Halloween in the Graveyard

[Martin Hash]

It’s a cliché but I’ve always wanted to visit a graveyard on Halloween night so when my son, Haven, asked about doing it in Lima, I was all over the idea. In my mind I was envisioning gravestones & crypts but the place we went to was a giant mausoleum, walls of niches housing a corpse and sealed with a concrete facades.

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There were plenty of cracks to trip over in the dark, and pits to fall into.
The tour was over 3 hours long, as the guide told story after story in Spanish, with lots of colloquialisms, so I could only follow half of what he said. After listening to one particularly lengthy ghost story that feature a candelabra & a skull, we were all given tiny plastic pumpkins with bizarre gorilla-headed caps filled with candy.

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I was most fascinated by a marble statue of 7-year old boy who was famous because he was “well liked.” Someone had put a red silk cape on the statue, and the wall behind it was covered with photos and cards. Visitors were encouraged to leave money.

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The most interesting part of the whole thing for me was the 1930’s era hearse parked out front, unrestored but still in such fantastic condition that I was imagining a body laid out in the back. Whatever expectations I had about visiting a graveyard on Halloween were more than fulfilled so I don’t think I have to do it again until there’s a statue of me in a red silk cape.

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