Feelings of panic after visiting Highgate Cemetery

[Therunecaster]

Good evening

I visited Highgate Cemetery last summer and the catacombs have played on my mind ever since. Normally I love a wander round a cemetery but on this occasion it has left me feeling anxious about death. I don't know if it was the catacombs or the mausoleums or just the wildness of it but I wish I hadn't gone. Has anyone else experienced this feeling?

I get it. I have a friend’s sibling buried there and I’ve been a few times. Honestly the whole place gave me the creeps. Lots of ‘energy’ for want of a better term.

Oh, I wont be going there

Would it help to think that it’s just the epitome of all things ‘death’? Our mythology, psychology, sociology all encapsulated in an almost deliberate stereotype of morbidity. It’s both influenced our expectations, literature and film culture, and been influenced by it.

I love Highgate Cemetery and find it all quite lovely and calming. But you’re not being unreasonable to feel however you feel!

I love Highgate cemetery. I enjoy walking round old cemeteries (I live beside one) but I can see why people wouldn't want to.

YABU
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust... there are very few people buried in that cemetery than anyone now alive remembers and loved (apart from George Michael, LOL!) - 99.5% of the interments are just history now.
What it is, is a fabulous and very much alive habitat for hundreds of natural species.

I've sort of wanted to visit ever since it played a big role on one of the JK Rowling Strike books - sounds a really interesting place. I'm not so sure now!
YANBU to feel how you feel.

Are you pregnant?

@LovesLabradors oh if you get chance you should. It's beautiful.

I do feel it had a weird energy / vibe on the older side. I really regret going into the catacombs and looking into the Julius Beer Mausoleum

I felt the same after visiting the Paris catacombs. Hundreds of skulls all packed in tightly. Everyone else seemed cheery and fine but it freaked me out. Me my family and all our friends will one day be just those skulls. Why wasn’t anyone else bothered?!

I'm not but my youngest left home for uni a couple of weeks after we visited the cemetery together and I think it's a combination of that, a transition in life and the place being creepy

I haven't been there but wandered around one local to me. There are 2 massive graves of 2 teenagers, looks like they might have died in some sort of accident atvthe same time by the references and items left there. It left me feeling deeply sorrowful and overwhelmed so I get where your coming from. Sometimes I think it's also where you are in life, what your going through can affect you in such places more than at other times though. There are family tombs in old cemeteries in France that are also like that. They are enormous and the feeling of death being bigger than you because of the stature of them left me feeling the same.

@JuliettaCaeserthats it exactly

A couple of my long-ago ancestors are buried there. I've never been though.

I've been to Highgate Cemetery, but wouldn't wander round alone, particularly on the west side, which is where the catacombs are. It does have vibes. And yes, it is sobering, being reminded of what we all must come to, in the end.

When I lived nearby I loved Highgate Cemetery. I loved the peace and quiet. I’m not one with deep feelings about death or the afterlife though….. I just enjoy the quietness of a cemetery, so rare in London. A place to reflect. I loved Abney Park too.

It’s an incredibly atmospheric place. I’m terrified of death and feel sick thinking about it but I find cemeteries really interesting and found Highgate peaceful and beautiful with the woodland setting.

To be honest, I find the realisation that one day we’ll be naught but dust quite comforting. Puts a lot of day to day troubles into perspective - at the end of the day, none of them matter.

Never been to Highgate but it’s on my list.

I love that cemetery but I don't go inside the catacombs with all the coffins as it's too creepy for me. Happy to wander around the rest!

Keep meaning to go to Abney Park, thanks for the reminder. Plenty of my ancestors are buried there.

My mum felt haunted by memories of that place.

I do get it - I felt similar for a long time after visiting Pompeii and Herculaneum and seeing all the 'bodies' which are just holes left behind. I also can't deal with mummies even though skeletons are ok. It's too much like actual people.

It's comforting to know that other people feel the same. It's a beautiful, peaceful place for sure. There's a memorial plague in the church which struck me. It was about a young man from his male friend. Said something about him being his one true friend. I guess they were in a relationship. The words were so moving

Anyone been to Nunhead cemetery in South London? That’s a really old one as well.