Cover #1
“I never saw a purple cow I never hope to see one
But I can tell you anyhow I’d rather see than be one.”
And the same holds true for a ghost.
However I've heard one and it didn't moo or say boo which would have been better either way.
Title Page #2
Title Page:
The longer I live the more I realize that truth is not an absolute. Sometimes I don’t believe things I know to be absolutely true. There are many tales of ghosts and other anomalies that have been for the most part proven as facts. Yet they are more question than answer and more for sensationalism then for any real purpose but when all is said and done we all like to believe in the unbelievable.
So this is not so much a book about the dead as about the living in the myths of it. Though most of the time books about cemeteries are equated with weird and supernatural happenings, there are some aspects to cemeteries that make them rich with color and alive with interest. And though I’ve had some strange experiences in my travels to different graveyards to my knowledge I have never had an encounter with a ghost or at least none that I recognized as such. My objective is to display death alive with light, dramatic with shadows sometimes shrouded in mystery and salted with a little humor.
Cemetery Pinckney, Michigan
Dedicated to Mary Ellen #3
Dedication:
Dedicated to a friend I'll never forget.
I spent several years trying to find Mary Ellen's grave. The day she was buried was a brutal March day with an ice storm and cold winds. School closed in the morning that day and I had to catch the bus home and therefore wasn't able to attend her funeral. I never knew where she was buried and had long ago lost touch with the family so the search took me through several cemeteries where she wasn't.
I remember Mary Ellen as a bubbly happy person with musical laughter. The last time I saw her was on a Friday afternoon in the school bathroom just before we caught the bus home. She had just returned to school after spending several months in a TB Sanitarium, but being pronounced cured was released. She looked great that day and seemed to be as healthy and vibrant as ever.
"See you on Monday," She said as we parted that afternoon.
On Monday morning the first thing I heard when I got to school was that Mary Ellen had died the night before. TB aside Mary Ellen was also diabetic and on Sunday she went into a diabetic coma and never came out of it.
I never forgot Mary Ellen because of the light she shed on my world during the short time I knew her. It was a light that reached down through the years of separation. Though I had other friends that died in High School, none of them left me with the light that she had.
St. Mary's Cemetery Milford, MI.
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"To understand the living you gotta' commune with the dead."#4
From: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Communing with the dead doesn't necessarily mean talking to dead spirits it means realizing the good that is left by those that are absent in body. It's the part that never dies, it's their song, their laughter, their love and nobody has to be a Medium to receive those. However knowing something and realizing it are two different things.
It is said that no man could live up to his epitaph because those that have passed seem to become shrouded in a type of sainthood. After a person is gone it’s usually not necessary to remember the bad things they did unless they had done a great deal of harm to somebody and even then we have to forgive it’s required.
Minerva said to Jim, (In Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) “Tell me something about him.”
Jim, “He tried to kill me?”
Minerva, “No, before then. Something good. Your kind words... ...take root, flower, come back to bless you.”
Likewise evil words create havoc and destruction.
I knew a woman that couldn’t say enough bad things about her husband after he died and somehow her husband became the subject of all of her conversations. It was creepy and a little scary. I could plainly see he was haunting her perhaps even trying to pull her into the grave with him. Her soul stumbled through a barren wilderness and though her words had no power to hurt him they sprouted thorny bushes and prickly weeds. Nobody could comfort her and soon nobody had any pity for her. Finally nobody even wanted to be around her and she became a lonely soul in a wasteland of her own making.
(Say) “Something good.”
John French Sloan had an excellent solution. “Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're alive.”
03-JUL-2007
This will give you Heart Burn #5
In the 1700s Colonel John Mulryne built a mansion, from bricks brought from England, on the land where Bonaventure cemetery is now. The mansion burned and the only thing left is a vine covered foundation. By all accounts it was a spectacular fire that took place during a formal dinner party with servants standing behind every chair. In the middle of the dinner a butler whispered to the host that the house was on fire. The host rose calmly, clinked his glass, and invited his guests to pick up their dinner plates and follow him to the gardens. The servants carried the table and chairs after them, and the dinner continued by the light of the raging fire.
Photo taken in Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia
03-JUL-2007
The Lost #6
When we reached Bonaventure cemetery I wandered down the road alone and away from my husband and his sister.
I like to be by myself when taking pictures because people can be a distraction and sometimes get in the way. I found myself close to what I thought was the back of the cemetery when I came upon this scene. I just stood there while the sun moved in and out of wispy clouds casting shadows across this forlorn stage.
I knew they were preparing for a Military funeral because some of honor guard had pulled in up at the front though nobody had made it back there yet. I wondered if it was another soldier lost in the non-existing war? I didn’t know.
I stood for a long time gazing at the emptiness of death. No casket, no people, nothing but symbols of what was to come. A silence hung heavy in the air. Not even a bird twittered or flew, just the wind dancing like ghosts through the Spanish moss.
