Haunted Graveyards

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been experimenting with some horror photography. I stumbled across the reverse color and black and white settings on my camera and have been snapping photos of castles, cathedrals and graveyards. On a recent visit to Escomb church, the oldest surviving Anglo-Saxon church, I took some photos in the graveyard. The church was built in 670 and I'll be blogging about it on Gadling next week. These graves are from the 17th-19th century. I like this one above, in a reverse black and white image.

Here's the same grave in a reversed color image. Check out the skull. It looks like something my kid would draw!

The trees make a nice backdrop to this shot.
I like the fade out to the left.

Here are some buildings on the River Wear at Durham. The greenery came out an interesting color. I have plenty more images of castles, stone circles, graveyards, etc., mostly normal shots rather than products of my fiddling with the settings. If anyone's interested in using them for their own projects, get in touch.

Dowsing for graves

In the course of my research I come across some strange stuff. I've been invited to Cass County, Missouri, to present one of my history books and while searching around their historical society website I discovered an article on dowsing for graves. Apparantly two volunteers who have been participating in recording local cemeteries use a rather unorthodox technique to find them, and have published their methods in case you want to try it out for yourself.

First you need to practice on a marked cemetery to get the hang of it, and then you can venture off into likely spots to find unmarked graves. The technique is so accurate you can even tell the height and sex of the body by how the dowsing rods move.

While you're probably getting skeptical by this point (I know I am) the author claims she has actually tested this method by using it on a family plot and found three unmarked graves. When the funeral home checked two of the spots, they found coffins.

Hmmm. When I go to Cass County for the reading, I think I'll ask to see this in practice.