Urban Legends: The Ghosts of Greenwood Cemetery. Greenwood Cemetery in New York

April 5 Easter (Sunday)
In the morning I read a hundred new and not very XB. I wondered what Jesus would say if he knew people were texting. We have learned to exchange information quickly, paying for it with the ability to communicate for real. Like a boy from a fairy tale who gave his laughter for the ability to win any argument.

The day was sunny and almost warm. Two days later, in Moscow, I decided to fulfill my old idea, to walk around the Green-Wood Cemetery in New York. At the house, I took the subway and after reaching the D line, I changed to the R to 25th street in Brooklyn. The road took about 45 minutes. I sat and listened to a book. I love the NY subway ... It or it - the subway is made just to make it convenient for people to get there. I thought about it and remembered that I didn’t take a taxi for a month :) Why?

Greenwood Cemetery is a huge park. Unlike the central one, you can’t run, rollerblade, bike, etc. here. Therefore, there are no people walking on tens or hundreds of hectares of land. It does not bother me that someone is buried under every meter of lawn. The whole earth is a big cemetery, and for hundreds of thousands of years someone has died on every meter. But not as beautiful as here. No funerals and mourners. Nature rejoices in spring, and more trees bloom in the Botanic Garden.

At the entrance, an old man sells books, maps of the cemetery, and T-shirts. I wanted to buy a card for 3$. And he asked if it was my first time and gave me a free one. It has 70 major celebrities buried in Green Wood. & On the big one, for $3, there are three hundred of them. Buy it if you come next time. Such is the businessman. The card was not needed. I went through the list and realized how far from the USA. I didn't know anyone except the sculptor who sculpted the Indians. And then, I drew attention to his work in Congress in Washington.

At Pere Lachaise in Paris, I saw about a hundred names from Molière and LaFontaine to Jim Morrison, Makhno and Edith Piaf. Yes. Paris. The native cherry blossoms were in bloom, as plump and profusely rich as New York City itself. It was green and beautiful. The main thing is to be calm and happy. Who would have thought that a trip to the cemetery so lifts the mood. I wanted to buy a place here. I'm getting old. And he himself laughed at his mother's plot. Momento sea. And then the relatives will have less trouble with the funeral. I sat down by a small pond with a fountain. under these cherries. The petals were falling, the water was roaring, grazed wild geese. They were looking for something with their beaks in the grass and all their heads are covered with rose petals. I don’t like everything so sweet, but for what I bought, for that I sold it.

I sat down on a bench and wrote everything at once. At home again there is vanity, and time does not wait. It makes no sense to describe the landscapes, I hope I will print from the photo and it is better to see than to read a hundred times. Of course, lawns in all open spaces are mowed and there are no abandoned graves. Somewhere trees fell in a hurricane and even confirmed the crypt-chapels. I believe everything will be fixed soon. From the hill, you could see Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. Built in the Financial District new tower instead of the dead twins. There was a bike marathon in Central Park. The city bustled and lived. In Green-Wood, time stopped, and I did not want to leave it at all. I even thought, I was mistaken when I thought that they gave me a double portion of the brains, but forgot to put the heart.

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“Today I want to talk about one of the most unusual cemeteries in New York. Not even one, but two cemeteries. They are located in neighboring blocks, have similar names and are equally difficult to visit. It is not surprising that many people confuse them or think that there is only one cemetery. Although, I think that most of them have never heard of them at all,” says blogger samsebeskazal.

(Total 41 photos)

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1. There are two old cemeteries on the island of Manhattan in an area called the East Village. One is called "New York Marble" and the other is called "New York City Marble". Their main feature is the technology of burial. The difference from any other is immediately visible. The photo shows a cemetery where more than 2,000 people are buried. And almost all of it is in the frame.

Let's start with history. Until 1831, the vast majority of city cemeteries were confessional (Catholics have their own, Protestants have their own, etc.) and were located in the churchyard. The church, as a rule, stood in the center of the city in its most densely populated area. The cemeteries themselves looked quite different from what they look like today. These were untidy and neglected plots of land with small gravestones, overgrown with weeds and vines. They went to them only during the next funeral. The rest of the time, people avoided visiting cemeteries whenever possible. As the population of New York grew, so did the number of cemeteries. The main problem became their overcrowding, as well as the fact that many of them were located in close proximity to residential buildings and sources of drinking water.

