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Posted: 28-05-2010 08:01 Post subject:

We also have a "Gravestones and Epitaphs" thread:

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9679

Posted: 04-06-2010 10:41 Post subject:

Not just creepy: The cemetery that has gone all crawly too... after invasion by web-spinning caterpillars
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:03 PM on 3rd June 2010

Visitors to graveyard have been spooked by a plague of web-spinning caterpillars.
The scene at Southend Cemetery in Essex is straight out of a horror film with silken threads draped over trees, plants and gravestones.
It has been caused by an invasion of thousands of bird cherry ermine moth caterpillars who have created a vast web-like nest.

Nova Bickmore, 69, could not believe the sight when she visited her father's grave.
She said: ‘There were thousand upon thousand of caterpillars and a silk web all over the trees, which had no leaves left.
‘Some of the caterpillars were hanging down from the trees and others were all over the floor.
‘It was a really ghostly scene.’

In their caterpillar stage, the bugs, known as web worms, weave leaves of trees together and eat them from their nests.
They feed on bird cherry trees which are found across Europe and when they emerge fully grown, they become distinctive white moths with five rows of black dots.

Sheila Weeks, from Ramsden Heath, went to tend her sister's grave and was shocked by the scene which met her.
She said: ‘The trees are all covered with what looks like white net. There are millions of them.
‘We had to clear them off our feet and car before we left but we took about 20 home.
‘It's very eerie. The trees are shrouded in lacy silk from top to bottom and they are all over the grass and graves - they are quite a sight.’

Roger Payne, natural history curator at Southend Museum, said the caterpillars will emerge as moths next month.
He said: ‘They have good years and bad years and this is obviously a good one for them.
‘The fact they are on the ground means there are so many of them they are probably starving and have fallen from the trees in search of food.’

Southend Council staff said that the moth invasion had been brought to their attention, but said there were no plans to get rid of the bugs.
Park officer Paul Sinclair said: ‘We because aware of this problem last week. These creatures are affecting about 30 trees.
‘We believe they are bird cherry tree ermine moths as they are only on these trees but we have taken samples of larvae and are growing them on to see what emerges.
‘Last year it affected fewer trees. They stripped the leaves off the trees but the trees all seemed to survive.
‘It is a natural phenomenon, so we don't want to go spraying chemicals if we don't need to. We will monitor the situation.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1283749/Not-just-creepy--cemetery-gone-crawly-caterpillar-invasion.html#ixzz0psM4jgBx

Posted: 11-06-2010 09:31 Post subject:

Soldiers buried in wrong graves in Arlington Cemetery ‘shambles’
Michael Evans, Pentagon Correspondent

America’s pantheon of war dead, the hallowed Arlington Cemetery on the edge of the capital, has mislaid more than 200 of its fallen heroes.

An investigation carried out by General Steven Whitcomb, Inspector-General of the US Army, revealed yesterday that the nation’s most sacred shrine was a shambles, where hundreds of graves are incorrectly marked.

Headstones have the wrong names, some graves recorded as empty have the remains of unidentified soldiers — and there have been cases of doubling up, with the body of one dead soldier dumped on another.

The record keeping has also been found wanting, with burials listed on paper files that go astray. The digital age has not yet reached Arlington National Cemetery.

As Americans learn the shocking details of the desecration of their monument, heads are certain to roll. John Metzler, the long-standing superintendent of the cemetery, has already resigned. He was sent a letter of reprimand by John McHugh, the Army Secretary.

Thurman Higgenbotham, Mr Metzler’s deputy, is on “administrative leave” and could face disciplinary charges.

Shamed by the revelations, Mr McHugh apologised yesterday to the families of the servicemen and servicewomen who perished in battle around the world and ended up in the wrong graves. He described Arlington National Cemetery — in Virginia, south of Washington DC — as “the most sacred place on this planet”.

General Whitcomb said that the cemetery was supposed to have “zero defects”. But he revealed that in his investigation he had discovered 211 graves where errors had been made. He admitted during a press conference at the Pentagon that more could be found.

Families had come forward to tell him: “This isn’t where my father/husband was buried.”

The largest numbers of mistakes were found in Sections 59, 65 and 66, which cover a number of past wars, although not Iraq or Afghanistan.

But even in Section 60, where US servicemen and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are laid to rest, two graves were found with the wrong markings.

