This very year. Midnight. Oct. 31, 2018.
Under Halloween’s quarter moon … faceless, bleached-robed specters begin their grave-maddened banshee cries and wails as they whirl and float among the Spanish moss-choked limbs of the very cedar trees – the gnarled and bent and ancient cedars – that name deathly and haunted Cedar Grove Cemetery.
There they are! Ebony-gowned witches! Witches by the score – with their pointy hats dancing, swirling in rings, insane and evil, hand-in-hand with demonic fairies around serrated spires of violet bonfires under sleepy, creepy moonlight; casting shadows of gloom on desolate headstones and crypts of the long-departed … when all of them – ghosts, witches and fairies alike – are startled dumb, still and silent by the earth-shaking, pounding, pounding, pounding hooves, as a headless horseman on muscled steed gallops wildly through the monstrous triple entrance gate as fast as the frozen winds off the tar-dark Neuse River!
Nah. None of that’s gonna happen.
The place’ll be closed up tight. And silent as, well, the grave. Sorry.
But if it could happen, Cedar Grove would be an excellent place for it. Since 1800, Cedar Grove Cemetery at the corner of Queen and George Street has been New Bern’s favorite burying ground. With Victorian flourishes on the century-before-last tombs, soaring monuments and ornamented graves under low-hanging trees, it looks like Stephen King’s imagination, and manifests one of the Colonial Capital’s favorite tourist attraction as well.
In addition to the shell-sand-gravel aggregate “coquina”-paneled walls, iron-fenced family plots and dramatic triple-arched entry gate, the client list is pretty impressive. Famous congressmen, Civil War soldiers, artists, authors, writers, and the inventor of Pepsi-Cola are among the Who’s Who of Craven County historical luminaries at rest in Cedar Grove’s park-like setting. The 218-year-old cemetery was selected for the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and is today watched over by the City of New Bern’s Parks and Recreation Department.
Cedar Grove is at 808 George Street. It’s open to the public dawn to dusk.
But back to the spooks and goblins.
The New Bern Historical Society will present “Graves Anatomy” Thursday, October 25 through Saturday, Oct. 27. This edition of the ever-popular Ghostwalk promises “haunting historical sketches,” shows and skits about “medicine, mystery and mayhem” at 13 – get it, 13 – downtown locations. Late afternoon to early evening. Check newbernhistorical.org for Ghostwalk ticket information, schedules and details.
Being the intrepid, dedicated journalists that we are, we called the city’s parks and recreation folks and put it to them straight: “Is the place haunted?” we asked.
“I only go there during the day,” a cemetery administrator said. “I don’t go in at night.”
Good advice. Be out of there way before midnight. You’ve been warned!
by Edward Ellis, Spectral Correspondent
Craven County native Eddie Ellis is a journalist, writer and historian. He’s the author of New Bern History 101 and other works about the area’s rich heritage.
More at edwardellis.com