With various epidemics that claimed many lives, in those days everything was more than in order. Cholera, yellow fever, etc. A major yellow fever epidemic occurred in 1793 in nearby Philadelphia, which at that time was the capital of the United States. About 5,000 people died from the disease then. And this was about 10% of the city's population. In 1798, the same attack fell on New York. There, within a few months, 2086 inhabitants died. Splashes happened later, but that epidemic was the most serious in the history of the city. People who lived at that time had little idea of the causes of such diseases and even less of the ways to treat them. They looked for reasons in everything they could: in rotten vegetables, spoiled coffee, West Indians who came to New York. Someone said that the terrible living conditions in the shantytowns were to blame (which was partly true, but not the reason). But for the most part, they were pure fantasies, with one idea being more delusional than the other. A newspaperman wrote a long article explaining that the cause of the yellow fever epidemic in New York was the eruption of Mount Etna in Sicily. It was not until 1881 that the theory was advanced that yellow fever was transmitted a certain kind mosquitoes, and only in 1900 it was scientifically proven. Cemeteries located in densely populated areas New York. This was the reason for the closure of several existing ones with the transfer of burials outside the city. The only problem was that this feature was constantly moving south, absorbing more and more cemeteries every year. In 1813 burials below Canal Street were banned. By 1851, prohibition had extended to all areas south of 86th Street. An exception was made only for private crypts and some church cemeteries. Most of the burials were moved to Queens and Brooklyn, and former cemeteries became city parks (Washington Square, Union Square, Madison Square and Bryant Park are all former cemeteries).

New York Marble Cemetery was established in 1831 and quickly became popular (if such a word is appropriate for such a place) as well as commercially successful. Commerce implied order and grooming, which were so lacking at that time, and burial technology made the cemetery epidemically safe. So, anyway, they thought then. New York City Marble owners open year later, they simply adopted a successful business model and, having bought a plot of land in a neighboring block, opened exactly the same one, adding only the word “City” to the name. Both cemeteries were founded solely as profit-making businesses, as a result they were non-denominational and open to everyone (well, almost everyone), which only added to their clients in such a multinational city as New York. As businesses, they were designed to make the most of a small piece of land. High price of land in Manhattan has led to the fact that people began to replicate plots up, building more and more high buildings. Cemeteries, by virtue of their specificity, began to grow downwards. The task that confronted the people who organized the New York Marble cemetery can be formulated as follows: how to equip a small area maximum amount burial sites, and even make them safe for the health of residents of the surrounding neighborhoods? The solution was found in the form of capacious stone crypts arranged below ground level. For their construction, they dug a pit, equipped the floor, ceiling and strong walls, and then covered them with earth. It turned out something like a basement, but without the floors above. For access inside, a special hole was equipped (one for two crypts), which was closed with a stone cover.

2. Let's start with the New York Marble. Finding him is not so easy. It is located in the courtyard of a residential area with dense buildings. It is not visible from the street, and you can get into the territory only through a narrow and almost imperceptible passage from Second Avenue. But even if you know where the entrance is, this is unlikely to help you. In 99 cases out of 100 you will see only locked gates. There are only a few days a year when visitors are allowed into the cemetery.

3. If you do not know that somewhere behind the houses there is a cemetery, then it is almost impossible to guess about its existence.

4. And even after going inside, you will most likely think that you are in a small garden.

5. Beautiful green lawn, bushes, trees, benches, garden tools. What other cemetery?

7. The fact is that the cemetery is completely underground. The stones with inscriptions in the wall are not tombstones, but tablets showing the number of the underground crypt and the names of its owners. On the territory of 17 acres there are 156 underground crypts, in which 2080 people rest. The crypts and the wall around the cemetery are made of marble. The same one that was used in the construction of many famous buildings, including the Washington State Capitol. Hence the name - "Marble Cemetery".

