Being involved in the early Goth scene and devouring a steady diet of B-grade horror movies from the 1960’s and 70’s, reading Henry James, Anne Rice and H.P Lovecraft, I grew to love and appreciate the darker side of life. To me, vampires, death & sadness were concepts to be admired for their purity & honesty.

And from these shadowy passions, grew a love of all that is macabre. Cemeteries of course, fit neatly into this view. These are places that shouldn’t be viewed as scary or nefarious. But instead, as monuments to memory, love and loss.

I believe there are three notable moments for the modern day ‘eldritch’ connotations that popular culture has cultivated for the cemetery. Firstly, Mary Shelley shocked the masses in 1818 when she released the groundbreaking novel, Frankenstein. It moved cemeteries from an afterthought into the zeitgeist. Then in the 1850’s, the Victorian Rural Cemetery Movement caught fire, popularizing cemeteries as places to relax and be close to past loved ones. This movement by the way, paved the way for the concept of city parks. Then, in 1968, came the one movie that scared theater-goers into permanently distaining cemeteries as places of death & unknown agonies…Night of the Living Dead. George A. Romero almost overnight, pounded the last proverbial nail in the coffin that cemeteries were now places to be avoided. Of course, there will always be those taphophiles that prefer the solace and mournfulness of cemeteries. However, now, they are now places of specters, death, dread and maybe, if you’re lucky, the occasional LeStat sighting (if you happen to be in NOLA).

Despite the antediluvian and unfair connotations we now have of cemeteries, I personally still find them to be places of forlorn beauty & solitude. Some locations of course, have faired better than others through the years. And yes, under the right conditions, they’re even on the spooky side. :o)