Why would anyone visit a cemetery?

Posted on March 10, 2022 | 3 comments

In every conversation I have about cemeteries, in every interview, on every podcast, I get asked two questions. One is “What is your favorite cemetery?” On the surface, that’s a funny question, because its underpinning is the second question: “Why would anyone visit a cemetery?” Unspoken, usually, is the rest of the question, either “by choice?” or “on purpose?”

I’m not sure when Americans were taught that it’s weird or creepy or disrespectful to visit cemeteries, if you aren’t driving straight to the gravesite of someone you’re related to, saying a few words, and leaving as soon as you can. I’ve even had people ask me if it’s legal to visit a graveyard where you don’t have a family connection.

Promenading at Bonaventure. Vintage postcard with undivided back, pre-1907.

During the 19th century, people flocked to cemeteries. They took carriage rides through them. They strolled in the shade of world-class arboretums. They fed flocks of birds or picnicked or read poetry. They studied the statuary and read the epitaphs and considered visiting cemeteries part of a moral education.

Out of sheer curiosity, I’ve been asking all kinds of people why they visit cemeteries: genealogists and geocachers, tour guides and travelers, historians and teachers, bloggers and horror writers and people who’ve never written anything before but have a good story to tell.

I’ve collected their answers into a book called Death’s Garden Revisited: Personal Relationships with Cemeteries. It will be available for crowdfunding next Thursday, which will allow you to reserve a copy before it’s published in October — and to help fund full-color photos to illustrate each story.

You can click on the image below to be taken to the Death’s Garden Revisited pre-launch page on Kickstarter. There you’ll see a button that says “Notify me on launch.” If you click on that, Kickstarter will send you an email on March 17, the day the campaign goes live. 

The direct link is https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lorenrhoads/deaths-garden-revisited-relationships-with-cemeteries.

I hope you’ll consider helping bring this beautiful, touching, thought-provoking book to life. Thank you for your support!

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Happy Birthday, Cemetery Travel!

Posted on February 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

I began this blog in February 2011, which blows my mind: 11 years, more than 600 posts, over half a million views ago.

In February 2011, I had already published 3 books: an anthology of political essays about North America at the end of the 20th century, an anthology of cemetery essays, and Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues, an anthology of essays drawn from my 10 years of editing Morbid Curiosity magazine.

For the better part of six years, I’d also written a monthly column about visiting cemeteries for Gothic.Net. By 2011, I’d put together the manuscript that would become Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel and my agent was looking for a home for it. We were hobbled, though, because my agent couldn’t quite grasp why anyone would want to visit a cemetery.

While I was trying to persuade her — and waiting for a publisher to say yes — I decided to start this blog. Amazingly enough, no one had snatched up CemeteryTravel.com yet, so the domain was mine for a song. I learned WordPress, set up a website, and wrote my first post. I repurposed that as the Welcome to this blog.

The last 11 years have been a wonderful ride. I’ve met so many people through this blog — other bloggers, cemetery authors & photographers, tour guides, restorers, historians, genealogists, and more — people who have an attachment to just one graveyard and people like me who will explore every cemetery they come across.

I used this platform to research and write 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die and collected some of my favorite photographs into the Cemetery Travels Notebook. I’ve used feedback from blog readers to update Wish You Were Here.

Readers supported me through 2020, when two publishers contacted me about new cemetery books and both proposals fell through. (Oh, 2020, why did you have to be so mean?) Someday, I’ll work my way back around to those books and finish them at last.

Contributors to this blog will appear in the book I’m putting together now, the sequel to the original Death’s Garden published all the way back in 1995. I am so excited about Death’s Garden Revisited! The essays are funny, heartbreaking, and lovely — and focus on cemeteries all around the world. I cannot wait for you to see it.

Here’s to another 11 years of Cemetery Travel. Thank you for being along for the ride!

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Death’s Garden Revisited

Posted on January 5, 2022 | 2 comments

Almost 30 years ago, I received a box of miscellaneous cemetery photos. They had been taken by my best friend’s husband over the course of his travels around the Americas. Blair was 28 years old and dying of AIDS. He wanted to know his photos had a good home.

I decided to put together a book to feature Blair’s photos. I planned initially to write all the text, but as I talked to people about the project, everyone seemed to have a cemetery story they were eager to tell.

The book title expanded from Death’s Garden to Death’s Garden: Relationships with Cemeteries. I was thrilled to discover that people — people I knew, even complete strangers — all had a graveyard they’d connected with, either because  family members were buried there, or because they’d visited it on vacation, or because they’d grown up in a house near it, or for a whole bouquet of other reasons.

The contributors varied from people I met through zines to a ceramics professor at Ohio State University, writers for the LA Weekly, professional artists and photographers, underground musicians, depressed high school girls, and most incredibly, punk rock diva Lydia Lunch, who provided some glorious photos. As the book came together, Death’s Garden: Relationships with Cemeteries blew away my expectations.

The initial print run of 1000 copies sold out 18 months after the book came out. I’d only asked for one-time rights to use everyone’s contributions, so I couldn’t republish it. Once the books were gone, Death’s Garden went out of print.

