Abstract cross from Maple Shade

I am interpreting this as a cross. It’s a little abstract, but I really like it.

I think that’s all we’re going to manage for today. Hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving and enjoys the long weekend!

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Sad little lambs

For whatever reason, I am looking more at lambs lately when I visit cemeteries.

Lambs are always sad for me, as they are a commonly accepted symbol of a child’s grave in American culture.

But even in the most well-maintained cemetery, you will find lambs like these. There is something about the particular shape of lambs (and probably the materials they are carved from) that makes them very susceptible to damage.

In my walk of Harvard Grove, that covered about 1/3 of the graves, I didn’t find a single intact lamb sculpture.

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Fallen cross

I gasped when I saw this Celtic cross sprawled among the autumn leaves rather than standing tall.

It was hard to tell how long it has been down – the base wasn’t immediately visible, but a thick blanket of leaves covered the ground.

I am going to assume from the arrangement of the other stones around it that Rev. William Ashton Thompson, whose name is on the base of the cross, was the patriarch of a family who passed on both his vocation and his name. The Thompson family stones all had a small Celtic cross engraved on them, and at least two more of them indicated that his descendants had been addressed as Reverend as well.

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Pillows

I found this interesting little marker in Woodland Cemetery. There are a number of grave marker styles that are called pillows for various reasons (those horizontal cylinders resting on a rectangular base are one), but none of them actually look like pillows. The stone is too worn to identify much of anything, but this looks to me like a carving of two fluffy bed pillows with little flowers engraved at the top – I would guess for two people, likely children. It’s the only stone like it I’ve seen in my travels.

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Harvard Grove crosses

As I mentioned in my introductory post about the cemetery, Harvard Grove is not in the finest shape.

Someone took the time to prop this broken cross up against this monument.

This cross has lost one of its horizontal arms.

Even with weathering, this cross is one of the best-preserved I saw all day – at least it is intact!

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Hidden treasure

Recently, I visited Kirtland West Cemetery, and I found this old stone with a marvelously preserved carving.

Looking at the base of the tombstone, it appears that the stone might have been broken off at some point and spent time knocked over. The stone does have a distinct forward lean that the photos don’t show very well. It’s possible that the damage to the stone’s base might have allowed the beautiful carving to remain in such good condition.

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I prefer my eyes with pupils, thank you!

I should probably begin this post with a thank you to all of you for putting up with this month’s posts. While I’ve told some ghost stories, a lot of these “creepy” posts are really just about things I find personally disturbing in cemeteries. It’s been very cathartic.

When I took the Angels and Sculptures tour at Lake View Cemetery that I posted about recently, the guide focused upon particular art and architecture movements as they could be observed in sculpture. When we first got to this monument, I knew instantly that I didn’t care for these Art Deco sculptures nearly as much…

…but it took me a minute to put my finger on it.

GOOD HEAVENS, THEY HAVE NO PUPILS! They just have wide, staring blank eyeballs.

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Not dead, but asleep

If there isn’t a ghost story about this monument, there should be. This monument in Kirtland Historic North Cemetery is for a small girl. She and her family were traveling westward and stopped in Kirtland for the night during a snow storm. The little girl found her way outside and froze to death before she could be found. A stone representation of her lies inside a glass case on a stone bed and pillow, harder but safer than the snow that made her final pillow and blanket that night.

Most statues under glass I have found have a ghost story associated with them – the glass is often to protect them from disrespectful thrillseekers. But I can’t find anything about this monument with a ghost story attached.

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Marriage is what brings us together today

Today is my wedding reception. (I did write this post in advance.) One of the current cultural trends that I think has occurred is that tombstones are again becoming more personalized. Modern technology has also made that personalization process much cheaper and affordable to more families than ever before. Now, a computer will do the work of engraving your stone with a precision that would take an expert craftsman much more time to produce.

Part of this surge in personalization is the increased emphasis on wedding dates on markers.

Noting the marital relationship on a grave stone is nothing new, as we have seen before with the posts on relicts and consorts. But now a lot more couples (or their descendants) are choosing to include not only their birth and death dates, but the date of their marriage.

It seems like a logical next step in the personalization of tombstones. After birthdays, wedding anniversaries are probably the most celebrated yearly personal events.

Will we choose something similar for ourselves? Hard to say. It is likely that we have some time to decide, and who knows what will be possible/fashionable when we need to pick a style?

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Haserot Angel

I’m posting a few photos of my favorite supposedly creepy angel. This is the Haserot angel, the centerpiece of the Haserot family plot at Lake View Cemetery.

A few notes about him: he’s seated. I have seen several mentions of how the Haserot angel is standing – perhaps meant in the sense of “standing guard,” but he is most definitely sitting. The sculptor did manage to give him the feeling of movement, as if at any moment he will rise from his post and walk.

Secondly, that thing in his hands is an extinguished torch, with the burned end on the ground.

This angel, like a number of other cemetery statues, has a creepy reputation, but I’ve never heard an actual story about him. I think the outstretched wings add to his imposing nature, as does the fact that he stares directly and stoically at the viewer. A more common posture is that of grief. And of course, the weathering of the metal has created streaky “tears” that cascade from his staring eyes.

Whatever the reason, this statue has the reputation for being the creepiest in Cleveland’s cemeteries.

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