8. The tablets are also made of marble, which slowly deteriorates under the influence of time and weather. Therefore, some of the names are no longer readable.

9. Building around.

10. It is interesting that over the years they have not changed much. Here is a photo taken in 1910.

11. And this was done the other day.

12. In the far corner reconstruction in progress walls and you can see construction material. What the crypts look like, you will see below.

13. At the end of the 19th century, the heirs of the owners of the crypts seriously considered the option of transferring burials and selling the land in order to equip a school and a nursery on it. playground. Today, New York Marble Cemetery has two vacant crypts for sale. Each is asking for $500,000. The owners of the cemetery are the heirs of the owners of the crypts. Their great-great-great-grandchildren. They also have the rare opportunity to be buried in lower Manhattan. The rest of New Yorkers are deprived of it. The only active cemetery on the island (Trinity) is located north of 153rd Street. Interesting fact. During genealogical research, it was found that only 3% of the heirs of the owners of the crypts retained the surname of their ancestors.

14. This is the New York City Marble Cemetery, which is located in the next block. It is larger in area (37 acres) and is well visible from the street. Getting on it, however, is just as difficult. It only opens a few times a year.

15. Its main difference is that the stones with the numbers of the crypts are not installed in the wall, but on the ground. Just between them is the entrance covered with earth.

16. There are also steles installed instead of license stones at the request of some owners of the crypts.

17. Crypt number 137. There are 258 of them in this cemetery.

18. Number 150, owned by a certain Ji. Es. Winston.

19. Crypts in marble cemeteries never belonged upper class New York society. The richest had country estates where they could hide from the hustle and bustle of the city (and from the outbreak of the epidemic). Private family cemeteries were built next to such estates. In the marble cemeteries, mostly wealthy merchants, shipowners and lawyers are buried. People are not poor, but far from the cream of society. There were also exceptions. In 1825, the fifth President of the United States, James Monroe, was buried there. His son owned one of the crypts. After 27 years, in 1858, his body was reburied at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.

20. By the 1860s, the number of burials in marble cemeteries had drastically decreased. Greenwood Cemetery was opened in Brooklyn and quickly became fashionable with its parkland scenery and cozy winding paths. In addition, the demographics of the region have changed. Wealthy residents and middle class moved to the neighborhoods to the north, and the area around the cemeteries was quickly settled by poor immigrants who came to America for a better share and did not have money for life, not to mention for a funeral. During this period, about a quarter of all burials from marble cemeteries were transferred to other cemeteries. Most on Greenwood in Brooklyn and Woodlawn in the Bronx. By the 1860s, they had almost ceased to be buried on them. The last burial was made in 1937. Since then, they have stood there, surrounded by dense buildings and closed to visitors.

21. What the crypt looks like. To get inside, you need to remove the sod on the site, dig a hole about 10-20 centimeters deep and find a stone slab that closes the entrance.

22. Then, with the help of a winch and ropes, lift and put aside a heavy cover, under which a rectangular well with stone walls and two stone doors will be found.

23. Each of them leads to a crypt. Interestingly, some doors require a key.

24. Inside is a cramped space with vaulted ceilings and shelves on which lie the decayed remains of coffins, wreaths and other things. The walls, floor and ceiling of the crypts are made of light Takahoy marble.

25. Scheme of the crypt. They write that once every 10 years, new dead can be brought to the cemetery.

26. Only cemetery workers could get into the crypt itself. Heartbroken relatives and the priest remained upstairs. This is an old mechanism that was used to open crypts.

The booth was given interesting statistics by mortality in the 1830s:

13% - died before the age of 6 months,
18% - died at the age of 6 months to 2 years,
15% - died at the age of 2 to 4 years,
7% - died at the age of 4 to 10 years,
4% - died between the ages of 11 and 20,
11% - died between the ages of 21 and 30,
9% - died between the ages of 31 and 40,
7% - died between the ages of 41 and 50,
5% - died between the ages of 51 and 60,
5% - died between the ages of 61 and 70,
4% - died between the ages of 71 and 80,
2% - died between the ages of 81 and 90,
0.5% - died at the age of over 90 years.

