Creepy Halloween sounds so much more fitting than "Happy Halloween", doesn't it? Halloween is supposed to be creepy, because that's what makes it fun, after all.
Whether or not you believe that the gate between the worlds of the living and the dead will swing open on All Hallows Eve, a cemetery can be an intriguing place...
Please allow me to share with you some of my favorite "haunts'...
Cemetery in Bloomington, IN
SpringGrove Cemetery, Cincinnati, OH
New Orleans Cemetery, photo by Louis Martinie
The festival observed at this time was called
Samhain (pronounced
Sah-ween). It was the biggest and most significant holiday of the Celtic year.
The Celts believed that at the time of Samhain, more so than any other time
of the year, the ghosts of the dead were able to mingle with the living, because
at Samhain the souls of those who had died during the year traveled into the
otherworld....Virtually all present Halloween traditions can be traced to the ancient Celtic
day of the dead. Halloween is a holiday of many mysterious customs, but each
one has a history, or at least a story behind it. The wearing of costumes,
for instance, and roaming from door to door demanding treats can be traced
to the Celtic period and the first few centuries of the Christian era, when
it was thought that the souls of the dead were out and around, along with fairies,
witches, and demons. Offerings of food and drink were left out to placate them. ( Jack Santino,
The American Folklife Center)
shop window in Richmond, VA
St. John's Church, Richmond, VA
The oldest gravestones I've ever seen were here. At this church, Patrick Henry uttered the famous words, "Give me liberty, or give me death."
This burial is so old you can no longer make out any words or carving at all.
A beautiful place.
SpringGrove Cemetery, Cincinnati, OH
SpringGrove Cemetery, Cincinnati, OH
All Hallows Eve
By Dorothea Tanning
Be perfect, make it otherwise.
Yesterday is torn in shreds.
Lightning’s thousand sulfur eyes
Rip apart the breathing beds.
Hear bones crack and pulverize.
Doom creeps in on rubber treads.
Countless overwrought housewives,
Minds unraveling like threads,
Try lipstick shades to tranquilize
Fears of age and general dreads.
Sit tight, be perfect, swat the spies,
Don’t take faucets for fountainheads.
Drink tasty antidotes. Otherwise
You and the werewolf: newlyweds.
Who knew Dorothea Tanning wrote such things? Enchanting!
