New England Oddities

Buried Legends

Our perception of death has been accompanied by superstition and tradition since humans first implemented the practice of burial around 60,000 BC. Every culture throughout history has observed its own elaborate customs, both to keep safe the living and chaperon the dead to their next stop.

Our modern cemeteries are no less exempt from the vestigial residue of archaic myth. Combining an array of traditional elements – from a uniformity of layout (the feet of the decedents to the East and heads to the West), to gun salutes, bells, and headstones decorated with symbols ranging in theme from the cherubic to memento mori – is it any wonder that cemeteries have long been a source of both curiosity and trepidation?

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