I'm Pure Mad About Graveyards

Warning: If mention of graveyards gives you the dry heaves, step away now, If you’re as warped as I am, carry on.

I love a good graveyard. And what better time to celebrate that love than during the season of the dead. My post is going out on 2 November, All Souls’ Day, The Day of the Dead in Mexico, Samhain. Today is the right day for this post.

I love all graveyards, the ones with shiny stones and the ones with stones that list to the right, the engravings worn away with age. I don’t set out to visit graveyards, but I frequently stumble upon them, and that fills me with delight.

Here are the three crude categories of graveyards that fill my warped heart with wonder.

Unexpected Graveyards

As I say, I love to stumble upon graveyards – it fills me with a sense of discovery, the delight of the unexpected. I did a photography course at the National Council for the Blind.

Outside the building was a busy road, with buses passing by that would bring you to the city centre in minutes. And at the back of the building was an old graveyard, with tall gravestones peeping through tall grass.

I took a picture of the graveyard with my newfound skills. I took it through the black bars that surround the graveyard, and you can see the tops of the gravestones just above the grass.

The Pretty Graveyard

I go skiing in Austria and we stay in a village where the Catholic faith of the people is strong. Beside the church is a small, perfectly formed graveyard. The narrow, neat graves are adorned with carefully arranged flowers.

Above each grave is an ornate, marbled stone, the engraved letters unclogged by grime. These were graves that were tended with loving reference.

The Atmospheric Graveyard

And then there is the graveyard that has the good fortune to find itself in a pleasing setting. Like the one overlooking Killary Fjord on the Galway-Mayo border in the West of Ireland.

The graves are on a hill, the stones facing the water. As John McGahern put it, they faced the rising sun. The sight of stones, with their generations of Galway names engraved on them, moved me to tears.

Whatever your belief system, graveyards hold a lot of spirit within them. The spirits of those who have gone before, and the love that remains, the love that's clear in the well-tended graves, the flowers, the silent, remembering figures. There’s nothing ghoulish about a good graveyard. It’s a place of love and memory

I’d love you to share the graveyards you find moving, atmospheric or deliciously creepy. If you’d like to nominate your favourite graveyard…