Episode 39: Cemeteries to See Before You Die with Loren Rhoads

Angie Orth:

When I was a kid, cemeteries were places you went to be spooked—gated gardens of perfectly manicured lawns dotted with bright white headstones against the dark blanket of night—places your friends dared you to enter alone at midnight. But cemeteries weren't always considered to be such terrifying places. In fact, they used to be destinations, and these destinations are making a comeback.

My guest today is an expert in this, sometimes spooky, but hauntingly beautiful travel pastime. Loren Rhoads is a San Francisco-based author, editor, and lecturer on cemetery history. She wrote, Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel and 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die. She's also just finished a new book, Death's Garden Revisited—a collection of essays about why people visit cemeteries.

After this episode, I'm willing to bet you'll be one of them. So, let's start this journey to the underworld, shall we? Loren Rhoads, thank you so much for being here with us. I have been looking forward to this chat. I have to know, how did you end up an expert in cemetery travel?

Loren Rhoads:

Completely by accident. We were traveling to Barcelona in 1991 as the Gulf War was starting, so we kept missing flights, things kept being delayed, and they kept rerouting us. We ended up going to London where we had no plans to be. We didn't have guidebooks or any sort of itinerary, and I happened to stumble on this book in Victoria station's bookshop that had cemetery photos that were beautiful, gothic, overgrown, crumbling monuments.

It was a January day, we schlepped out to this cemetery and it was amazing, all these angels, statuaries, and famous people. We had a place completely to ourselves and I thought, “This is cool.” The second half of our trip was Paris and a friend had already told us, “You should go to Père-Lachaise and see Jim Morrison's grave,” and so that was amazing. Père-Lachaise is huge. It was full of autumn leaves and again, we had it to ourselves more or less because it was January and really cold. But I got hooked, I started looking for angels. That was the first focus; I guess I haven't stopped since then.

Angie:

For people who love to travel—all of our listeners—but have never really thought of adding a cemetery to their must-see list, what reasons would you give people to start including them on their itineraries?

Loren:

Let me start by saying, they may have already been to a cemetery or a grave site and not realized because they're pretty much everywhere. If you go to Yosemite, there's a cemetery in the heart of the valley.

I would think the reason to add them is because it's a different perspective. When you go to a graveyard, you see what the culture values and what is important—is it family or religious connections? The history of the area? For me, I get overwhelmed fairly easily, so it's super nice to go someplace quiet and listen to the bird songs, enjoy the trees, flowers, blue sky, and all of that. There's just so many reasons.

People go for birdwatching or because they want to see the gardening. A lot of the bigger cemeteries are one-of-a-kind art galleries that are free. You can walk right up to the sculpture and all the way around it. I think the first one is the scary one, and after you've gone to the first one, you get the bug really quickly.

Angie:

Cemeteries have been lumped into the category of dark tourism. Can you tell us a little bit about dark tourism? Do you think cemeteries belong in that category?

Loren:

Dark tourism is defined as visiting sites of suffering or death. I think of it as battlegrounds, concentration camps, or something like that. Chernobyl is maybe dark tourism, and I personally don't think of cemeteries that way because when I visit them, they're not about death for me, it's more about memory and history. I think a case could be made that some cemeteries have a dark enough history that they would fall under dark tourism.

Angie:

If anybody does feel a bit iffy about the idea of cemetery tourism, I wanted to share a story I read about Père-Lachaise in Paris, which we talked about. Lee Abbamonte was on our recent Paris Olympics episode, and he told us a little bit about visiting. I didn’t know it's actually the most-visited cemetery in the world thanks to Napoleon. In the early 1800s, the more popular cemeteries in Paris were getting overcrowded, and that made the spread of disease a concern, so Napoleon hired an architect to design a new cemetery in the area, and it was outside of the city limits at the time.

Now, you can get there very easily, but the problem was that Parisians didn't want to walk such a distance for funeral processions. He wanted to make it beautiful and encourage people to actually want to be buried and go to funerals out there. He had the bodies of famous people like the playwright Molière and poet Jean de La Fontaine relocated there to create more appeal, and it obviously worked because so many people have been there. It's one of the top things to see in Paris. The moral of the story is if Napoleon was promoting cemetery tourism in the 1800s, then I think it's safe to say we have full permission to enjoy these outdoorsy spaces now.

Loren:

We think of visiting cemeteries as a new thing. Some people have rediscovered it, but it's not new. If you think about Canterbury Tales, the pilgrims are traveling to Canterbury to see the grave of Thomas Becket. It's in the first paragraph. People have been visiting cemeteries for millennia. It's not a new thing at all. And if it's good enough for Canterbury Tales, it's good enough for us.

Angie:

It's actually a historic thing that people do, and it's only a recent development that people are iffy about it. I wonder if that has anything to do with Hollywood and the way that cemeteries are portrayed in movies and such. It's like a scary, creepy place instead of the artistic, historic, outdoorsy, park-like atmosphere.

