Creepy Cemetery

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Cemeteries have long held an air of creepiness. They are places where we bury our loved ones. Places that make us think of unpleasant things. Sometimes the place manages to creep you out because of the way it looks but there's a reason Fantasy and Horror like this setting. It's the birth place of The Undead and in a Zombie Apocalypse, expect every grave to be a Clown Car Grave. If you're lucky, then the local vampire coven didn't get the memo about this not being the best place to sleep. If they didn't you just need to find their Ancient Tomb and hope there isn't a night guard (and that they're heavy sleepers).

Big Boo's Haunt overlaps when it takes place in a cemetery. See also Indian Burial Ground and Elephant Graveyard.

Examples of Creepy Cemetery include:

Anime and Manga

  • In episode 79 of Yu-Gi-Oh! Bakura and Bonz duel in a graveyard and bring the creepy crawlies to match.

Film

Literature

  • In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort did his little forbidden ritual in a graveyard. You know, the usual "bone of father, blood of enemy, flesh of servant" rebirth routine.
  • Stephen King's Pet Sematary and its film adaptations have these.
  • At least one in every Anita Blake Vampire Hunter novel. Justified as Anita's occupation is to raise zombies from graves.
  • Averted in The Zombie Survival Guide, which points out that zombies (by that book's rules) can't rise from the grave, and they won't go into cemeteries because that's not where the food is. Therefore, cemeteries are usually a good place to rest.

Live Action TV

  • The third season of Charmed has a few cemetery scenes and it's mentioned a few times that Cole can't be tracked in a cemetery.
  • When Buffy has no other demands on her time, she stakes out the cemetery (no pun intended) because new vamps emerge from there.
  • The Twilight Zone TOS has this in two episodes.
    • "The Grave": The scary part of the episode took place in a cemetery.
    • "Mr. Garrity and the Graves": The end has resurrected townsfolk rising from their graves on Boot Hill.

Music

Tabletop RPG

  • In Call of Cthulhu adventures, anytime you find a cemetery, you can (and should) assume that there are ghouls nearby.
  • The same is true of Dungeons & Dragons, which has an even greater variety of undead.

Video Games

  • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Link can drop down into some of the graves to do things like race the ghost of an Undertaker in a creepy maze and fight ReDeads. Also, it houses the entrance to the spooky shadow temple, and the well isn't too far away from the cemetery.
    • Ikana Canyon in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask has its own cemetery, but the entire area feels like this to some extent. Inside the cemetery, Link can race against the remains of an army officer who died centuries ago, trick his men who dance around graves at night into thinking he [Link] is the officer, and have his men open up the graves to go on adventures underground.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages has the Yoll Graveyard, which had ghosts in it as well as the first dungeon in the game. In addition, the final dungeon in the game is located in the same location in the past, and is an ancient tomb blocked by whirlpools. The Yoll Graveyard is also one of the only two places in the entire game that prevents you from time traveling, and distorts the screen if you try.
  • The cemetery in Halloween Town of Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days.
  • Resident Evil 3: Nemesis had Jill going to the cemetery when she goes through the Raccoon Park.
  • First levels of Medievil are in one huge graveyard.
    • A smaller graveyard appears in Whitechapel in MediEvil 2.
  • The graveyard in Luigi's Mansion. It gets even creepier when lightning strikes the glowing blue tombstone near the end of it and Bogmire attacks Luigi in the area 2 boss battle.
  • The first stage of every game in the Ghosts and Goblins franchise (including the 2021 remake) is a Creepy Cemetery full of zombies.

Western Animation

  • The Simpsons have a cemetery moved next door to their house, and it freaks Lisa out.
  • Samurai Jack once had to battle an army of skeletal warriors in a cemetery.
  • On SpongeBob SquarePants, Mr. Krabs had to go into a cemetery to find a valuable hat and had to fight an army of undead fish.
    • Spongebob and Mr. Krabs went back to the same cemetary when they thought they killed the Health Inspector.
  • In the episode of Captain N: The Game Master where the titular captain first meets Link and Princess Zelda, they venture into Hyrule's cemetery during their adventure. The Captain notes that the cemetery is much creepier in person than in the game.
  • Invader Zim had a pretty creepy cemetary (but with cool LED-screen tombstones).

Real Life

  • A group of British ravers invoked this when they tried to organise a rave at a cemetery for Halloween 2011. The local council was not amused.
  • Actually, most of our ideas about creepy cemeteries originate in Victorian London. The city had serious problems with overcrowding, both for living people and as a consequence for the dead as well. This resulted in dead bodies being buried in graves that were already occupied, half-buried body parts sticking out of the ground and the like. Add constant smog for special spookiness. Matters were much improved by the founding of Highgate Cemetery.
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