Feelings of panic after visiting Highgate Cemetery

I was with a friend. We wandered around, tried every gate. Tried to call a number we found for a caretaker.
In the end we climbed out.
It was dusk, getting really spooky!

aka creative and imaginative thinking. Not bad in and of itself.

Its properly creepy. I used to live nearby and would often go there. Its very much Victorian death cult, well over the top.
We're all going to die. That much is inevitable.
Im just having a pure cremation and then be scattered by the sea. No fancy tombs for me. Those places just encourage fanciful thinking.

That's fascinating anyway, but googling tells me they were the grandparents of the mid century children's writer Violet Needham.

Thank you.

Atmospheres in burial places - oh yes. Usually peaceful, full of memories and prayers, but sometimes, unexpectedly, there is something else.

I’m totally with you about Avebury. I was just thinking the same reading this.

There are clearly places that must touch us - good or bad - that we can’t get away from afterwards. I feel chills every time I picture Avebury.

You are clearly sensitive to things other worldly. Put it behind you. You could visit a spiritualist for assurance.

Malcom McLaren’s grave is in the East side, and yes, that is his death mask.

Burst out laughing at @keepswimming38 🤣

And thank you for the book tip @emeraldroulette ordered it!

i have a list of places in the UK that I want to visit...just random places, like a lavender field or an animal sanctuary...ive also added Highgate cemetery and the Alnwick Gardens to that list. ☠️ DH said he's starting to worry about me...🤣

I've never been bothered about Highgate Cemetery, I now feel I need to make a visit!

How old are you, OP? Perhaps you've been confronted by your own mortality for the first time.

Yes, fine thank you! It was midsummer but it still closed at 5, so I had to get a nice chap who.looked like Father Christmas to let me out. I'd been distracted by a poorly fox in there, and calling various wild animal charities for advice (she was fine and already being cared for by a wonderful local charity). Just as I was leaving, a big branch fell from a tree and broke a headstone.
It was a surreal afternoon, all in all..

I've never been to Highgate cemetery but would love to go. It looks absolutely fascinating.

@keepswimming38 shush! you are lowering the tone of this excellent thread 😂

I agree with previous posters on the discomfort and sadness when the dead person’s dignity and privacy are compromised. They are dead - it doesn’t “matter” to them but I think as a species it matters to us, the living.

There was a really interesting documentary about very early cave burials and how honouring the dead is one of the things that is connected with consciousness and being human, essentially. I can’t remember what it was called though.

Ooh, what an excellent story...were you all right?

OP, I would add that it's surely a GOOD thing, that you were absorbed into the haunting, evocative and atmospheric aura of the place, that PrizedPickledPopcorn expressed so well. It is normal to feel discomfiture in such a place; Highgate Cemetery embodies that long-lost, wild hinterland, of history and death. It shows you have a complexity of character to appreciate that.

I love it there. It's so beautiful and peaceful. However I did get locked in a couple years ago. Embarrassing.

My father was at Belsen c8 yrs after its liberation and said it was eerily quiet, as if life had deserted it. Not a single bit of bird song for miles around. I gather Highgate is the opposite, full of life in that sense, but the oppressive Victorian grandeur of the tombs I can’t imagine feeling anything but heavy and could provoke intense feeling. I’m not a fan of graveyards at all for that reason. With my own much loved mother I remember her in life, I remember her birthday, but I never visit her grave

This thread has brought back memories of my youth. Back in my early 20s I moved to London for work, and my boyfriend and I moved into a shared flat in Highgate. We were both in our first jobs, so not much money, so we have fond memories of wandering round Highgate Cemetary and Waterlow Park, as both were free. This was in the 70s and there was no charge in those days. As well as Karl Marx's grave I remember graves of Stoney Smith, the inventor of Hovis, and Christina Rosetti. I think that you have to pay for a guided tour of the West side today, but back then you could just wander round. We are still together, and that sparked an interest in visiting old cemeteries and tombs wherever we go. I think the most moving we have been to is in Oradour Sur Glane in France where the whole village was massacred by the Germans in WW2. The memory of the family graves, with lines of photographs of the whole family, right down to babies, will never leave me. I think it is good to feel unsettled, I would be more worried if it didn't unsettle me.

I visited Highgate during a wet, autumn day. A combination of the overcrowded graves, lots of mature trees and gloomy autumn light made it feel different to other cemeteries.

Litvinenko?
But I agree with you.

I love Highgate and Brompton. Went to an.interesting little exhibition a few weeks ago about death and mourning at a museum in Yorkshire... lots of Whitby jet and Victoriana!
We are off to Paris catacombs later this year.

I felt similar after visiting Dachau (one of the first concentration camps). I was visiting Munich with a friend and they suggested we go as it's not far to travel; I was interested and thought it would be educational (in fairness, it was). However, I wasn't at all prepared for the feelings it stirred up (I knew it would be a sombre day, but...). I felt troubled, almost haunted for weeks afterwards (and the memories don't feel pleasant even now, well over a decade later). Similar to another poster, it wasn't actually the place as such, more the feelings that came from within me.

I visited Highgate Cemetery a few years ago and paid for the guided tour (highly recommended) and had the complete opposite experience and feelings from you, OP.

I found it absolutely mesmerising and fascinating. It was like an Aladdin’s cave for me, so much history, so many beautiful headstones. I could have spent hours longer there.

I absolutely loved this headstone though, I’d never heard of Patrick Caulfield before but I imagine he had a pretty wicked sense of humour.

I just visited Nando’s with my daughter before she set of for uni. Perhaps you would have been better doing something like that!