Loren:

Cemeteries have changed over the years. It used to be that people would go and visit family graves and they'd have a picnic and include the dead in their celebration and enjoyment. When Mount Auburn was founded in Boston, people would spend the day going out to read the headstones and it was considered edifying, that it was good for you. People would court in cemeteries, and it changed over the years, rules came in where people weren't allowed to picnic, and you weren't really encouraged to come and hang out in some cemeteries. I think it's changing back the other way because people will take care of what they love, and if they're invited into the cemetery, then they're going to fall in love with it. So, maybe it's come full circle.

Angie:

How are cemetery visits different around the world? People gather with the spirits of their loved ones in the cemetery on Day of the Dead in Mexico, and it's a celebration versus a sad moment that they do once a year.

Loren:

They're different everywhere, every place you go. Mexico is not the only place that has a Day of the Dead celebration. A lot of northern Europe celebrates November 1 in the cemetery with lighting candles on the graves, leaving candles burning overnight, the Chinese have Ching Ming.

All around the world, people include their dead in their families in different ways and they're not considered cut off. I think maybe in America where we move around so much, we don't have that connection as much as we used to. But we're seeing it come back, especially now with genealogy where people are discovering their connections and you see the huge web of people that you're related to.

It's kind of a new fashion in gravestones, but women have been putting family recipes on their stones and I love that. I love that you can go and grandma's cookie recipe is on the back of her stone, and talk about a way to connect the family together.

Angie:

That's incredible because 100 years from now, you can go see a great grandma's grave and then make her same cookies or her same fudge.

I want recipes on my tombstone. I'm not much of a cook, so mine is like, “Cookie dough, put it in the oven.” That's Angie's special recipe, passing it down for generations.

Loren:

There's something about standing at the grave in front of the headstone of somebody that you're related to that gives you a sense of the continuity of life.

Angie:

I've gotten into genealogy recently. I did the whole 23 and Me and holy cow, I had no idea how spread out my genealogy was. Just to think of these relatives who are buried in a random cemetery in Corning, New York. I didn't even know I had relatives from there, wouldn't have had the first clue. Now that I know that, I definitely would love to go see that and say, “Hey, Great Great Great Grandma, thanks for coming here and starting me down this path and all the rest of your generations.” It's wild to look back and think about what people went through to come here. What an amazing place to be able to connect like that.

Loren:

My family started in England, they ended up in Texas, they ended up in Michigan after that, back and forth. Travel was difficult and you're like, “How did you do all of that?” I can barely drive across the Bay.

Angie:

What about the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in LA? I heard that they host events there.

Loren:

It was originally the cemetery that all the silent film stars were buried in. It backs onto the Paramount lot—Tyrone Power and Cecil B. DeMille, all these names that you would recognize are buried in the cemetery. In the ‘80s, it fell into disrepair. People were digging up their loved ones and moving them to other graveyards. It was in really rough shape. Then it was bought and the name was changed to Hollywood Forever. At first, it was kind of scandalous that people would take this historic cemetery and make it touristy, but it's turned into this amazing place where they show movies on the mausoleum wall, and they do concerts and art installations, and it's become really popular now and well-cared for. They give you a map when you come in and you can visit all these famous people. My favorite event they do is a huge Day of the Dead, and bands are playing and it’s welcoming and really poignant.

Angie:

Another interesting example I came across was the Central Cemetery of Vienna, and they are using the space for concerts. There's a running track around the perimeter. They have bike rentals, painting classes, a museum, a cafe, gift shop. Do you think that we should experience cemeteries more like public green spaces, particularly in cities where there's less space? Or do you think they should be quiet places to reflect?

Loren:

I think there's space for both. The original and most important purpose is to serve mourners as a way to connect with and remember the dead. I think that should continue to be the primary purpose, but there's also room to bring people in and tie them better into the community.

The Congressional Cemetery in Washington D.C. has a huge group of dog walkers who walk through the cemetery and have been really instrumental in fundraising and helping to protect the cemetery. They're one of a number of cemeteries that host spirit runs or ghost runs as fundraisers so that they can trim trees and keep their roads up and all of that. I think that's a great idea.

A number of cemeteries, especially on the east coast, have birdwatching groups. Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn has a huge birdwatching group because it's on the Flyway as the birds are migrating back and forth.

One of the loveliest cemeteries I have seen is Swan Point in Providence, and they have these enormous specimen trees, so it's a world-class arboretum. One of the hillsides has a sea of daffodils in the springtime.

Angie:

My husband and I went to Arlington National Cemetery a couple of years ago in the fall. We were searching out a specific grave, but holy cow, it was stunning and it was just amazing to be outside on a beautiful day with the leaves falling all around. Also, the weight of that number of graves and what all those people did to get me to where I am today. There's a lot of power there, and I think the nature helps a lot.

Loren:

With Arlington, you see the Memorial Day Ceremony at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It's enclosed and you don't get a sense of the scope of how big that cemetery is. It's huge, and so many important monuments are there. The Kennedy grave site is gorgeous and the monument to the Challenger astronauts. Every time I go there, they’ve added something else, so it's one of those places that welcomes you back multiple times.

