Thursday 4 December 2014

From Backyard to Graveyard.



From backyard to graveyard

The subject of graveyards or cemeteries is something that fascinates me. As a writer of supernatural thriller novels the sombre oppressive atmosphere of a graveyard, imbued with such reverence and awe as befits the dead, is a great place to start. Its melancholy sense of past misery seems to hang in the air like some unholy miasma as legions of the living have cried rivers of tears in their intense grief and loneliness. What a sad place for the living…

Death is inevitable for all of us and in a graveyard we are reminded of the frailty of human existence like nowhere else. The fascination for me, when I visit graveyards, is to look at the oldest graves and inscriptions and wonder what happened to the person… Sometimes great ideas for stories spring forward from this as I try to imagine what life might have been like for the said dead person.

But apart from that there is the great unknowing… What does happen when we finally confront our very existence? Scary stuff, indeed, for most of us… Unless you have great faith in your own brand of religion/belief… Most of us do not want to be reminded that we are going to pass into the great unknown someday. Perhaps that is really the scary part about graveyards and cemeteries.

But spirits, ghosts and things that go thump in the night are also great things to think about in graveyards…

So let your imagination fly!! If you dare…

Do graveyards/cemetaries scare you or are they just places of great sadness?

4 comments:

  1. I sometimes visit graveyards to research names and dates. There is something spooky about them, isn't there? Gargoyles too.

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  2. I've always wanted to take a walk through a graveyard and see what I experience. :)

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  3. On the flip side, graveyards can be comforting too: for the living of course. Paying respects to the fallen, discussing problems out in the open without the fear of being told to 'buck up and get on with life', letting go of the past - endless possibilities. But I must admit, whenever I think of graveyards, I think of Stephen King's 'Carrie'. Brrrrrrr - shivers.

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  4. Graveyards don't scare me. I find them kind of comforting - there are always signs that loved ones are remembered and often they're beautiful places. I particularly like really old ones which are now managed with wildlife in mind.

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