Category: Written Word

A season when cemeteries reunite the living and the dead

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Above: No rearranging of the surroundings would be needed to film a horror movie in the dark and cavernous Cimitero delle Fontanelle in Naples, Italy.

It’s not surprising that a writer who would include Haunting the Graveyard as part of a book title is drawn to cemeteries. A few random headstones can reveal stories about individuals and entire communities.

Someone in the family demonstrates great patience with sating my taphophilia wherever we travel. Naturally, All Saints Day and All Souls Day are among my favorite times to do so. Posts in this blog are filled with the resulting photos, and the links below will take you to a few from our past travels. So many graveyards from which to choose….

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Ghosts with Halloween howling rights in Brackenridge Park

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Above: Do Laszlo Ujhazy (1795-1870) and his baying vizsla hounds haunt Brackenridge Park to avenge the brutal 1899 murder of his daughter, Helen Madarasz?

Tired of recycling the same old San Antonio ghost stories? Time to pay attention to a few of the many spirits probably haunting the banks of the San Antonio River in Brackenridge Park. Any resemblances to real persons, actual dead people, referenced in this post are absolutely intentional.

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19-teens Labor: Major holiday marches, brewing concerns and Colonel dogs

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Above: 1914 Labor Day photograph of workers in front of Maverick Building on Alamo Plaza provided by Connie Fuller to Paula Allen for The History Column appearing in the November 7, 2013, issue of the San Antonio Express-News

Labor Day was the only national holiday between July 4 and Christmas.”

Carol Boyd Leon, “The Life of American Workers in 1915,” Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Typical 1911 Fat Men’s Race from Kickass Fact Encyclopedia

With a dearth of holidays, it should come as no surprise that more than 50 unions turned out for San Antonio’s Labor Day Parade in 1911. A crowd of 5,000 gathered at the fairgrounds. “Colonel” Otto Wahrmund, vice president of the San Antonio Brewing Association which produced Pearl Beer, remarks in An Ostrich-Plumed Hat, and Yes, She Shot Him Dead, that there they encountered the excitement of the beer drivers’ union striving to have their candidate crowned queen; sporting events such as the fat men racing for 75 yards or the old men (50 years and up, how insulting!) crawling 50 yards to win a purse of $2; and fiery political speeches.

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