They're Still Coming to Get You Barbra: Night of the Living Dead Cemetery

October 28, 2008 — From the haughty tombs of Pharaohs to the humble country church graveyard, all burial grounds are historical records. They reveal the lives, deaths, and customs of those who’ve treadmilled this hamster ball of a planet before us. A few, though, are historical records beyond that. Like Evans City Cemetery in Evans City, Pennsylvania. It was in this rather nondescript little cemetery just north of Pittsburgh, that George A. Romero filmed the first scene of his landmark cinematic achievement, Night of the Living Dead.

I’ve already written about my trip to the Monroeville Mall where Romero filmed Dawn of the Dead, the sequel to Night of the Living Dead. I realize that’s a continuity gaff, but sometimes life orders things a bit differently. I’m still to this day waiting to live through my fourth grade year.

I’m not sure if any of the gravestones in Evans City Cemetery, from here on out referred to in this article as Night of the Living Dead cemetery, bear the birth year of 1968, but one ought to. In fact, overall it should read:

Beloved
Night of the Living Dead
(1968 - )
Loving Father of
The Modern Zombie and Modern Horror Film
In Our Hearts Forever
And Our Nightmares

Thanks to the film’s title, I don’t have to explain its plot, but I’m also not going to spend much space discussing the import of the movie, either…only because it’s a disappointing exercise. It’s one of those few movies that you don’t have to defend because pretty much everybody who needs to just gets the film for most of the right reasons. As a result, the film’s been lauded to the appropriate degree in the appropriate circles. And I hate that, of course. I just want to fight about things and call other people wrong.

But I will state for the sake of a punch line that this film helped bring about a fundamental philosophical shift in horror films from depictions of existence as morally meaningful to depictions of existence as mere survival, a shift that potentially affected other genres of film, as well. I’m not going to make any judgments here about the worth of the shift itself, but if you help cause a fundamental philosophical shift of any kind, I’ll call you bad-ass. And if you do that with cannibal dead people, I’ll call you Dirty Harry.

Night of the Living Dead cemetery is located on Franklin Road just south of Evans City and about half an hour north of the aforementioned Monroeville Mall. You can’t see the cemetery from the road (and that’s not a personal crack; it’s because it’s surrounded by trees), but an unobtrusive wooden sign that wasn’t in the movie tells you where to turn.

I’ve seen Night of The Living Dead enough times that making the sharp right turn into the cemetery felt almost like déjà vouz. Scenes from movies often stand in as personal memories for me. You might think that pathetic, but while you’re reminiscing about the times you said something witty in front of your boss at the weekly business meeting or bought a week’s worth of groceries for under $100, I’m remembering the times when I animated the Statue of Liberty with pink slime and singlehandedly freed an entire building from terrorists at Christmas.

Turning my car into the cemetery (no mean trick, I can assure you) made me feel like I was in re-living the movie in a literal sense, following the exact path of Barbra [sic] and her brother Johnny as they drove in their Pontiac to pay respects to the dead, even though it turns out that the favor isn’t returned. To help further the enjoyable illusion, I started calling my fiancée, who was accompanying me, "Barbra" the entire time we were there. Which she didn’t think was funny, even after the 10th time. I also kept responding to everything she said with the phrase, “of the living dead.” Still do, actually.

Once we passed that first sign, we traveled up a forested road, past a redundant but more official-looking polished granite sign bearing the name of the cemetery and the year of its incorporation (1891), and to the open space of the cemetery...the Night of the Living Dead cemetery. Don’t forget that. The cemetery’s only impressive if you keep that in mind.

In fact, with its well-spaced headstones of polished granite in simple unflourished geometric shapes, the cemetery doesn’t look 120 years old at all. It’s small, open, has a few bushy trees growing throughout, and is dominated by a Soldiers' Monument that wasn’t featured in the movie and consists of a giant pillar topped by an eagle. In addition to not looking over a century old, the cemetery also hasn’t seemed to change much since the movie’s filming. The dead age well.

Immediately on our left as we entered the cemetery was the abandoned chapel featured in the movie. It’s the only building on the property, and its windows are still boarded up, so that little bit of continuity goes a long way in helping one imagine what this spot was like forty years ago when a tall bearded guy with thick hair could be heard barking out directions like: “Ok, now try to eat her” and “Make it look like you’re bashing his head against a tombstone.” From that point the path splits in two to encircle the cemetery, all of which you can pretty much see once you’re reached this vantage.

