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Goths have discovered what the status quo has not—cemeteries
are just about the last places available to be alone in the city. They
are perfect for quietly strolling, leisurely reading, drawing, singing,
simply spending time with a loved one. Old-growth plants, like rose bushes
that can date back to the Victorian era, grow in cemeteries and are perfect
for taking cuttings.
When populations were still small enough that most people lived in rural
settings and little villages, it was easy enough to bury the dead. The
bodies of the lord of the land and his family went directly down to the
crypts beneath the castle, where they rested eternally in stone coffins.
Serfs who worked the land were simply buried on the land. Community was
everything, in life and in death. But when people began migrating to cities,
and the population of those cities expanded, funerals became a more difficult
affair. At first, nobility and clergy could be placed beneath the floor
of the cathedral—those closest to the holiest spots inside the church,
like the altar, had either supported the church financially or had lived
the most pious lives. Parishioners complained that the churches did not
smell very good, and it's easy to understand why. The ordinary faithful
were buried in the churchyard, and there too positioning proved crucial.
Those buried close to the church on the east side had the advantage: The
resur-
reeled would be able to watch the sunrise on Judgment Day! The north corner
of the graveyard was considered the Devil's domain, reserved for stillborns,
bastards, and strangers.
By the Middle Ages, populations in cities had exploded. Wars, and nearly
two centuries of plague—black and other types—culled populations
dramatically, and burials became impossible to carry out. Enormous "bone
pits" were dug and bodies dumped into these communal depositories
on top of those who had died before them. It wasn't until the middle of
the 1700s that death reached a crisis pitch, and something had to be done.
Cemetery design came into vogue.
According to Katherine Ramsland, author of Cemetery Stories, garden cemeteries—the
new designs of the late 1800s that resembled a British garden—"merged
nature and art." Consequently, "The public was lured into the
sanctuary of the dead."
Katherine goes on to say, "The extensive landscaping inspired many
sculptors to display their talents. Tourists came in droves, and artists
soon found themselves in demand."
The Victorians took to cemeteries (the word means sleeping chamber) .
. . well, the way goths do. Weekend outings with the entire family were
a common practice, a chance to socialize and "take in the air."
They held picnics, admired the statuary on the graves and mausoleums of
the rich and famous, contemplated poetry and the mysteries of life, paid
their respects to deceased friends and family, and enjoyed a visit to
the frequently adjoining arboretum.
Katherine believes goths are enamored because "[cemeteries] inspire
us to ponder possibilities, and since most people avoid the subject [of
death], goths can claim it as their own special arena."
Today, cemeteries are more for the dead, not the living. They have fallen
out of favor as places to visit, apart from mourning, or for tapophiles
(lovers of tombs)—and goths, who are often tapophiles.
Goths have been picnicking in cemeteries since . . . well, the beginning.
Possibly the first recorded instructions for a goth picnic appeared in
The Web, a print publication out of Chicago, put together by Heather Spear
in the early 1990s. In one issue, a picnic is described at Gore Hill Cemetery,
with an accompanying list of general suggestions for goth picnikers.
It was the Chinese, around 300 B.C., who appear to have made the first
rubbings. They used permanent colored wax and dyes to reproduce infor-
TYPES OF CEMETERIES
Church vaults: Inside a church, near statues or areas of intense worship,
beneath the floor in subterranean rooms or vaults. Usually reserved for
clergy or important persons.
Churchyard/Graveyard: Small, flat, organized, situated beside a church,
may or may not be enclosed by a fence. Burials for church members and
families.
Family plots: Located near a rural house or a farm. Private, family members
only.
Forest: A large piece of land with cemetery buildings around a central
hilly part, graves hidden in dense foliage, dirt paths, artistically disorganized
or haphazard feel.
Garden: Medium-height stones, a few obelisks. Ornamental monuments clustered
within designated lots, not necessarily aligned in rows. Trees often line
the paved roads and cars can drive through.
Lawn: Resembles a suburban lawn, clipped grass, footpaths, low stones,
or metal plates at ground level. Non-ornamental. One central roadway.
Park: Slightly hilly, trees old and random growth, can be wild with undergrowth,
asymmetrical. Concrete, flagstone or dirt paths, similar to larger city
parks.
Rural: Small, located in the country, usually in a field. Burials of area
residents.
180 *i* THE GOTH BJBLE
mation on parchment, basically laws, slogans, and messages carved into
the stone of temples. Rubbings are a kind of missing link in human history
that led from records in stone to records on paper—a bit of a forerunner
of the printing press. Over the centuries, rubbers began to favor images,
done on stone and metal. Many Asian countries display large rubbings they
call batiks (not the same as the fabric known as batik). Rubbings can
also be done on surfaces like architectural reliefs, and even on leaves.
Many of the more commonly seen rubbings come from churches—Medieval
knights and dames and popes are popular.
But gravestones produce the most intriguing rubbings. The flat stones
of New England's cemeteries have long been favorite haunts of rubbers.
The Fugit Hora (Time is Fleeting) light-bulb death's heads began as crude,
cartoonlike images dug into slate by the Pilgrims in the 1600s and evolved
to the more sophisticated designs of the 1800s before they finally disappeared.
Epitaphs themselves can be worth reproducing. One perennial favorite from
the gravestone of John Wilson in Georgia reads: "I told you I was
sick!"
Gravestone Artwear is a ten-year-old mother-and-daughter operation based
in York Harbor, Maine. Paulette and her daughter Cassandra specialize
in reproducing Colonial, Celtic, and Victorian gravestone carvings, on
T-shirts, sorcerers' pouches, stationery, and velvet garments like cloaks,
scarves, and dresses. They also sell natural-ingredient soaps shaped like
New England tombstones, and kits to do tombstone rubbings.
It was Cassandra who inadvertently began this company by carving silk
screens from gravestone rubbings, then printing the designs on posters
and fabric as part of her art school portfolio. These were given to friends
and sold at fairs, and soon she and her mother opened a workshop, with
space for a retail shop. "Naturally, our items are dark in nature—no
bright colors for us," Paulette says. "Black is our favorite
non-color, and thus the word was out—visit this macabre shop where
black is dominant." They decorated their shop with "gravestone
rubbings we have done or acquired over thirty years. Our black dog joins
us most days." And above Cassandra's production area is their prized
possession, a ten-by-two-foot black sign with gold-leaf lettering advertising
the Austin Embalming and Mortuary business. "It dates back to 1912.
When we rented the space we didn't know that back then this is where the
embalming took place. The
Movw to MOLD A Gotn Picnic in tHE
Suggestions adapted from Chicago's original Gore Hill picnickers
Organize! Pick a date when no other major goth events are being held,
or events in or near the cemetery. (You can't help spontaneous funerals!
But it's certainly better to skirt the mourners rather than rush up to
the open grave and ask "Can I peek at the corpse?")
Advertise! Make flyers and Web sites with: date, place, time, how radically
to dress, and a phone number for info. It's good to be specific: bring
a blanket to sit on; bring food (no, it's not obvious); water (don't drink
from the water used to refresh flowers on graves); sunscreen and sun umbrellas;
insect repellent; something warm if it turns cool at nights.
Hypothesize! Distribute four times the number of flyers as you want attendees.
Bigger=more attention. This has a negative effect, in that you don't want
annoying elements to show up. On the other hand, if people don't know
you're having a picnic, they won't come, will they?
Utilize! Pick a discreet spot, preferably under the shade of a tree, keep
the noise level down, clean up your trash.
Proselytize! If the police or cemetery authorities show up, be friendly.
People have the right to congregate in a cemetery for peaceful purposes,
and you can even tell them you are reenacting the Victorian tradition.
But you sould avoid identifying yourself as a member of a witches coven,
don't mention that your brother is starting a teenage vampire cult, don't
discuss your love of death and decay.
Deversify! While in the cemetery, there is plenty to do besides eat and
get drunk. One annual picnic in Montreal, run by Cemetery Crow, allows
him to do group photographs. Another activity is gravestone rubbings.
181
VISITiriG THE VAULTS
funeral parlor was three doors down the street and caskets were made about
1/4 quarter mile away and brought to our location by horse-drawn carriage."
