America's Most Haunted Cemeteries: Background information when reading The Graveyard Book

America's Most Haunted Cemeteries

This article relates to The Graveyard Book

Luckily for young Bod he happened upon an abandoned graveyard that was haunted by benign, some would even say friendly, ghosts. Caspers, one and all. Apparently, not all cemeteries are so hospitable.

The Haunted America Tours website chronicles the ten most haunted cemeteries in the United States. Topping the list is the St. Louis Cemetery #1 in New Orleans, Louisiana where forever resides the angry ghost of 19^th Century Voodoo Priestess Marie Laveau. Laveau's life story is as rife with voodoo lore and legend as is her death and subsequent ghostly incarnations. But several websites nonetheless feature photos purportedly taken of herghostly apparition in and around her above-ground tomb.

Other haunted cemeteries on this top ten list include two in the Chicago, Illinois area that boast some incredible photos of truly melancholy or vengeful apparitions. Resurrection Cemetery seems particularly populated by young ghosts and it is said that a woman known variously as Resurrection Mary or Bloody Mary Smith flags down lone motorists seeking a ride to the cemetery's gate; a 12 year-old boy named Andrew Holcomb also haunts the grounds. Batchelor's Grove Cemetery is also a site of inexplicable spectral visions. Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens Cemetery Central in Fort Lauderdale is the burial site of boxing marvel Rocky Marciano whose other-worldly feats have apparently become almost as legendary as his worldly ones.

Europe is also graced with its share of ghostly apparitions include many in Great Britain which are not limited to cemeteries. In fact, the vast majority are (no surprise) castles, churches and towers that were once scenes of violent bloodshed. Needless to say these ghosts are not of the kindly, taking-in-orphaned-children variety either. While there have apparently been no reported attacks on humans inside any of these haunted locales – why take the chance? I guess the moral of all these stories, even though it makes a fine fictional story, is don't let your babies grow up to be cemetery denizens.

Filed under Places, Cultures & Identities

This "beyond the book article" relates to The Graveyard Book. It originally ran in October 2008 and has been updated for the September 2010 paperback edition. Go to magazine.

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