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Welcome
Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
A Taphophilia Thank You...
Taphophilia (dot) Com would not be possible without the knowledge, experience and talent of DarkestWeb. From its conception and early development, DarkestWeb was faced with many challenges; from inspiring and motivating, to providing guidance and direction. The continued dedication and support has produced results greater than ever expected, and for this, I owe a huge debt of gratitude.
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Graveyards of Chicago:
The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries
By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski. Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!
Green-Wood Cemetery Arcadia Publishing announces the release of Alexandra Mosca's historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery and to browse other available titles!
Men of Mortuaries Calendar
To purchase your 2008 calendar, learn more about the KAMMCARES Foundation, or to be featured in the 2009 calendar, please visit Men of Mortuaries.
Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.
Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints, Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture
with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman is now
available. Please visit
Studio Indiana for more information.
West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Salem Historical Society charting Colonial cemetery |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Wednesday, 02 May 2007 |
By Gordon Fraser
SALEM - Thomas Spitalere shouted as he wielded a hatchet yesterday, whacking the sod near the weathered headstone of Capt. Stephen Clement, who died in 1816. "Oh, oh! We have located - something!" he exclaimed.
Spitalere's hatchet made the flint-and-steel sound with each strike as he tore small clumps of grass from the ground, revealing a flat stone, maybe the size of a newspaper, just beneath.
"That's definitely a stone of something," he said, tossing the hatchet to the ground and brushing dirt from the stone with his bare hands.
Spitalere is part of a Salem Historical Society project, launched last week, to chart the identities of people buried in the North Salem Burial Ground - a cemetery where headstones date to the mid-1700s. The town's vital statistics indicate that 31 people were buried there, but Spitalere thinks there might be many more.
Just last week he discovered the headstone of Peter Currier, who died in September 1754. Currier isn't listed in the town's vital statistics.
That find prompted seven volunteers to gather yesterday at the old burial ground and begin work that will probably take all summer. They intend to cut brush around the graveyard, and search beneath the ground for buried gravestones and old artifacts.
Yesterday's search turned up a few finds, too. One headstone - which looked like it matched the 18th century style of some of the oldest there - leaned against a stone wall at the base of a shallow slope, almost in a nearby stream. Once Spitalere tore through the brush to get down to the stone, he looked it over.
"It's illegal to rub gravestones, but it looks like we'll have to rub it," he mused, examining the stone's face - algae-splattered, looking like a Rorschach test.
He put the headstone aside and navigated his way back up the hill. That's where he found, buried near other head and foot stones, the remnants of more grave markers.
Spitalere is a short man, age 30, with a dynamism trumped only by the variety of his interests - ghost hunting, genealogy, history, yard sales, development projects, conservation.
He gives the impression he's moving in four or five different directions at once. In the course of yesterday's grave search, he managed to lose his cell phone - the third time his phone has vanished in a graveyard, he said. A short time later, he lost his pruning shears. He found the cell phone.
But while Spitalere is leading the search, several volunteers have come out to help. Rudy Bibeau brought his metal detector, hoping to uncover a buried metal veteran's marker, one that might lead him to a buried headstone.
Instead, he found the tab of an old beer can, a key chain, a dime from the 1970s, a hand-wrought square bolt, a modern screw and a few other odds and ends.
Daniel Zavisza came out, too. The former president of the Historical Society and a board member, Zavisza joked that he had found a genuine Revolutionary War-era artifact, one that must have belonged to a well-known patriot and pamphleteer.
It was a bottle cap, inscribed with the name Samuel Adams and everything.
The work at the burial ground involves some drudgery. Volunteers yesterday were busy raking pine needles and leaves from the corners of the graveyard, fighting their way through underbrush. Later, they'll hack that underbrush down, clearing the way for a wider search for gravestones.
But the work is important, Spitalere said, because it can help people searching for their ancestors.
For his part, Spitalere has traced his family on his mother's side all the way back to the late 1500s in Portugal. His Italian father's family was more difficult to trace because many records were destroyed in World War II.
And while Spitalere hasn't been able to fund a pilgrimage to the grave sites of his own Italian ancestors, he hopes at least to restore the graves of Salem's earliest inhabitants.
"We just want to find them so (their) families can find them," he said.
The volunteer group will be working at the North Salem Burial Ground every Monday, starting at 2:15 p.m. For information about how to help, call Spitalere at 978-376-2807.
http://www.eagletribune.com/punewsnh/local_story_122093855?keyword=topstory+page=2
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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
Taphophilia Facts
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New Jersey is home to one Presidential gravesite, Grover Cleveland.
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Quote Repository
“Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate death.” Walt Whitman
Grave Epigrams
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Here lie interred the dreadfully bruised and lacerated bodies of William Bradbury and Thomas, his son, both of Greenfield, who were together savagely murdered in an unusually horrid manner on Monday Night April 2, 1832: Such and interest did their tragic end excite
That, ere they were removed from human sight,
Thousands on thousands daily came to see
The bloody scene of the catastrophe... Saddleworth Church Graveyard
Yorkshire, England 1832 |
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Shirtless and Sculpted
The Men of Mortuaries 2008 Calendar is now available! All sale proceeds benefit KAMMCARES, a breast cancer foundation.
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