Paulette and Cassandra are in love with gravestones. "Our research
has taken us all over New England, and even on a trip to Ireland to research
ancient high crosses. Gravestone carving was the first American stone
sculpture in the New World, and old burying grounds and Victorian cemeteries
are museums without walls."
About 30 percent of Gravestone Artwear customers are goth. "And one
of our stitchers is a beautiful, very stylish goth young adult who has
a five-year-old daughter. We gave her some extra velvet fabric and she
created mother/daughter matching dresses and cloaks. These two looked
so fabulous that tourists in our summer coastal resort town had them posing
for photos. We were so proud! They even stopped traffic!"
Goths visiting New England will be delighted to learn about the nighttime
"Ghostly Tour throughout the summer, which departs our shop each
evening at 8 P.M. (except Sunday), for the old burying ground in our village."
wicket holidays
Paris
Many of the world's most exquisite cemeteries were created out of necessity.
Paris had its Cimetiere des Innocents, a mass gravesite filled with plague
victims, among others, located about where Les Halles is now. This was
consecrated but contaminated ground, with crumbling stone walls used as
a barrier between living and dead. At the Cimetiere des Innocents so many
corpses were heaped one upon another that not only did bones often fall
over the walls and onto the streets, but disease-causing seepage that
included adopcere (body fat that turns into a soaplike substance) came
through at ground level to accost passersby. The stench must have been
horrible.
In 1786, Paris decided to close down the Cimetiere des Innocents and move
the remains of about seventeen million people twenty-five meters underground,
into the quarries over which the city was built around the tenth century,
tunnels that had existed when the Romans held this part of the world.
The massive tunnel system beneath Paris holds what is now the world-famous
Catacombs of Paris.
How to DO tomBstoriE KjjBBincs
MATERIALS
• White paper like pellon (from a fabric store), unused newsprint,
or rice paper
• Masking tape
• Scissors
• Black rubbing wax or thick crayon or charcoal
• Soft-bristle brush
PROCESS
• Foremost, avoid damaging the stone.
• Clean the stone with the brush of bird droppings, dirt, moss,
lichen, mud, etc. Do not damage the stone in the process.
• Cut the paper larger than the stone and tape it to the sides,
not the front of the stone, using enough tape so the paper doesn't slip
while rubbing. If the paper slips, it causes a blurred effect, or double
image, which might be cool, too.
• Rub using the wax, crayon, or charcoal, beginning at the outer
edges of the stone. Block in the basic design using the wide, flat edge
of your rubbing material.
• Darken the design, until you have it filled in and dark enough
to suit you.
• Carefully remove the tape from the paper, and the stone.
• If you have used charcoal, you'll need to spray the paper with
a sealer, like lacquer.
FINISHING
• Cut the paper for a clean edge and whatever shape you like, or
leave ragged edges. You can also frame the rubbing.
182
THE GOTH BJBLE
Only a small section of the Catacombs is open to the public. Wandering
the deep-in-the-earth corridors crammed with bones and skulls, many artistically
arranged by the laborers who carted the remains below ground, is a spiritual
and silencing experience for most goths.
Today, Paris has many small cemeteries and three major ones. All of its
cemeteries are home to stray felines. Cemetery visitors feed them, and
locals set out covered boxes for the cats to sleep in during inclement
weather. One cemetery in Nancy, France—northeast of Paris and near
Alsace— contains an actual cat condo, which houses hundreds of felines,
fed and housed by the city government.
Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise—which receives over one million visitors
a year—is now easily accessible by Metro, but back in the 1600s
this area was far outside Paris proper, surrounded by a high-criminal
area. (The city of Paris, at that time, like most European cities, was
enclosed by fortification walls.) In the seventeenth century the Jesuits
used the land for a hospice. Then it became a meeting place under the
guidance of Pere Lachaise (Father Lachaise), confessor of Louis XIV. In
1803 Napoleon, Prefect of Paris, bought the land to be used as a cemetery,
and its history of death began. This planet contains many wonderful cemeteries,
but perhaps none are as exquisite as Pere Lachaise. Gorgeous rows of narrow
crypts that resemble gothic telephone booths line quiet stone walkways.
Many famous dead lie buried throughout the hills and lowlands within the
cemetery's walls, and each grave has a story: The naked Egyptian Art Deco
sculpture of the outrageous English homosexual author Oscar Wilde, created
by Jacob Epstein, had the penis cut off (it has since been reattached).
The tomb of the Italian painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani can be
found here, along with the tomb of his lover, who, overwhelmed by grief,
killed herself days after he died of meningitis. The grave of the beloved
French author Colette is always blanketed with flowers. Other famous dead
include Charles Nodier—an early French writer of vampire tales;
Honore de Balzac, who liked to "bury" the characters in his
stories at Pere Lachaise; brilliant, asthmatic French author Marcel Proust;
composer Frederic Chopin,- French torch singer Edith Piaf; the playwright
Moliere; Jim Morrison of the Doors . . . the list goes on and on. Perhaps
the statue here most familiar to goths is the tomb of French radical/revolutionary
Vincent Fran£ois Raspail. A sculpture of a life-size shrouded "weeper"—purported
to be his wife—clings to the window.
Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise
Photo by Hugues Let/one
Your morul existence
WAS brief Ano Aotwse.
the Win?) nusses Accuse
you of excess desire, Babble about A tbousAno
frtoolous objects,
Ano refuse you ct>en the
bonuge of A thought.
But pegetAting nritb the mistake
they completely
t)ie, A tbousAno times better
still tbeir fxte.
The Catacombs of Pahs, Italian poem from the section for the Remains of
St. Nicolas des Champs (1804)
I83
VISJTinG THE VAULTS
Dead Can Dance used this deliciously morbid image on the cover of their
CD Within the Realm of a Dying Sun. Pere Lachaise is the Louvre of cemeteries,
with everything France offers best—beauty and passionate history
interwoven into an exquisite art of death.
The most tragically romantic cemetery story is that of the star-crossed
Medieval lovers Abelard and Heloise, the oldest residents of Cimetiere
du Pere Lachaise. Letters survive the couple, detailing a tempestuous
history.
It was the twelfth century in France. Pierre Abelard was a handsome thirty-year-old
student at the University of Paris, one of the new wave of learning institutions
forming at that time. He was confident and challenging, and destined for
great things. And he had never, been in love—until he met Heloise.
The beautiful Heloise wandered the cloisters of a Paris cathedral. The
niece of Canon Fulbert, Heloise was an anomaly for the times: unmarried,
not a nun, she was allowed to study, and was known as a brilliant individual.
Abelard boarded with Uncle Fulbert and, in exchange, provided instruction
to Heloise.
Abelard and Heloise were perfectly suited—both attractive, intelligent,
and possessed of a love of learning—but their ignited passions led
to tragedy. Heloise was compromised in an era when a woman married a man
or the church, and she had done neither. Abelard's lectures became uninspired,
as his fascinations lay elsewhere. Rumors spread throughout Paris of an
illicit joining.
Uncle Fulbert separated the couple, but soon Heloise got word to her beloved
Abelard that she was pregnant. They fled to Abelard's family, where Heloise
stayed until she delivered a son, Astrolabe. Abelard returned to Paris
torn; to marry would legitimize the relationship but it would hamper his
chances of a career as a church scholar. He wrote Uncle Fulbert that he
would marry Heloise, "whom I had seduced," provided the union
could remain secret.
Heloise believed her uncle would not be satisfied, and offered to sacrifice
herself for the sake of Abelard's career by not marrying him. But ultimately
they wed in secret, Uncle Fulbert in attendance, then parted, rarely seeing
one another to perpetrate the myth that they were not involved. The baby
remained with Abelard's family.
Heloise had been right about Uncle Fulbert—his pride was wounded,
and he let the marriage be known publicly. To protect Abelard, Heloise
THE f SECTION ON GRAVEYARDS
X "[Tends to] seek out
local cemeteries wherever I go. I have
visited native burial sites, catacombs all
over the world, cemeteries in places like
Transylvania, London, Rome, Madrid,
Paris, Portugal, the Canary Islands,
Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada, and all
over the US."