Honestly, for having such an important place in horror film, the cemetery itself isn’t spooky at all...if you go in the day...in full color…without a shambling dusty zombie who’s just killed your brother trying to break your car window open with a rock. Spooky’s all about context.

There were two spots in the cemetery that I wanted to find in particular, and I came prepared with screen caps from the movie to help me. The first was the grave that stood in for the siblings’ dearly departed, who was never explicitly identified in the movie but was more than likely their father. At least, I don’t think it was ever specifically mentioned, anyway. Maybe later in the film it was. I only re-watched the first scene to prepare for this article, though…well, that and I drove 600 miles from my house to visit the cemetery. So please hold the criticism.

It thought this spot would be harder to find. After all, in the movie you only see the blank back of a generic-looking grave (that is a personal crack), and the only real clues from the movie are the half a name on the back of an adjacent grave (“air”) that slips into the frame and a tree right beside the grave. The tree isn’t there anymore, but it still turned out to be an easy find because of the cemetery’s size and the fact that the pair of headstones is right on one of the main paths. The full name on the back of the adjacent grave is “Blair” and the one beside it that stood in for Johnny and Barbra’s father is the Cole family plot. To find it, just take a left where the paths diverge beside the old chapel and then go less then halfway along it through the cemetery. They’ll be on your right waiting for you. Tell them I said “Hi.”

Next, we wanted to find the monument that Barbra fell against while she watched her brother die in one of the least gruesome ways one can be killed by a zombie. This is a little past the Blair and Cole plots if you’re coming from the direction of the chapel, and it's also easy to find due to its tall, more-monument-than-headstone shape and the fact that the name is fully shown in the movie. The guy who’s buried there is named Nicholas Kramer (1842-1917). I did some Internet searching on him thinking that might be a cool angle, but judging by his Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, not so much.

After the graveyard scenes, the rest of the movie basically takes place in an old house situated nearby, which I would have visited as well had it not been demolished…but you knew that already because you saw the movie. Zombies wreck everything they touch.

Overall, there’s something organically satisfying about walking around a graveyard where a movie about the dead coming to life was filmed, especially such an important movie. Something also slightly boring, which is why this article goes out with a whimper.

So thank you, and good night...of the living dead.

Claude Rains' Grave

October 22, 2008 — He was nominated for four Academy Awards; acted alongside the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, and Jimmy Stewart; and was directed by the powerful megaphones of Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra, and Irwin Allen. Yet for some reason this London-born actor is moldering in a tiny cemetery in the middle of nowhere, New Hampshire.

His name? Claude Rains, and I had to go see his headstone. Not because he Casablanca’d with Humphrey Bogart or Notorious’d with Cary Grant or Lawrence of Arabia’d with Peter O’Toole. I had to visit his grave because, as you and The Rocky Horror Picture Show both know, Claude Rains was the Invisible Man.

That’s right. Bela is buried in California, Boris in England, and Lon Jr. was donated to science. But New Hampshire can claim the final resting place of its own Universal Studios monster, the Invisible Man from the 1933 film of the same name.

The Invisible Man doesn’t get as much face time as some of the other Universal monsters, even at this hallowed time of year, but that’s because...I can’t finish that pun. Still, he’s not exactly a monster of the exterior sort—no decaying skin, no reptilian scales, no sharp fangs, no beastly hair. Just a human-shaped, monocaine-addled bit of nothing covered in bandages, goggles, and a Mr. Potato Head nose. The disguised appearance of the Invisible Man is unnerving. When he blusters snowily into that English pub at the beginning of the movie, his facade is just as disconcerting as his big un-reveal a few scenes later.

However, despite his lack of overt outward monstrosity, in some ways the Invisible Man is the most twisted, terrifying creature in the Universal cannon. He’s fear of the unknown personified. He’s the utmost in attainable human evil. He’s a mass murderer who delights in all the most atrocious acts of human malevolence. And he cackles.

That said, he also spends a lot of film time in simple mischief like stealing bicycles, slapping drinks out of people’s hands, and other general Three-Stoogery. He’s just as likely to knock a man’s hat off his head as cause a high-fatality train wreck. In fact, depending on your mood and thanks to director James Whale, you can watch The Invisible Man through on one occasion warmed with laughter and on another chilled with terror. But it took Claude Rains to bring the Invisible Man to full-blown megomaniacal life.