Angie:

Do you think that a cemetery is defined specifically as an intentional burial place, or would you put places like Pompeii or Chernobyl in this category?

Loren:

I consider a cemetery any place where people are buried. I was at Sagrada Família a couple of years ago in Barcelona, and Gaudí is buried there. That seems fitting and perfect.

I had to think about Chernobyl because most of the people that lived there were able to escape; 30-50 people died in Chernobyl as a result of the accident. So, I don't know if I consider that a burial ground or not.

I do think about Ground Zero in New York, those people were lost, those bodies were never recovered, and so, I consider it a graveyard even though there may or may not be people buried there. Now, my definition is wide.

Angie:

What are your top 3 unmissable cemeteries?

Loren:

I would say Gettysburg is powerful for the same reason that Arlington is. To see all the stones with unknown dead.

The African Burial Ground in New York City was a cemetery from the Dutch era outside of Wall Street; the British used it to bury American soldiers during the Revolution. Then it was lost, it was treated as a dump, it was paved over, buildings were built on it, and it was only rediscovered by accident when they were building federal buildings. Now it's under a national park surface, but it's this beautiful tiny space where they've reburied thousands of bodies and created this memorial to the Africans that built New York, whose history we don't often think about.

Lakeview in Seattle, the other 2 are heavy, this one is beautiful. Lakeview is on a hill, and you can see water on 3 sides in the heart of Seattle. Bruce Lee is buried up at the crest. It's just one of the most beautiful, peaceful spots. I think it's perfect, and he has a really beautiful monument, and his son, Brandon, is buried right beside him.

Angie:

Can you tell us about your most impactful cemetery visit? I'm sure there are tons because you've been to many, but is there one that comes to mind that just really shook you?

Loren:

One of the favorite cemeteries I've been to is San Michele Isola, which is the cemetery island outside of Venice. That's where the Venetians bury their dead. It's not a very big island, but the fact that it's this whole island, and there is nothing there but graveyards, it's an amazing place. The artwork is exquisite, so beautiful. The cemetery was surrounded by water. It was kind of shocking how bright and lively it was. It was very quiet and you could hear the water all around you. In the corner, there's a Russian Orthodox graveyard. Sergei Diaghilev, the Russian impresario who brought Ballets Russes to the West is buried there, and people leave their toe shoes on his tombstone. You stumble on by accident, but I just was so touched by that because I used to dance when I was in high school and ballet has been a huge influence on my life, and here's this guy that made ballet cool. That was something for me to see.

Angie:

That's such a sweet way to pay tribute to someone, a historical figure that you admire. Are there other similar gravestones in the world where people drop things off to pay tribute?

Loren:

I'm in California, and just south of the city is a Jewish graveyard where Wyatt Earp is buried and people will bring bottles of whiskey, bullets, coins, or something like that to drop off on his headstone. They call it grave goods, the things that people leave behind. The last time I was in Highgate, we visited Douglas Adams's grave, he's the author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, and there was a coffee can that people were leaving pens in. I don't know exactly what the significance of leaving a pen for this author is, but I hadn't seen that on other author's graves.

Angie:

What is the most unusual cemetery you've been to and what made it unique?

Loren:

The Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor; I didn't know that it was a cemetery before I got there. There's a little tape that runs on the ferry as they take you out to the monument, and they talk about people trapped on the boat when it sank. It sank so suddenly that they couldn't get out. They could hear people who were trapped tapping and they couldn't get to them, and some of the bodies were never recovered.

But in addition to that, people who served on those ships could have their ashes brought and interred on the boat, so it's become a cemetery. There was a woman in the next window over from me stripping flowers from a lei and throwing them in the water. It was so touching, and such a simple gesture, but so beautiful. It's common to leave flowers on graves, but to see somebody leaving flowers on the water was … I can barely articulate it. It was really cool.

Angie:

I've been there myself and I feel exactly the same way. That's a really powerful spot.

Loren:

People get on the boat and they're tourists, chatting, and not taking it seriously. Then you get out there and the reality of it hits you, and everybody steps off the boat and is silent and behaved. It's amazing to just see that transition.

Angie:

We talk about visiting cemeteries as public spaces, but how do we stay respectful while also using them as public spaces?

Loren:

I think the key is to just be respectful of other people, especially mourners. They have to be primary, so give them space, leave them alone. Don't take photographs of people who are mourning. Don't take things, don't touch things. If somebody has left grave goods, if they've left something for the dead, leave it there, don't touch or move it. If you find a stone that's broken, let the grounds crew know. It's like going into a church.

Angie:

Loren Rhoads, thank you for joining us, and thank you to our listeners for being with us.

If you're planning a trip, be sure to connect with AAA Travel Advisor, check out AAA.com/travel, or visit your local branch. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe. I'm Angie Orth, thank you for traveling with AAA.