Spooky Cemetaries

I visited New Orleans recently, and one of my favorite things I did was take a paranormal tour of some of the cities' cemetaries.

Our tour guide explained the history of why the dead are buried above ground and an interesting concept of family tombs and coping graves. In a couple of photos, you can see large, raised grassy beds with grave stones behind them. These are considered coping graves. Soil was built up above the ground and held in place with walls so that the deceased could be placed in the ground but still above the water table.

Family tombs were a new concept to me that I found very interesting. They are standalone, stone structures, usually with a family name on the front. For a burial, the deceased will be placed inside the vault where the body must remain, undisturbed, for at least a year and a day. Due to the Louisiana climate, the interiors of these tombs get extremely hot, thus speeding up the decomposition process. When another family member passes away, the remains of the earlier interred person are pushed to the back of the vault, where they’ll fall through an opening into a lower chamber, known as a caveau. The newly deceased will then be interred, and the process will repeat. Eventually, the caveau can contain the remains of many members of a family.

As the night went on and it became darker, we were given different ghost hunting equipment and were told of different encounters people had gone through.

Superstition states that you have to walk out of a cemetary backward. Otherwise, the dead can follow you home. Do you believe this superstition?

#hauntedthings #cemetery #paranormal #paranormallocations #neworleans