A significant number of graves are unmarked, the report noted. In Section 27, the official map shows that there should be 5,816 occupied graves but there are only 5,303 headstones.

etc...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7147910.ece

Posted: 07-07-2010 10:29 Post subject:

Only a glimpse, but here's a quick tour around the English Churchyard:

http://www.deadinteresting.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=67&Itemid=76

...by the same chap who wrote the excellent Sexton's Tale's for BBC Radio some years ago.

See here: http://www.tales.co.uk/SEXTON_TALE.HTML
And here: http://www.radioarchive.cc/torrents-details.php?id=5183

(I have no idea as to the copyright status of free-to-air broadcast, but I suspect it's fine).

Posted: 14-08-2010 21:27 Post subject:

Took this pic a couple of days ago in Phillack, Cornwall.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/rynner/Boysgrave-1.jpg

It's the grave of a 5 year old boy who died in 2002.
(Although a mark on the headstone makes it look like 2802! Shocked

)

Practically all the toys and decorations are as good as new - the grave is obviously regularly tended.

Posted: 08-09-2010 17:52 Post subject:

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs059.snc4/35335_1393737637415_1051382423_30947039_567411_n.jpg

Interesting gravestone, there must be a story behind it.

I took this in Jesmond cemetary in Newcaastle upon Tyne. I have asked around and tried searching the internet but so far have found no info. If anyone has more luck i would be very interested.

Posted: 08-09-2010 20:01 Post subject:

To repeat what I said earlier:

We also have a "Gravestones and Epitaphs" thread:

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9679 Wink

Posted: 08-10-2010 00:28 Post subject: Graveyards

Hello all,interesting subject and one I want to join in on as my first post.

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area in the city of Berkeley. I have been to Mission Dolores (founded 1776) in San Francisco,where there is a small graveyard. It's pleasant and there is nothing scary about it. Because San Francisco has limited space,they moved their cementaries to neighboring Colma,just south of the city in San Mateo county. If I could name one famous "resident" there,besides a departed friend,it would be Wyatt Earp,the famous western lawman,who lived 1848-1929.

Berkeley does not have a cemetery either. Oakland to the south has Mountain View. If you have ever heard of the Black Dahlia murder case,this is where Elizabeth Short is buried. In that case,I'd feel it would be improper to go there out of morbid curiosity.

Gene--

Posted: 13-10-2010 08:41 Post subject:

Not the first time this has been reported:

Badgers dig up human bones in graveyard
Badgers are causing havoc in an ancient churchyard by digging up the remains of people buried there for several hundred years.
By Nick Britten
Published: 6:55AM BST 13 Oct 2010

And locals have been warned they can do nothing about it because the animals are a protected species.

At least four graves have been disturbed so far; in one instance a child found a leg bone and took it home to his parents.

It is illegal to kill badgers or destroy a sett, and attempts by the local parish council to have the badgers moved have been blocked by Natural England.

Instead, Rev Simon Shouler has been forced to carry out regular patrols to pick up stray bones, store them and re-inter them all in a new grave.

Rev Shouler first noticed the problem at St Remigius Church in the village of Long Clawson, Leics, which dates back to the 12th Century, earlier this year when someone reported seeing a skull and a bone on top of the ground.

The churchyard took burials for 800 years before closing in the early 1900s because it was full.

Since the first discovery a child has discovered a leg bone and two other leg bones have now been dug up.

Rev Shouler said: “The parish council began seeking advice and someone from the local county badger group came around and told us about special gates that allow the badgers out but does not allow them back in.
“The idea was that they would be relocated to a nearby field.
“However, Natural England and English Heritage got involved and ruled that there might have been a medieval house on the adjacent field once, and so the land is protected.

“We cannot go near the sett, and English Nature will not grant us a license to relocate them so there is nothing we can do other than to let them remain in the churchyard, digging up the remains of people who have been buried for several hundred years.
“Because the setts are under or in the grave, we cannot even bury the bones in their rightful place. I have been told to carry out a monthly bone patrol, collect them all up and re-inter them in a new grave.”

He added: “It is ridiculous. If I decided to dig up a grave to build an extension for the church or something, there would be hell to pay, yet here we have people who are having their bones scattered at the whim of someone sitting in an office miles away.
“It lacks any common sense but sadly reflects the bureaucracy of modern life.

