Lantern Tour (at Cedar Hill)

On Friday night, October 30th, I found myself walking around a dark, cold cemetery. Happy (early) Halloween? Sort of.

It was another tour of Cedar Hill Cemetery. This tour is called the "Hallowed History Lantern Tour." It is the only night that Cedar Hill Cemetery is open to the public (after dark). The tour involved 10 stops at selected graves where character actors shared their true (yet dark tales).

Like other Cedar Hill tours, I did not take notes (Hey, it was dark!). I brought my camera but I thought that flash photography might be disruptive so my pictures were limited to the available light and turned out pretty dark (surprise).

Earlier Cedar Hill tours were free for me thanks to my "Let's Go Arts" (support) card. Otherwise tours cost $5. However, this Lantern tour cost $15 per person (for everyone). Also had to make a reservation. I think they had groups leaving every 15 minutes between 6 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. My reservation was for 9 p.m. The tour was sold out.

As usual, the tour began at the Flag pole.

I arrived at ~8:35 p.m. The night was cold and dark yet the sky was clear. I was shocked at the large number of cars; I had to drive down a dark drive pretty far to find a spot (along the road). Then to hike back to the usual Flag pole starting place (this is essentially the entrance to the cemetery proper). There were a couple portable lights (powered by portable generators) that lit the area (sort of ala Close Encounters)

After checking in at a tent/booth I had to wait a few minutes for others to arrive (no one I knew). There was probably about 20 in the group (mostly adults oldies like me along with a few college-age couples and a couple teenagers with their parents).

Our group had two women guides, one at the front and one at the rear (to prevent stragglers from getting lost). The route through the cemetery was marked with green glow sticks along both sides of the path/road. It reminded me of an airport runway at night.

Speaking of planes, towards the beginning of the tour, we heard a single engine airplane flying low overhead. There is a small airport nearby. Several people commented that the engine noise sounded like something was not right. It sounded like a riding lawnmower with a bad spark plug. I assume it made it back okay since there was nothing in the news about a plane crash.

This is from Cedar Hill's FB page. Since it was published before the tour
I assume it is from last year (2014) or earlier.

While our guides had large flashlights and many of us had flashlights too, it was still pretty dark. When we arrived at each stop, the guide turned off her flashlight and turned on the portable light and the character actor (in period costume) stepped out from behind the tombstone/marker they were hiding behind. The actor gave a short talk about the particular deceased. The story usually had a twist or dark side.

This is one of my pictures. Note the green glow stick at the foot of the woman
another glow stick is at the left, at her waist level.

One of the stops involved a woman who lost her son in a crewing/rowing accident. At the end of a race, the boats collided and the rowers fell into the river. Her son drowned. She attributed it due to his exhaustion at the end of the race as the reason he was not able to stay afloat.

This gentleman's story involved one of the first major train crashes in Connecticut. "He" was a doctor returning from a medical convention in New York when the train ran into the river because a draw bridge was in the UP position. He was not killed (he was in the first car that did not go into the river) but spent hours treating the injured and attending to the dead.

Even the tour only lasted an hour, I was happy and eager for it to end because I was very cold (there were no bonfires for warmth).

The last station was memorable because it involved a woman who died as a result of a fire works accident. One of the rockets went awry and shot into the crowd instead of going up in the air. Her leg was injured when the rocket exploded near her foot. She was taken to the hospital and it was thought she would survive but for unknown reasons she died a few days later.

Most of the stories involved people who lived (and died) during the 1800s (19th Century).  One of the stories was about artist William Gedney Bunce. Bunce  died on November 5, 1916 when he was hit by a car while crossing the street after getting off a trolley. He was one of the first traffic fatalities in Hartford.

As a safety & insurance professional, my thoughts centered on potential liability for slips, trips, & falls due to walking around on uneven surfaces in the dark. There was also the potential for someone to get lost in the dark while looking for their car after the tour. Now, these kinds of accidents rarely happen but they are possible. Use the buddy system.

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Links:

http://www.cedarhillcemetery.org
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow_stick
http://cedarhillfoundation.org/notable-residents/william-gedney-bunce
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Written Saturday 28 November 2015