CHILLING CEMETERIES

 


Cemeteries. They tend to be the setting for plenty of urban legends and campfire ghost stories. Storytellers love them; they score high on the ‘creep factor’ due to all the--you know--dead bodies six feet under, which provides plenty of ammunition for a good ole fashioned ghost or zombie story.

In the daylight, cemeteries seem pretty harmless. But once the sun dips below the horizon, they take on a whole different vibe. You probably wouldn’t think twice about walking past a cemetery in the daytime, but I bet you’d find a different route if your walk was at night and would take you past a graveyard.

Speaking from personal experience, I can remember a Halloween night when I was about fourteen or fifteen. It was probably the last year I went door to door looking for handouts. The trick-or-treating ended at my friend’s house at the far end of the community we lived in and I was looking at a long walk home.

 Alone. In the dark. On Halloween. Fairly late at night. 

Wouldn’t you know it—to get home, I would have to pass two local cemeteries. Alone. In the dark. On Halloween. There was no alternate route. But hey, I am a paranormal enthusiast! A self-made ghost hunter! What’s a few zombies and wayward spirits crawling out of their graves in the dark, ready to attack and whisk me away to the lairs from whence they came?

Okay --in those days I did not look forward to seeing ghosts like I do today. I hadn’t exactly explored the spirit world at that point, even though some were already residing in our house. To say I was concerned about my trek from one end of the community to the other is a bit of an understatement.

I should interject here and tell you that most of the community is pretty much just a forest with one road running through it and the odd house here and there.

Unless you have lived in the country far away from light pollution, street lights and constant traffic, you cannot understand how very dark it is at night in this area. There were times during the walk when I just had to hope I was still walking on the road and not heading for a steep ditch. There were also times during the walk that I hoped no nocturnal creatures were going to appear in my vicinity. And then there was the fact that I knew I would eventually be passing the two cemeteries.

So like most of the decisions that I have had to make before that night and after, I realized there was no other option and did the only thing I could: I headed for home. Alone. In the dark. On Halloween.

This is how focused I was on the dark walk: I never once touched my Halloween candy the entire way. And there were some full-sized bars in there, so…

Anyway, I can only surmise I walked faster than normal, due to admittedly being frightened by the circumstances. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, it wasn’t a terribly long time until the local churches were in sight, their tall white steeples prominent against the dark of night. It was quite foreboding to say the least. 


Behind the churches, which are practically next to each other, lie the cemeteries, with many, many, many old and new graves and headstones. Did I cross to the other side of the road to put as much distance as possible between me and whatever was going to rise up out of those graveyards and come after me? You bet your ass I did. Would those fifteen extra feet have helped, should this nightmare come to fruition? I doubt it very much.

I walked as fast as it is humanly possible to do while holding a large pillowcase full of candy. As I mentioned, I could barely see anything-- but my hearing became extra sharp, listening for nearby caskets creaking open down behind the churches and quite possibly the moans of the dead. I heard a few branches snap somewhere. My mind went through the possibilities: deer, raccoon, skunk (no please God do NOT let it be a skunk. I’d almost rather it was a resurrected body.), or zombie. I don’t know that the zombie would be snapping branches in the bushes, though. I picked up the pace a bit more wondering why on God’s green earth we lived so far away from my friend’s house. Why why why??

I kept cruising down the road, not daring to look behind me. I could no longer hear branches snapping. It was just me, the rustling bag of candy, and my heart rate increasing. I finally made it home. Alone. In the dark. On Halloween. Fairly late at night.

The moral of this story is, obviously I would do anything for chocolate. This still holds true today.

When people think about ghosts, for the most part they tend to picture them showing up after dark; cue haunted houses at night, poorly lit attics, after-hours morgues and graveyards as previously mentioned. The mind just naturally goes there, although this theory makes little sense. It’s not like ghosts sleep all day and only wake up at night so they can haunt the heck out of you. That’s not how it works.

The idea of “ghosts in the dark” might lend itself from stories of fictional vampires though, who allegedly do sleep in the day and roam the earth at night, but as previously mentioned in another post (here), real ghosts and spirits can and will show up at any place at any time. There are no set hours or off-limits locations for them. There could be one standing beside you right now.


I grew up with ghosts in our house. They were in the house for many generations. They came and went on their own schedules, any time of day or night, any time of the year, and continue to do so. Trying to coax them through séances or Ouija boards during dark and stormy nights is only successful once in a while. You have just as much chance of experiencing one in the daylight, even without personally inviting them in, not just in our house but in any haunted location.

To think ghosts and spirits can only appear after dark is a fallacy and most of the true ghost sightings I know of (including my own) happened in the light of day.

However, things always seem scarier once the lights are out (clearly demonstrated in the Halloween story), driven by the natural fear of the unknown and what might be lurking in the shadows or the pitch black dark.

 To my knowledge, the church cemeteries I walked past on that creepy Halloween night are not haunted, although my mother did witness an anomaly we still cannot explain outside the doors of one of those churches many years ago.