CD&Uttiu "The sculptures in
cemeteries-l am fascinated by
the way that people remember the
dead. We all seek validation in life
and wonder how we will be
remembered. Cemeteries offer
a peek into the possibilities of how
those you leave behind will represent
you to the living world."
Qoist admits he's lucky. "There is a
beautiful cemetery near my home, at the
Chapel of the Holy Ghost, a ruined
church several hundred years old. Its
cemetery is disused and there are lots of
trees and some extremely ancient graves
and tombs. I love it there."
WantonBlooi "In a way [cemeteries] put life in perspective.
I have never felt more alive than at some of the moments I spent there,
with friends and people special to me.
Cemeteries are like parks, well-groomed but in cooperation with nature."
184 4- THE GOTH Bl BLE
denied the rumors, and Uncle Fulbert beat her. To protect her, Abelard
sent Heloise to a convent at Argenteuil. He made the mistake of asking
her to wear the vestments of the nuns, but not the veil—which indicated
the taking of vows.
Further enraged, Uncle Fulbert hired two men who bribed Abelard's servants.
They broke into his rooms in the dead of night and castrated him. With
few choices left him, Abelard became a Dominican, entering the abbey of
St. Denis. Before doing so, he convinced Heloise to wear the veil, against
the wishes of her friends. She took the vows perhaps not so much for love
of the Church as for love of Abelard.
Years passed. Abelard pursued theology and Heloise became a prioress,
ultimately at an abbey at Paraclete established by Abelard. Eventually
they resumed a relationship, but one far different from their early passions.
Heloise for the remainder of her life was devoted to a man who could no
longer be her husband. Abelard had won few friends in the religious-political
climate, his career marked by controversy, and her support helped sustain
him in times of bleakness.
When Abelard died in 1142, his body was brought to the Paraclete, where,
upon her death, Heloise finally joined him for eternity. Four hundred
years after their demise, the coffins of the star-crossed lovers were
moved to Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise to rest in peace together, in perpetuity.
Cimetiere de Montparnasse is home to the remains of Charles Baudelaire,
author of Lesfleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) (see Chapter 11) and
other dark poetry, and translator of Edgar Allan Poe's works into French.
This cemetery was created by joining three farms, and its stones date
back to the early 1800s. It is a large flat expanse of graves and crypts,
with lovely and unusual monuments, for instance, the life-size bronze
sculpture of Charles Pigeon (inventor of a non-exploding gas lamp) and
his wife in bed together, fully clothed. Mr. Pigeon is half rising from
his bed, startled by the angel above. Also buried here are writers Simone
de Beauvoir and Guy de Maupassant, as well as Camille Saint-Saens composer
of "Danse Macabre;" American actress Jean Seberg; and sculptor
Con-stantin Brancusi, famous for the work Le Baiser (The Kiss).
Cimetiere de Montmartre, the smallest of the large Parisian cemeteries,
has an intimate feel. Located near the famous Pigalle (prostitution) district,
it is multi-leveled, with the charm of Pere Lachaise but a slightly darker
en-
XjUsCcRuCifyX "They are
beautiful places with many stories to
tell, and it's really neat to try to imagine
how people died, why they died, and
what their lives were like. It's not always
dark and depressing, but can be
peaceful and interesting."
Auntck
Photo by Cathy Brown
VlsiTiriG THE VAULTS
185
Highgate Cemetery
Photo by Stephane Lord
vironment. Here lie the remains of painter Edgar Degas and filmmaker Francois
Truffaut. Because Montmartre is less visited, the boxes left by Parisians
for the multitude of stray cats are kept inside the narrow crypts.
London
Many amazing cemeteries exist in England, but everyone's favorite is the
now barely accessible Highgate.
Highgate Cemetery opened in the 1830s. Soon, so many were buried here
that new ground to the East was bought, across Swain's Lane. Burials didn't
take place in the eastern side until the 1860s. A tunnel beneath Swain's
Lane connects the two halves, built mainly for pallbearers to walk coffins
through.
Highgate over the years fell into abandonment to the point where, in the
1970s, a number of vampire hunters spotted the undead skulking through
the grounds. Armed with stakes and garlic, they competed with Satanists
who used the cemetery for rituals. More than one tomb was opened, more
than one corpse disinterred; several pentacles were drawn on stones. The
police came, court cases ensued, and at least one person was imprisoned,
it now appears unjustly. Highgate Cemetery fell into desolation, the very
condition goths appreciate most.
Ultimately, after changing hands a number of times, the historic cemetery
was bought for $ 1—imagine!—by the Friends of Highgate, an
organization that now conducts tours of only a small portion of the western
side—the oldest part—of the cemetery. The eastern, less evocative
half is wide open. But on the west, tourists are under the watchful eyes
of elderly tour guides and are not permitted to leave the designated path
to explore. Understandably, Friends of Highgate has a stake in preserving
the cemetery. They make extraordinary efforts at removing the perpetually
expanding wild growth, and do repairs to fallen stones and broken fences.
Yet the fact that so much of Highgate is now unavailable to the public
is a great misfortune, especially to goths, who adore and respect cemeteries.
From what one is permitted to see, western Highgate inspires fantasies
of what cemetery legends are composed of—walking corpses, ghosts
of unrequited loves, graves that open and lure people to their doom .
. .
About 170,000 people are buried at Highgate Cemetery. In the western cemetery,
the circuitous winding paths led to it being dubbed "the most magical
place in London." What delights visitors is the romantic decay,
THE GOTH BJBLE
186
surrounded by an amazing forest of rambling hills and trees. One of the
pleasures of this cemetery is strolling along the dirt paths and glimpsing
old tombstones, angels, and sculptures half hidden in the foliage. Over
the low rises, past centuries-old trees, sloping pathways appear, which
are commonly called "Avenue of Death" and "Street of the
Dead." A wide walk known as "Egyptian Avenue" leads to
an anomaly, an enormous neo-Arabic construction built around a majestic
cedar tree that predates the cemetery by about 150 years. This awe-inspiring
monument to and for the dead—with fat pillars, a columbarium and
twenty family catacombs within the inner and lower circles surrounded
by a high retaining wall with low graves before it known as The Lebanon
Circle—is situated at the cemetery's highest point.
Highgate's famous dead include the Victorian writer Marian (born Mary
Ann) Evans, forced by the era which sired her to write under the nom de
plume George Eliot. Evans scandalized society by having an affair with
a married man for twenty-seven years, living with him for twenty of those
years, and then, when he died, she re-shocked her world by immediately
marrying an old friend of the family. She was buried next to her lover,
with her husband just a few graves up the slope.
Radclyffe Hall is another famous writer interred at Highgate. Hall, known
as "John," smoked cigars and dressed in men's clothing. In 1901
she toured the New World in an old jalopy with her female cousin, a fierce
one-eyed dog for protection, and a couple of six-shooters. Hall lived
with her second female lover Una Troubridge for many years and it was
Una into whose hands she placed the awesome responsibility for giving
Hall the go-ahead to write The Well of Loneliness, which exposed their
relationship to the world, and brought Hall mounds of scandal and negative
literary criticism. The book was banned in England. Since then, The Well
of Loneliness has gone on to sell millions of copies.
Other famous bones in Highgate include writer Charles Dickens, who left
us a hideously realistic view of poverty in Victorian England, Elizabeth
Madox Brown, wife and model of Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Madox Brown,
and Socialist Karl Marx.
But undoubtedly the most intriguing goth-interest graves at Highgate are
those holding the remains of Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
his sister Christina, and Elizabeth Siddal, Rossetti's tormented wife
and the most famous and favored of the Pre-Raphaelite models, (see Chapter
11)
visiiinc THE VAULTS
187
Elizabeth was discovered working in a milliner's shop near Piccadilly.
Her mournful visual aesthetic struck the romantic Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
of painters as the epitome of fragile womanhood, and she modeled for many
of them, including the big three, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais,
and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. To pose as Ophelia for Mil-lais, Elisabeth
was required to lie in an iron bathtub of tepid water, heated by candles
underneath. She contracted pneumonia. It's thought this was the beginning
of a lifetime of illness.
