Feelings of panic after visiting Highgate Cemetery

I am saddened to read of your feelings and hope somehow they can be reduced or overcome.

I visited Highgate Cemetery a few years ago and to be honest it did not leave me with many feelings at all. War graves and those of relatives are the ones that emotionally affect me.

I watched David Attenborough's Wild London and they showed Hither Green Cemetery as the trees are absolutely coated with parakeets at sunset.

I love old churches and churchyards. There's a family grave in a village churchyard that ran out of space in the 20th century and it's got so many wild flowers. The grave stones are the traditional grey stone rather than shiny granite.
I once came across a grave in a little country churchyard that said
"Once I stood where thou dost now,
And viewed the dead as thou dost me,
Ere long thou'lt lie as low as I
And others stand and look on thee."
I'd like to visit Highgate cemetary

DH and I walked through Tower Hamlets cemetery 2 weeks ago.

It was an amazing experience that neither of us was really prepared for.

We walked through Tower Hamlets, with the pervasive smell of weed smoke. Past groups of young men, on street corners, with enormous dogs. There was a real feeling of tension, if not underlying threat.
Then through a gate to find ourselves surrounded by an overwhelming feeling of peace.

Such a beautiful place. The only sound was the singing of the birds. It felt like a woodland glade. You'd never guess you were in the middle of the East End.
Then thousands of graves. Crammed in with no real sense of order.

I could have spent hours there, but we were just passing through and had to be somewhere else.

I looked it up later, and apparently there are 44,000 people buried there.

It was closed as a cemetery in the 60s, and has since been a city park.

I absolutely love walking around cemeteries, as does my daughter so it's a shared activity. My husband thinks it's morbid, I think 'why would there be memorials if they didn't want people to see them'. However, I do get creeped out sometimes, and often feel like I am being 'watched'.

I was going to ask you what is your relationships with mortality. Did the visit make you confront it in a way you haven't previosly?
But to be honest Highgate has a vibe. No doubt about it. You might be sensitive in that sense.
How about Chislehurst caves though!! That place creeps me out like no other. I would not go back even if someone paid me.

And?

Where my granny is buried there is a grave right beside it which has the remains of a woman with my exact first, middle and last names and same year of birth. 😱

My daughter went to Aushwitz on a school trip. They were at the far end of the site. She and her friend went to the loo. When they came out, everyone had gone and left them!

Totally understand. I went a few years ago. What got me was the overwhelming, almost tangible silence. Very very weird.

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

It deeply upset me I used to be in tears every time

If Highgate gives you the creeps, then Auschwitz certainly will - I couldn’t sleep for 5 nights after visiting .,it’s incredibly well ‘done’ but just so bloody awful looking at man’s inhumanity to man -

Places don't really make me panic but some alive people certainly do.

I'd recommend Saint Mary's Churchyard, Mortlake. It's completely unremarkable in every way - just a little suburban RC cemetery overlooked by the back windows of terraced houses - apart from the tomb of Sit Richard Burton (the explorer, not the actor!) which is in the shape of an Arab tent.

I find Highgate interesting to visit too as so many horror films used the site.

It’s a cemetery - and a rather grande one at that. It’s not going to be a joyful experience is it?

I think it’s beautiful - but not the kind of place you go for a laugh

I don't feel sad for people buried in places like Highgate as that's just life and part of the victorian business of burial. Though I do sort of feel sad that with modern cremations we don't have places that mark people's lives like older burial sites.

I did feel sad when I saw Douglas Adam's grave as he died so young and was such a great writer.

I used to be a volunteer gardener and later a tour guide at Highgate Cemetery. I loved it - the calm , the beauty, the mysterious atmosphere, the amazing history.

The only thing that gave me creeps is literally seeing how many kids would die if it wasn't for vaccinations, and that there are people who would willingly return to the times when every family had several children in every generation dead at the early age from preventable illnesses.

I also find cemeteries peaceful and beautiful but during the pandemic when I was walking through one with my sister, I felt the same way as you OP.
I saw some of the older graves that were so worn down that you didn’t know the name of the poor soul or when they were born. They were forgotten and had disappeared forever.

It was particularly painful to see that because I was the youngest in a large family of single and childless siblings, I would mourn for them and remember them but who would do the same for me?

I was 35 and single with too much time on my hands due to pandemic unemployment and people were dying everyday.

Luckily, I am a mother now and feel at peace with the future.

I have always wanted to visit Highgate and now I want to go even more! But then I have always been a bit of a goth.
I can understand how it would have unsettled you but it was months ago so to still be upset about it makes me think there is something more worrying you x

I would love to go to Egypt but wouldn't be able to go into the pyramids. I also don't like the way the curators have unwrapped the royal mummies and put them on display.

Death doesn't frighten me and I spent my youth singing in old churches I just don't want to disrespect the dead. I'm also a bit frightened of ghosts!

Omg that is horrific like something from a horror film.
Where is the peace amd dignity in that?

Yes, but from Kensal Green not Highgate. Catacombs are places best avoided IMO.