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Halloween Discussions - Cemeteries.. (1 Viewer)

DeathStar1

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Figured this would be a 'spooky' subject for Halloween :).

Something I've always wondered why driving through the huge cemetery around the GSP. Why are some people buried above ground in those cryptlike buildings rather than below ground wich is the usual tradition?

I mean, what, do the families walk in and visit the corpse or something? :).
 

John Watson

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Think its mostly money, vanity. Like the Pyramids.

PS We have a nearby cemetery (the ‘berry patch" as I like to call it), we like to walk thru. Very peaceful, tho sometimes there are a few too many crows perched way above us. Many fascinating inscriptions, interesting to imagine the lives involved. Sort of brings one down to earth after computers, etc.

One of the funniest emblems I saw on tombstones in older cemeteries was a bas relief of a hand with fingers pointed upward. I assume it meant the dear departed had gone to Heaven? :emoji_thumbsup:
 

Jay H

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The spookiest cemetary I've been in is the one cemetary in Paris, France where Jim Morrison is buried in. They have plots that are back to back, wall to wall, they really pack em in over there. And a bunch of them are in disrepair and since alot of them are sort of mini mausoleums, you can kind of walk into them and check things out. I remember one of them whos door was broken, I walked into just to check it out and there was a gaping hole in the floor where you could not see in without a flashlight. Looked like a bottomless pit and kind of freaked me out.

Feel sorry for the poor blokes buried by Jim Morrison because the punks have left graffiti all over it, pertaining to Jim but not on his tomb.

Jay
 

Joseph DeMartino

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rather than below ground wich is the usual tradition?
While common enough in the U.S. and western Europe, burial below ground is not necessarily "the usual tradition". It is just the tradition that you are familiar with. In ancient Rome the normal custom was to cremate the dead and place the ashes in above-ground buildings on the outskirts of town. Burial in the ground was nearly unheard of, but so was intact burial of any kind. Times and customs change.

The structures you are referring to aren't "cryptlike" they're crypts, pure and simple. And yes, relatives do sometimes go inside to pay their respects. (Most crypts have room for several burials, so people may visit the same one several times a year on different dates that relate to different individuals.) Many crypts also have benches inside, places for flowers, and they're better than being outside on rainy days. It isn't all vanity and wealth.

In some parts of the country the water table makes inhumation (burial below ground) almost impossible. New Orleans cemetaries are consist almost exclusively of above ground mausoleums, because ordinary graves would fill with water as fast as they could be dug. In others the ground is too hard for "normal" burials during much of the year, so again, an above-ground alternative is sought.

Regards,

Joe
 

MarkHastings

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Above ground also makes it much easier (less expensive) if you ever need to move the grave. Rather than go through the cost of digging it up, etc.

Not that moving caskets is a normal thing, but there may be instances where it's necessary.
 

Joseph DeMartino

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Not that moving caskets is a normal thing, but there may be instances where it's necessary.
In places that are really squeezed for land a new "resident" of a cemetary may be placed in an above ground mausoleum owned by the cemetary (or the church or town that runs it) and a year or two later quietly "re-interred" in the ground - sometimes stacked three or four deep with other caskets. In Paris it was once common to leave a body in an above ground chamber until it was reduced to bones - then to place those bones with thousands of others in underground tunnels. There are places beneath the city where there are just mountains of intermixed human remains from recent times at the top to hundreds of years old at the bottom. Happens more often than you might think.

(Then, of course, there are the criminal scandals like the ones in Florida and Long Island in recent years where multiple bodies were buried in the same plots, bodies cremated and the ashes discarded, etc., without the loved ones ever knowing.)

Regards,

Joe
 

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