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This Twaggie is an illustration of a Tweet by @toddlevin by Matt Lassen. When I had more free time and gas was cheaper, we’d stop at cemeteries and look for the oldest birth date and the oldest death date on a stone, so who am I to say what is morbid and what isn’t? Link
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It’s that time of year, when we look to graveyards for tales that scare the Dickens out of us. You’ve read about 9 Creepy Places to Visit for a Good Scare and you’ve seen lists of haunted houses. Now how about cemeteries? These six stories don’t all contain ghosts -some are about vampires, poltergeists, and unidentified flying objects! Shown here is Chesnut Hill Cemetery in Rhode Island, the site of a vampire exhumation in 1892.
Chesnut Hill Baptist Church Cemetery in Exeter, Rhode Island is reported to be haunted by a vampire named Mercy Lena Brown. She was preceded in death by her mother and sister, victims of tuberculosis, and Mercy would often visit their graves. In January 1892, 19-year-old Mercy herself fell to tuberculosis and was interred with her family members. Mercy’s father George claimed she haunted him every night, complaining of hunger. His son Edwin fell sick, also with tuberculosis, but as he experienced visits from Mercy, the family and townspeople considered the cause of his illness to be the restless dead. George Brown, with the help of others, dug up the graves of his wife and two daughters on March 17, 1892. Only Mercy, who died in January, was free of decomposition. This led George to believe she was a vampire.
Read what happened then, and other tales, at mental_floss. Link
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Atlas Obscura is running a series called the 31 Days of Halloween on their blog. One post tells how made-up ghost stories can lead to frightening real stories of graveyard shenanigans, as happened at London’s fashionable Highgate Cemetery in the 1970s.
Though the details are a bit murky, it began with reports of a “creature” in the graveyard. The story was likely generated by one of the two main players in the incident magicians / exorcists / full-on maniacs Seán Manchester and David Farrant. Eventually the story became that it was a vampire (a Transylvanian prince brought to the cemetery in the 1800s) and Manchester and Farrant both vowed to hunt down and kill the beast. (They also pronounced each other charlatans.)
As described in the (not to be fully trusted) book Beyond the Grave, “many claimed to see a particular creature hovering over the graves. Scores of ‘vampire hunters’ regularly converged on the graveyard in the dead of night. Tombs were broken open and bodies were mutilated with wooden stakes driven into their chests. These stolen corpses, turning up in strange places, continuously startled local residents. One horrified neighbor to the cemetery discovered a headless body propped behind the steering wheel of his car one morning!”
Read the whole story at Atlas Obscura. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Leo Reynolds)
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Frank Glick, an amateur photographer, captured this amazing image at Fort Snelling National Cemetery in Minnesota. He thought that the family of the veteran buried at that gravestone might like to have a copy, and did some research on Sgt. Maurice Ruch.
Ruch, a veteran of World War II, was a US Army marksman who served in the Aleutian Islands and earned a Bronze Star. Then he went home, became an engineer and got married. John Tevlin of the Star Tribute spoke with Ruch’s widow, Vivian, and best friend, Jack Kiefner:
I told Vivian that some cultures believe the eagle is a symbol, not only of patriotism and dignity, but a messenger between heaven and earth. She nodded solemnly.
“I’d say the eagle had a very good eye when he landed on Maurie, and he was respected,” she said.
“I miss him,” said Vivian as she picked up the photo. “He was a good man and a good provider.”
“The eagle couldn’t have picked a better person,” said Kiefner.
Link -via American Digest
Who says that cemeteries have to be all drab and morbid? Take a look at these colorful and "happy" cemetery in Sapânta, Romania:
Originally begun by a peasant grave carver named Stan Petras in the 1930s, and carried on today by the Pop family, the cemetery has become one of the most popular tourism attractions in rural Romania, with tour buses pulling up and unloading foreigners hourly. [...]
The grave markers in the cemetery in Sapânta are carved and painted with scenes of the deceased accompanied by a poem describing their fate in Maramures dialect. About half of them have two painted sides – one showing the deceased as they were in life, and the other showing either the way they died or illustrating some quirk that made them the talk of the village.
Dumneazu blog has the story: Link
Previously on Neatorama: Strange Funeral Rites From Around the World, 10 Most Fascinating Tombs in the World
What is now Arlington National Cemetery was once the home of Robert E. Lee and his wife, Mary.
