Feelings of panic after visiting Highgate Cemetery

I've always wanted to go there but it's pia to get to from south London. It sounds beautiful and spiritual. I believe the fauna and floral is awesome.

I love graveyards, I find them really calming. One of my great grandparents is buried at Highgate, I’ve only been once and had some sort of plot coordinates or map or something, but the bit they were in was dark and overgrown and I couldn’t find it. One day!!

I can’t even stand the word Victorian. It has to be the creepiest and most miserable period of history one could imagine. Endless suffering for poor people. Sepia tinged madness. Freezing and dirty. All those hideous photos of families and the ones with dead children dressed up. I find that whole area of London creepy. And that house in Luther. Makes me nauseous. I swear it’s in the air. I was taken there as a child and wouldn’t ever go again.

This is a great thread though. I find it so interesting to hear people’s descriptions of how places can make us feel.

@Crikeyalmighty must be amazing to live there. I'd be tempted to go to the pond at night and look for the shivering chicken!

There's another book that posters here might like. Fallen Angels by Tracy Chevalier. Really interesting on women's suffrage but also about Highgate Cemetery and the concept of cremation coming in.

I think another reason I liked Highgate Cemetery is I find Victorian stuff very comforting. I don't know why that is. Probably all the historical fiction I read as a teenager. I like being surrounded by history though.

Yes, once in Bodmin jail and once at Battle. I could feel what people experienced in both those places and was in floods of tears. There have been other occasions where I have felt similar but less.

However it didn't stay with me as it has with you. Once I'd left it was over, I remembered how I had felt but that's all.

Some of us are sensitive to atmospheres in places where things have happened, in this case unpleasant things, people suffering. The Jews call it 'shades', it's not like ghosts which I do not believe in. It came from within me.

I know there are places other people go to see which I would avoid.

sometimes in the woods in different parts of the uk ive had a strange feeling like your being watched but know theres no one there etc

I read this on holiday one year - -a book that stayed in my mind -intriguing and really really creepy !

Well there is a graveyard near me and it has a couple who were buried some years ago with the same first names of my husband and myself and it did give me a slight double take. I went to Highgate a long time ago, didn’t bother me but the house I grew up in was opposite an abandoned church with graveyard. One of my favourite books is called The Fireside Book of Death all about the customs and rituals of death. I read it when I was a teen and still have it.

OP, I don't think there's anything weird about finding it disturbing or lingering in your mind to see coffins and decay and things rotting away. I am quite at peace with the idea of dying and have seen several people die, but I still hate looking at mummies in museums, in fact, I don't think they should be shown, not their bodies wrapped anyway. I think it's because I imagine how much that person would not want to have been displayed rotting for everyone to see- I wouldn't and I'm guessing they wouldn't either. There's a publicness about what is a very private matter.

I don't think this is strange, or it's weird that it's lingering in your mind. Hospices themselves and graveyards with just the stones showing don't freak me out at all, our local hospice is a very calm and lovely place (I'd like to go there if/when my time is up and have a nice bed by the windows onto the garden).

I’ve never been to Highgate and it’s on my list when I get the chance to visit London. No connection to it personally. It sounds peaceful and beautiful.

I visited a cemetery when I was expecting my eldest, my mum had asked me to go on my way to somewhere else and take photos of the gravestones for a family history project she was doing. Off I went with dh. Not kidding, almost every gravestone in that place had my surname, all ages and going back to the 1800s and beyond. It was so strange. I felt quite ill. Dh went and took the photos while I just stood and stared. I guess it was the intersection of birth and death, and that those people were my ancestors, plus it was a calm and lovely day and it all just felt so weird.
I’ve not been back. Life can grab you like that I suppose. Hope you feel ok now.

We lived about 80 yards away at one point for quite a few years

• I kind of loved it , but it always left me with huge melancholia whenever I went - it’s a very dramatic , gothic place .

You have got to be a professional writer. That is beautifully said

Visiting Highgate has long been on my daughter and my ' bucket ' list , as we ( maybe enjoy is the wrong word!) wander around graveyards a lot. Your experience will make me think twice!

I go there all the time with my little one and find it very peaceful. The kid loves it. Also loads of wild garlic in spring which I gather in heaps and make pesto from. I find it very peaceful and the kid loves running around the hills and paths and tunnel.

It’s very Victorian is what I’d say. So if you’re susceptible to that maybe it feels creepy. I suppose I see the Victorians as a bit overblown and so I take it all with quite a big pinch of salt. Not that I don’t love the incredible angels and the inscriptions and the whole feel of the place, but just putting it in a historical context makes it seem a bit OTT on some level. Beautiful, but of its time.

You have described this so well. It's the "passing of time" on such a grand scale.

I'm not woo but I had an unsettling twinge at my local cemetery. Walked past all the recent graves fine then got the heebie jeebies near the old unkempt graves.

I've been a couple of times and simply found it atmospheric. But I totally understand others having a different experience.

But I enjoy visiting cemeteries abroad, especially in what used to be the colonies. They're often very sad, because everyone died so young, and often whole families succumbed to tropical diseases. But I kind of feel that they deserve someone from 'home' acknowledging their story life story. And the headstones usually carry very long and sentimental tributes.
They're also maintained with great respect, I find.

But you may find me weird!

I went there on a Sunny day and felt uncomfortable, and driving towards Avebury I had to make my husband turn back, sense of malevolence

Thank you for saying that
I'm glad it's not just me who feels that way

@Isometimeswonder that sounds like quite a story?

@Therunecaster sorry it's troubling you. That specific place, is it because of the little girl who died?

I've only been to Highgate Cemetery once. I found it interesting. But it's such a tourist spot, I didn't feel much else. It was before George Michael died.

I left London three years ago. Hampstead and Highgate are the only two areas that I miss. The streets around the cemetery are really nice.

At one stage, the local cemetery was the only place I could find peace and quiet! I did not live in a good part.

I go to visit my parents graves whenever I visit my home town but I can never understand why anyone would want to visit the graves of strangers let alone half open graves. To me they are best left in horror movies.

A lot of my family are buried there. I quite like it. But I feel connected to it. A lovely wilderness island in a urban area too..

I live near West Norwood cemetery. That is definitely worth a visit. I spend some much needed quiet time at lunch there during the warmer months!

I went there 30 years ago. I don't remember it very well but I don't remember feeling woo.
How did you escape?

I always wanted to visit after reading her fearful symmetry https://www.amazon.co.uk/Her-Fearful-Symmetry-Audrey-Niffenegger/dp/0099524171 great book but I still haven’t been !