Of Specters and Spirits . . .

Cemeteries are a part of life. They’re a bigger part of death but, for those of us still around, they are part of our existence. We visit them, revere them, even fear them.

I’ve had my share of grave graveyard experiences, including burying close friends and family members. But there have been others not involving actual burials. And, at this season of Halloween, cemeteries even play into that frighteningly fun time.

Who hasn’t passed the neighborhood house where mock tombstones are inscribed with “Here Lies” names of such notables as “Dracula,” “Frankenstein,” “The Mummy” and other denizens of the dark night? How deliciously macabre is that?

The cemeteries of New Orleans are actually tourist attractions, where visitors come to see the ornate above-ground tombs that hold the remains of generations of whole families. They are truly works of art, even attracting thieves who rob them of statuary that they intend to re-sell. Fortunately, most of them are usually caught and convicted and the artifacts returned. The ancient crime of grave-robbing, it seems, is still with us.

Also still with us is the belief that the spirits of the dead haunt cemeteries, hovering near their final resting places for all time. I cannot say this is true or untrue, even after a late-night experience in a rural South Louisiana graveyard.

Having heard about making tomb recordings with a tape recorder, I placed a running tape recorder onto the tombstone of a young man who lost his life while working on a railroad more than 10 years earlier. I returned later for the recorder.

I listened to the tape, which recorded nothing more than muted night sounds such as distant crickets chirping – until about halfway through.

The distinct, muffled sound of a train passing, with clacking of wheels-on-rails and the whistle even blowing shocked me. The nearest railroad was miles away through thick woods. I told my wife Terri about that long ago night so we plan to make a taping at an old cemetery not far from where we live in Lee County.

Nothing, though, approaches my cemetery experience as a young teenager, when my family lived on the Presidio of San Francisco, the U.S. Army post on the tip of the California peninsula. I was 14 and had attended a movie at the post theater; it ended later than I anticipated, more than an hour after the post shuttle bus had made its final 10 p.m. round.

I was left to walk home, a marathon of miles if I followed the Bayside roads around the perimeter of the post, or only a few miles if I traversed cross-country to the Pacific side of the post and home. Problem was, the only route I knew for sure was through the National Cemetery adjacent to the theater, all this on a nearly moonless, eerily hazy night as midnight neared.
I stood at the tall iron gates for a few moments, steeling myself to the journey ahead – more than a quarter-mile up a hill past thousands of white tombstones, including occasional fresh graves of Vietnam dead. I had never walked so fast; I didn’t look back and I didn’t look to the sides. I looked straight ahead, concentrating on the thick brick wall I would eventually have to scale if I made it to the rear of the cemetery alive.

The wall loomed ahead and I jumped high enough to wrap an arm on top. I clawed and scratched with hands and feet, fearful something would grab my dangling legs as I struggled up and over. I dropped to the other side in total darkness since trees blocked out what little moonlight shone onto the cemetery.

I made it through the graveyard but was still not in the clear. All around me lay tombstones, a dozen or more seemingly glowing in the blackness. No time to think about them; it was time to get out of the woods, as far from the cemetery as fast as I could.

So I lived to tell about it. But as terrifying as the cemetery was to a kid, I still think about the discarded tombstones tossed over the fence. And I’ve never figured out why; it’s the specter that still haunts me about that night.