Grave occasion / Wheel time
Today: Anna Merlan, author of REPUBLIC OF LIES: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power; Tod Seelie, photographer and author of BRIGHT NIGHTS: Photographs of Another New York; and Luke O’Neil, author of the newsletter Welcome to Hell World, and the story collections A Creature Wanting Form and We Had It Coming.
Issue No. 434
Cemetery Gates
Anna Merlan
How It Is Done
Luke O’Neil
Riders on the Storm
Tod Seelie
Cemetery Gates
by Anna Merlan
Harry Houdini died on Halloween, after being repeatedly punched in the stomach by a McGill University student intent on making some sort of weird point about the Bible. He is buried in Machpelah Cemetery, in a small family plot near the cemetery gates. A bust of the great magician’s head looms over a long curved stone bench, where a melancholy stone woman kneels, her head propped in her hands. Houdini’s wife Bess has a tombstone nearby, but she isn’t actually buried there because she wasn’t Jewish; the date of her death is blank on the tombstone, though she died in 1943.
Statistically, if you reside in New York and are currently dead, you’re quite likely to be buried on the Brooklyn/Queens border, where an extraordinary “cemetery belt” stretches for some six miles: a dazzling stretch of stones, gates, mausoleums and crypts, all sprouting from the hillsides like millions of jagged gray teeth. Literally millions: the New York Times reports that more than five million are buried in this part of Queens alone.
On a recent afternoon, during the most luminescent time of year for a graveyard walk, I roamed the cemetery belt with a few friends, including Allison C. Meier, who wrote the original version of the Atlas Obscura piece about Houdini linked above. Allison writes about art and overlooked history, and she often leads cemetery tours in graveyards throughout New York City. Checking in on Houdini’s grave at Machpelah is a yearly tradition for Allison.
The plot around Houdini’s tomb is littered with the weird detritus of private pilgrimages that people have made here over the years: playing cards so old they’re now blank, a broken wine glass in a plastic case painted with gold spirals, and, because Houdini was Jewish, a huge heap of the so-called visitation stones we place on graves to symbolize remembrance and respect. Allison noted that Houdini died in 1926, but the inscription on his funerary bust lists him as president of the Society of American Magicians until 1927. One last great escape, perhaps.
Keep us breathing fire!
For $3/month you can read this whole post and get our weekdaily newsletter too!