“And it can’t be healthy to touch these bones. Goodness knows what some of these people died of – there were things like Anthrax around and I know that can stay in the ground for a very long time.”

The field next to St Remigius Church is said to contain remains of the main residence of the Bozon family, Lords of the manor from 1304 to 1539.

The field and graveyard are part of a Scheduled Ancient Monument and whilst Natural England were initially happy to grant a licence, English Heritage advised that if moved the badgers could cause more damage to the protected site.

A spokesman said: “This is a complex issue where finding a solution to satisfy everyone is hard.

“We evaluate situations such as this on a case by case basis but we always aim to strike a balance between the welfare of wildlife and the preservation of human remains and scheduled ancient monuments.”

Under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992, it is illegal to kill, injure or take a badger, or interfere with a sett. The maximum sentence is six months’ jail.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8059257/Badgers-dig-up-human-bones-in-graveyard.html

Posted: 18-10-2010 20:51 Post subject:

My previous post told of wildlife and graveyards - but it's not always so disruptive:

Urban biodiversity beyond the grave
By Mark Kinver, Science and environment reporter, BBC News

"It was such a beautiful place, it was easy to capture on film," said film-maker Emma Cepek, explaining the lure of Manchester's Southern Cemetery as a location for a wildlife documentary.

Her film, Beyond the Grave, sets out to highlight the importance of cemeteries as vital habitats in urban areas.

"Whilst I was there, it was never a gloomy place. It was a place of life - there was a real sense of biodiversity," she explained.

The 40-hectare site, established in 1897, is listed on the national landscapes of special historic interest register.

Artist LS Lowry and football legend Sir Matt Busby are among the famous names to be have been laid to rest in the leafy surroundings.

Ms Cepek, a student on the University of Salford's MA course in wildlife documentary production, said: "It is a huge green space, and it is located just three miles from the centre of Manchester, which was one of the first industrialised cities.
"For Manchester, this more or less meant a wipe-out of all green spaces except for this one location."

Derek Richardson, principal ecologist for the Greater Manchester Ecology Unit, explained why the sites were deemed so important for biodiversity.
"As most cemeteries were laid out prior to the more industrial farming practices, they can be refuges for species that are not found in the wider countryside," he told BBC News.
"We have records in cemeteries near the city centre of foxes, badgers, deer, songbirds, as well as flora and invertebrates."

He added that the locations also provided shelter for species because they were not as intensively managed as other urban green spaces.
"They are not like agricultural land, or even gardens, where you have herbicide spraying or slug pellets being put down.
"So this means that the whole food chain is there, from invertebrates right up to the higher mammals - even close into the city centre."

He explained that mature or veteran trees, which were often originally planted as a feature of the cemetery - such as London's St Pancras Garden's "Hardy tree", an ash tree growing in the middle of a grouping of headstones which novelist Thomas Hardy planted as a young trainee architect, provided a valuable refuge for a wide variety of species.

Mr Richardson explained that, very often, bigger was better when it came to supporting biodiversity.
"Municipal cemeteries, like Southern in Manchester, are very big in scale, and that scale is very useful in terms of supporting more species, such as mammals that need more space."

The sites also provided a route for species passing through an urban landscape, he added.
"It does seem to be the case that you do not need green spaces to be physically connected as long as you have the stepping stones - and cemeteries provide those spaces.
"The fact that we are finding deer in cemeteries close to city centres in Salford and Manchester means that cemeteries are certainly being used as stepping stones.

Staff member Tommy Moran, who has worked at Southern Cemetery for 40 years, said that many of the natural features had been there much longer than any of the staff.
"In some places, the ivy has been there for over a hundred years," he said in the film, before acknowledging how the burial site has provided stability in a rapidly changing landscape.
"If Southern Cemetery was not here then you might have a factory with smoking chimneys, or a housing estate with a load of Asbos on it."

Emma Cepek said that it came to light during filming that some of the cemetery staff had trained as arborists, and they also encouraged wild flowers to grow among the headstones.
"During my time there, they were also constantly debating how much of the ivy needed to be cut back, and what trees needed to be cut back - it was fantastic atmosphere."

Advice in an English Heritage report, Paradise Preserved, offers guidance on maximising the benefits the areas offer wildlife.
This includes only cutting grass once, maybe twice a year, to encourage the growth of wild flowers that are important food sources of butterflies and pollinators.

