cemetery – סלומה

WOŁÓW (Lower Silesia, Poland): the old cemetery in the woods – set up in 1919, now closed.

Threads of silk following a mass spider ballooning (or kiting). (Source)

Tomb of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, St. Louis Cemetery #1, New Orleans.

In a bizarre dispute, a skyscraper has been built around a tombstone in the city of Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province in China. Building developers bought a cemetery with an eye to building a series of skyscrapers on the land. Prior to construction, locals were paid to relocate the graves, yet one family refused the proposed terms, forcing developers to build around the landmass.

Glenwood Cemetery, Mississippi.

Lindholm Høje, Denmark
Lindholm Høje is an Iron Age and Viking Age burial site just North of Aalborg and Nørresundby on the South slope of Voerbjerg Hill facing Limfjorden. Lindholm Høje was in use as a burial site between 400 AD and 1000 AD and was excavated from the sand covering the burial site in 1952-1958 to reveal the 700 graves.

The grave of Gracie Watson at Bonaventure Cemetery
Little Gracie Watson was born in 1883. The only child of her parents. Her father was manager of the Pulaski House, one of Savannah’s leading hotels, where the beautiful and charming little girl was a favorite with the guests. Two days before Easter, in April 1889, Gracie died of pneumonia at the age of six. In 1890, when the rising sculptor, John Walz, moved to Savannah, he carved from a photograph this life-sized, delicately detailed marble statue, which for almost a century has captured the interest of all passersby.

After succumbing to a fever of some sort in 1705, Irish woman Margorie McCall was hastily buried to prevent the spread of whatever had done her in. Margorie was buried with a valuable ring, which her husband had been unable to remove due to swelling. This made her an even better target for body snatchers, who could cash in on both the corpse and the ring.

The evening after Margorie was buried, before the soil had even settled, the grave-robbers showed up and started digging. Unable to pry the ring off the finger, they decided to cut the finger off. As soon as blood was drawn, Margorie awoke from her coma, sat straight up and screamed. The fate of the grave-robbers remains unknown. One story says the men dropped dead on the spot, while another claims they fled and never returned to their chosen profession.

Margorie climbed out of the hole and made her way back to her home. Her husband John, a doctor, was at home with the children when he heard a knock at the door. He told the children, “If your mother were still alive, I’d swear that was her knock.” When he opened the door to find his wife standing there, dressed in her burial clothes, blood dripping from her finger but very much alive, he dropped dead to the floor. He was buried in the plot Margorie had vacated.

Margorie went on to re-marry and have several children. When she did finally die, she was returned to Shankill Cemetery in Lurgan, Ireland, where her gravestone still stands. It bears the inscription “Lived Once, Buried Twice.”

Masses of tombstones in cemetery in Queens, 1948.