Rossetti fell madly, insanely in love with "Lizzy." She lived
with him for a number of years, and although he was obsessed with her,
he managed to avoid marrying her. Back then, a woman modeling for painters
was considered not much better than a whore. An unmarried woman was bad
enough, but one living in sin ... Lizzy needed marriage to legitimize
her. By the time Rossetti could bring himself to tie the knot, the relationship
had deteriorated. Lizzy's ongoing ill health, his perpetual meanderings,
and a miscarriage that seemed to break her spirit led the moody Lizzy
to addiction and eventual death by overdose of laudanum.
Rossetti remained consumed by Lizzy until his own death, perhaps more
so after her demise than when she was alive. As her body lay for viewing
in the sitting room of their house in Highgate village, Rossetti tenderly
placed into the coffin sheets of parchment with love poems he had written
to her. The lid closed, and Lizzy took his romantic verse to her grave.
Seven years passed. Rossetti became increasingly addicted to alcohol and
chloral (usually the chlorination of ethyl alcohol), among other things.
His career as both a painter and a writer was on the skids. It was his
literary agent who persuaded the reluctant Rossetti that the poems buried
with Elizabeth— of which there were no copies—might be published
and revive his career. Lizzy's exhumation took place after dark, when
the public could not witness this grisly act. As a bonfire lit the eerie
scene, and while the bells of St. Michael's Church chimed midnight, Lizzy's
coffin was hauled to the surface. Rossetti, unable to face the macabre
sight of his wife's corpse, hid at home. Reports from those present indicate
that decomposition had not touched her. She had always been pale of complexion;
now, only her auburn tresses were longer. Elizabeth Siddal looked as lovely
as the day she had been buried.
The manuscripts were disinfected, published, and . . . met with lukewarm
reviews. They did not garner the attention that Rossetti was led to expect.
Until his death, he regretted removing them.
THE GOTH BJBLE
188
Massey Crypt interior, Toronto
Photo by Hugues Leblanc
Massey Crypt exterior, Toronto
Photo by Hugues Leblanc
Cimetiere du Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, Montreal, Quebec
Photo by Hugues Leblanc
His life terminated in a haze of addiction and madness. He remained haunted
by the ghost of his dead wife until the end.
Toronto
Toronto's largest cemetery is Mount Pleasant, home to the Massey Crypt,
one of the most unusual and gorgeous pieces of cemetery architecture in
the world. The building, constructed between 1890—1894 of large
stones, is a melange of complementery shapes, which include a tower with
tiny stained glass windows. As astonishing as the outside is, it is through
the crypt's metal and glass doors that the magic occurs. Inside at the
back, the large altar is always adorned with an enormous bouquet of dying
flowers. As the sun sets each day, the light pouring through the stained
glass rises up the sides and back of the crypt casting the most breathtaking
element of morbidity and decay onto the altar.
Lovely as this large cemetery is, one of the smaller cemeteries of Toronto
stands out. The Toronto Necropolis has headstones dating to the mid-1800s.
The layout of this cemetery is singularly appealing. It lies at the end
of a dead end, hidden from the residential neighborhood on three sides,
and on the fourth slopes down a high embankment towards the Don River.
Here there are no crypts, just stones, and a fascinating feeling of loneliness
and antiquity that permeates the atmosphere.
Montreal
The bilingual city of Montreal (aka the France of North America) where
a mountain dominates the terrain is home to three enormous graveyards.
Mount Royal is the English cemetery, Shaar Hashomayim the Jewish cemetery,
and Notre-Dame-des-Neiges the French cemetery, although English and French
are buried in all three. Cimetiere Notre-Dame-des-Neiges is the final
resting place of tormented French Canadian poet Emile Nelligan, who spent
most of his unhappy life in mental institutions, diagnosed as schizophrenic.
His 160 poems are rich in symbolism and imagery and many speak of dreaming
and death. In a city caught in a deep freeze between December and March
every year, Nelligan's haunting despair as he writes of ice crystals forming
on the windows, obliterating the outside world, is a peek into the mind
of this afflicted soul.
Cimetiere du Notre-Dame-des-Neiges is also famous for its gorgeous nineteenth-century
crypts, with ornate filigree metallic grillwork doors
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Danse Macabres, Clusone, Italy
Photo by Hugues Leklanc
that allow viewing of interiors. As replacement doors are installed, this
unique glimpse into the past becomes less and less available. Still, there
are crypts where one sees wood and metal coffins from the 1800s stacked,
some adult size, some small enough for infants, adorned with elaborate
hardware, accompanied by crypt furnishings like decaying kneeling chairs,
dusty crucifixes attached to the walls, overturned flower vases and lanterns.
The Italian Alps
Danse Macabre is the name given to the fifteenth-century "plague-art"
paintings and drawings done by anonymous artists found on cemetery and
church walls, (see Chapter 11)
Italy is one of the few places remaining with early Danse Macabre artwork
still extant. In 1485, Giacomo Borlone painted a Danse Macabre on the
exterior of the Oratory of the Disciplinarians, a church for an order
of flagellant brothers in Clusone, Italy. In 1519, Simone Baschenis painted
his Danse Macabre on the outside of the cemetery chapel San Stephano in
the
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village of Carisolo. Then, in 1539, he reproduced those images high on
the walls of the church of St-Vigile in the village of Pinzolo, two kilometers
away. These last two villages are in the Alps, not easily accessible,
and require a pilgrimage of sorts.
Venice
Italy has no shortage of amazingly artistic graveyards, including San
Michele Cemetery, founded in 1810, located on an island visible from Venice.
This island was formerly a prison until France took over the region in
the 1800s and Napoleon ordered the Venetians to ferry their dead through
the canals to the island. The cemetery which takes up the entire island
is run by Franciscan monks who tend the garden-like grounds.
Genoa
Perhaps the most important and lovely cemetery in Italy lies in Genoa.
The enormous II Cimitero di Stagliano dating from the eighteenth century
is crammed with neoclassic porticos, Gothic chapels, and statuary. One
sentimental statue reproduces the small, bent form of Teresa Campodon-ico.
The poem carved below recounts how she sold her nuts in sunshine and rain
to earn her daily bread, and also to propel her image into the future
by way of this monument! The grave of Constance Lloyd is in the Protestant
section. Lloyd, the wife of Oscar Wilde, died at the age of forty in 1898,
less than a year after Wilde's release from prison. Shamed by his imprisonment,
she changed her name and that of her two sons to Holland.
Palermo
Palermo on the island of Sicily is home to the Catacombe dei Cappuc-cini,
located beneath the church Convento dei Cappuccino, built in 1623 on the
remains of the original medieval church.
It all began in 1534 when the newly formed order of Capuchin monks arrived
in Palermo, Their first cemetery was a well where the bodies of their
dead were tossed one over the other—cappuccino coffee is named for
the color of their robes. In 1599 those corpses were exhumed and discovered
to be preserved. Later that year, a local priest decided to continue this
accidental habit and intentionally mummified Brother Silvestro so he could
pray to him. Soon other monks, and then the locals, wanted in on the action,
and mummification came into vogue. Priests, professionals,
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Mummies of the Catacombe del Cappuccini
Photo by Hugues Leblanc
and professors have their own section, as do children and women. One area
is for virgins, so designated because of the metal headbands they wear.
The normal method of preservation was simply to place a corpse in one
of the passageway cells called "strainers," composed of the
local tu-faceous (porous limestone) soil, which dried out the body in
about eight months. Once dehydrated, the mummy was then dressed in the
finery of the day and displayed along the walls of the catacomb, in a
coffin, or placed reclining or standing in a niche, alone or as part of
a tableau, wherever and however they had requested to be positioned for
eternity. The practice continued until the late nineteenth century, when
mummification was outlawed. By then nearly 1,000 mummies were on display
at the Catacombe dei Cappuccini.
The mummies of Palermo—in various stages of decay—are fascinating,
but they are not pretty. One imagines that George Romero saw them before
shooting his now-classic zombie movie Night of the Living Dead. These
mummies make an appearance in the opening shots of Werner Her-zog's 1979
remake of the classic vampire silent film Nosferatu the Vampyre. In the
1920s an exception was made and one additional mummy was permitted entry.
