I Love Cemeteries, Haunted or Not

By Dagmar Marie Muthamia

Cemeteries are more than just burial sites.  They are perfect settings for ghost stories real or imagined.  Many have had a haunting experience or know someone who has.  For me it came on a Christmas visit to Galveston, Texas.  It was a cold damp overcast day when my cousin Pat and 1, both age 12, were out and about by bus and on foot shopping for presents and exploring the city that was new to both of us.  On our way back to my uncle’s house we found a large cemetery and decided it would be more fun to walk through it rather than around it.  Amusement gave way to silent contemplation as we wove around headstones, crypts and graves raised above the ground like sarcophagi.  Dark green and gray.  It was like nothing I had ever seen – mysterious, haunting.  I felt there was something calling to me.

I have forgotten most of the rest of that Christmas but not the strange feeling I had in the cemetery.

Fifty years later I was deeply immersed in family history and discovered that I had a relative who died in 1867 in Galveston. He was alone and far from home, a 25 year old carpenter recently emigrated from Scotland moving from job to job—a life unfulfilled, a perfect sort of spirit to haunt the living.  Since it was the first time members of his family had gathered in Galveston for almost one hundred years and three of them shared his name, I have entertained the thought that I could feel his spirit  trying to reach us.

Ghosts and spirits aside, Cemeteries are useful to those who delve into family history.  Headstone inscriptions and cemetery records are good sources of information for names, dates of birth and death, military service, marriage, children and relationship to others buried nearby.  Today we have access to cemetery data on the internet and do not need to spend money and time to actually visit them.  Currently the most comprehensive database for cemeteries in the United States is www.Findagrave.com.  Another good source is the Tomb Stone Project at www.usgenweb.org.  Both rely on volunteers to photograph headstones and to copy what is written on them or contained in cemetery records.  On Findagrave there may also be a picture of the deceased, an obituary or other information.  In fact, I found an obituary and a copy of the church record for Paul Ibsen, Joy Ibsen’s brother, who died in childhood and is buried at Diamond Lake, Minnesota.  Other inventories of cemeteries are on other sites might be found on line by Googling -- for example, the word “cemetery” and the name of the town and state. 

I have looked for and found cemetery lists for the Danish American settlements of Looking Glass, Nebraska; Fredsville, Iowa; Danevang, Texas; Grant, Michigan and Solvang, California.  .  However, I could not find anything for Tyler, Minnesota; Askov, Minnesota or Lansingburgh, New York.  Information on the internet is constantly growing and being moved, I know that if you do not find anything the first time, you might do so when you try again days, months or years later

Solvang’s cemetery is the only one I have found that looks like the cemeteries in Denmark with clearly marked plots separated from each other by gravel paths and headstones that may be of natural rock not neatly shaped slabs.  Some even have Danish inscriptions like “Elsket og Savnet” [“Loved and Missed”].

Headstone inscriptions and other cemetery records may or may not be accurate.  I found one error in the internet transcription of headstones in the Danish Lutheran Cemetery in Grant, Michigan.   There my great-grandfather Peder Kjolhede’s second wife was buried.  It showed the dates of her life as 1868 to 1901.  The year of birth is correct, but the year of her death was 1938.  Fortunately a picture of the headstone on Findagrave.com has the correct years.  The transcriber who got it wrong might have confused Peder Kjølhede’s first and second wives as they were both named Karoline Amalie Brandt Kjølhede, the second being the niece of the first who did die in 1901, but is buried in Newell, Iowa.  Moster Karoline, as Mormor called her stepmother had no children.  Before I saw the picture I wondered who would care about the mistake.  Did it keep her spirit unhappy?  I know of several instances where bodies were moved from one cemetery to another  to give the spirits of the living and the dead peace – I hope.

Cemeteries may evoke insights not ghosts.  In 2008 I visited the Danish American settlement of Danevang, Texas where my Great Aunt Dagny Rodholm was buried.  She was 7 years 10 months old when she died in January 1921.  Her father, Jens Rodholm, was the pastor.  It was another overcast winter day in Texas.  I did not sense her presence, but as I looked out over the seemingly endless expanse of land I felt alone and sad and it made me wonder if the sense of isolation added to the reasons why Uncle Jens took his family back to Denmark.  I met Uncle Jens on my first visit to Denmark and we corresponded for years, but I never thought to ask why he left the United States to return to Denmark.  Maybe he needed to be away from the sadness and he yearned for the more comforting landscape of Denmark.  

Of course, if you are doing Danish research the church records are excellent and comprehensive, but the headstones probably won’t be there.  In Denmark the family has to pay to keep the headstone up over the grave.  When a family fails to pay the headstone is removed.  I saw headstones stacked against a wall of the Bøvling cemetery in Western Jutland that I visited with my aunt, Miriam Showalter, and a Danish friend.  When asked what ultimately happened to these discards, she laughed and said, “They probably paved the roads with them.”

Ultimately I find that a cemetery enhances the sense of connection that I often feel with the departed.  A cemetery is a place to go to mourn for the loss, but also a great place to visit to celebrate the life that was and still lives or is reborn in your memory.

dagmar820@verizon.net