But *Those* People, Too ...

The Charter Street Cemetery is reopened!  This is good to see.  I was among those worried that once it had been locked, it might never be unlocked again.  I have been sick and staying in, so only just got over there today.  I spent maybe half an hour or so, taking photos, and saw at least twenty people cycle through, taking pictures and admiring headstones.

And because I am my father’s son, and I will talk to anyone, I asked a few people what brought them out to visit the cemetery today.

One woman was a big fan of the movie, Hocus Pocus (which I just saw this week, finally, and thought it was incoherent and not remotely entertaining, but I digress) and always wanted to visit Salem to see the filming locations.  She knew that Charter Street was not the cemetery featured in the movie, but visited anyway. 

Another woman was from Seattle, and on a trip east.  She had come up from Boston with her boyfriend.  She told me that she always made a point to visit cemeteries when she could; being a history buff, cemeteries are an important resource.  She was looking for Mary Corey’s grave.

Another pair of women told me that they were genealogists, just visiting for the day, and they always checked out graveyards on the off-chance that they recognized a familiar name.  So far today, they hadn’t.

As I was leaving, a father was coming in, with a couple of young, single-digit aged kids.

“Remember, it’s not a playground,” he said.  “This is a graveyard, you have to be respectful.” 

It’s easy to troll social media and find pictures of people misbehaving.  I’ve seen those pictures, too, and it pisses me off as much as it does you, believe me.  But I think most people understand where they are, and treat it with respect.  Not everyone, obviously, but I would say the vast majority.  It’s not a scientific sample by any means, but on my visit today, I saw people with genuine interest in the history of the cemetery, and Salem generally.  I didn’t see the “people wearing all black, and talking about horror” that one of the cemetery commissioners so reviled (see the post titled, “Those People”).  I just saw some nice people who were happy to be there, and they would have been locked out last week, too.  And that would have been a shame.