Grafton State Hospital’s cemetery: Now with less spookiness!
Maybe it’s the difference between summer and fall. Maybe it’s the recent cleanup by the Grafton Job Corps. But my favorite spooky place in Grafton, Grafton State Hospital’s old cemetery filled with unmarked graves, is suddenly a lot less creepy.
For starters, you no longer have to whack your way through the underbrush to get there. The job corps took out all the bushes that were blocking the view from the road and added a stone path lined with American flags, since several of the people buried there are veterans.
I mean, look at it! The weeds are gone! It’s no longer a monument in the middle of nowhere! And even the old stone tower…
OK, it’s still creepy. But instead of looking like a place where Voldemort might have hidden a Horcrux, it looks more like, say… Voldemort’s vacation home. You know, the place where he hangs out when he’s not being all evil and stuff.
The Job Corps also added a gate to keep the riff-raff out. The glowing behind it, I keep having to remind myself, is from the sun coming through the tower’s open top. It’s certainly not the souls of the damned gearing up to come after me, although I swear I did not see it glowing like this while I was there.
The Job Corps also cleaned up the grounds to make the grave markers more visible. Only a few people have actual names and dates. The rest are simply numbers, which is just sad no matter how well you clean it up.
To sum it up: in the bright light of summer, with a little love, the Grafton State Hospital cemetery no longer looks like a place that needs regular patrols by Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Except for that stone tower. I wonder if Lord Voldemort decorates his summer home with cheap tchotckes from the Christmas Tree Shop like everyone else?
You have to admit, though, that tree looks a lot like the whomping willow.
That big tower isn’t for show and it isnt for kids drinking beer either or standing around a fire. The old tower was supposidly a crematory
That’s a new theory, but I doubt it. Crematories need to have very hot burning fires and nothing about that structure’s interior suggests that to me… especially the windows.
That sounds very true but I still don’t understand why there are ashes and what looks like a fire pit. It just makes sense to me to have that so close to the graves. Your point seems valid though. Is there anyway anybody can find out the true nature of that tower?
Also when i was in middle school years back my teacher said something about the tower. He suggested that it might be a watchtower which also makes sense. The crematory idea still bites at me though especially because it could give a possible explanation to the windows as escape routes for the flame and heat
the tower was used for water at the top was a tank in the in side were stairs going up in to the tank but the closed that down cause the mentally insane were sneaking out and jumping to there death of the tower
I have been looking for my Great GrandFather…Waldo W. Mower. This is where he died May 12, 1919 and is buried in section ” A ” Grave # 90. He was born 1868 in Fitchburg,MA and was married to Emma H. Sampson. His son Roland S. Mower was my GrandFather, and his son Harold Roland Mower was my Father.
I worked at G.S.H. in 1969 til just before it closed.I was 18 when I started. Believe me, what I witnessed there Iwill never forget ! I sit here now 61 and I am soaked in cold sweat and goose bumps. If a place could be haunted, that place should be.