 Horror/Scary: February 08, 2023 Issue [#11800] |
This week: The Light Side of Cemetery Edited by: ~Minja~  
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"Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude." ~Anne Frank~
"For as much as I hate the cemetery, I’ve been grateful it’s here, too. I miss my wife. It’s easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she’s never been anything but dead, than to miss her in all the places where she was alive." ~John Scalzi, Old Man's War~
"The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place." ~Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais
"One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find it - water stained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment. It may be colder than the other gravestones, too, and the name on the stone is all too often impossible to read. If there is a statue on the grave it will be headless or so scabbed with fungus and lichens as to look like fungus itself. If one grave in a graveyard looks like a target for petty vandals, that is the ghoul-gate. If the grave wants to make you be somewhere else, that is the ghoul-gate." ~Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book~
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or as long as I remember, graveyards and cemeteries are a hotbed for macabre, ghost, and supernatural stories with the right reason. We can't think of a cemetery without thinking about the death, bones, spirits of the dead, burials, and everything else that reminds a common man about the ending of one's life. It is a natural way of thinking this is the place where dread lives, whether in a ghostly form or just as a reminder all of us will be part of it one day as well.
Cemeteries gain a reputation for being haunted for reasons that include the desecration of the grave, the dead has not received a proper burial, old and forgotten graves of unknown people. But, one thing that experts of the occult agree with is that graveyard is the last place to find ghosts or, if you are to find them, these are different types of ghosts than those in other haunting places.
We know that the cemetery is the last resting place for the dead; naturally, all cultures in the world follow specific burial rituals so that the spirit of the dead may rest in peace in their final spot. It is unlikely you will find a graveyard whose residents didn't receive a proper burial. I'm not saying this type of cemetery doesn't exist because it does —think of all mass graves from war for example— but it is unlikely you will find one unless you really search for it.
If the dead received the proper burial according to tradition, the ghosts and spirits do linger around for a more reasonable idea: to comfort the loved ones who are left behind, to protect graveyards from vandalism and disrespect, and then there are those who cannot come to terms that they are indeed dead. Surely, these are rather peaceful spirits whose intention is not to harm. In some cultures, the first person who is buried is a protector of that graveyard. In other cultures, it is the last person who is buried there.
It is believed that most of the dead pass to the other side peacefully but are being pulled back because of the emotional attachment of the loved ones who are left behind. If you ever lost someone close to you, you know how difficult it may be to make a peace with it. The first weeks, months, and years sometimes are always the hardest to let the dead go because we think if we let them, it means we forgot them, we don't love them anymore. Once we truly make a peace with death and ourselves is when we truly allow spirits to rest. The spirits who haunt graveyards can be divided into short-term, long-term, permanent, and stray ghosts where long-term and permanent ghosts are a helping hand to those who cannot easily pass.
Many old traditions in the world follow common practices when it comes to the death of a person and its easy passing to the other side. Some of the practices are dismissed as a superstition but one man's superstitions are another man's beliefs, is it not? Here are some of the beliefs/superstitions that are followed around the world:
 Window open: All windows should be opened at the moment of death so the soul may have a speedy journey to the other side.
Lightning a candle: On the night after November 1st a candle should be lit for each deceased relative and placed in a window.
Grave and flowers: If the person lived a good life, flowers will grow on the grave. If the person was evil, weeds will grow.
Thunder at the funeral: Thunder following a funeral means the person’s soul has reached heaven.
Taking the corpse out of house: A corpse should be removed from the house feet first to prevent its spirit from looking back into the house and beckoning another member of the family to follow.
Touching the deceased at the funeral: If you touch a loved one who has died you won’t have dreams about them.
Tombstone at the grave: Some cultures believe placing a tombstone on the grave keeps the ghosts weighed down.
Bells on grave: The fear of someone being buried alive led coffin makers to design caskets with an internal chain attached to a bell on the grave. If the person should awake they would pull the bell and alert the community to their premature burial. Hence the saying "For Whom the Bell Tolls."
Procession: It is bad luck to meet a funeral procession head-on. If it cannot be avoided then hold onto a button until the procession passes. A funeral procession should never return from the cemetery the same way they came to prevent the spirit of the deceased from following them home again.
In my life, I have visited a couple of cemeteries in different cities around the world. Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris is one whose beauty and mystery I will never forget. Just recently, last year in August, I stumbled upon the old cemetery in Portofino, Italy. I was walking around the beautiful hills of Portofino and saw the entrance behind the church. It is like a fairytale; the entrance is overgrown with flowers and weeds, ancient statues are placed around, and the pathway leads you to little crypts layered on top of each other so that it looks like a huge wall with framed paintings on it. And from there, the most stunning view of the sea and cliffs. I can only imagine the stories of people who are buried there. Death seems so soothing in this place. We've poured a lot of sacrament, superstition, and fear into our graveyards, which makes for quite a powerful atmosphere and that's alright. Whatever your relationship with the cemetery is, we can't deny the curiosity of what, or rather who lies underneath those monuments and tombstones.
Until next time,
~Minja~
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Excerpt: It wasn’t the cold of the gravestone against Bootsy’s bleeding scalp that roused him, or the hands scraping his shirt, neck, jaw. It was the smell. Rancid puffs of spoiled eggs and rotten meat jolted his slowing heart and opened his swollen eyes.
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Excerpt: She remembered her Spiritual Father’s wise words again: “Do not worry. A cemetery is a rather quiet and safe place to be at, and it’s not spiritually ‘polluted’ like bars, nightclubs, slaughterhouses, brothels, and hospitals. We should avoid these places like plagues. You will all do just fine as long as you --- believe.”
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Excerpt: I dropped to all fours and inched my way forward through the flowers. To my bewilderment, white tents peppered the grounds. I hid in the shadows behind the fallen Weeping Willow tree as I scanned the area. I caught sight of a short clothesline stretched between two dead Elms growing on either side of the crumbling grave marker with the surname Johanneson engraved upon it. The three names beneath were ineligible, though I assumed they represented a mother, father, and child. A pair of old wool pants stained with something dark hung on the twine next to a bloodied yellow apron, faded from years past. A tiny dress made from burlap flapped in the wind. I felt relief, noticing it was bloodless but found myself wondering what had happened to the child.
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Excerpt: Those vivid nightmares straight from hell,
A distant tolling of the bell,
Sullen psalms respect the dead,
Bitter are the tears they shed.
Touching tributes to a friend,
Slow the coffin does descend.
Quiet do the bereaved depart,
Mats I strip and shoveling start.
The grave with earth I fill and fill.
Then sounds the voice; my spine does chill.
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Excerpt: The moon had hidden itself, and the cloud-scudded sky was a lighter black against the rectangular top of the grave three feet above Corben's head. He jumped but couldn't reach the edge no matter how hard he tried. He yelled Jubal's name until he was hoarse. It was just a joke. Jubal would come back. But he didn't.
Torben curled into a corner at the bottom of the hole, nursing his broken wrist. The grave swallowed his screams, and the cold spurned his tears, and the wind whipped dust into the hole to cover him like a shroud, alone with his pain and fear.
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