Taphophilia.(dot) Com - Fifty Visitors Locked Inside Cemetery for 3 1/2 Hours

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Fifty Visitors Locked Inside Cemetery for 3 1/2 Hours

Written by DeadGirl
Monday, 09 May 2005
BY GARY WISBY May 9, 2005 About 50 people paying Mother's Day visits to a Forest Park cemetery spent 3-1/2 hours more there than planned when a cemetery worker locked them in. "This is not the thing to do when people come to pay their respects to their loved ones, specifically their mom," said Reginald Raines, 40, of Chicago, who called the Sun-Times from his cell phone while still captive in Forest Home Cemetery. "It is salty on their behalf." Raines said the cemetery's posted closing time was 4:30 p.m. He said he arrived at 4 and an employee locked the gate about 4:15. "This is messed up," said Raines, who has visited the grave of his mother, longtime Chicago schoolteacher Ecta Raines, every Mother's Day since her death in 1985. Anxiety builds Forest Park Police located a cemetery employee who opened the main gate at 6:08 p.m., Sgt. Dan Harder said, adding 10 or 11 cars were waiting to leave. Among visitors was 65-year-old James Hester, who complained, "We've got babies out here crying and hollering and needing to use the bathroom. This is ridiculous." The cemetery worker "took off" after telling visitors it was closing time, Hester said. "We've got a big dinner waiting," said Shirley Jones of Bellwood, Hester's sister-in-law. She had brought her deceased sister's children on their first Mother's Day visit to the grave of their mother, Valerie Anthony, who died in September. Cemetery officials were not available for comment Sunday. Past woes Forest Home Cemetery was sued by the state in February 1996 after relatives reported shoddy upkeep of gravesites. One west suburbanite brought his own lawn mower to remove a knee-high overgrowth of grass and dandelions from his relatives' graves. In the 1980s and early 1990s, a string of owners plundered the cemetery's trust fund, declared bankruptcy and sold to other parties who repeated the process, authorities said. In all, $9 million was looted, they said. In August 1996, state legislators passed a law aimed at preventing such abuses. Evangelist Billy Sunday -- who died in 1935 in Chicago, the town he "couldn't shut down" according to the song -- is among notables buried at the 212-acre cemetery. http://editorial.yellowbrix.com/editorial/editstory.nsp?step=5&story_id=70854171

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Taphophilia?

taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)

ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"

DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries

Taphophiles Speak

Have you decided on eternal repose?

	earthen burial
	entombment
	cremation
	donation to science
	cyrogenically frozen
	you mean I'm still alive?

Quote Repository

“Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay