Samhain/Hallowe’en Visit: Highgate Cemetery

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Well this is the time of year to think about or ancestors. To remember them and where we have come from because of them. But I was thinking, not only should we remember those directly linked to us but how about those who through their existence have directly or indirectly affected us?

I have always been interested in the cemeteries, places of supposed haunting; I find them peaceful and intriguing. Whenever I am in a new area I visited the local cemetery. Not only is it normally a lovely place for a walk, most having beautiful gardens and tree areas, it is also a place where you can learn things.

Highgate cemetery is local to some of my family and one I have visited over the years quite often. They have in the past held “ghost visits” at Hallowe’en to those brave enough to try them.
Highgate cemetery is in London and has lots of “residents” from the inconsequential to the most revered. Open to visitors, although only when a funeral isn’t taking place, you can visit the graves of those who have had a touch of improvement (or maybe otherwise!) on our world. Whether it be the written influences of someone like Douglas Adams (author of Hitchhikers Guide..) or Farzad Bazoft a journalist, executed by Saddam Hussein's regime, or the work leading to the invention of electric dynamo by Michael Faraday, physicist, through to Karl Marx there is someone there who will make you stop and think. To be grateful of whom we are and how we got to be there. Not to mention it is just the most fantastic place of Victorian Gothic to study!

So next time you are passing one, have a look, the messages engraved on the stones should be enough to make you think, if not at least the surroundings are worth a visit.