Halloween Discussion Forums, Costumes, Horror!

Nice photos, RDM.

You are lucky to live in the Northeast.

Here in California the history that goes that far back is Spanish Colonial. I do like the Mission history and all of that, but Colonial American history is my favorite.

Grim; there is a mausoleum in San Jose, Ca. that is built to look like a library, and each of the urns is shaped like a book!

Here are the rest of them. I am not showing all of the picures just the ones that are interesting.

I have never seen a real gravestone with only R.I.P. but this is close!

Well, I have seen one gravestone like that one in another cemetery but there was a big crack or something right between the R and P so I don't know if it was R.P. or R.I.P. Anyways alot of gravestones are like this one.

This one looks like it is in pencil! Someone must have done that becuae the words faded away.

I'm still working to find a pic of mausoleum.

So, Andy, some urns are shaped like the books? Do you have pic of them or not? Just curious to see.

Yeah that is funny!

From what I have heard all of the urns are book shaped.

If I go I will take some photos and post them.

Here's a photo of mausoleum:





It was from Scotland.

I love this! It is above ground right?

Above ground? I really don't know because I've never been there inside! It's from Scotland. Maybe they buried there inside underground or in the tombs, who knows?

There is a HUGE cemetary in Minneapolis that has it's own lake. They have some neat mausoleums, I will take some pictures if I can get around to it. You don't have any in Virginia??

IF you can find a copy look for 'The Big Book Of Death'.

It's a darkly funny cartoon book about weird ways that people have died and it has sections on famous cemetaries around the world and their famous residents.

There is also a site devoted to generic cemetaries and famous & regular folks who are buried in them: http://www.findagrave.com/index.html

I don't view cemetaries as morbid at all. I am not into blood, guts, gore, or anything remotely close to that, but I love cemetaries. I think they are super peaceful and they are about as close to History as you can possibly get. It blows my mind to think that these people are laying 6 feet under me dressed in the clothes they would have worn at that time. Of course I would never WANT to see that, but I like to think about who each person was, when they lived, what they might have been like, who they might have loved. I think it's sad when people are scared of cemetaries or when they turn them into gross things, every single one of those people lived, just as we do, all of them were passionate about something, just as we are, all of them loved someone, just as we have, they all had families, jobs, hobbies, interests. How can people just like us be scary? I often walk through a cemetary with my 5 year old and explain to him that death is a part of life and not something we should fear.

RDM thank you so much for sharing your pictures of gravestones. I should get in the habit of taking more pictures of interesting ones. I find them fascinating too. Sometimes it's hard to find pre-1800's ones even around here in New England. I went to Salem, MA last year and they have the coolest cemetary I had ever seen. HEre's a picture from that one:



I also have pics of the family in the cemetary there, because I am not scared of cemetaries at all. I respect them more then most, but am not scared of them. So long answer short, yes I have had a picnic in a cemetary because I think the people in there deserve and would want to be remembered by those of us that are still living.

Rachel