Then the spell was broken by the beat of an approaching helicopter and soon a chopper approached circling overhead.
I took a few shots then strolled on.
Seeing another road that angled off to my right I went deeper into the cemetery not even thinking of the possibility that I might be considered lost by those with me. But with 600 acres to explore I couldn't let any grass grow under my feet, Lord knows it'll grow a lot longer over them.
Photo taken in Bonaventure Cemetery Savannah, Ga.
03-JUL-2007
Little Gracie #7
Little Gracie was born in 1883, the only child of her parents, her father was the manager of the Pulaski House, one of Savannah's leading Hotels where the beautiful and charming little girl was a favorite with the guests. Two days before Easter, in April,1889, Gracie died of pneumonia at the age of six. In 1890, when the rising sculptor, John Walz, moved to Savannah, he carved this life-size memorial delicately detailed marble statue, using a photograph. The statue has captured the interest of passersby for over a century.
(This is the most viewed gravesite in Bonaventure)
Gracie cropped
22-JUL-2005
The Haunting of Old Sheldon #8
The trees hung heavy with a gray lacy substance making them appear eerie even spooky on that gray fall day.
“What is that stuff?” I asked my sister-in-law. The two of us were on our way to Beaufort where Ruthie, was moving. I was going with her so she wouldn’t have to drive to her new home alone and every since we had turned off the main road I had felt as if we were heading into no man’s land. The farther we went the more overgrown and tangled the landscape became it was like a jungle skirting the edges of the road and the strange gray dangling masses didn't help any.
Ruthie glanced upward through the windshield. “Spanish moss,” she said then added that it was a fungus that grew all over down there.
We passed the ruins of an old building and I quickly took in the few scattered above the ground crypts. Some of the lids were askew and a couple were broken or gone missing. The place was almost hidden in a tangle of weeds. It definitely looked haunted, forlorn and desecrated. It was like nothing I had ever seen before and it intrigued me. I knew I would have to come back and see it close up the charm of it haunted me long after it was out of sight. However, I didn't get a chance to take any pictures of it for about 30 years.
Church of Prince William's Parish
Known as Sheldon.
Built between 1745 and 1755
Burned by the British Army in 1779
Rebuilt 1826
Burned by the Federal Army 1865
Left to ruins. Gardens Corners, South Carolina.
Noted haunting: Sometimes a woman is seen dressed in a simple brown dress dated in the pilgrim era. She stands by the grave of an infant who died. Feelings of sorrow overcome some people.
"Have you ever heard of him?" #9
I asked my teenage grandson after he said, “Cool,” over my shoulder while he watched me manipulate this picture.
“Wasn’t he the Rebel without a Cause guy?” Bobby said and his answer surprised me.
Though James Dean was from my era I barely knew who he was myself until I visited his grave in Fairmount, Indiana. But then celebrities don't interest me much until after they're dead. I wouldn't go across the street to see most entertainers perform but would travel many miles to visit their grave-site and then only as long as it was on my route.
James Dean was a legend in his own time and became immortalized by his death.
His tombstone has been stolen a couple of times and had to be replaced once. Once it was found in a field behind the cemetery.
The farm where James was raised, by his aunt and uncle, is about a mile down the road from the cemetery. The farm has been heavily renovated and modernized and I’m sure looks nothing like the homestead where the boy grew up.
The Secret Graveyard #10
An ancient cemetery back in the woods lost to time and long forgotten.
I read about this cemetery in "Aaron's Crossing" (a true Ghost Story)by Linda Alice Dewey. The story line piqued my interest and I wanted to see the place where she had met Aaron Burke a man who had been dead for at least seventy years.
I found out where the cemetery was located from John at the Evolve Store in Glen Arbor, Michigan then followed the leaf-strewn undefined path until I came upon this long-lost graveyard.
I was glad that the new publicity about it hadn't inspired a crew of beautification experts to run out and change the atmosphere of the place. It looked as if nobody had been there in years.
A few stones were inside an old wire-fence and several were hither and thither outside it. It was definitely a place full of feeling and atmosphere as the sun lowered and the shadows lengthened on that late afternoon.(click Next)
Excerpt from Aaron's Crossing #11
(Aaron said)"Seasons came and went winters blew over the cemetery and through me. Each summer the trees became taller and the forest became more dense hiding the little graveyard from civilization."
From: Aaron's Crossing (A true Ghost Story) by Linda Alice Dewey.
(Chapter 19 p. 243)
Sentence used with permission. (click next)
Aaron said, #12
"The living had long ago stopped bringing bodies to this old place. The road grew over until it became simply a path."
From: Aaron's Crossing (A true Ghost Story) by Linda Alice Dewey.
(Chapter 19 P 243)
Sentence used with permission.
