Cemeteries don’t need the supernatural to terrify. Zombies and revenants aren’t required to raise gooseflesh along our necks. Ghosts don’t have to peer out from mausoleums to sink that stone of dread into our guts. King’s Pet Sematary is a great example of the fear that has been associated with graveyards in the horror genre . . . the dread of What if they come back? What if they come back, but different? This misses the true point of what is scary about cemeteries. On their own, graveyards are one of the most immediate reminders of our mortality. You see the names, the dates, and sometimes the causes of death. You see yourself reflected back in each of the polished (or sometimes tarnished) headstones. It’s undeniable, but there’s always one question I find myself coming back to when I think about cemeteries:
What is more haunting: an old cemetery filled with gothic crypts and moss-stuck graves, or the modern, plastic-wreath-draped version of a burial ground?
On one of our first dates, my wife and I drove to a cemetery in Holyoke, MA to go for a walk, because hey, it’s peaceful, and you don’t have to worry about getting run over by passing cars. We didn’t realize the front gate would be locked around sunset, so we found ourselves trapped inside with our car for a few hours before someone unlocked it.
In some ways, my mind has always been trapped in cemeteries. My favorite movie as a child was The Nightmare Before Christmas. In high school, my friends and I were the stereotypical graveyard loiterers depicted in movies. Throughout college, I mowed the cemeteries of my hometown during the summer, which is the basis for my debut novel, Living in Cemeteries (JournalStone, April 2024), and the reason I know so many odd facts about their maintenance and upkeep.
For example, did you know many graves from the late 1800s to the early 1900s consisted of a buried brick vault containing the coffin, often constructed in hopes of preventing grave robbers from getting in? That those vaults would frequently be covered by a thin piece of slate? Do you know how durable slate is? The answer: not very. After a time, rainwater causes the slate to erode and the grave to cave in. When you run a lawnmower over those graves, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll find yourself inside the vault with whomever was buried there. This happened a few times while I was working. It’s not exactly the most fun part of the day when you have to get winched out of a sunken grave . . . and I can’t imagine the dead appreciate it either.
On Cape Cod, where I live, our cemeteries stretch back to the 1600s. Many of these stopped interments after the 1800s, after which point they were considered full. But many contain ancient and new stones alike, giving us a glimpse of how people have mourned throughout time, and how burial practices have changed. Both the new and the old hold their own spooky elements, but each are distinct in their own way.
So . . . which do you find more terrifying?
Well, let’s start with the different shapes a cemetery can take. Sometimes historic cemeteries are vast, acre upon acre. Sometimes they are three weather-worn graves on the side of the road. Sometimes they are ten granite slabs in the middle of the woods, marked by a smallpox burial sign overgrown with poison ivy. Being on the Cape, there are plenty of Lost at Sea memorials, mostly belonging to young men in the age range of nineteen to thirty . . . the same age range I occupied while I weed whacked around their stones. There were often chained-off mausoleums in the older sections, grated windows looking into burial chambers where you could glimpse a casket and imagine what remained inside, or rewrite a scene from Dracula if you were in the mood (I listened to a lot of audiobooks while I mowed).
Beyond anything, I believe the most haunting aspect of older sections are the squat stones that read simply: BABY. Family plots often contain a crowd of such stones, the parents having decided against naming their children after one too many didn’t make it through their first week. If you want a reminder of how short a life can be, they’re out there waiting for you. I never saw tiny ghosts lingering between the stones, but that didn’t stop my mind from placing them there.
Most new sections consist of neat rows of headstones and intentional tree placement, marble mourning benches and ceremonial gazebos. The stones lack that gothic aesthetic, but I’d argue some of the recent trends are far more terrifying than the engraved skulls and weeping willows. Nowadays, someone can get a photorealistic image of themself engraved on their stone or printed on ceramic. Just having a name written there isn’t so bad, but when you have the face of those buried below looking at you as you run your mower around their headstones, it’s truly unnerving, their likeness humanizing an otherwise impersonal rock.
One of the most distinct differences between the old cemetery and the new is not what’s written on the stones, but what clusters around them. I think of this as a shift in grave good mentalities. The plastic flowers that refuse to age, the plastic tchotchkes of a favorite animal that create eternal menageries, the plastic ornaments that are swapped out for each corresponding holiday. While the bodies decay below ground, we are decorating these graves with objects that will outlive us. You and I will rot, while that plastic pig figurine ironically cooking a skillet of bacon besides your headstone will not. And I don’t like that, the idea that these tiny plastic Pokémon and book-reading squirrels and Barbies will exist long past my own expiration date, even if they are a little sun-bleached and melted. More often than not, it’s not going to be the ghosts of the dead haunting our cemeteries, but the manufactured capitalist trash that lines the shelves of the Dollar Store and Walmart.
While I can easily picture ghouls haunting the older sections, it’s hard to imagine them in the new. But what isn’t hard to imagine in the new is you and me. One specific grave sticks with me. The squat headstone belonged to a high schooler who died in a car accident near my childhood home. Around his headstone are a number of skateboards slowly decaying, grip tape peeling under the constant beat of the sun. There are the plastic figurines from his (probably) favorite TV shows. These objects could have decorated my own grave if I’d passed at a similar point in my life. While the Lost at Sea stones make me uneasy, there’s no comparison to their modern counterparts, and the little piece of ourselves we can see in each one.
So, which would you prefer to get locked inside of on an early date with your significant other? The ancient cemeteries with their gothic trappings and imagined ghosts . . . or their new, plastic-drenched neighbors where each of us will end up one day?
I know where I prefer to go for my walks.