Dr. Solafia of Palermo embalmed the best-preserved corpse in the catacombs,
two-year-old Rosalia Lombardo; unfortunately he took the ingredients of
his chemical concoction to his grave.
Guanajuato
Guanajuato is a dusty city five hours northeast of Mexico City through
the mountains. The Panteon Municipal in Guanajuato is composed of several
walled-off sections of simple whitewashed graves, and "drawers"
in the walls that are also resting places for the dead. What makes this
cemetery so fascinating is the adjacent Museo de las Momias (the Mummy
Museum). On display are mummified bodies taken from the cemetery. The
interred were exhumed when their descendants stopped paying for up-
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keep. Only about 2 percent— 108—of the mummies at the museum
are available for viewing in their wood and glass coffin-like cases. It
is thought that the hot, dry climate results in mummification, but only
bodies removed from aboveground crypts—not buried in the earth—seem
to mummify.
At the Museo de las Momias, a mummified fetus—the world's smallest
mummy—sits next to its mother, who died pregnant. The fetus was
discovered when the mother's mummified remains were disinterred. Also
on display are children dressed in frilly christening outfits; the oldest
mummy at the museum, a French doctor who came to the region and died 200
years ago; and a mummy called the Witch, who was probably a healer. Shreds
of clothing cling to their leather-like flesh. Most are still wearing
socks, if not shoes. Outside the museum, vendors sell twisted clear toffee
called "mummy candy."
Mexico is also home to the two-day holiday el Dia de los Muertos (Day
of the Dead). On November 1 and 2 each year it is thought that the souls
of the departed return, briefly, and it is important to welcome them back.
During this time, especially in the less urban regions, families clean
graves, apply a fresh coat of whitewash, plant flowers, and burn copal
resin incense. They even cook meals by the graveside, and sleep there,
and pay the mariachi bands to sing a favorite tune of the deceased loved
one. At home, altars are built, adorned with fruits, yellow marigolds
(the "flowers of the dead"), bottles of tequila, perhaps a brand
of cigar that the departed favored, a skull made of sugar and decorated
with icing sugar and sequins with the deceased's name attached, and a
small skeletal figure that represents the deceased, often in a humorous
role. These tiny Day of the Dead skeletons are collected the world over
as Mexican folk art. Water is also placed on the altar—the dead
get thirsty during their travels. Anyone who has played the excellent
George Lucas computer game Grim Fandango can catch the bizarrely humorous
feel of this celebration, variations of which are also practiced in some
South American countries.
Museo de las Momias, Guanajuato, Mexico
Photo by Hugues Leblanc
World's smallest mummy, Museo de las Momias, Guanajuato, Mexico
Photo by Hugues Leblanc
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St. Louis Cemetery #1, New Orleans, Louisiana
Photo by Hugues Leblanc
St. Louis Cemetery #3, New Orleans, Louisiana
Photo by Hugues Leblanc
New Orleans
Between New Orleans and Baton Rouge more than sixty graveyards exist.
Forty of them are within the city limits of New Orleans, the "City
of the Dead"—a favorite goth haunt. The unique mixture of French
and Spanish architecture of the French Quarter spills over into the cemeteries.
Even the newest, Meterie Cemetery, with its enormous whitewashed crypts
and rows of rooftop angels appealing to heaven, reflects this tradition.
But it is the oldest, most decrepit cemeteries here that enjoy tremendous
goth appeal.
Saint Louis #1, at the foot of the French Quarter, is well-known and well-preserved.
The voodoo priestess Marie Laveau has a tomb here, although it's unknown
whether or not, as rumored, her bones have been secreted away by followers.
Saint Louis #1 possesses charm. With all the upkeep available, frequent
tours are conducted for those wary of tackling ghosts alone on grounds
crammed with the high oven-like tombs, so close together their alleyways
resemble those of Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise. It's easy to feel like a
child in this cemetery, dwarfed by these huge "oven crypts."
New Orleans is cursed/blessed with a low water table, meaning that below-ground
burials are rare. During floods, more than one coffin with a body has
been found floating in rivers and even in the Mississippi River. Consequently,
cremation of an unusual nature has always been the popular choice in New
Orleans. "Oven crypts" are usually designed to hold two bodies,
upper and lower, like sleeping berths on a train. Space is rented for
a year and a day. During that time, the heat and humidity of this Delta
city works to cremate the flesh. If another family member dies before
the year and a day are up, the new corpse is stored temporarily in a brick
wall of niches used for that purpose. Once the designated time lapses,
the bones within the oven are shoved to the back, the most recently departed
is interred, and the crypt walled up for at least another year and a day.
In this manner, family members' ashes are mixed together for eternity,
which might be comforting or horrifying, depending on how one views one's
relations.
Equally well-traveled as Saint Louis #1 is Lafayette #1, an historic cemetery—Anne
Rice's favorite, apparently, and within walking distance from her home—in
the Garden District, a more upscale area of town.
But the most often visited cemeteries are not necessarily the most inter-
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Dia de los Muertos figures
Photo by Nancy Kilpatrick
esting, at least to goths. Saint Louis #2 is right behind #1, but this
is a high-crime neighborhood, and not everyone is brave enough to venture
inside walls that hide much from the view from the few passersby. These
crypts enjoy little in the way of upkeep, but the disrepair has a charm
of its own. The ornate fences surrounding the crypts are broken and rusted,
and bricks composing the ovens are frequently crumbling or missing entirely,
leaving holes large enough to peer into, and in some, to see bones. It's
the same with Lafayette 2 and 3, and with the two Washington cemeteries,
the Oddfellows Cemetery, and so on. It's easy to see the unpreserved past
as it has come down to the present, and corrosion adds a charm that upkeep
denies.
St. Roc is a little gem of a cemetery, protected by a guardhouse. Here
there will likely be few visitors at the same time. Dumpsters accumulate
empty tall glass votive candleholders, and more dead roses than can be
carted off. The cemetery surrounds a small chapel, full of lighted votive
candles, and crutches affixed to the wall—St. Roc apparently healed
the lame.
New Orleans is also famous for voodoo, or vodoun, the West African—Caribbean
religion transported to the United States by way of the black slaves kidnapped
and brought over to work on Southern plantations. Voodoo is a religion.
It borrows from Catholicism, but incorporates poly-deities. Candles are
burned, magic bags of herbs, stones, and perhaps human hair or fingernail
clippings are worn around the neck for protection, spells can be cast
to entice love or money or success, and sometimes bad spells can be placed
on others—the intended victim of one of the most popular evil spells
is the philandering mate, or even that mate's lover.
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Courtesy of Lei/a/I Wendell
Voodoo ceremonies involve music and dancing that can produce a tranced
state among some participants, and when the spirits enter them, they might
speak in tongues in much the same way Pentecostals do. Little outsider
information is available about voodoo, and it is mainly media hype that
has brought the religion to the fore. Particularly because of the ability
to create zombies (see Chapter 12), B and some A movies have taken the
concept and run with it. True practitioners of the faith in New Orleans
can be found at the Voodoo Spiritual Temple. They declare that most of
what people associate with the voodoo religion is utter nonsense at best,
and disrespectful at worst.
The spin on cemeteries and death in New Orleans crystallizes at West-gate,
which for many goths fills a need. The Westgate is the gate of the four
directions that opens to the west, to death. For the past twenty-three
years, Leilah Wendell and Daniel Kemp have been documenting encounters
with anthropomorphic death entities by way of the Azrael Project. Westgate,
their black-and-purple house on Magazine Street, is home to artwork and
writings, and a meeting place for people who have met Azrael, the Angel
of Death, in any of his myriad forms.
Leilah, who is perhaps the most frequent visitor to cemeteries in New
Orleans, believes meeting the Angel of Death is a common experience. "We
have all 'met' him at one time or another as we pass through many lives.
It is that many choose not to remember."
Her first visual encounter with Azrael occurred when she was four years
old. "I saw him 'float' down from an attic entry and down the hall
to my room. I was terrified! He came towards me, sat beside me; I turned
towards the wall, shaking. I felt a hand on my shoulder. The next thing
I knew it was several hours later, and I oddly had full recollection of
what he was and I never feared him after that point. I don't know to this
day why, or what transpired during those 'lost' hours, but I 'woke up'
remembering a whole lot of things a four-year-old kid should not know."
