Category Archives: Cemetery interview

Interviews with tour guides, authors, photographers, and other cemetery aficionados.

Death’s Garden contributor: M. Parfitt

I’ve known M. Parfitt since the late 90s, when she submitted a wonderful essay about dressing up as a little girl for an after-dark tour of Sacramento, California’s Old City Cemetery to my Morbid Curiosity magazine. You can read that story here.

The essay she submitted to Death’s Garden Revisited is about becoming a tour guide at the Old City Cemetery. Her dedication to the people she brings back to life on her tours is really inspiring.

M. Parfitt in mourning garb

Officially, M. Parfitt is an artist, writer, collector of exquisitely awful junk, keeper of hair, and hoarder of yellowed newspaper clippings. You may find her wandering down a deserted alley, traipsing through an old cemetery, or peering into an abandoned warehouse. Her collages incorporate photographs, bloodstained paper, and other unexpected materials.

What’s your favorite thing to do in a cemetery?

Take photos, look for “Mattie” on headstones, and (in the Historic City Cemetery) tell stories!

Tell me about your favorite cemetery.

Sacramento’s Historic City Cemetery is as old as the City of Sacramento and it’s the permanent home of more than 25,000 interesting people. It’s always been a city-owned cemetery, so it’s a very egalitarian place. When I give tours, I tell visitors that any color, any creed, any race, any religion, ANYONE could be buried there. The only color that mattered was green — if you could afford a plot, you could be buried there. There are still about a dozen interments a year, but if you want to spend eternity there, you better have a deed or proof that your ancestors bought a plot, because that’s the only way to get in now. That means I’ll never be buried there, but that’s fine — I just want a little bit of my ashes tossed in on a windy day so they scatter to different plots and sections.

Is there a cemetery or gravesite you’ve always wanted to visit?

I would love to visit Highgate Cemetery in London.

Do you have a favorite song about cemeteries or graveyards?

“Long Black Veil.” It’s been recorded a million times, but Johnny Cash’s version is my favorite.

Loren again:

I had a lot of fun putting together a playlist of cemetery songs recommended by the Death’s Garden Revisited contributors. You can listen to it here.

I would also love it if you’d check out Death’s Garden Revisited, which is available for preorder on Kickstarter now. This beautiful book will be full of 40 amazing essays about why visiting cemeteries is important. Check it out — and please consider joining the other backers: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lorenrhoads/deaths-garden-revisited-relationships-with-cemeteries

Death’s Garden contributor: Carole Tyrrell

I met Carole Tyrrell years ago, when I discovered her blog Shadows Fly Away. She wonder a wonderfully in-depth feature where she examines one symbol that appears on gravestones, usually in England, and provides history, analysis, and beautiful photos to illustrate it.

Always attracted to the dark side of life as it’s much more entertaining, Carole has been involved with cemeteries for over 30 years. They are an oasis of peace and history. Carole’s fascination with cemetery symbols and their meaning has led to her blog, leading symbolism tours, and a forthcoming book. I can’t wait to read it.

Carole’s essay in Death’s Garden Revisited is about falling in love with London’s Nunhead Cemetery — and how the cemetery changed her life.

What’s your favorite thing to do in a cemetery?

Appreciate the calm.

One of Carole’s lovely photos from Nunhead Cemetery.

Tell me about your favorite cemetery.

Very overgrown, very Gothic, great view from the top of the hill.

Is there a cemetery or gravesite you’ve always wanted to visit?

Too many to mention! One is Arnos Vale in Bristol.

If you have anything to say about it, what would your epitaph be?

See you soon.

Do you have a favorite song about cemeteries or graveyards?

“Cemeteries of London” by Coldplay.

That’s perfect! You can check out Carole’s contributor to the Death’s Garden Revisited playlist on Spotify.

I would also love it if you’d check out Death’s Garden Revisited, which is available for preorder on Kickstarter now. This beautiful book will be full of 40 amazing essays about why visiting cemeteries is important. Check it out — and please consider joining the other backers: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lorenrhoads/deaths-garden-revisited-relationships-with-cemeteries

My Cemetery Videos on Youtube

Many years ago, I started a channel on Youtube. It was intended to showcase videos I recorded, but over the years, I’ve appeared on a number of other people’s podcasts and blogs, talking about cemeteries.

Last week, I finally spent some time organizing my youtube channel into a functional series of playlists. If you’ve got some time, you can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvTI4Zh74nsCLGmOBqulRRQ

The Cemetery Travel playlist collects interviews I’ve done with Joanna Penn of Books & Travel, Goth podcast Cemetery Confessions, genealogy podcast Extreme Genes, cryptozoology podcast Strange Familiars, and most recently with Tui Snider’s Tombstone Tuesday podcast. There are also some video clips from the interview I did with Bridget Marquardt for Ghost Magnet.

