Happy Halloween

there's a lovely mood in a cemetery on a wet fall day. Very somber, as if the graves themselves know its Halloween.
the leaves help, blanketing everything thickly. They certainly add a bit of atmosphere.

The rain-dampened stones certainly look all nice and ready for a real haunting, even the modern graves manage to look somewhat creepy.
But why? Why do moss and leaves and rain seem so sinister in graveyards? Is it that Fall reminds us of death? Is it the heavily influence of the media, all those movies and fabulous documentaries on hauntings?

for that matter: why do we persist in out belief that graveyards are haunted? Doesn't it make more sense that ghosts would be in places where they had lived, rather than the place where their remains were interred? Based on that, other than my eventual specter, most ghosts should generally avoid graveyards. On the other hand, is the concept of "making sense" one that we can actually apply to ghosts?

(I'm not entirely sure about ghosts, one way or another, and if not for Halloween, I wouldn't be discussing them here.)

Regardless, the atmosphere is wonderful, well suited to deep thoughts, heavy philosophy, and intense emotion. Its a marvelous time to stand graveside and contemplate mortality, and the lives of all who came before us. This Halloween, don't waste all your time mooching candy off your neighbors; go visit your local cemetery, and ponder the deep questions of life.

Our Glorious Dead

Groveton Confederate Cemetery has two headstones. There are 266 soldiers buried here, but most of them were never identified. thats 264 families left wondering.

but from the standpoint of a resting place, what more could you ask for? These boys are here, now, among the fields and trees where they fought and died. And if not for the heavy-handed gate and the fenced area, this might well be another field, another lovely roadside picnic area. It clearly doesn't matter to us, after our death, whether we lie in a glorious mausoleum or in the unmarked, sun-dappled ground beneath a tree. Even the most lovingly placed and carefully inscribes tombstones eventually fall into disrepair, and rather than bittersweet reminders of a dearly adored one, they become sinister props to nightmares.

But the fact remains that the presence of a cemetery, of the stones themselves, provides us with a link, with a reminder of generations past, even if they aren't our own glorious dead. We are not the first to face struggles, to suffer, to contemplate death. It is, in many ways, a comfort to walk among the old headstones and know that you will not be the first to venture into the valley of the shadow, and to hope that you, too, will be lovingly remembered with a carefully placed stone, and possibly flowers, flags, trinkets. In that regard the unmarked graves of Groveton are far more horrifying than even the most run-down cemetery: here lie the unremembered, the lost and alone. How many more lie interred around us, the nameless deceased of the ages, gone now, and forgotten?