L'Ankou: The Cemetery Gaurdians

A. Lee. Martinez is my favorite author.  I have read his books backwards.  I read his last book first and crept my way back to Gil's All Fright Diner, which was his first novel.  This was an incredible read.  I finished it in a day.  It is interesting in the rules it creates and its descriptions of all things otherworldly.  Two of the heroes in the book are a ghostly rat terrier and a guardian ghost named Cathy.  Cathy is the last ghost to be buried in the cemetery and is thus cursed to watch over the cemetery until the next person is buried.  So the guardian ghost of any cemetery is always the last person to be buried there.

Whether he knew it or not, Martinez actually inverted a piece of old French folklore to create his guardian ghost.  In Breton, the Celtic Western tip of France, there is a old legend of L'Ankou.  L'Ankou was the oldest person buried in the cemetery.  He is the first ghost to rise up from the cemetery, and according to French Folklore, is thus condemned to guard over the cemetery and make sure all following souls are carried to the afterlife.   He is described as a skeletal figure in black robes with a wide rimmed Breton hat who uses a cart pulled by ghostly goats to carry the dead to the next world.   He is so prevalent in folklore that his depiction can be seen in many French Cemeteries carved into stone.  He is seen in the side of archways and in fountains.  Although, there are many of L'Ankou, they always look the same, skeletal and terrifying. My husband is French and he told me this story which was told to him by his family when he as a boy.

Wikipedia's take on L'Ankou varies a little from my husband's childhood memories of L'Ankou.  According to Wikipedia, L'Ankou becomes death's henchmen when he is the first buried in a cemetery.  In some tales, he is the first ghost to ever walk the earth and is the first child of Adam and Eve.  Accordng to French Wikipedia, he a derivation of the god Dagda.  Those who hear his cart will die shortly and those that see him will die within the year.  There is a legend that on Christmas Eve L'Ankou touches those who will die that year with his cape at Christmas Eve Mass.  Every depiction of L'Ankou I found shows him leading a cart drawn by horses rather than goats, but I suppose goats just aren't as scary as spectral horses. I prefer my husband's depiction of the goat cart.  It just rings a little more true to folklore and  is less dramatic to me.    L'Ankou is also known in Norman and Cornish Folklore as Anghau and Akow. 

The Cemetery in the Snow

It rarely snows in the South.  It snows so rarely that all of life seems to freeze when the first snow flake hits the ground.  School stops, work stops, the stores are quiet.  The snow casts a strange silence in the South and I couldn't help but wonder what the cemetery would look like draped in quiet white.   So I went to Huntsville's most famous cemetery to take pictures and explore a little in the snow.  Maple Hill Cemetery is the oldest and largest cemetery in Alabama.  It was begun on two acres of land and those acres were sold to the city for 200 dollars.  The cemetery has grown to over a hundred acres.  Its oldest grave stone is from1812 and it is of a little girl. Like many cemeteries, Maple Hill Cemetery boasts many ghosts.  Its long history and many stories stretch as far as the imagination. Ghosts and stories hide behind the tombstones like shadows waiting to spring out.  

The most famous ghost said to live in the cemetery is Sally Carter.  She is Huntsville, Alabama's most famous ghost and she is best  known for haunting the carter mansion.   After her grave was moved away from the carter mansion, her ghost has also been seen in Maple Hill cemetery where her grave now resides.  Sally Carter was an unfortunate young woman  who died of an unexpected illness while staying at the mansion.  Her ghost has been seen numerous times at the mansion and at the cemetery.

One of the crypts at Maple Hill Cemetery is also home to the ghost of an elderly lady.  Her body rests in one of the large above ground crypts in the cemetery.  According to legend,  in life the woman loved sitting on the front porch in her rocking chair.  She loved it so much her beloved chair was placed in the crypt with her after she died.  People say that if you push your ear up to the door of the crypt you can hear her chair gently rocking inside the crypt.  I tried this and heard nothing but the wind, but the story is wonderful none the less.

Chicago's Forgotten Cemetery

Unbeknownst to most, beneath some of the most populated and heavily used land in the country, there lies the remains of a cemetery.   Chicago's old City Cemetery  used to occupy space that is now Lincoln Park.   Begun in 1846, it used to take up space that was on the edge of the city.  However, as the city grew and land came into high demand, a movement began to move the city cemetery.   In 1866,   this idea was shot down by courts and it seemed the cemetery would remain along this beautiful lake front property forever.   However, in 1871 something happened that changed everything.  In a small barn a fire began that moved into the city and devoured Chicago.  The flames of the inferno were so intense that only 3 buildings remain that stood against the all encompassing flames.  The fire devoured everything in its path.  People fled into the cemetery from the flames and jumped into open graves to escape.   But the fire had no mercy and the flames roasted those in open graves and even destroyed the grave markers.

After that there was no question as to the relocating of the cemetery. A massive disinterment effort began in 1872; in 1874, the last burial lots were condemned. The last acknowledged removals in this process occurred in 1877.  However,  many of the graves markers were lost in the fire so many bodies were not moved as part of this process and new construction in areas once belonging to the City Cemetery often reveals old corpses laying in unmarked graves.    It is no telling how many bodies still lay beneath the earth of the ground that was once the old City Cemetery.

Only the Couch Mausoleum remains as an official reminder of the cemetery.  Couch's family would not allow this tomb to be moved or even opened so it stands quietly in a lonely corner of an old park.   It is even a mystery as to how many bodies lay within the tomb.   Of course,  stories of ghosts and haunting proliferate in the area around the mausoleum where the dead still walk.  Our ghost tour told a tale of a phantom dog that wanders the grounds at night, leaping upon those that walk alone.