, it was just sort of like, yeah, this is it. That said, I'm thinking about my name spelling in the newspaper or something.

20:55And what it did for me is it made death feel not scary. Wow. And so it's a, I want to do more with my life with the second chance. I do have that feeling. But it's not nearly as pronounced as I don't have a fear of death. Yeah. I simply know death is coming. And I do think about death. It informs a lot of my decision making. Like whatever I want to do, it's timed against how much time I think I have. But it's not sad. It just is. And I think people are so weary or scared of like what's going to happen when you die. And granted, I don't really know, but I got close enough to me. It was like you're ready to die.

21:32You just don't know it as messed up as that really is. Yeah. It's like hard because I think I don't want to focus on it on the day to day of the fact that like I'll wake up and being like, oh, yeah, like people I know might die today or tomorrow or in 30 years or whatever. ever. And like, once you get kind of over that, like you can go down the hallway of it's just fear taking over you all the time. Or you can go down the hallway of like, yes, I accept it. And this is okay. And I'm going to live my life. And if anything, I think the idea of the death positive movement is like, well, okay, how do I want to live my life then?

22:03Because I can either be really scared about it or completely ignore it, or I can just live my life. You know, I only have this life that I know of for right now, I might as well take advantage of it and, you know, do a very cool storytelling podcast or be a cemetery TikTok or whatever makes us happy rather than I'm just, you know, I think, I think also the pandemic for me, I was a lot more death aware because I think we were all talking about like our loved ones might die. And I think I felt very similar of like, I'm not really thinking about my death in the sense of like, how am I going to go out?

22:35Like, it's more of like, well, what will my husband feel about this and what's he going to do? And And what will my siblings do? And like, yeah, it's so, I don't know. The brain is so interesting like that. That's crazy. And you mentioned earlier that your folks gave ghost tours. And you've mentioned several times that you have this affinity for cemeteries, of course. Was that because your folks gave ghost tours that you have this interest in cemeteries? Or is this just like innate? You've just always been interested in them? I think I've always been interested in them. I find them really peaceful places.

23:05When I was in high school, I would walk through a cemetery on my way home. Just that was the shortcut. was through a cemetery. And it's fun to like read their names and see different like funny quotes or inside jokes or people's photos and art. And there's just so many things on different gravestones that I find like endlessly interesting. It's like a little piece of each person. And I mean, if you walk through a cemetery in the Midwest, the cemeteries in the Midwest are like everything, like, you know, someone's fishing boat might be on it or like a photo of their favorite beer can or like like literally anything could be on a gravestone um so i just yeah i don't know i really have always liked them but i'd say more recently i've been learning of like how what's cemetery preservation like and what is it like to bring the community in and what's the history of american cemeteries and all of the you know extra pieces to it other than just the vibe so do you plan to put a recipe on your gravestone i feel like i have to at this point i have to yeah are Were you, like, do you, and your wife talked about doing a cemetery as well or Christians?

24:11The thing is, is that that could be a topic of discussion. Totally. That is on limits for us. We have not had it. Absolutely. It's one of those things of, like, you don't usually deal with it until you have to deal with it. I feel like because of, you know, what I do with TikTok and with cemeteries, and I love cemeteries. Of course. Yeah, I mean, I feel like, you know, it's an exciting topic. So I'm working with Congressional Cemetery where I interned and I am getting a plot there with my husband. And we're talking about, like, do we want to be cremated? Do we want this type of burial space? Do we want our ashes?

24:46Because you can buy a plot and just have a memorial but not have your body there. There's new things in death studies these days. Aquamation is the new cremation where you essentially are. It's the same result at the end of you just have some like organic materials. but it's just through water your body is run through water for like a month and then you turn into this material ruse's cremation is just you know you're fired up and in a matter of minutes basically you turn into the material so aquamation's an option you can get your body turned into gemstones so your family could have jewelry of you you can get your body shot into space you can get your body turned into a body farm or donate it to science you can there's these things called mushroom pods now, which I'm still learning if that's like how legit that is.

25:33But it sounds interesting of like you put this body into a suit and then it's just it sprouts like new organic materials and it's very circle of life kind of thing. And I think for me, some of the things that I care about is like I want people to miss me when I'm gone. I want to be mourned. But then I kind of want people to move on with their lives. Like I would much prefer, you know, slowly fading into the distance over time i still i i guess i'm balancing at one point of like oh it's important to remember people's names but also like even cemeteries won't be around for forever like the american cemetery is unusual as a model that we die and are buried there and given this expectation that you will be taken care of for forever but for forever means that can mean anything and a cemetery could be relocated the gravestones could be lost this happens all the time and in particular like so I went to my sister-in-law's Peruvian I went to Peru a little while ago and it's you rent a space and apparently in Europe there's different models of it as well but in a lot of different countries you rent a space and then if your family is not around every five years to pay for it a new person comes in and you're just cleaned out and that's that's that but outside of that yeah most people like you won't be remembered much beyond a generation or two and that's okay it feels like engaging with it a little bit more makes it a little less scary not that i know what's going to happen afterwards but yeah i don't know what do you think happens when you die i don't know i feel like i listen to a lot of paranormal podcasts for you know for this reason um and i still am like i mean i was raised catholic so i'm probably some sort of amalgamation of like i'm no longer catholic anymore but i feel like that gave me the sense of like a soul and like the idea that a soul continues on i don't know what that is or that means and I think of like I have I think my family is very like Pascalian wager of like well you either know or you don't know but like it's nice to believe in something so I think for us it's like it doesn't hurt me to believe that like you know we'll live on in some way afterwards whether it's a second life or we just become particles and my dust scatters in the wind and like there's something very pleasant about that too what do you believe I don't know.

27:44In a way, my, I forget who said this to me in my life, it was a family member. I think it was my dad. I was talking about death or I was, death had come up and it was like, well, do you like feel bad or do you feel sad about the time before you were born? Whoa. And I'm like, no, it doesn't exist for me. And they're like, yeah, that's probably how death is. Wow. I don't know if that's supposed to be a good or bad thing. And that's also a very like sort of like intense way of view. But also, yeah, like there's there's a sense of like why put meaning to it if it just it is what it is kind of thing.