Those. most were children. 57% of those buried at the New York Marble did not live past the age of 20. 53% did not live to be 10 years old.

27. After you have seen what is happening below, let's look at what was happening above. Photos taken during OHNY - city day open doors when you get a chance to get to places that are very difficult or simply impossible to get to on a normal day. Marble cemeteries were on the program this year.

28. Pay attention to the fact that the people who came behave as if they were not in a cemetery, but at a picnic in the park. People lie on the grass, walk their dogs, read a book, or simply take a nap in the rays of a warm autumn sun. I can't imagine something like that in a cemetery in Russia, we have such a different mentality and attitude towards death. Perhaps this is due to the age of the burials and the fact that there are no graves, but a similar picture can be observed in any old New York cemetery. Especially during some interesting events.

Bride of Greenwood Cemetery

In one American city Decatur, which is located in Illinois, has an old Greenwood Cemetery, which rightfully bears the title of "the most damned place in the whole West." Many people who specialize in paranormal activity, believe that it is in this place that the entrance to parallel worlds is located.

The dawn of the cemetery came at the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time, this place was called "The most beautiful city of the dead". It was not an easy cemetery, erected on a site that the indigenous people of these parts used as a burial ground. It was in a way a secular and fashionable place. Now it’s hard to believe that at the beginning of the twentieth century picnics were often held here on weekends, and paved paths made it possible to get to any corner of the cemetery, water supply quenched the thirst of horses in carriages, which also quite often drove around the territory of the necropolis.

When came" a white man”, this place was special and sacred for the Indians, they believed that there was a direct connection with world of the dead and arranged their cemetery in order to facilitate the transition to another world for the souls of the dead. The Europeans destroyed the mounds erected by the Indians. Of course, the souls of the buried people were also disturbed. To this day there are unmarked graves in the southern part of the cemetery. And in the twentieth century, the cemetery became a very actively visited place, because for the poorer segment of the population it was a great opportunity to get closer to the elite of the city and its amusements. All segments of the population tried to snatch a piece of land in an elite cemetery, so that at least after death they could get closer to the life that one can only dream of.

Today this place is teeming with paranormal cases. It seems that here already everyone can see what seemed hidden to the eyes, so much different stories brought with them by the inhabitants of the city, who visited the graves.

Of course, there are also the most favorite stories. Perhaps one of the most popular is the story of the Greenwood Cemetery Bride. This story begins in the distant 1930s. At that time, "Dry Law" entered. Alcohol was banned but still sold. Of course, the people supplying and selling alcohol were breaking the law. One young and handsome guy, who was extremely successful in smuggling alcohol and delivering it to almost all the institutions of the city, was in love. His love was mutual. Despite the prohibitions of the parents, their story did not turn into Shakespearean, the parents resigned themselves to the choice of their daughter. Perhaps we can say that everything would be fine, but the young man was very fond of quick profits. And even on the eve of the wedding, he could not deny himself to get a little richer. The night before the wedding, the young man and his team went to work, hoping to make a good profit. But it was a set-up, and the competitors, who had been sharpening their teeth for a long time, killed the young man in cold blood, and then pushed his body into the river, located not far from Greenwood. It is believed that it was found and pulled out of the river by local fishermen. The next morning, the young girl, who was about to become a bride, brought sad news. She was already in a dress when she was told that her fiancé was no longer alive. In what is, the girl ran to the river. Soon her corpse was also found there - he floated face down in the very place where the groom died. From grief, her mind was clouded and she drowned herself. The bride's parents buried her in her wedding dress. Deciding that she would like it more than anything. The girl was buried in the same cemetery, on a hill, because it was customary to bury suicides there. Especially none of the townspeople did not attach special importance to this occasion. There was a small article in the local newspaper, nothing more. A day later, everyone had already forgotten, since the young man was not the only victim of the deceased because of the “prohibition”. But not much time passed, and a rumor spread around the city that a young lady in a white dress was walking around the cemetery. She was seen by so many people that even law enforcement agencies became interested in this case. Having carefully checked everything, the police did not find any traces of bare female feet, since everyone was sure that this was just a hoax, and someone was trying to cause confusion by diverting attention law enforcement from something more important. But to this day, many locals we are sure that this is the ghost of the same girl who has been looking for her beloved for a hundred years now. And now, after so many years, a beautiful and sad girl in an old wedding dress, wiping tears from her angelic face, walks among the graves, scaring the cemetery visitors half to death.