Since that initial meeting, Leilah has had many encounters, including
crawling into crypts and sleeping with corpses to invoke Azrael, which
she documents in her books.
Such necromantic love is difficult for many people to understand, but
not for most goths. Goths comprise about 30 percent of her visitors. "I
think a lot of the ideals and images and emotions in my works many goths
can identify with. The feeling of isolation, loneliness, melancholy, the
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THE GOTH BJBLE
Courtesy of Lei/a/I Wendell
Voodoo ceremonies involve music and dancing that can produce a tranced
state among some participants, and when the spirits enter them, they might
speak in tongues in much the same way Pentecostals do. Little outsider
information is available about voodoo, and it is mainly media hype that
has brought the religion to the fore. Particularly because of the ability
to create zombies (see Chapter 12), B and some A movies have taken the
concept and run with it. True practitioners of the faith in New Orleans
can be found at the Voodoo Spiritual Temple. They declare that most of
what people associate with the voodoo religion is utter nonsense at best,
and disrespectful at worst.
The spin on cemeteries and death in New Orleans crystallizes at West-gate,
which for many goths fills a need. The Westgate is the gate of the four
directions that opens to the west, to death. For the past twenty-three
years, Leilah Wendell and Daniel Kemp have been documenting encounters
with anthropomorphic death entities by way of the Azrael Project. Westgate,
their black-and-purple house on Magazine Street, is home to artwork and
writings, and a meeting place for people who have met Azrael, the Angel
of Death, in any of his myriad forms.
Leilah, who is perhaps the most frequent visitor to cemeteries in New
Orleans, believes meeting the Angel of Death is a common experience. "We
have all 'met' him at one time or another as we pass through many lives.
It is that many choose not to remember."
Her first visual encounter with Azrael occurred when she was four years
old. "I saw him 'float' down from an attic entry and down the hall
to my room. I was terrified! He came towards me, sat beside me; I turned
towards the wall, shaking. I felt a hand on my shoulder. The next thing
I knew it was several hours later, and I oddly had full recollection of
what he was and I never feared him after that point. I don't know to this
day why, or what transpired during those 'lost' hours, but I 'woke up'
remembering a whole lot of things a four-year-old kid should not know."
Since that initial meeting, Leilah has had many encounters, including
crawling into crypts and sleeping with corpses to invoke Azrael, which
she documents in her books.
Such necromantic love is difficult for many people to understand, but
not for most goths. Goths comprise about 30 percent of her visitors. "I
think a lot of the ideals and images and emotions in my works many goths
can identify with. The feeling of isolation, loneliness, melancholy, the
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aforementioned affinity of darker things, death. My style of writing often
harkens back to the earlier styles of literature, i.e., 'purple prose'
of some of their favorite writers." Leilah, who wore black long before
there was anything remotely called "goth," says she has "...
never considered myself a part of any named subculture." Still, she
believes that her interests gel with most goths because "many goths
have also had either an affinity or some type of inner connection with
that energy on some level, which is why they are 'goth' in the first place."
For Leilah, meeting like-minded individuals is "like finding family."
Leilah describes her relationship with Azrael in this way: "I am
here in service to him and to humanity as a whole. I do this solely out
of my love for him and my hope for 'them,' that by example of our love,
humankind will eventually reconcile with their own deaths as well as with
him." She sees the relationship as "two halves of one whole,
one foot in this world, one in the next. . . always together, always apart,
yet we share emotions, understandings. We are empathic dualities, yet
we are one . . . completely in love."
She has often been asked if her encounters are "real." "For
those who have never had an encounter or a relationship with the Angel
of Death, they may never understand, but that's okay, one day they will
remember. For those who have, it is cathartic for them to be able to finally
express these things without fear of being called 'psychotic.' These things
are very real. Ask anyone who has experienced him. For those who have
faith, no proof is necessary, for those who doubt, no proof is sufficient."
Chicago
In a city of fifty cemeteries Chicago's 350-acre Rosehill Cemetery—the
largest—stands out because of its famous haunted chapel.
The Rosehill Cemetery Company's 1913 promotional booklet says the cemetery
was named for the white roses growing in abundance on the hills. But another
story insists the cemetery was named because of a mapmaker's error. The
area was originally called Roe's Hill, after a nearby tavern keeper.
Whatever the truth, opposite the Middle Lake a widow built a Romanesque
chapel in 1913 dedicated to her husband Horatio N. May. The May Chapel
can hold 250 mourners, although in its history it has been closed to mourners
more than it has been open. Adjoining the chapel is the receiving vault.
A grassy mound covers the exterior of the vault, which
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contains 300 crypts available to anyone wishing to defer interment "for
any reason."
Like the tales of how the cemetery got its name, there are several stories
about the May Crypt, and the strange goings-on there. One is that in the
1970s a Satanic group used the chapel for rituals. But its bleak history
stretches back even further. The land had been used for burials since
the 1700s, long before Rosehill Cemetery came into existence. The May
Chapel was constructed over a preexisting cave that became a crypt. During
the 1800s, bodies were stored in winter in the subterranean crypts until
the ground thawed and they could be given a proper burial. But rumor has
it, come the spring, not all of the deceased were brought aboveground.
Burying people twice seemed like a waste of money to the powers that then
were, who decided to just leave many of the bodies there. Mourners were
directed to fake graves.
Since that time, frequently when the chapel has been open to the public
for funeral services, paranormal occurrences have been observed, the source
of which seems to emanate from these belowground vaults. Lights flicker
on and off in the chapel, caskets shake and lids fly open, statues and
candleholders fall over, moans and screams are heard, as well as footsteps
running on the hardwood floors. Currently the chapel is closed to the
public. There is even talk of walling it up. But peering down the skylights
on the grassy mound one can catch a glimpse of crypts below, the openings
sealed but unidentified. Do these hold the bodies not given a proper burial?
Souls not resting in peace? Many Chicagoans think so.
Another haunted cemetery in Chicago is the small White Cemetery in Barrington,
north of Chicago. Red or white orbs of light have been observed here many
times. Orbs of light, as the psychically inclined tell us, are souls of
the departed caught on the physical plane. As well as lights, cars have
reportedly disappeared, and even a house vanished, all adjacent to the
graveyard.
Baltimore
The controversy rages on: Just who is it who is buried in Poe 's grave?
Edgar Allan Poe (see Chapter 11), considered the originator of the short
story, left us a wealth of macabre fiction and grim essays. His life was
fraught with financial hardship and emotional pain, his work largely unappreciated
until long after his demise. All this plus a weak constitution
Edgar Allan Poe's grave and monument, Baltimore, Maryland
Photo by Hugues Leblanc
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drove him to alcohol for solace. He married his cousin, creating scandal,
and when she died he never recovered from the grief. His own tragic life
ended at the age of forty.
The stories he penned are shrouded in the bizarre, but then, so is his
death.
Poe, indigent, died on the morning of October 7, 1849 in an out-of-the-way
hospital. His body lay in state for three days in the rotunda of the college
adjoining the hospital, where friends, family, and strangers paid respects.
At least fifty women arrived to receive a lock of his hair as a memento.
Relatives paid for an oak coffin, and Poe, who always dressed in black,
was buried in black.
On October 9—a cold, rainy, cheerless day—his body was carried
to Westminster, burying ground of the First Presbyterian Church. He was
interred to the right of his grandfather, General Poe, in a lead-lined
coffin with a brass plate at the foot of it. A temporary marker with the
number 8 scrawled on it was placed at the head of his grave. Poe's headstone
had not yet been transported to the cemetery from the marble yard near
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad tracks where it was cut and carved when
a train jumped the tracks and crushed it.
In 1875, schoolchildren donated money for a stone monument that was placed
in a corner of the cemetery yard, where it still stands. Poe's body was
exhumed and moved to this new grave site. Or was it?
Eleven years earlier, in 1864, the headstones of the cemetery were all
turned from facing the east gate to facing the west gate, reason unknown.
Apparently no one told the grave diggers of 1875, who only knew that Poe
had been buried to the right of his grandfather. But Poe, because of the
movement of the headstones, was now on the left. Who was on the right?