And as if playing the Invisible Man weren’t enough, Rains further embellished his Universal monster cachet by also starring as Larry Talbot’s father in the 1941 The Wolf Man and as the title role of the 1943 version of The Phantom of the Opera. Claude so reins.

So how did an Oscar-nominated, British-born actor with an impressive cinema resume end up in the middle of New Hampshire? I don’t know. But I could probably intuit a few reasonable guesses. Maybe it’s because the state has a nice, English-sounding name that would naturally draw a nostalgic expatriate. Or, and I’m admittedly stretching here, New Hampshire might just be a much cooler state than is generally figured by the populace at large. Then again, it could be as simple as he wanted to be invisible in his later years...wait, I want to take that joke back. Seriously, though, the monied always have places in the country, and even if Rains picked a place a little farther away, he was still close enough to New York City to work his craft. Regardless, he lived the last few years of his life in the Granite State, dying at the age of 77 in 1967.

And the proof of that is in a little front lawn of a graveyard called Red Hill Cemetery in Moultonborough, a small town on the northern point of Lake Winnipesaukee. The cemetery is surrounded by a white picket fence, and has only a handful of graves. It’s bracketed on three sides by houses, so it looks like just an empty house lot.

The cemetery is small enough that it only has a single dirt path that cuts through the middle of it and then exits out the back so that you can turn your car around in a clearing behind the cemetery. The address of the house across the street from Red Hill Cemetery is 289 Bean Road. I assume the cemetery itself has no address as we all know the attitude of the dead toward grocery store circulars.

Rains is buried beside the last of his six wives, Rosemary, under a unique pair of matching four-foot-tall bullet-shaped obsidian tombstones of Rains’ own design. Inscribed on his grave are a few lines from a Richard Monckton Milnes poem; on hers, a hybrid of a Christina Georgina Rossetti poem and a John Lodge Ellerton Hymn. I didn’t get much from the sentiments of eternity those epitaphs expressed, but, man, was I touched at what sat humbly on their graves.

In front of each of his and his wife’s headstones was a small freshly placed orange pumpkin, bequeathed by some unknown pumpkin fairy with a tremendous sense of whatever the word is for the quality of “just getting it.” The orange orbs looked great against the black granite slabs, but the aesthetics of the colors aside, it’s just a great idea. I want every grave to be adorned with a pumpkin at this time of year.

Of course, since Rains was buried here, I figured he probably lived nearby. It’s located on Rt. 109 in nearby Sandwich, NH, at the intersection of Little Pond Road and Wentworth Hill Road. In fact, that stretch of street in front of the house might itself be Wentworth Hill Road, but I’m not certain because country byways can get confusing. The number on the front of the house is 357, and it’s an L-shaped, white house with three columns, a red front door, black shutters, and out-buildings. All in all, it definitely fits the part of the country home of a rich and famous actor from the first half of the century, but then again I try to refrain from stereotyping when I can. Like most houses, it’s a private residence, so if you want to go see it don’t be jerky about it...like loitering too long in front of it for pictures and publishing the address online and stuff.

For me, it’s a day worth writing about when I get to visit the grave and house of a horror cinema icon in the thick of the Halloween season. It’s pure buttered marshmallows, though, to find a brand new reason to watch a classic movie.

Claude Rains was the Invisible Man. That is all.

...at the late-night, double-feature picture show.

Salem, MA

October 15, 2008 — You know that bit of awkwardness you feel when you’re pretty sure no introductions are necessary between two people, yet it’s still your social responsibility to assume otherwise and make a half-hearted attempt? Well...Reader, meet Salem, Massachusetts.

My original intent for this article was to put together an informative two-part summation of the witch-fest that is Salem. After all, there’s quite a bit of historic, cultural, and general oddity to this town, and I would need at least that much space to even do the topic slight injustice. Then I realized that at this time of year, even your most staid local paper will probably be running a piece on this popular tourist destination, so I need to differentiate myself somehow. And I probably should start doing that by not using phrases like “popular tourist destination.”

So I’ll forego all the historical background about the witch trials of 1692 and all the self-righteous caveats about its current exploitation in the town and tell you exactly how I do Salem...in one article or less.