This brings us to a few of the truly haunted cemeteries of Nova Scotia:

Lunenburg, NS

There is a 300 year old cemetery in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia which sits atop (the quite aptly named) Gallows Hill.

Lunenburg holds a special place in my heart and I have visited many times, as it is not very far from where I live or from my other ‘haunted’ house. My ancestors first put down roots there many generations ago. The town is known for its exceptional seaside beauty, friendly people and is a world UNESCO Heritage Site, one of only 1,150 in the world for having unique cultural and historical significance. It is world famous for many of its distinct qualities and you can’t swing a dead cat in Lunenburg without hitting a tourist.(that’s a local saying.)

But the town is not without its fair share of hauntings and tales of the paranormal.

Wouldn’t you know it—the Gallows Hill cemetery is haunted by one Miss Sofia McLaughlin, a fourteen year old who literally died from stress and a broken heart.

It was 1879. Sofia worked for a dressmaker in Lunenburg, who accused the young girl of stealing money from her. Sofia was beside herself—she lived by the bible and would never entertain the thought of breaking a commandment. The townspeople soon turned on Sofia, believing she was indeed a thief and soon, the locals refused to do business with her father, and the family’s reputation in the small town was ruined.

Sophia had a sister who had previously died and was also buried in the Gallows Hill cemetery. Daily, Sophia would read her bible at her sister’s grave and sob over the accusations against her. Her own mother didn’t even believe her when she swore she did not take money from her employer.

The stress became unbearable for Sophia and she died. Her grave in the Gallows Hill cemetery is adorned with a broken iron heart decoration.

People have reported the sound of laughter and sighs and disembodied female voices when visiting Sophia’s grave on more than one occasion.

Sidenote: The dressmaker’s son later admitted to stealing the money.

 

Halifax and Pictou, NS:

Locally infamous for voices and laughter verified by many different people, these two cemeteries have been haunted for years. We previously talked about them here:

Other Haunted Cemeteries


When you first started reading this, the skeptic in you likely thought, ”It’s pretty cliché to talk about a ghost in a cemetery”, followed by, “A ghost can allegedly go anywhere in the universe; why would it haunt it’s own grave or a cemetery?”

I, too ask these questions. Having never been dead before (in this lifetime), I don’t really have the answers. I can only tell you what I iterated in the beginning: ghosts and spirits can and will show up at any place at any time. And they do.

I don’t think it really matters “why”. It only matters that it happens.



 Additionally, I would be doing a huge disservice to all of the creepy cemeteries if I did not include the following, even though there is no ghost involved:

This story is the true account of what happened to a local man and has not been embellished. Some of my family members-- going back several generations-- have related this, so we know it to be true.

It was May 1870. In rural Nova Scotia near the little community I grew up in, the local doctor, Dr. Edward Pope, lived in the next community. He was kept fairly busy as he was the only doctor around for miles and he would service the surrounding communities. He was well respected by all that knew him.

He only had one downfall: he never met a bottle of alcohol he didn’t like.

Many times, he would drink to the point of blacking out for many hours at a stretch (and reportedly sometimes even for days). His wife would often find him in such a state, unable to wake him from his total inebriation, and he would be left to come to naturally once the effects of the alcohol had worn off. One wonders if maybe he also took some type of pills, as he was a doctor and had access to whatever was available back then.

So on May 6, 1870, his wife once again found him passed out. She tried to rouse him to no avail. Hours went by. Then a couple of days. He was still not able to be brought around. They couldn’t fetch a doctor; he WAS the doctor. Due to the length of time he was unconscious, it was determined that he must be dead.

The funeral was arranged. Many people from the neighboring communities gathered at the local church to attend, including some of my ancestors.

His casket was set up in the local church and prior to the service, mourners lined up to view the doctor’s body and pay their respects. Everything was going along nicely as per funeral standards when a couple of the attendees noticed sweat on the brow of the doctor. They whispered to each other about this as dead bodies do not produce sweat (even if you are having a particularly hot May) and even when you consider how they might have prepared a body for burial back then; it would have been a much simpler process without the extent of the preparations that are done today. Even so, there could not have been sweat on the brow of a dead man unless…. he wasn’t actually dead.

This was not brought to the attention of the minister performing the burial rites and the funeral  proceeded, while some of those in the church pews whispered amongst themselves about whether the doctor was actually dead or not.

Interment followed in the local Old Burial Ground cemetery pictured here. 

(I visited the grave yesterday and snapped this pic.)



Public record shows his cause of death as heart disease. I’d be inclined to change that to “buried alive”.

If the casket was exhumed, would there be evidence on the inside of the lid that Dr. Pope eventually woke up after his drunken stupor wore off?

It was quite a common practice going back many centuries to attach a rope into a tomb or coffin with a bell above ground, should the interred find himself alive and well and six feet under. Methods for determining that a death had occurred were not as accurate at that time. Unfortunately, this invention had not reached the south shore of Nova Scotia in a timely manner for Dr. Pope.



For further paranormal reading on related places and topics mentioned here, please check out the following links:

 Creepy Counties

Haunted Nova Scotia Schools (Lunenburg and Halifax mentions)










 

 

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