Private Philip Mosher, Jr. The coffin that was dug up—twelve feet
to the right of General Poe—was not the lead-lined oak Edgar Allan
had been buried in, but mahogany, with no plate. Records state that Private
Mosher had been buried in a mahogany coffin. There were other discrepancies,
including the excellent condition of the teeth, again pointing to the
occupant as the younger and more affluent Private Mosher.
The body exhumed to the right of General Poe was reburied under the new
monument, and joined by the remains of Virginia Poe.
Since 1949, this grave identified as belonging to Edgar Allan Poe has
been visited every year in the early hours on his birthday, January 19.
Rumor has it an elderly gentleman draped in black using a silver-tipped
cane for support
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Lightbulb head tombstone, New England Photo by Hugues Leblanc
kneels at the foot of the grave for a toast of Mattel cognac, then leaves
behind the half-empty bottle and three red roses when he departs.
Rhode Island
At the end of the nineteenth century, consumption ran rampant. In a small
farmhouse just outside Exeter, Rhode Island, Mary Brown died in 1883.
Her daughter Mary Olive died in 1884. Then another daughter, Mercy, died
in 1892. George Brown, his young son Edwin and three daughters remained.
When young Edwin took sick, the family decided that he did not have consumption,
but was being attacked by a vampire. They dug up the three females. Mary
and Mary Olive had decomposed to bone. But Mercy's body, buried only two
months, was still fresh. They cut out her liver, and her heart, which
still dripped blood, and burned them on a rock in the cemetery behind
Chestnut Hill Baptist Church. The ashes were dissolved in medicine given
Edwin by his doctor. But Edwin died two months later. Mercy, the only
one of the Brown women dug up with blood still in her veins, was deemed
the vampire. The locals say that violation of her grave has caused her
spirit to haunt the graveyard at night ever since.
Prague
Seventy kilometers outside Prague near Kunta Hora lies the sleepy village
of Sedlec. Since 1141 the tiny town is home to the hrbitou, or cemetery
of the Cistercian Monastery. It wasn't until 1278 when Abbot Heidenreich
returned from Jerusalem with a jug of dirt dug from Golgotha, the hill
where Christ was reputedly crucified, that the cemetery became consecrated
ground. Pretty soon all of Europe was dying to be buried there.
In the middle of the cemetery stands the fourteenth-century Church of
All Saints, with its copper cupolas atop twin spires. The crypt in the
basement was used to store old bones dug out of the cemetery to make room
for new burials. In 1511 a blind monk gathered the excess bones that had
been overflowing the basement crypt for more than 200 years and placed
them into the church proper. It took until 1870 to hire a wood-carver
named Frantisek Rint, who arranged what amounted to 40,000 sets of bones
into "pleasing designs."
Stark white bones. Everywhere. Daisy chains of skulls draping the arches,
crossed bones dangling here and there, a pyramid of bones with tarnished
silver crosses hanging above, bones arranged to form chalices, an
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enormous eight-armed chandelier suspended from the ceiling made entirely
of bones. The church lights the candles in the bone chandelier on All
Saints' Day, November 2, the same day Mexico celebrates its Day of the
Dead.
Vienna
The Viennese are said to be obsessed with death. Awash in cemeteries,
Vienna is also home to the Bestattungsmuseum, aka, the Undertakers' Museum.
The Big Book of Death by Bronwyn Carlton (DC Comics, Paradox Press, 1995)
depicts a goth girl, in cartoon format, touring the museum and providing
a history of Austrian funeral customs. The outside of the building is
nondescript. Inside are offices, the museum located in the back rooms
where everything comes to life, so to speak. On display are coffins, casket
coverings, needleworked shrouds, velvet curtains and silk funerary footwear,
ornate casket hardware, toy worm-eaten corpses and painted floral skulls,
and the elaborate funeral uniforms of powerful men and the drapings for
their horses. Also displayed are a variety of contraptions invented through
the ages to allow the false dead to ring for help from below ground in
the event they had accidently been buried alive. Being Vienna, there is
a strong emphasis on composers: Beethoven's death notice, Schubert's death
certificate, and Haydn's death masks. An enormous variety of macabre objects
are displayed, including an antique hearse. Tours are conducted, in English
as well as other languages, by a dapper gentleman, one of Vienna's leading
undertakers.
Houston
Houston, Texas is home of the National Museum of Funeral History, open
for ten years. On display are thousands of artifacts, including an ornate
1860 German "Glaswagen" Funeral Coach, antique motorized hearses,
the original John F. Kennedy eternal flame (it was replaced in 1992),
and many caskets, including one entirely of glass made in the 1800s. As
well, a variety of mourning pictures line the walls, and plenty of early
embalming equipment is exhibited.
Lithuania
Six miles north of Siulivi in Lithuania is a hill piled high with crosses,
rosaries, and other religious objects, more than 50,000 of them! This
area, originally a stronghold against the Knights of the Teutonic Order,
became
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ViSiTinG THE VAULTS
318 J9 H1OO 3H1 4. OOZ
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• ' j i
painted floral skulls, and the elaborate funeral uniforms of powerful
men and the drapings for their horses. Also displayed are a variety of
contraptions invented through the ages to allow the false dead to ring
for help from below ground in the event they had accidently been buried
alive. Being Vienna, there is a strong emphasis on composers: Beethoven's
death notice, Schubert's death certificate, and Haydn's death masks. An
enormous variety of macabre objects are displayed, including an antique
hearse. Tours are conducted, in English as well as other languages, by
a dapper gentleman, one of Vienna's leading undertakers.
Houston
Houston, Texas is home of the National Museum of Funeral History, open
for ten years. On display are thousands of artifacts, including an ornate
1860 German "Glaswagen" Funeral Coach, antique motorized hearses,
the original John F. Kennedy eternal flame (it was replaced in 1992),
and many caskets, including one entirely of glass made in the 1800s. As
well, a variety of mourning pictures line the walls, and plenty of early
embalming equipment is exhibited.
Lithuania
Six miles north of Siulivi in Lithuania is a hill piled high with crosses,
rosaries, and other religious objects, more than 50,000 of them! This
area, originally a stronghold against the Knights of the Teutonic Order,
became
201
visirinc THE VAULTS
318 J9 H1OO 3H1 4. OOZ
UE 'saoijEtp uuoj oj pa§UE.uE sauoq 'sAoqE Sui§UEq sassojo JSAJIS
paqsiu
-JE} tpiAi sauoq jo piuiE-iXd E 'ajaqj pUE ajaq SuijSuEp sauoq passoiD
'sa
-qojE ain SuidEjp sjjmfs jo sureip ASIEQ 'ajaiiAiXjaAg -ssuoq ajiUA ^JEIS
(('su§iS3p SuisEajd,, ojut sauoq
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paDE|d puE sJEaX QQ3 uEqi ajouj joj jdXao juauissEq aqj 9uiAogj3Ao uaaq
pEq jEqj sauoq ssaoxa aqj pajaqjE§ Jfuoui putjq E 115 j uj 'S|Eunq
A3U JQJ uiooa 33JEUI oj Xj3j3iii3D aqj jo mo Snp sauoq pjo ajois 01 pasn
SEAI juaiu ui jdXjo aqj, -saaids UTAJ dojE sEjodno jaddoo sii qjiAV 'SJUIES
||v
iuds-yiuddimoi dm spuejs Xjajauiao ayjjo a/ppra si/J uj
• ' j i
painted floral skulls, and the elaborate funeral uniforms of powerful
men and the drapings for their horses. Also displayed are a variety of
contraptions invented through the ages to allow the false dead to ring
for help from below ground in the event they had accidently been buried
alive. Being Vienna, there is a strong emphasis on composers: Beethoven's
death notice, Schubert's death certificate, and Haydn's death masks. An
enormous variety of macabre objects are displayed, including an antique
hearse. Tours are conducted, in English as well as other languages, by
a dapper gentleman, one of Vienna's leading undertakers.
