Images of the Past

Images of the Past

As I sit in hallowed silence among the weathered and crumbling headstones of AuSable Cemetery, I can’t help but see the ghostly images of days since past. There is almost an eerie presence that tightens around your spine as your breathe in the stagnant frosted air.

It is painfully silent as you strain to hear even the slightest sound. You then realize that the residence of these plots might be straining just as hard to hear you. Your mind starts to race and suddenly you can hear creaks, cracks, and crunches everywhere. You feel brushes and breezes from behind and spin your head around as if you were an owl. Convinced you are just freaking yourself out, your focus turns to calm and collect your senses. Then, for no apparent reason, a puff of snow flutters down from the tree branches above you and progresses from tree to tree across the ever darkening abyss.

The grounds look rough and uneven. The trees stand in distorted reverence towering above the secrets of the dead and their markers with dilapidated slates and incoherent messages leaves one to wonder the fate of the departed and the duration of their internment. There are few discernible rises in the ground anymore and the path around the plots is nothing more than an indentation in the earth. The wrought iron hedge that surrounds this burial ground is battered and bent with a strong posture of indifference to ever letting you leave once you have entered.

With your senses in overdrive, the images of yesteryear start to manifest themselves in the shadows of the snow and wind swirling in gestures that don’t seem quite natural. The creaky old cart that carried the rotting corpses to their final resting place can be heard slumbering along the rooted trail, and the shuffling feet dragging through the mud and leaves of a soggy graveyard almost drown out the groans of the grieving descendants.

As I am leaving, I notice only footprints coming into this place and none ever going out. So upon your next visit to the AuSable Cemetery always be aware of the exit, as many have never found it.