Greenwood Cemetery also has a memorial to the fallen in civil war, where both those who fought for the Confederates and those who fought for the Federalists are buried. Before that, there was a mausoleum here, which collapsed in 1967 due to an imperfect design. The bodies were reburied, but the gravediggers did not try to separate the bones, threw them into one pile and buried them. Since then, there have been reports that screams and groans are heard from the abandoned mausoleum, and that strange figures and inexplicable phenomena are seen in places of mass reburial.

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From the author's book

Surviving cemeteries

From the author's book

Lost cemeteries

I love old cemeteries. So when I was researching the city on Googlemap, I was interested in a large green spot on the map of Brooklyn next to Prospect Park and botanical garden called Greenwood Cemetery. When I went to read about this cemetery on the net and found out that it is a national park, there are guided tours around it, I realized that I needed to go there. Moreover, the pictures depicted ponds with fountains and goldfish.

A bit of free history.
O one of the first necroparks in America, which in 1840 marked the beginning of a new direction in the organization of funeral and landscape space, is located in Brooklyn on an area of 194 hectares, which is three and a half times the total area of Novodevichy and Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow.
David Bates Douglas, the cemetery engineer who was commissioned by the New York City to lay out Green Wood, was a romantic, in keeping with the spirit of the first half of XIX century. From the very beginning, he decided that his creation would be not just a burial place for the dead, but also a demonstration of the possibilities of landscape architecture, a park for walking, affirming the idea that death, returning a person to nature, can also be beautiful.
Douglas, in love with his brainchild, came up with poetic names for its corners - Serene Backwater, Forest Cliff, Camellia Way. A guidebook with a map showing all the avenues and paths of Green-Wood clearly reflects the wealth of its botanical world: Iris, Jasmine, Fern, Lotus, vine...
A detail that few even in New York remember. The success of the cemetery in Brooklyn, which became a popular tourist attraction, inspired supporters of the creation of a large public park in New York, later called Central, and quickly became the most prestigious area of the city. Its planners, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, creatively used some of the landscaping techniques tried in Green Wood.
How! And this is just 8 stops on the metro, and without a transfer!
I definitely need to go there!
And on Sunday, left alone at home, I rushed there.
I got out at the 36th Street subway station and immediately did something stupid. Not in vain smart Google drew me a path of 23 minutes around the fence. So it was necessary to go, but I hastily dived into the service entrance and did not go to the main gate.

there were modest burials of the middle class, dated to the beginning of the last century.
And there were no people at all. Only occasionally I was overtaken by cars that came to visit relatives. In America, this day was Father's Day.

But then she reached the beauties, decently circling along the alleys among centuries-old trees.

Unlike our cemeteries, there are no grave mounds, fences and wreaths, there are no photographs on the monuments. Just monuments on a solid green lawn.

although sometimes relatives can plant flowers

Among the monuments there are also family crypts, or mausoleums. paths paved with tiles lead to them

I dont know American history so the names don't tell me anything famous people buried here. But sometimes there are namesakes of people I know. Bender

Bradbury

and even Capone. Although the same Al Capone was buried in Chicago, and then his relatives transferred his ashes, in my opinion, to Illinois.

I wandered in silence along the alleys of the cemetery and suddenly heard a very unusual and sad melody. A young man stood among the monuments and played .... the bagpipes. it was so solemn and sad that I sat down under a tree and listened. and remembered that today is Father's Day, and my father, with whom I had difficult relationship, I have never been to his grave, I only know that he was buried in Pskov. here, if you look closely, you can see the piper

and then completely unexpectedly overtook me .... a tram

then I realized that it’s true that I’m not the only tourist here and I don’t offend anyone with my idle wandering among other people’s graves, even if they are a national monument. and continued to stagger with a clear conscience.