Mary Lee dreaded the thought of abandoning Arlington, the 1,100-acre estate she had inherited from her father, George Washington Parke Custis, upon his death in 1857. Custis, the grandson of Martha Washington, had been adopted by George Washington when Custis’ father died in 1781. Beginning in 1802, as the new nation’s capital took form across the river, Custis started building Arlington, his showplace mansion. Probably modeled after the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens, the columned house floated among the Virginia hills as if it had been there forever, peering down upon the half-finished capital at its feet. When Custis died, Arlington passed to Mary Lee, his only surviving child, who had grown up, married and raised seven children and buried her parents there. In correspondence, her husband referred to the place as “our dear home,” the spot “where my attachments are more strongly placed than at any other place in the world.” If possible, his wife felt an even stronger attachment to the property.
Mary Lee packed up and left in 1861, just ahead of the Union Army. Even after the federal government began burying soldiers on the property, the Lees fought for the return of their home. Smithsonian Magazine has the rest of the story of how the estate became the hallowed ground it is today, a resting place and a memorial to American military personnel who died in service to their country. Link
(Image credit: Bruce Dale)
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A patent has been issued for this device, which would conserve space in burial grounds. The inventor even envisions a transparent variety:
“A clear plastic Easy Inter Burial Container, where the body is additionally encased in clear resin and is standing erect for all to view during installation, creates a very impressive image.”
The screwing-into-the-ground would be performed either by humans or by an adaptation on a tractor backhoe.
Sure it’s got high ceilings and amazing stain glass windows but wouldn’t you feel a little bit intimidated taking showers and sleeping in this house? After all, it used to be the House of God …
Apparently, it didn’t bother Sally Onions and Ian Bottomley – the couple converted a Georgian church in Kyloe, Northumberland, England (complete with its own cemetery outside) into a residential house.
All About You has a gallery of photos of the converted house (from the House Beautiful magazine): Link (if you don’t like clicking through the photos, SwipeLife has kindly um, "borrowed" all the photos)
Previously on Neatorama: Man Converts Church Into a Home
Photo: susanhardman [Flickr] – via ok bye, the blog
Who says that cemeteries have to be all somber? Check out these colorful tombstones in the cemetery outside of Chichicastenango in Guatemala, as taken by photographer and avid traveler Susan Hardman.
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Most Fascinating Tombs in the World
The funeral industry is usually recession proof. After all, as Arvin Starrett, spokesman for the National Funeral Directors Association, said "The honest-to-goodness truth of the matter is that everybody does die."
So it goes to show how bad the current economic situation has become: a cemetery on Highway 86 in Imperial, California, is in foreclosure!
Annika Mengisen of Freakonomics Blog has the answer to the question I’m sure you’re all thinking of: will the …, um, occupants be evicted? Link
The Linden Hill United Methodist Cemetery, located between Bushwick, Brooklyn and Ridgewood, Queens, take themselves very seriously. They’ve got strict rules regulating … well, everything!
It seems that about the only thing you can do at the cemetery is be dead. Oh, wait – they’ve probably got a rule against that too.
There’s a spot in a Lowes movie theater parking lot in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where you’ll never forget where you parked your car: the grave of Mary Ellis. Yes, a cemetery right smack in the middle of a parking lot!
Not only is the grave of Mary Ellis embedded in a parking lot, it’s also the focus of a terrific legend. Mary, who came to New Brunswick in the 1790s to live with her sister, fell in love with a sea captain who promised to marry her once he returned from his next voyage. The captain then left Mary his horse and sailed off down the Raritan River.
Every day, Mary rode her lover’s steed down to the river, hoping to meet him at the water’s edge. For years, she gazed at the river, waiting for his return. In 1813, she purchased a plot of land overlooking the river, where she maintained her vigil until her death in 1826. And there she was buried, forever waiting for her captain.
Meanwhile, commercialism swept through, establishing a series of retail businesses, including a popular flea market, all sharing space with Mary. Today, Mary’s grave is entrenched in the parking lot of a Lowes movie theater.
Wesley Treat’s Roadside Resort has more on Paved Paradise: Cemeteries in Parking Lots – via
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Most Fascinating Tombs in the World