First, I always go in October. Interest in cauldron-hunched hags seems more excusable in that month, and it is also, as a result, the time of year when Salem celebrates its month-long Haunted Happenings, a Halloween-tinted (nay, dyed) celebration when special events are scheduled, stores and attractions stay open later, wares are priced more expensively, street vendors proliferate, and the usual skim of witchiness that always overlays the town is given a second coat.

It’s also, of course, the time of year when it’s the most crowded. In fact, the closer you get to the end of the month, the more Bacchanalic the place becomes until it officially achieves madhouse status on H-Day. Which is why I go early in the month, on a week day preferably, to celebrate the Halloween season in general. One day I’ll have to celebrate Halloween night itself in Salem, I guess. Until then, I’ll stick to observing it sedately, with Halloween specials on the television, candy corn between my teeth, and goblin children at my door.

Still, putting up with a certain level of crowdedness is worth it to experience Salem in Autumn, when the weather is crisp, the leaves are aflame, and it’s much more enjoyable to walk down the Essex Street Pedestrian Mall with a plate of fried dough or hunker down on the Common to arrow through the digital shots you’ve so far imprisoned on your camera. Plus, I’ve got to be honest...there are going to be times while you’re in the town that you’ll feel a little silly for being there, and the crowds will make you feel less so, even if half of the people are wearing conical black hats and matching cloaks.

My first stop is always the Salem Witch Museum across from the Salem Common on Washington Square North. Not to go into it, though. Just to hang out around it. With its reddish medieval-looking exterior, striking statue of the town’s founder, and autumn decorations, it’s Salem on a postcard, and if you kill some time there and then skip the rest of the town you can still pretty much say you did Salem.

The one time I actually did go into the Witch Museum, I found it horribly misnamed. The museum’s a little one-room show involving an encircling diorama of life-size figures in scenes that are sequentially lighted and narrated to tell the story of the Salem witch trials. It’s a decent little show, but with such a great facade and all-encompassing name, it’s a bit of a let-down and not really worth the amount of money you have to pay to experience it...which is a running theme in Salem.

The truth is, there are much better ways of finding out the true story of the witch trials than going to Salem or any of its attractions, even if that attraction does include period-dressed mannequins and a half hour worth of narration. However, you can go into the gift shop for free, and that’ll help set the mood you need to explore the rest of the town.

Outside the museum looms the towering statue of Roger Conant, the founder and first governor of Salem. It’s a great dramatic statue with a billowing cloak that makes the first settler of Salem look like a superhero. I’ve written entire articles on statues, but that’s pretty much all I have for this one.

Salem is a harbor town, and if it didn’t have witches, it would probably put more of its eggs in its maritime history basket. Derby Street parallels the water, and I usually walk it both for that reason and because it drops me off outside a candy store called Ye Olde Pepper Companie (keep it down, spell check). The place claims to be the oldest candy company in the country, but it holds a special place in my life because it was here that I discovered clove drops. I like to pretend that discovery changed my life, but in reality, it usually just makes the rest of my visit in Salem a bit more clove-flavored.

Across from the Ye Olde Pepper Companie is the House of the Seven Gables, the inspiration for the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel of the same name. Hawthorne lived in Salem, and his life and works are another basket for Salem’s eggs that would be more ballyhooed if it weren’t for the spotlight-hogging witch trials. I’ve already covered this attraction here on O.T.I.S. It’s another place in Salem that I usually go to but don’t go in.

However, after I posted that article, I received enough responses encouraging me to actually take the tour that I ended up doing so on my most recent trip. I've got to admit, it wasn’t bad. I also got to check off “use a secret passageway” off my lifetime to-do list, but I still got that prickly, slightly panicked feeling in my skull that the world was passing me by while I was on the tour. I'll just never like group tours, I guess. Also covered in that article is the impressive Nathaniel Hawthorne statue on Hawthorne Avenue that depicts him as yet another member of the Justice League of Salem.

Once I have some hard candy to chip my teeth on and the smell of dead sea things in my nose, I then back-track along the painted red line that is the Salem Heritage Trail toward the epicenter of Salem’s Haunted Happenings shenanigans to see the Witch Trial Memorial and The Burying Point cemetery on Charter Street. Or, more accurately, to go through the Witch Trial Memorial to see the The Burying Point cemetery.