The Greater Manchester Ecology Unit advises councils on the most effective ways to manage urban green spaces, including cemeteries.

Mr Richardson said that when developing strategies, the unit did understand that the primary use of the site had to be taken into account.

"What people want when they are visiting is signs that there has been some care of the site, but that is not totally at odds with managing wildlife," he observed.
"You can put up bird or bat boxes, sowing wild flowers, or encouraging hedges. These sorts of things do not make a site look unattractive, but nevertheless it is good for wildlife."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11546089

Posted: 23-10-2010 09:00 Post subject:

Bereaved mother told she may have visited wrong grave for 60 years
A bereaved mother who lost her daughter 60 years has been told she may have been laying flowers on the wrong grave.
Published: 8:00AM BST 23 Oct 2010

Janet Murcott, 80, has spent the past six decades placing floral tributes on the plot she believed contained the remains of her child Carol.

But last week she found a laminated note on the grave at Sudbury Cemetery in Suffolk telling her there may have been an error and someone else may be buried there.

Mrs Murcott, from Sudbury, said: "It is really disgusting. I just found this notice - we have been going up there as often as we could for years.
"She would have been 60 in March and I only laid some posies there a few days ago.
"It is disgusting - it is very upsetting. I'm 80 years old and I don't need this."

The notice, left by fellow visitors to the cemetery, thanked Mrs Murcott for tending the grave but asked her to contact the superintendent at the cemetery to clear up the matter.

Mrs Murcott, who has three sons, lost her daughter to spina bifida.

She believed Carol was buried in an unmarked plot which sits alongside another unmarked grave.

Sudbury Town Council launched an urgent investigation to establish the truth about the plots.

Deputy town clerk Jacqui Howells said: "It is extremely distresing for the parties concerned.
"We do have all the records and if it is the wrong grave we can put the situation right."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8080220/Bereaved-mother-told-she-may-have-visited-wrong-grave-for-60-years.html

Posted: 24-10-2010 02:11 Post subject:

I wish "it's the thought that counts" would cut it. Crying or Very sad

Posted: 27-10-2010 09:02 Post subject:

Russian bears treat graveyards as 'giant refrigerators'
A shortage of bears' traditional food near the Arctic Circle has forced the animals to eat human corpses, say locals
Luke Harding in Moscow guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 October 2010

From a distance it resembled a rather large man in a fur coat, leaning tenderly over the grave of a loved one. But when the two women in the Russian village of Vezhnya Tchova came closer they realised there was a bear in the cemetery eating a body.

Russian bears have grown so desperate after a scorching summer they have started digging up and eating corpses in municipal cemetries, alarmed officials said today. Bears' traditional food – mushrooms, berries and the odd frog – has disappeared, they added.

The Vezhnya Tchova incident took place on Saturday in the northern republic of Komi, near the Arctic Circle. The shocked women cried in panic, frightening the bear back into the woods, before they discovered a ghoulish scene with the clothes of the bear's already-dead victim chucked over adjacent tombstones, the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomelets reported. Shocked

Local people said that bears had resorted to scavenging in towns and villages - rummaging through bins, stealing garden carrots and raiding tips. A young man had been mauled in the centre of Syktyvkar, Komi's capital. "They are really hungry this year. It's a big problem. Many of them are not going to survive," said Simion Razmislov, the vice-president of Komi's hunting and fishing society.

World Wildlife Fund Russia said there had been a similar case two years ago in the town of Kandalaksha, in the northern Karelia republic. "You have to remember that bears are natural scavengers. In the US and Canada you can't leave any food in tents in national parks," said Masha Vorontsova of WWF Russia.

"In Karelia one bear learned how to do it [open a coffin]. He then taught the others," she added, suggesting: "They are pretty quick learners."

The only way to get rid of the bears would be to frighten them with something noisy like a firework or shoot them, she said.

According to Vorontsova, the omnivorous bears had "plenty to eat" this autumn, with foods such as fish and ants at normal levels. The bears raided graveyards because they offered a supply of easy food, she said, a bit like a giant refrigerator. "The story is horrible. Nobody wants to think about having a much loved member of their family eaten by a bear."

The bear population in Russia is relatively stable with numbers between 120,000 and 140,000. The biggest threat isn't starvation but hunting - with VIP sportsmen and wealthy gun enthusiasts wiping out most of the large male bears in Kamchatka, in Russia's Far East. Chinese poachers have killed many black bears near the border, selling their claws and other parts in markets.

