F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Cemetery

The Assumption Cemetery

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The Assumption Cemetery, October 2013
The Assumption Cemetery, October 2013

Yesterday I posted about Silver Cliff Cemetery. Today, I’m posting about the sister cemetery up a little farther on that little dirt road, called The Assumption Cemetery. It’s a Catholic cemetery (and I’ve read Silver Cliff was a Protestant cemetery) and isn’t as old as Silver Cliff.  Most of the graves in Silver Cliff were 1800s, while in Assumption, there were many more contemporary graves.

Curiously, my wife and I noted a preponderance of “Franks” buried here.

That reminded me of the time my dad and I were staring down at my grandfather’s gravestone during my grandfather’s service, over 21 years ago. My grandfather was the “Sr.” of the “Jr.” and the “III” of us, but his gravestone did not have “Sr” on it. After the service I turned to my dad and remarked how that was our name on the gravestone. We both chuckled at how unreal it was attending our “own” funeral!

Anyway, since this was later in the day, I loved the long shadows that developed at Assumption; it reminded me of the Vincent Price film, House of the Long Shadows, I’d just watched the other night. It definitely added an extra bit of atmosphere to the place. And there are a couple shots I have that really turned out great, one a small tilted wooden cross and another of a wooden cross propped up by bricks that lent a particularly eerie (human?) shadow….

Note, I’ve attached links to my other cemetery posts, below. Take a tour!

So, without further ado, here is The Assumption Cemetery:

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Silver Cliff Cemetery

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Silver Cliff Cemetery, Silver Cliff, Colorado
Silver Cliff Cemetery, Silver Cliff, Colorado

Yesterday, my wife and I visited the Silver Cliff Cemetery, at Silver Cliff, Colorado. It’s a stone’s throw east from Westcliffe, Colorado. We picked this cemetery because of the drive…and that it’s supposedly haunted. It’s listed as the “most haunted” (scroll to the bottom to read about it) Colorado cemetery. Of course, you need darkness and a moonless night to see the supposed blue and white lights, but we went during the day…also to go on a drive on such a beautiful, crisp October day that it was. We saw no glowing lights that are said to hover above the graves, and are also written up in National Geographic (August 1969, Volume 136, No. 2). I did a quick search for the NatGeo magazine, but didn’t find any entry into one, just outlets looking to sell it to me, and now, to search NatGeo’s archives, you need an account. Not creating one.

Our visit was interesting…once entering Silver Cliff, you take a left on an unmarked street (should have been labeled “Mill Street”) just before the only pizza joint in town (on the left), drive down a short stretch of Mill Street blacktop, then onto a dirt road, which takes you out into the open Colorado plains. Lots of sun and wind. Open space. This, as well as another cemetery we also visited just up the dirt road from it, The Assumption Cemetery (will post tomorrow), both repose before the beautiful Sangre de Cristo mountains. Basically, they’re not your typical, Night of the Living Dead layout, but, this is Colorado. They both had some beautiful and interesting gravestones, and, as always, these places always fascinate me about the lives lived and lost. Who were they—really? How’d they die? How’d they live?

What are they doing now?

Here are some links to read about Silver Cliff:

Top Colorado Cemeteries to visit

Silver Cliff Town

Silver Cliff Lore 1 (lights)

Silver Cliff Lore 2

Silver Cliff Lore 3 (lights)

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Cemetery Walk—Fairview Cemetery

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Who...is watching WHO...?
Who…is watching WHO…?

When my wife and I stopped by this cemetery the other week, it was a gorgeous October morning, the wind blowing tons of leaves from the trees. I tried to capture a couple intentional shots of the leaves flying through the air, because they were really brilliant and many, but they really didn’t come out in these pictures.

As in my Cemetery Dance post, I love the atmosphere of this cemetery. Loved the different kinds of gravestones we found. Found a handful being crowded out by trees. Found one that looked exactly like a specter had appeared on its stone. My wife showed me the grave of the famous nature photographer, Rich Buzzelli. My wife knew him since they were kids—and he’d actually been the photographer at our wedding. “People” really were not his subject, but she’d managed to convince him to do it, and he’d done an outstanding job. He was such a nice guy. Usually that word can be meaningless, but for Rich, it really described the man as I met him. A few years after our wedding, he was struck and killed by lightning in mid-conversation with his girlfriend, on the slopes of Pikes Peak, in Colorado Springs.

Fairview Cemetery is on the west side of Colorado Springs, on 1000 S. 26th Street. Once again, I got lost in the imaginings of the people beneath my feet, like Maggie (b. 1915) and Jimmie Heath (b. 1914), died 1933.

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Cemetery Dance

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"Graves," Arlington National Cemetery, VA, 1990
“Graves,” Arlington National Cemetery, VA, 1990

What is it about cemeteries that draws us to their hallowed grounds?

Yeah, I know, “they just can’t stay away,” and are….

But, really, what is the allure?

Once you get past the well-manicured state of most cemeteries, the beautiful landscaping…what really draws our fascination?

I admit to visiting them. I find them calming. I also don’t believe that when we die, that’s it—in any sense of the word. I believe in quite the active “afterlife.” When I stroll through them I wonder about the all the lives that have been lived—and I’m excited for their souls. In my eyes they are now moving on to other things with the consciousnesses that had once inhabited those “vehicles of life.” Hopefully, I like to think, they have learned something useful from their lives to apply to other lives they’ll live, or move on beyond reincarnational existence (I actually believe in simultaneous lives, but let’s not go there now).