Houston
Houston, Texas is home of the National Museum of Funeral History, open
for ten years. On display are thousands of artifacts, including an ornate
1860 German "Glaswagen" Funeral Coach, antique motorized hearses,
the original John F. Kennedy eternal flame (it was replaced in 1992),
and many caskets, including one entirely of glass made in the 1800s. As
well, a variety of mourning pictures line the walls, and plenty of early
embalming equipment is exhibited.
Lithuania
Six miles north of Siulivi in Lithuania is a hill piled high with crosses,
rosaries, and other religious objects, more than 50,000 of them! This
area, originally a stronghold against the Knights of the Teutonic Order,
became
201
visirinc THE VAULTS
enormous eight-armed chandelier suspended from the ceiling made entirely
of bones. The church lights the candles in the bone chandelier on All
Saints' Day, November 2, the same day Mexico celebrates its Day of the
Dead.
Vienna
The Viennese are said to be obsessed with death. Awash in cemeteries,
Vienna is also home to the Bestattungsmuseum, aka, the Undertakers' Museum.
The Big Book of Death by Bronwyn Carlton (DC Comics, Paradox Press, 1995)
depicts a goth girl, in cartoon format, touring the museum and providing
a history of Austrian funeral customs. The outside of the building is
nondescript. Inside are offices, the museum located in the back rooms
where everything comes to life, so to speak. On display are coffins, casket
coverings, needleworked shrouds, velvet curtains and silk funerary footwear,
ornate casket hardware, toy worm-eaten corpses and painted floral skulls,
and the elaborate funeral uniforms of powerful men and the drapings for
their horses. Also displayed are a variety of contraptions invented through
the ages to allow the false dead to ring for help from below ground in
the event they had accidently been buried alive. Being Vienna, there is
a strong emphasis on composers: Beethoven's death notice, Schubert's death
certificate, and Haydn's death masks. An enormous variety of macabre objects
are displayed, including an antique hearse. Tours are conducted, in English
as well as other languages, by a dapper gentleman, one of Vienna's leading
undertakers.
Houston
Houston, Texas is home of the National Museum of Funeral History, open
for ten years. On display are thousands of artifacts, including an ornate
1860 German "Glaswagen" Funeral Coach, antique motorized hearses,
the original John F. Kennedy eternal flame (it was replaced in 1992),
and many caskets, including one entirely of glass made in the 1800s. As
well, a variety of mourning pictures line the walls, and plenty of early
embalming equipment is exhibited.
Lithuania
Six miles north of Siulivi in Lithuania is a hill piled high with crosses,
rosaries, and other religious objects, more than 50,000 of them! This
area, originally a stronghold against the Knights of the Teutonic Order,
became
201
visiTinc THE VAULTS
Hill of Crosses, Lithuania
Photo by Hugues Lellanc
a receptacle for crosses in 1831, to protest the deportation of residents
to Siberia. Many attempts were made by the Soviets when they occupied
this land to destroy the hill—the last attempt in the early 1970s.
Hundreds of crosses came down under the Russian bulldozers, followed the
next morning by a thousand magically appearing to replace them. Considered
not a cemetery but more a mausoleum, this is a holy place. A Lithuanian
postage stamp from 1990 commemorates The Hill of Crosses.
As the traditional crosses decay, they fall and create new soil onto which
more crosses are added, piling up, making the view as far as the eye can
see overwhelmingly thick with crosses of wood, metal, stone, glass, clay,
enamel, woven fibers. There is no pattern, only the anarchy of controlled
rebellion mingled with faith on a hill that symbolizes resistance to assimilation,
something goths can appreciate.
other gotb tucAtion fascinations
When on vacation, many of The \ Section head for churches, castles, museums,
antique shops, and old libraries, like Daevina, Emily Bronte, Nimue, the
Crow, Paola, and museumbitch, who says "Museums, archives, historical
sites. I'm especially interested in bog bodies, and there are two museums
in this area of Sweden." And Nadia likes "Stonehenge, Avebury
Ring, Stanton Drew. Feeds the romance in my soul."
Shopping is a holiday for a lot of The f Section, for example, Calhoun,
Medea, Samael, Shekinah, Silver Moon, Slave!, SUZANNE, and White Raven.
They will visit not just goth shops but a spectrum, from antique stores
to thrift stores and flea markets.
Naturally goth clubs and other gothy spots are big on the to-do list,
as well as gatherings like Convergence. Taoist says, "When I went
to Goa, I went straight for the Hindu temples and the chocolate plantations.
But if I'm in a city, e.g., San Diego, I'll check out the goth clubs."
202 "f THE GOTH BiBLE
Madame X and Ra VeN like spooky holidays that include ghost tours and
haunted houses. And just getting out in nature does it for DJ Caluna,
Jola, RaVeN, and XjUsTcRuCifyX. Arantele "Found in New Brunswick
a wonderful old priest's house converted into an inn with the yard leading
to the sea and to a cemetery."
Euro restaurant and bar critic Mandy Slater discusses two goth-interest
establishments in Belgium:
"Halloween Cafe (part of La Brasserie de 1'Etrange) is a horror-themed
restaurant and bar, one hundred meters from the famous Manneken Pis in
Brussels. This large, lively restaurant and bar is beatifically decorated
with paintings, gargoyle sculptures, pumpkins, and fountains. Waiters
dressed as monks serve horror-themed food, and if you're really lucky,
you might be visited by a monster, vampire or witch while munching on
your tasty Belgian fare! Tables are named, such as Fu Manchu and Dracula.
While a little on the touristy side, Halloween is well worth a visit.
"Le Cerceuil (the Coffin) is located just off the Grand Place. This
vampire bar is one of the oldest of its kind [horror themed] in Europe.
Music can be classical or roam through the range of goth. Lucky Belgian
goths sit at tables made from coffins and sip their cocktails from a skull."
North American goths do not need to go so far afield for creepy dining.
New York City boasts the haunted Jekyll and Hyde Restaurant Bar in Greenwich
Village, where wall artwork like Dreadmina the Vampire and Tobias the
Werewolf animate as diners consume the Cannibal's three-meat pizza, and
sip their beer from a mold green two-foot-high glass!
Other hot spots include:
Bodyworlds-based in Germany (a roving anatomical exhibit of real human
bodies (seen in the German movie Anatomie) www.koerperwelten.de/index2.htm
The Catacombs of Paris-Paris, France (hundreds of years of bones, artistically
arranged) www.members.tripod.com/~Motomom/index-3.html
Dracula Theme Park-Sighisoara, Romania (the name says it all)
Jewish Cemetery in Prague-Prague, Czech Republic (oldest and only cemetery
left intact by the Nazis) www.rabunda.com/qtvr/cemetery.html
203
VISITiriG THE VAULTS
Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum-London, England (check out the chamber of
horrors and Marie Antoinette's death mask) www.dimkin.df.ru/mt/
Medieval Criminal Museum Collection-San Gimignano, Italy (a traveling
exhibit for the criminologist within)
www.torturamuseum.com/
Museum of Death-Hollywood, California (Hollywood macabre, serial killer
oddities, crime scene photos, skulls, coffins, artwork, mortician tools,
body bags, you name it!) www.museumofdeath.com/
Mutter Museum-Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Victorian medical oddities,
and lots of bones, including the famous two-headed skeleton) www.collphyphil.org/muttpg1.shtml
Pitt Rivers Museum-Oxford, England (excellent anthropology museum,
shrunken heads, talismans, mechanical toys)
www.prm.ox.ac.uk/
The Salem Witch Museum-Salem, Massachusetts (history of those nasty
witch trials!)
www.salemwitchmuseum.com/
Songran Niyomsane Forensic Medicine Museum-Bangkok, Thailand (what
it sounds like)
www.corkscrew-balloon.com/misc/siquey.html
Torture Museum-Amsterdam, Netherlands (where much of that torture equipment
from the Inquisition ended up) www.arise.demon.co.uk/photos/holland-torturemuseum.html
Tower of London-London, England (endless imprisonment, and the crown
jewels, too!)
www.toweroflondontour.com/
Vienna Vampire Museum-Vienna, Austria (obvious) www.hollenthon.com/other.html
Voodoo Museum-New Orleans, Louisiana (voodoo artifacts and history) www.voodoomuseum.com/
204 "I" THE GOTH BIBLE
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