The Russian government is drafting legislation to ban the killing of bears during the winter breeding season.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/26/russia-bears-eat-corpses-graveyards

Posted: 27-10-2010 18:09 Post subject:

Posted: 22-02-2011 11:37 Post subject:

Burial ground of Bunyan, Defoe and Blake earns protected status
Bunhill Fields in north London, where nonconformists, radicals and dissenters are buried, is declared Grade 1 park
Maev Kennedy The Guardian, Tuesday 22 February 2011

Bunhill Fields, the London cemetery where some of the most radical figures in history lie quietly side by side in unhallowed ground, will today be declared a Grade I park by the government, with separate listings for scores of its monuments.

The cemetery, founded in the 1660s as a burial ground for nonconformists, radicals and dissenters, holds the remains of John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's Progress, Daniel Defoe, who wrote Robinson Crusoe, and the poet and artist William Blake, among thousands of others.

In the 19th century, when it had already become a place of pilgrimage for nonconformists and radical reformers, the poet Robert Southey called it the Campo Santo (holy ground) of the dissenters. By the time it was finally declared full and closed in 1853, at least 120,000 people had been interred in the four acres.

"Paradoxically, the fact that many of those buried here would cheerfully have damned one another to hell on some minute point of theological dispute has brought them all together in this peaceful place," said David Garrard, the English Heritage historian who advised the government that such a unique place deserved the highest grade listing and protection. "Many of these people suffered a lifetime's persecution for their beliefs before coming to rest here."

He spent weeks poring over weathered inscriptions with an Edwardian guidebook - the most recent - in one hand and Dictionary of National Biography in the other.

Leftwing pilgrims of many shades visit regularly to lay wreaths, including Blake Society members, who come every August on the anniversary of the death of the man who wrote Songs of Innocence and the poem which became the hymn Jerusalem.

When the Independent newspaper was founded in 1986 with offices overlooking the burial ground, the editor Andreas Whittam Smith led a small delegation to lay flowers on the grave of Bunyan, who was in prison for his beliefs when he began writing Pilgrim's Progress, the book that is the most translated into other languages after the Bible.

Along with the Grade I listing for the burial ground as a landscape – putting it into the top 10% of the 106 listed cemeteries in England – 75 monuments are being individually Grade II listed including Blake's extremely plain headstone. His bones were lost in a partial clearance and landscaping in the 19th century and the original sites of more burials were lost as a result of 1960s landscaping to repair second world war bomb damage.

Bunyan's much grander tomb is to be listed Grade II*, along with Defoe's obelisk.

Bunhill Fields, just west of City Road in Islington, also provides the final resting place of Isaac Watts, the "father of English hymns", many still sung every Sunday; less famous hymn writer William Shrubsole, whose headstone is carved with three bars of his music; Susanna Wesley, mother of 19 children including Charles and John Wesley, whose London home, chapel and grave lie just across the road; and the engineer Thomas Newcomen, a pioneer of steam power.

Some monuments are being listed on their own merits rather than for their occupants; Henry Hunter, a Presbyterian minister and translator, earns a listing for his imposing 1801 obelisk, made of artificial Coade stone, while Eleanor Coade, inventor of the stone, is buried nearby. Dame Mary Page was buried in 1728 under a massive marble chest, with a long and excruciating inscription recording her last illness: "In 67 months she was tapp'd 60 times, had taken away 240 gallons of water, without ever repining at her case or ever fearing the operation." Shocked

Garrard says the burial ground is of unique importance as a vivid example of the London's old cramped cemeteries, with forests of headstones and thousands of graves jammed into every possible space, which shocked the Victorians and were almost all cleared as the large new garden cemeteries opened in the outskirts.

The land for the cemetery was originally leased from St Paul's Cathedral, which had used it as a dumping ground for bones being cleared from the charnel house and tiny burial ground around the church.

So many cartloads of bones were dumped that the land is said to have risen high enough to support a windmill. It was also designated as a plague pit, when – as chronicled by Defoe – thousands were dying in the city every week, but Garrard can find no evidence that plague victims were actually buried there.

It has been managed as a public open space by the City of London since the 1860s.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/feb/22/bunhill-fields-bunyan-defoe-blake