Cemeteries: The Good, The Scary, and the Erotic!

Most beautiful cemeteries in America? There’s actually a freaking lot of them. Of course, what you consider to be beautiful might vary, but here are some to look for in your area:

Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah Georgia
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts
Arlington Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia
Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills, California
River View Cemetery, Portland, Oregon
Lakewood Cemetery, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Oakland Cemetery, Iowa City, Iowa
Glenwood Cemetery, Houston, Texas


Most haunted cemeteries in America? Haunted America Tours online listed these top 10 most haunted cemeteries:

10. Haunted Salem Cemetery, Hendrysburg, Ohio
9. Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens Cemetery Central, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
8. Greenwood Cemetery, Decatur, Illinois
7. Bachelors Grove Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois
6. Chestnut Hill Cemetery, Exeter, Rhode Island
5. Resurrection Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois
4. Garden of Hope Cemetery, Gautier, Mississippi
3. Western Burial Ground, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, Maryland
2. Stull Cemetery, Kansas City, Kansas
1. St. Louis Cemetery, New Orleans, Louisiana

You want to talk about the weird things that happen in cemeteries? We all think of the greatest taboo: Sex in a cemetery. In fact, every time I’m in one, I think about it… my mind can’t help it. So, I wrote a highly erotic short story involving sex in a cemetery. If any of you wish to read it, just email me because I’m not putting it on the blog—it’s explicit. Psychic62@hotmail.com

Murders have been committed in cemeteries, ritualistic occult ceremonies, and here’s what one brilliant guy right here in my state decided to do: “PHOENIX -- A 17-year-old boy who disappeared last year was killed during an argument with a friend and then buried at a cemetery, concealed in a woman's freshly dug grave, authorities said. Richard Waive Palmer, 26, was being held in a Maricopa County jail Monday on a charge of second-degree murder. He confessed last week to killing Robert K. Martin in April 2004 by hitting him over the head with a baseball bat, authorities said.

You couldn’t miss it in the news when mortuary workers cheap out on burials and sell more graves than are available or perhaps toss the ashes out and don’t bury them. In many countries, especially France, they dispose of older bodies to make room for newer ones, thereby creating the famous Catacombs under Paris.

Death definitely holds a fascination, but is it the forbidden cemeteries that represent our dead, that are quiet rarely visited dark spots in our cities that attract the weirdest of us? Or is putting all those bodies in one place somehow changing the land, making it somehow attractive for the weird and strange?

Oh, and, if you’re just a bit curious, there is a cemetery called “Weird Cemetery” in Kentucky!

Comments

  1. Definitely being in a cemetery at night is very creepy. The older ones in the Eastern part of the country have the best headstones and markers, very old and unique. We'll have to do a cemetery hunt together someday.

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  2. Oh yeah! Definitely! I'm hoping some time this summer to do a girl's sleepover here with the team and we could project a horror movie and float on the pool and enjoy it and go raid the Buttes where I've gotten all that crazy phenomenon the past 7 years. Of course, should Hug a Blogger happen--we'll hit every cemetery we can find!

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  3. The cemetery where my parents are entombed in a mausoleum is actually on the same street that I live. It's about 16 blocks away. It's kind of dull in that it's very traditional with just the standard gravestones except for the big mausoleum that you need a personal key to get into. The glass is tinted so that you can't see inside, but once you step in, you can see out. it doesn't really spook me out and I hardly ever go there because it's not like my parents are really THERE.
    But there is the Chippiannock Cemetery that is very cool. I've taken a LOT of photos there. It has Angel statues and small private mausoleums and tombstones shaped like trees and dogs and anchors and cradles and a HUGE ball and it's so old. There are also some stones with the persons photo enclosed in glass....YOU would love it. http://www.chippiannock.com/about.shtml
    I posted a few photos last fall on my blog and this year I plan on posting more, probably closer to Halloween.

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  4. Cindi;
    I can't wait to see them! You need to do more cemetery shots. I can't get enough of them! Here in the west the older cemeteries have iron cradles built around the baby's graves. The cemetery in Bisbee--there's a whole big row of those and it's eerie. People leave toys inside them.

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  5. here's a link to my post on my blog last October...just a few cemetery shots!
    http://oldblackcatboo.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html

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  6. Cindi;
    Now that's a REAL cemetery! Beautiful shots!

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  7. First: send me that story!
    Second: there's an old country song called "Makin' Love In The Graveyard At Night", but I'm having a hard time finding the lyrics.
    Third: there's a cemetery in South AL and one of the graves has a dollhouse on it. It's the grave of a little girl who died close to Christmas. She wanted a dollhouse, so the family had one built for her grave. It has windows & you can look inside. The histirocal society maintains it and occassionally rearanges or replaces the dolls and furniture.

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  8. BG;
    You asked for it... I'll send it. It's written from the man's perspective so perhaps you can give me insight if I was able to describe it properly...Oh, and yes, he burned off lots of calories the positional way! (Did I just hear you snort with laughter?)
    That cemetery sounds amazing! I love to find ones like that. Here in the west, the weather is so hard on graves and many were made my itinerant workers out of whatever they had like wood and cement. It leaves a kind of skeletal remains behind...

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  9. I think cemeteries are some of the most beautiful places on earth. It is sad that the most lasting impression most of us make in life is the tombstone we leave behind.

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  10. Jessica; I always dreamed of having a mausoleum (crematorium) that is high tech. People buy their spot there for when they're cremated and we do a video of them or compile one from the video of their life and perhaps a personal message they want to leave. Then, when folks come in, they can click the button and for a time you're alive and giving advice and showing a life that's been lived.

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  11. From the stuff I find in the old cemetery where I volunteer, "Sex in the Cemetery" is a popular thing!

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  12. Debe;
    Yeah, that cleanup we had at the downtown cemetery--I saw about 3 condoms. Yikes! I suppose with the homeless soup kitchen nearby, that's the only "quiet" spot for some lonely time. If only cemeteries could talk...

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  13. There are tons and tons of old cemeteries hereabouts. Great for wandering around and taking photos.

    Here's a couple from a day in Calvary Cemetery in Evanston.

    Looking out over Lake Michigan
    http://imgur.com/PohTx.jpg

    and a really spectacular statue
    http://imgur.com/3CZgk.jpg

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  14. Pangs;
    Those are gorgeous! You lucky pup! If our Hug a Blogger goes through, we should meet up in your city! Your entire state is one of the most haunted geologically although the history is fairly good for haunting. If you were to take the geology and waterways of your state and plop it in, say Georgia or Alabama--damn! That'd be crazy haunted with the kind of traumatic history atop that kind of land...

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  15. Can anyone provide any proof that the Garden of Hope Cemetery in Gautier, MS. is actually real? I can't find any kind of record online that proves that this place is real...

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