If you click past the channel’s home page to my collection of playlists, there’s one of my favorite cemetery videos on youtube. These include videos other cemetery bloggers have made of their graveyard explorations, lectures I’ve attended online, and much more. Here’s the direct link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXorvWMCgb5B1bXgYOemh-I8Xt3FdjbBx

That playlist is a work in progress, so if you have a favorite video I haven’t included — or you’ve made one of your own that you would like me to check out, please send me the link.

I hope you’ll check out my channel. I’m working on another video that I hope to have finished in May. Let me know if there’s is anything related to cemeteries that you’re particularly curious about and I’ll try to assemble a video exploration on the subject.

Thanks!

Join me for a live conversation about Cemeteries

DATE CHANGE: Despite the podcast being called Tombstone Tuesday, this will take place on Wednesday, March 17 at 4 pm CT (or 2 PT). Tui’s getting her vaccine on Tuesday.

Tui Snider, author of Understanding Cemetery Symbols and Six Feet Under Texas, has invited me to come chat about cemeteries. You can join us live on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc8atGbwYis

We’ll be taking questions from the chat, if you have anything you’re dying to know.

A Taste of an Interview

IMG_0944Hello! I’ve missed you.  I’ve been swamped in my other life, editing a book of horror stories to benefit survivors of last year’s Camp Fire, the worst natural disaster Northern California has seen.  That book — Tales for the Camp Fire — will be out in May.

In the interim, I’ve been visiting some of the local pioneer cemeteries as research for that book, but so far, I haven’t gotten my notes polished up.  Soon my life will have more balance, I hope, and I can begin posting regularly on Cemetery Travel again.

In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy one of my favorite interviews I did last year.

The interviewer asked, “What was so glorious about your first visit to Highgate?”

Loren: Before I visited Highgate, I hadn’t spent a lot of time in graveyards. I was familiar with the little farming community cemetery down the road from where I grew up – and my date wanted to take our prom pictures in a lovely old garden cemetery near our small town — but Highgate was my first experience with a cemetery as an outdoor sculpture garden. I was immediately fascinated by the angels standing on graves or peeping out of the ivy. They were lovely, I could get as close as I wanted, and it was possible to walk all around them and look at them from every angle.  I still don’t know as much about art as I should, but I am an ardent student of beauty.  Highgate inspired me to look for the beauty that is so common in cemeteries and rare in real life.

Before I saw Highgate, I assumed that cemeteries were permanent and unchanging. Learning about that cemetery’s history of vandalism and neglect opened my eyes.  Cemeteries are really very fragile, almost ephemeral.  All it takes is an ice storm or a determined kid, to say nothing of a hurricane or an earthquake, to do irreparable damage. While Highgate is full of monuments to famous people, it was the stones that remembered average people that most captivated me.  I realized that once their monuments were damaged, it was possible the memory of their lives would be completely erased. I found that really poignant. It’s inspired my crusade to persuade people to visit cemeteries.  If people don’t begin to fall in love, then cemeteries will crumble away and be lost.

Her second question: “What is it about cemeteries that makes you feel alive?”

Loren: Other people may see my fascination with cemeteries as morbid, but I don’t.  Visiting cemeteries, especially while traveling, is restorative to me.  I can get overwhelmed by crowds and maps and concrete. I counteract that by walking in the sunshine, listening to the birds sing, smelling the flowers, and looking at some gravestones.  Cemeteries remind me that every day aboveground is a blessing.

Question #3: “What sort of things can people gain from a visit?”

Cemeteries offer a surprising variety of experiences. They provide habitats for birds and wildlife, as well as arboretums and gardens of surprising beauty. They can appeal to art lovers, amateur sociologists, birdwatchers, cryptologists, master gardeners, historians, hikers, genealogists, picnickers, and anyone who just wants to stop and smell the roses. Our relationships with the places we visit can be deepened and enriched by learning the stories of those who came—and stayed—before us.

Some cemeteries offer tours, whether self-guided, historian-led, or put on by actors in costumes who represent the people interred there. Others offer galleries or libraries dedicated to the works of people buried here. Some provide book clubs, host author events, show movies, or serve as venues for celebrations like Dia de los Muertos or Qing Ming. Friends of the Cemetery groups host cleanup days for cemeteries that need extra care, which is a great way for people to give back to their communities.

Parts of the interview were quoted in “Trails of the Unexpected” in Breathe magazine #18, which was published in January.  You can see the finished piece here: https://www.breathemagazine.com/portfolio-item/breathe-issue-18/.