At first glance, they don’t look like coffins. They resemble intricately carved wooden sculptures depicting airliners, animals, and automobiles. With their brightly painted exteriors and whimsical designs, they seem better suited for a sculpture garden than the National Museum of Funeral History (NMFH). But make no mistake: They are hollow, fitted with hinged lids, and built to bury the dead. These are the abebuu adekai of the Ga people—“proverb boxes,” more commonly known as Ghanaian fantasy coffins.

The funeral museum holds 12 total, an elaborate lineup of coffins shaped like luxury and recreational vehicles, wild animals, and even favorite foods and condiments. Artist Seth Kane Kwei helped influence them all.

Considered the father of fantasy coffins, the late Kane Kwei created his first piece entirely by accident. In the 1950s, while living in Accra, Ghana, the young Ga carpenter had a knack for the fantastical. He received a commission to create a palanquin—a ceremonial chair that carried chiefs through parades—in the shape of a giant cocoa pod. Before it could debut at the festival, the chief died, but the eccentric palanquin was still put to good use. On the day of his funeral, the chief’s body was displayed within the cocoa pod, and a new tradition was born.

According to the artist’s website, Kane Kwei went on to build a coffin in the shape of an airplane for his grandmother, who grew up in a coastal suburb near Accra’s airport. “She had always been mystified by the planes flying overhead,” but had never ridden in a plane, the website notes. In death, he gave her the gift of flight.

That tribute served as the foundation for a multigenerational workshop and a new art form. Kane Kwei crafted a Yamaha outboard motor for a mechanic, eagle-shaped coffins for chiefs and other notables, and crustaceans for fishers. As his business grew, he trained apprentices, including his son, Eric Adjetey Anang, and Joseph Tetteh-Ashong (Paa Joe), who would eventually found Paa Joe Coffin Works. Together, they produced hundreds of increasingly imaginative designs: a giant Twix bar, a Nikon camera, a Heinz Tomato Ketchup bottle, a KLM airliner, a Mercedes-Benz, a canoe, a leopard, a chicken, a bull, and a shallot.

Genevieve Keeney-Vazquez, director of NMFH, says the meaning behind the fantasy coffins is two-fold: “First, they represent what that person did in their life. So, if you were a mother, if you took care of all the elders and the children, perhaps you would be buried in a Mother Hen coffin,” she says. “The other concept is what they hope to achieve in their afterlife.”

The museum now claims to have the largest collection of fantasy coffins outside of Ghana. The permanent display often leaves many visitors perplexed, Keeney-Vazquez says. “They ask, are these really coffins? Do people get buried in these?” The workshops’ continued operations suggest that these ethereal coffins are intended for burial, though many are used primarily as displays during viewings. “The fantasy coffins can finalize the story of who [a person] was or what they hoped to be,” Keeney-Vazquez explains, but it’s still a concept that can feel foreign to Americans accustomed to more subdued funeral traditions.

In a 2025 article in Palliative Care and Social Practice, Ghana-based researcher Joshua Okyere argues that American deaths are often medicalized, occurring in institutions like hospitals and assisted-living facilities. In contrast, “Ghanaians view death as a transition to the afterlife.… It marks a phase where the deceased person transitions to become an ancestor in the existential realms,” he writes. “In Ghana, death and dying are not simply…endpoints.” In fact, in order to transition properly, one must have a “good death,” dying naturally, at home, surrounded by friends and loved ones, and then an elaborate, often celebratory funeral, sometimes complete with a fantasy coffin.

In Ghana, these coffins remain deeply cultural objects, but in the United States and Europe, they are viewed as art, Keeney-Vazquez says. The coffins were popularized as artworks after they debuted in Paris at the 1989 international exhibition Magiciens de la Terre (Magicians of the Earth)—the first time abebuu adekai were revealed to the Western world. In 1996, a private collector anonymously donated all 12 fantasy coffins to Houston’s funeral museum. They’ve been there ever since.

Kane Kwei told anthropologist Roberta Bonetti that technology carried the coffins around the world. “The first engine to stimulate the production of the coffins was the creation of a website with the purpose of making my website more visible,” he said, crediting a Wikipedia page dedicated to his work, leading most of the tourists to his workshop in Accra.

As global death traditions migrate through immigrant communities and contemporary art circuits, Americans are being nudged to reconsider a system in which death is hidden in hospitals and care facilities. That conversation feels especially relevant in Houston, where nearly three in 10 residents were born outside the United States. The museum reflects that cultural breadth, displaying authentic vestments worn at Pope John Paul II’s funeral alongside vibrant Day of the Dead altars and offerings. Yet, it’s always the fantasy coffins that stop visitors in their tracks.

“If you start looking at the new trends that are coming out in the industry, they somewhat align with what the Ghanaian coffins do,” Keeney-Vazquez says. “I always tell people, it’s your final party—you can design it however you want.”