Day 7 of Drawlloween, and the prompt is Grave.
This is Edgar Allan Poe’s original burial marker in Baltimore, which holds a special place in my heart; it stood over his first grave from 1849 to 1875 and bears a carved raven with the words we all know.
It has been a couple of years since I did yearly gate work for the Westminster burial grounds. Every Halloween, BHK and I (and sometimes Amy, sometimes Van) would take a station (usually the big Poe memorial) and do tours of the catacombs. The keys to the gate and vaults are still on a ring in our bowl in the living room. They were really nice folks there, for the most part, and they put on quite a spread for people there for the evening. When I signed on in ’06, they added baked ziti because I don’t eat meat. The source for cider and popcorn was ideal… we would frequently prep the event by scooping bags of popcorn from about six giant trash bags to single serving size paper bags for visitors that night, taking about two hours to get it all together while chit-chatting and just getting in whatever Halloween costumes we had done for that year. BHK would frequently do the “umbrella jellyfish”, while my outfits were usually something equally easy in which to wear and interact with the public. I think I liked the scarecrow / voodoo doll the best, as seeing and breathing through burlap (hessian) is really easy, and the effect can be neat because it’s hard to make out features through it.
Holy cow, it’s been a while since I waited behind a high school bus. I swear some of those kids looked 30 and others looked 10.