Over the years, I’ve lost track of many of the contributors. Some are dead and have a different relationship with cemeteries now. Others have sunk into the anonymity of a pseudonym on the internet.

Marilyn’s lipstick-pink marble

Seven years ago, I did a project on this blog where I invited people to tell stories about a cemetery to which they had connected. The stories ranged from falling in love in a cemetery to exploring vacation sites, from leading cemetery tours to visiting family members’ graves, from pilgrimages to famous graves to rediscovering the forgotten and alone.

At this moment, I am in the process of assembling a sequel to that original Death’s Garden book. Like the first book, Death’s Garden Revisited will explore all the different ways people relate to cemeteries: through family ties, as sites of history or settings for one-of-a-kind artwork, whether pursuing genealogy or paying respects at famous people’s resting places.

I’m thrilled by how the book is coming together so far. Stay tuned to this blog for the announcement of the Table of Contents and cover artist!

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Cemetery Podcasts

Posted on December 22, 2021 | 3 comments

I had the honor of being a guest on two really great podcasts this year.

In March, I chatted with Tui Snider on her Tombstone Tuesdays video podcast. We talked about Wish You Were Here and 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die, how I came to love cemeteries, and some of my favorite cemetery sculptures. It was really fun.

Here’s the link, in case the embed doesn’t come through: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc8atGbwYis&t=2s

In November, I hung out with LaShell Scott for her Stones, Bones and Shadows podcast. We talked about our favorite cemeteries that we haven’t visited yet — Highgate for her, Savannah’s Bonaventure for me, and so much more.

Click to listen to it here or go directly to Spotify with this link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/00tHCvVT7dq8Rm8bFhvRI0?si=e0af30ed3d574505

I know it’s been a couple of years since I had a cemetery book published, but that hasn’t been for lack of trying on my part. Hopefully, something will work out for next year.

In the meantime, if you have a cemetery podcast, I’d love to chat with you. Hit me up through the Contact form above!

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My Cemetery Work Crosses over into Fiction

Posted on December 8, 2021 | Leave a comment

When I’m not writing about cemeteries as travel destinations, I am a novelist. Whenever I can, I work cemeteries into my ficiton.

In the Nineties, just as I was beginning to explore cemeteries, I collaborated with Brian Thomas to write an epic love story between an angel and a succubus. As part of our location scouting for the books, Brian took me to cemeteries all around Los Angeles.

The first cemetery we visited was, of course, Forest Lawn. Brian lived in Glendale at the time, so Forest Lawn was practically in his neighborhood.

As we developed the story, I wrote some chapters and Brian wrote others. One of the pieces he wrote was about the angel Azaziel meeting a teenage runaway named Ashleigh amidst the statuary at Forest Lawn. Further into the story, Brian returned to Forest Lawn and particularly to the stained glass Last Supper window for a wonderful scene where the fallen priest Joseph regains his faith.

My Cemetery of the Week listing for Forest Lawn is here: https://cemeterytravel.com/2011/05/04/cemetery-of-the-week-14-the-original-forest-lawn/

Marilyn’s lipstick-stained marble niche in Westwood Village Memorial Park

I’ve written about exploring Westwood Village Memorial Park in the dark on Cemetery Travel before. When I was revising the second book in the angel/succubus series in 2019, I realized that Lorelei and Azaziel needed a place to have their first real date, so I wrote Westwood into Angelus Rose.

The Cemetery of the Week listing for Westwood is here: https://cemeterytravel.com/2012/10/31/cemetery-of-the-week-82-pierce-brothers-westwood-village-memorial-park/

In that same revision, I found a place to work the cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels into the book, too. When Brian and I initially wrote the books, the cathedral was still under construction. All these years later, when the books were finally being completed, it felt weird that the cathedral — such an important part of the religious life of Los Angeles — didn’t appear in our story. I revised the scene where the high school choirs perform for all the angels in the city and set the concert in the courtyard at the cathedral. I’m really pleased with how it turned out.

The Cemetery of the Week listing for Our Lady of the Angels is here: https://cemeterytravel.com/2021/03/26/cemetery-of-the-week-173-the-crypt-of-our-lady-of-the-angels/

Angels in Angelus Rosedale, Los Angeles California

Once we imagined the trajectory of Lorelei and Azaziel’s love story, Brian knew where the books had to end.  He took me time and time again to explore Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery. The angels, palms, family tombs, chapel, and columbarium all appear in the book Angelus Rose, although they end up worse for wear.

The Cemetery of the Week listing for Angelus Rosedale Cemetery is here: https://cemeterytravel.com/2012/02/15/cemetery-of-the-week-51-angelus-rosedale-cemetery/

If I’ve piqued your curiosity about our angel/succubus love story, it’s available in paperback, ebooks, or as an ebook set of both books.

Here are the links for Lost Angels:

Here are the links for Angelus Rose:

Or you can pick up both books in one ebook set at https://amzn.to/31L5U1G.

 

 

 

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