Cemeteries: A peacefull or dreadfull place ??

The other day we picked up a hitch-hiker during a town trip, and when we were approaching the local cemetery, he said "Tell me when we are past the cemetery", and ducked down in the seat, closed his eyes, blocked his ears, pinched off his nose, and hummed loudly. We were all quite shocked and asked him to explain. He said he didn't want to die, and so he needed to block off all his senses when going near a cemetery. This seemed very crazy to us at the time, but it got me thinking about different ways of thinking about death.

My family once lived near a huge park-like cemetery, and we took walks there everyday (and sometimes at night), and sat on blankets on the grass, and read, picnicked, sunbathed, and had a serene and peaceful summer, leaning against tombstones, and hanging out and relaxing.

Why the contrasting attitudes about cemeteries and death ?
Do you have any interesting reflections?

 

I hate cemetries . there are like bodies there.You wont see me walking in a cemetery ..

 

I've always felt wierd at cemeteries. It's just an odd feeling to know that people are buried under the ground by 6 feet from where you stand. And not just a few either, hundreds.

 

Most of the old country cemeteries around here are pretty easy places to visit, melancholy sort of places but not unpleasant or foreboding. Don't know about big city cemeteries, never been around them. Lived along the Amazon River in Peru for a while, Knew folks there that would flat out run to avoid cemeteries...especially if you came across a grave out in the jungle. Guys there told me there were way too many spirits around them to take any chances. I could feel spirits there more clearly than I do here. Theres a bit of a feeling there that there might be some bad-ass entities there...things better off left alone.

 

Cemeteries do not bother me. I live very near one and I don't think anything about it. My belief is that the bodies in the ground are just that so I don't have any fear about it. I have gone and sat next to my Grandmother's grave when I needed to clear my head. I did feel more comfortable being next to her tombstone than a stranger's but I think it's because her name gave me a feeling of familiarity. Not because I thought she was there but it was a quiet place to sit and admire the scenery.

 

I love them... I go to old ones in every place I vist... walk around them at night... read all the epitaphs... so peaceful!

 

You have to expect strangeness if you pick up hitch-hikers. You're just lucky you didn't end up hacked into little pieces.... Now, onto the cemetry thing. When I was a kid my father use to have picknicks with us in cemetaries... fuck I had a strange childhood

 

pickniks at the cemetaries??that really is strange...lol
i like cemetaries at night,cuz its so peaceful but at the same time very
scary so i i dont go at the cemetaries at night alone..guess im strange to

 

fingernailz an hairz, just keep groovin.

 

I've never seen cemeteries as peaceful places. Me and my friend used to go running in a cemetery near my house, and I could never run past dark because I would be just too afraid.

 

(Click for larger image)

Peaceful, mostly because I live down the street from this (Bonaventure cenetery, Savannah, GA).

 

Peaceful. I sometimes eat my lunch in one near my college, theres benches and its just like a park with pigeons to feed the crumbs from my subway oatmeal and raisin cookie. Its interesting to se how old the place is too, the oldest stone I've found so far said 1617 or something. Theres also ones with strange im guessing masonic marks on them.

 

Jezzbelle, I love your picture, thanks so much for that, it looks like such a beautiful, definitely peaceful, place. I remember spending many quiet hours in a similar cemetery, it was just timeless, a place rare in this hustle- bustle world of busy people. Cemeteries have never been spooky or eerie to me.

I definitely thought about the inevitability of dying more there, and then came to be supremely comforted by my contemplations about life and death. Death happens to everyone and everything that is ever alive, and will happen to you and me. It is as natural as being born. No one really knows what happens after we leave this realm on earth, and so I choose to believe it is just as exciting and adventurous as being born, and see no reason not to look forward to it with a feeling of spiritual openness and existential optimism.

 

Different cemetaries have different vibes. There was one not too far from me that we would go to every halloween. This place would make a grown man cry. Soon as you stepped foot inside chills ran down your spine. One night you couldn't strike a lighter inside the fences, but if you reached your hand over the fence outside the cemetary, it would light fine. Bring it back in and the flame would dissapear. I've seen a noose swinging back and forth, hanging from the center tree.......no wind, not even a slightest breeze. Graves freshly dug when you couldn't even read the tombstone it was so old. I later found out that Satanists were digging up graves and playing with the bodies. They actually killed someone there, and burried her in one of the graves. Since that happened they re did the cemetary, put all new tombstones, replaced the old iron fence, and paved the road. Though you won't see any crazy shit there anymore, you still get a creepy chill when you put one foot inside the fence.

 

Though for the most part though, I find them to be a peaceful place. The one above was doomed to begin with, it was built with a 'curse'. The most peacful ones I find to be close to a church......the church their burned down multiple times.

 

I like cemeteries, they're very interesting and I'm, just in general, attracted to that sort of mood that surrounds them. The hitchiker hated them because he feared death...which is pretty common I guess, but I personally WANT to die eventually and don't really like the idea of living forever, in heaven or through reincarnation or anything like that...mortality is beautiful to me.

 

My old schoolbus used to ride by the cemetery everyday, and I used to shut off all my senses like that. I used to be very superstitious about death and spirits. I guess now, since the only cemeteries here are out in the country or the one 40 miles away in Beaufort, I don't do it as much. I think it's just respect...I've somehow always thought that ghosts are involuntarily drawn to live souls, so it's best to let them wander without any kind of distractions.

 

ah guud place 4 all you phony wannah talk hip Phonyz.

 

And what kind of hippy are you? OooOOOoOoO yea... the only hippie, thats right I almost forgot.

 

I enjoy most cemetaries.

I spent every summer of my childhood with my Gran in New England. My cousins came to stay with her too.

Gran was cool - she'd take us in her little VW bug for day trips - which often included really interesting old New England cemetaries.

We ate lunch in them - we ran around reading headstones and exclaiming over the (sometimes HOURS long) ages of birth and death. We were raised, I guess, to appreciate the energy of cemetaries.

Gran even had a book called "The Last Laugh" which was nothing but FUNNY quotes from old tombstones.

I HAVE been in BLAH cemetaries - big, huge, corporate-like gigantic ones. They do nothing for me - they feel like golf courses with too many interruptions. I don't care for those kinds of cemetaries - they are void of "dirt" energy. OLD, SMALL, quiet cemetaries though - they have dirt energy - you can FEEL transformation happening all around you.

I am one who wishes to be cremated and have my ashes scattered across my favorite places - so I do not particularly wish to be buried in a cemetary (if they still put us in literal pine boxes that would decay and let us merge with the earth I'd feel differently - but today's fortresses of eternal "seperation from the earth" do not appeal to me) - but I do enjoy them - morning, noon, night, winter, summer, fall, spring, whenever.

I think maybe the guy who ducked and avoided the cemetary is afraid of death to the point of denial.

As a hippie-gypsy-pagan - I am glad I don't feel that way. Death is a part of the cycle of life, and while we do not LIKE to consider losing others to death, it is the natural order - and besides we can't "lose" what wasn't ours to begin with. We share space and time with others - but they are never really "ours" - death reminds us of that fact - a fact some are uncomfortable with.