The memorial is merely an open space surrounded by a low wall with inset stone ledges for benches around the perimeter and some barely visible witch trial victim quotes engraved on the paving stones of the threshold of the enclosure. It’s a subtle memorial that makes you forget that you’re even at a memorial...which is problematic, I think...and funny.

Created in 1637, The Burying Point cemetery beside the memorial is pretty much as old as American cemeteries get. In it are buried a couple historical notables including a Mayflower passenger and John Hathorne, one of the villains of the witch trial hysteria and great-a-few-times grandfather of the already mentioned Nathaniel Hawthorne. The cemetery is small, open, and filled with those thin tombstones popular in those times, many of which feature that classic winged skull motif that looks like an Edward Gorey doodle.

Now, I’ve been to more cemeteries than is probably proper, but this is definitely one of the stranger cemetery experiences I’ve had. Normally, I feel half out of place at the graveyards I visit, which I guess I should clarify, I visit for aesthetic, historic, or cultural reasons. Maybe one or two morbid ones, as well. Regardless, I still often feel like if I’m not visiting a dead relative, I don’t really belong there.

However, at The Burying Point, it’s literally like a party, which I guess often still implies a place where I don’t belong. In this case everybody’s welcome to mingle among the gravestones while eating carnival-type foodstuffs and treading festively above the dead. This convivial atmosphere is due to the fact that in October it’s hemmed in by Salem’s “Haunted Neighborhood,” an area that features haunted house attractions, wax museums, and vendors selling those aforementioned carnival-type foodstuffs. As a result, funhouse screams, ware hawking, and teenagers loudly overreacting to each other are the soundtrack for your cemetery stroll.

Throughout my meanderings about the town, I do go into gift shops. They’re everywhere in Salem. One of the better places for it is the Essex Street Pedestrian Mall, which, in addition to stores, has various tented vendors and street performers lining the way during Haunted Happenings. It was here that I first discovered mead, which has since become a favorite liquor of mine on a list that’s becoming so long that the word favorite has started to lose its meaning.

At the end of this lane is the Bewitched statue, sponsored by the cable channel TV Land in its ongoing quest to make classic TV more permanent than it should be. Now, I absolutely (and I don’t use this word lightly) dislike the statue. I’m not totally sure why. Maybe it’s because it’s a horrible likeness of Elizabeth Montgomery, who I think I had a crush on when I watched the show in summer syndication as a child. Maybe I expected her to be dressed as a witch instead of a house dress for purposes of enstatuation. Maybe it’s the cheesy-looking textures of the statue. Or maybe it’s because the entire thing looks like it should be a weather-vane than a statue.

The first time I saw it, I had planned to take a picture with it, but was so disappointed that I didn’t even take one of it by itself. And that says a lot because I once took a picture of a seal carcass on a beach a few months back just because I encountered it. I can’t believe you clicked on that. For the sake of article completeness, I took a picture of the statue on my last venture into the town. I’m starting to get used to it, but I will always remember my initial disappointment. That is also what I plan to say about life on my deathbed.

And that’s pretty much it. I usually skip the rest of the museums and attractions. The Witch House sounds cooler than what it really is, I’m saving the Peabody Essex Museum for another time, and anything else with the words “museum” (or “tour,” for that matter) in its name has a good chance of being overpriced, underwhelming, and cobbled together from household materials. Salem generally has a pretty liberal definition of "museum."

So now you know exactly who not to do Salem with. Other people wring way more enjoyment from all the various events happening in the town at this time of year. I know this because I feel like I’m surrounded by them every time I go. I think it comes down to the fact that I’m both easily conflicted and very inconsistent on where I stand in regards to the cheesy.

On one hand, I’m embarrassed by the whole Wiccan, New Age silliness that pervades a lot of the town, as well as the painfully touristy bits...even though those touristy bits give me something to do. On the other hand, I dig it when towns form identities beyond stupid sports teams and generic historical worth, and I dig the more macabre aspects of the town...which I’m also embarrassed about. In the end, though, it’s a great Fall town, and that makes it a great town to me.

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UPDATE: I have a new favorite place in Salem: Count Orlok's Nightmare Gallery. If you find yourself in Salem, love horror movies, or just want to spell yourself a bit from witches, this is a place you'll want to check out to make your Salem visit complete.