The only troubling sound I heard the night I spent in the Jailer’s Inn in Bardstown, Kentucky was the sound of a cell door closing. There are two reasons I found that disturbing. First, the jail was shut down late in the twentieth century, so there are no inmates, and it’s unlikely the staff was […]
Death
Art from the Wytchery: A picnic amongst the tombstones
St. Mary’s Church Burial Ground, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, Great Britain. Cate Davies, artist THE NECROPOLIS … CITIES OF THE DEAD. Today we tend to avoid them, whistling past the graveyard at night to keep death away. In America, during the early years we kept our dead on the outskirts of town, or even in the […]
Cemetery Symbolism: The Meaning of Memento Mori and a Puritan reminder of your mortality
Memento Mori, headstone in the Old Burial Ground, Concord, MA, c. 1759. Click here for more tombstone images “Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound […]
A Traditional Halloween: If it’s Samhain you’re looking for, ditch October 31
Pagans and Christians don’t agree on a lot. Pagans complain that Christianity is all show and no substance. One point of contention often leveled at Christians is that their holidays are frequently, if not always chosen in order to Christianize existing pagan celebrations. Let’s face it, that’s absolutely true. But when it comes to Christian […]
Haunted Graveyards: The ghosts of Williamsburg, Illinois and Ridge Cemetery
Ridge Cemetery on Williamsburg Hill, Shelby county, Illinois. To view more images, click here “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” – Genesis 3:19 “Oh my name it means […]
Hoppy Rebstock, the heartbeat in the tombstone and the joys of school picnics
“I foamed — I raved — I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder — louder — louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly , and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? […]
A warlock’s curse? The ghosts of Salem’s Howard Street Burying Ground
Salem’s Howard Street Burying Ground with the Old Jail in the Background Giles Corey married three times, the last time when he was pushing eighty years old. When his second wife died in Salem Village, Massachusetts, he married a third time, to a lady by the name of Martha, who had two grown boys. Martha […]
A Southern Gothic Ghost Story from Edisto Island, South Carolina’s Low Country
Top: Legare Mausoleum, Graveyard of the Edisto Presbyterian Church, c. 1831. Edisto Island, Charleston County, South Carolina Diphtheria, now almost non-existent in the United States was once among the most feared of diseases. What made it all the more dreadful, is that children were frequently its main victims. While no one was immune, it was […]
Newbury Massachusetts and the Pierce Tomb: Dancing with the dead on Old Burial Hill
The Pierce Tomb in Newburyport Massachusetts has been the victim of various vandals with a macabre streak a mile wide over the past eighty years. Learn more in this
Tales of Old Stony Brook II: Of William Sidney Mount, spirits and Spiritualism
The Hawkins Mount House. In Richard Matheson’s classic novel from the 1970s, Hell House, a team of investigators are sent to spend a week in a haunted house to provide definitive proof of life after death. Almost immediately, a conflict breaks out between the scientist, who while not doubting the existence of the supernatural, or […]
The Memorial Cemetery of St. John’s Church, Cold Spring Harbor, New York: Another Kind of Planting Fields
The Chapel at the Memorial Cemetery of St. Johns Church “You can spare me the gory details,” Miss Bronwen said, pulling her hat down over her ears as the wind blew a particularly vicious howl our direction, showering us with snow from the branches of the overhanging trees. “It’s not like we were out […]
Tales From Head of the Harbor & St. James Part II: What Lies Beneath Mary’s Grave
Top: St. James General Store. “You’re certainly in a cantankerous mood today,” Miss Bronwen noticed as she looked out the window of the passing scenery. “And look at you, speeding along at almost sixty miles per hour. But that’s right, you’re in your element now.” I hmmmmphed indignantly and concentrated on the road for a […]
