Are cemeteries haunted by the dead or the living? Do marble angels watch over the souls who search among silvery tombstones for names, dates and stone flowers?
Call them grave hunters, genealogists or historians, gravers, tombstone tenders, stone strollers or death hags. Just don’t call them morbid. Or ghouls. Or heaven forbid, necrophiliacs.
Technically they are called taphophiles – people who love cemeteries and funerals. And they are just like you and me. They could even be your neighbors.
Fascination with death and dying has been part of the human psyche since early man and a cemetery, old or new, is a peaceful place to contemplate our small place in the universe.
Lara Hartley examines the practice of visiting, and photographing, cemeteries.
Weep Not: Cemetery visitors celebrate life not death
https://www.desertusa.com/mag08/nov08/cemetery-visit.html