A new Instagram site called @sadtopographies is noting the world’s “grimmest-sounding places” and posting them to social media through captured images with mapping tools. Sounds like a fun game to play!
I don’t know about grim, but there are plenty of funny, sad, unfortunate, and maybe even morbid names for locations, bodies of water, streets and more around the Richmond region. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there is anything bad about the names. They all add character and charm to the region. I’m just saying I’d have a hard time celebrating that I live on a street named Kill Deer or on Dead Man’s Hill (though the view of the James River from the Rice House is excellent).
If I took the time, I’m sure I could find hundreds more, but here is what I’ve come up with so far:
- Little Lickinghole Creek and Tarred Rat Creek meet in Goochland County
- Kill Deer Street in Prince George County
- Dead Man’s Hill off of Old Lock Lane, the Rice House, across from Pony Pasture
- Deadman’s Run Lane in Petersburg
- Bloody Run in Mechanicsville
I found out about this from a post on Planetizen:
The @sadtopographies Instagram account shares screengrabs of places like Cape Disappointment, Mistake Island, or Unfortunate Cove.
The account is the work of Australian artist Damien Rudd, whose collection of Google Maps screengrabs of the world’s “grimmest-sounding places,” which also, according to Merelli, “makes for an excellent collection of weird travel destinations.”
The Instagram feed is just getting started, with only 37 posts so far, but as of this writing it’s already racked up 16.9 thousand followers. Clearly there are a lot of people out there with a sick fascination with sad place names. For the record, my favorite, as one of those people, is Point No Point.
Phil Riggan 