A lost tombstone

When we took the Ghosts of Gettysburg tour during our vacation, and this story was the only one that had a tombstone associated with it. The house is rented out to college students every year, and the residents over the years have supposedly reported hearing the sound of a body falling down the stairs and thudding to the floor. When some work was being done on the grounds, workman unearthed a tombstone with the name “Joanna Craig” on it in the yard.

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Reminder: East Cleveland Township Cemetery Tours

Just a reminder that this Saturday there are tours featuring the darker stories of East Cleveland Township Cemetery’s residents. Tours are scheduled for 7 pm and 8:30 pm. Come out, have a good time, and support the efforts to preserve this historic cemetery.

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Ghost Dog II

I heard another tale of a ghost dog from across the ocean that seemed fitting for this month’s series of tales. St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin (as well as Glasnevin Cemetery) are haunted by a ghostly dog. The black Newfoundland belonged to John McNeill Boyd, who is buried in the cemetery but memorialized inside the cathedral with a statue. Boyd, a sea captain, died trying to rescue sailors on the Irish Sea during a storm in 1861. His body was recovered, and following his funeral, his dog refused to leave the grave, eventually starving to death in the cemetery. Since then, the dog has appeared both at the grave at and the base of his master’s statue inside the cathedral.

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A month of hauntings: reflection

There were parts of writing about ghost stories for most of this month that were really fun, but I also experienced a lot of frustration. For all of the spooky, creepy graveyards we see in movies and tv and hear about in the wee hours of the morning around a crackling fire, the majority of cemetery ghost stories just don’t have much substance. Whether people truly believe in ghosts or not, most still can enjoy a spine-tingling story with lots of suspense and details, even if they are suspending disbelief to listen to it. But a lot of cemetery ghost stories lack that flair: mysterious lights that you shouldn’t investigate or “something bad” will happen? A grave you shouldn’t approach because…”something bad” will occur? “Something bad” is just not a compelling description of horror to make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.

Most people who study the paranormal argue that a cemetery is one of the least likely places to find ghosts. Those who perceive spirits usually attribute hauntings to strong emotion or major events that occurred during the ghost’s life, and there really aren’t many of us who spend a great deal of time in cemeteries before we die. There are exceptions, like the Ashtabula Horror ghosts who haunt the Chestnut Grove Cemetery (I’ve saved them for almost last), where the deceased were ripped so suddenly from life that they seem unable to figure out how to proceed.

And ultimately, I’m not sure that publishing ghost stories about cemeteries does the cemeteries much good. I don’t want my posts to be used as an excuse to vandalize and deface monuments. I want to write about ghost stories because I am interested in the way we remember the dead and the stories we tell ourselves about those places, but not everyone approaches the topic with that base level of respect. I will probably try to collect the spooky and the weird for next October, but I see that I will not be able to fill years worth of Octobers with those kinds of posts.

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Glendalough Ghosts

Not surprisingly, Glendalough has at least one reported ghost. We didn’t see anything there and I found the place to be wonderfully peaceful, but there is supposedly a hooded black figure – one of the monks, possibly St. Kevin himself?

The other ghost is supposedly a woman in red, who St. Kevin beat with nettles and then threw into the lake…oooooooookay. I’ve noticed a lot of ghostly legends revolve around supposedly moral/religious people doing hideous things.

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