A Prayer for the Departed

 

Bonaventure Cemetery is a public cemetery located on a scenic bluff of the Wilmington River, east of Savannah, Georgia. It has inspired many authors and movies bringing with it tales of frightening hauntings.

From Life Magazine Special - Strange But True: 100 of the World's Weirdest Wonders
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To many people, a graveyard offers solace: a chance to visit—perhaps commune with—a lost family member or friend. But for many others, a graveyard represents an eerie experience without rival. In a cemetery, the veil between life and death is simply too thin. There, if our world indeed supports ghosts, is where the dead sleep. Or refuse to.

Life Magazine's special on Strange But True: 100 of the World's Weirdest Wonders, has a great write up about this creepy cemetary. Famous authors like Edgar Allan Poe and  Stephen King used graveyards in setting their disturbing tales. Writer John Berendt took advantage of the strange events surrounding a death in Savannah, Georgia, in his famous 1994 book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which included voodoo rituals that transpired in this cemetery.

Now is this a haunted graveyard? It could be an example of one.

The moss-draped oaks inside the wrought-iron gate look like close kin to the animated trees of The Wizard of Oz or The Lord of the Rings. The statuary is extraordinary, even by stringent haunted-graveyard standards. Angels, praying children and grieving women are among the stone denizens of Bonaventure.

The article talks about stories, like that of Josiah Tattnall Jr. who once owned a plantation on the site of the present-day cemetery, where after a dinner party, the house caught fire. As the story goes, the plantation owner directed his slaves to move the festivities outside, and the article goes on to say that today Tattnall's guests can sometimes be heard chatting cheerily and toasting with fine crystal.

There are even stories of a pack of wild ghost dogs. But that doesn't come close to the more popular story.

One of the cemetery's best known monuments, the statue of little Gracie Watson, has been said to cry out in the night. 

There is even a ghost story of a six year-old girl, "Bird Girl" (who died of pneumonia), and was renown for being on a bestselling book, that it was moved indoors into a museum called the Telfair. You would think a graveyard should be place of peace and quiet. Right?

The tiny Dog Chapel in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, is just that—in fact the canines here are considerably less demonstrative than those in Bonaventure. Built by the artist Stephen Huneck after he survived a life-threatening illness in 1998, the chapel welcomes "All Creeds, All Breeds—No Dogmas Allowed." Its solace was not enough for Huneck himself, who suffered from depression and took his own life in 2010 at age Ea. But the chapel endures, the perfect place to celebrate (or remember) man's best friend.

We say enter at your own risk!

From Life Magazine Special - Strange But True: 100 of the World's Weirdest Wonders
Purchase here!