I’ve tried to explain my own curiosity around graveyards to myself, but, in the end (pardon the pun), I’m not quite sure what really got the interest going—maybe it is as simple as life’s “beginning and ending points,” which do fascinate me, or that death really isn’t the end, or how people die as well as how they live—I’m just not quite sure.

And when you get into the “atmosphere” of graveyards, especially the more established and older ones which I prefer to roam, their leafy trees and old, old buried dead, is it all the years of watching spooky movies? We all do seem to have some measure of inherent “joy of fear,” especially for fear that is removed and not really in our faces, as we watch from living rooms and theater seats. Read books we can put down. But where many cemeteries are built, they are usually at places I like to frequent—full of large, flowing deciduous trees tossing in the breezes, they’re quiet. Calm. Lawns are well-kept. Who wouldn’t one like to stroll through such an area, short of the realization you’re walking over, well, many, many, uh…dead bodies….

So, maybe it does have to do with a little or a lot of all of the above. But I do marvel at the lives lived and wonder how they fared…how they birthed…how they died. How they loved and strove. What kind of people were they? Were they kind? Giving? Hard working? Fun loving? Love the artistry in effort, whether a little or a lot, that went into making the headstones. Headstones say a lot about the dead over which they rest. How well liked they were, how affluent they or somebody who cared for them were. What material was available, what skills. “The sign of the times.”

Are they kept up?

Who’s keeping them up?

Some even show a sense of humor…irony:

“Quod tu es, ego fui, quod ego sum, tu eris”

The above phrase is said to go back to ancient Roman times, and is included in the more modern version most are probably more familiar with:

Remember me as you pass by

As you are now so once was I

As I am now so you will be

Prepare for death and follow me

And, in all my journeys, I’ve never (to my knowledge) seen any ghosts among the dead—and I’ve tried. Asked for some to present themselves. Never once. Now I have seen ghosts, but not of the human variety, so I know I’m capable of it.

One note: included in the pictures below is a “mummified” human forearm. That photo was taken in a small (at the time) museum in the back of local shop, on the road into Sharpsburg, MD. It was on the left side of the road, as driving up from Alexandria, VA. There was a small article attached to the glass, thought I’d taken a picture of it, but I didn’t find it. What I remember of the article was that the arm was thought to have come from the battle of Antietam, that it looked to have “flash fried” as it was blown off its owner. I forget the rest of the details, or where it was found, maybe when an building was being excavated? Just don’t remember. But it was creepy, and, once again, rammed home the horrors of war.

Okay, originally, I was going to include more photos of other cemeteries, but once I scanned in the set, below, I thought, these look so cool on their own, give off such a great, creepy, atmosphere, I have to keep them by themselves. Like my previous post, all the shots in this post were taken with film, then scanned. I love how they came out. And these are just the ones I could find, I know I have more. I might do another post for other cemeteries, but for now, I’m keeping the “Cemetery Row” work (Alexandria, Virginia, back in 1990), below on its own, with a few from Sharpsburg, Maryland (Antietam Battlefield, same 1990 timeframe) as their own post.

So…what better time to revisit and share some of my favorite cemeteries than during the haunting month of October?

Enjoy.

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Etched in Stone

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NY Zouave Monument, Bull Run Battlefield (April 22, 1990)

In 1991, I wrote a short story that took until 2005 to get published, in Apollo’s Lyre (now defunct; here’s my meager-yet-humble list of credits, listing its publication), Nov 2005. It was about a displaced Civil War soldier’s spirit and involved cemeteries, the pissed-off dead, and the Second Battle of Bull Run (aka Second Manassas, to the South, fought August 28-30, 1862). Here are some monument images. I was inspired by visiting the Bull Run battlefields, in Manassas, Virginia. I’ve since been there three times, but it was that first time that was my own personal Twilight Zone experience. I’ve written about this experience once, before, on my website. What happened besides my childhood experiences was that the very first time I ever set foot on Bull Run battlefield soil, was that I immediately felt “torn in time.” I literally felt as if I were in two places at one time: one foot in the 1990-present, and the other in 1862. And it persisted the entire time I visited the battlefield. It wasn’t subtle, or “am I really feeling this?” kinda thing. It was powerful, creepy, and physically electrifying. Life jarring.

I knew I’d been here before, and not as a visitor to a battlefield memorial.

And in my visit there, I stopped by a small plot of gravestones. So, that cemetery plot, coupled with my Twilight Zone experience of literally feeling displaced in time and space, gave rise (pardon the pun…) to the story I wrote. Within that story I’d written “displaced” stanzas of a prose poem recited by the battlefield dead coming after my displaced soldier’s spirit. I’ve compiled them below, and worked on a more coherent, completed version.

I hope you don’t sleep well after reading it.

 

Etched in stone

Etched in stone…

Take your place

among the bone.

 

Etched in stone

Is writ the tome

To one whose life

Has left the bone.

 

To one who fought

To one who fled…

To one who denies

His place among the dead.

 

They call you back

You never go far

The grave of yours

Is the grave of all.

 

You try to run

You try to roam

But you must always, always

Always come home.

 

Etched in stone

Back with bone

Home is home

And bone is bone.

 

Etched in stone

Etched in stone

Take your place

among the bone.

 

Etched in stone

Etched in stone

Back to bone

You find yer home.

 

Etched in stone

Etched in stone…

Take your place among the bone.

© 1991/2012