One of the most significant issues that the early settlers of New Orleans encountered was where to bury their dead. The city’s swampy location has an exceptionally high water table, so when graves were dug, water quickly filled the holes. Caskets would float from their graves after heavy rains. The solution was not to bury the dead below ground, but rather inter their lost love ones in aboveground vaults. The result was beautiful cemeteries that have since come to be known as Cities of the Dead.
In New Orleans, there are 42 surviving historic cemeteries, with the oldest and most well-known being St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. The cemetery was established in 1789 and remains in use over two hundred years later. Occupying only 300 square feet, a single city block, St. Louis No. 1 remains the final resting place for thousands, welcoming each new internment as the newest residents of the New Orleans’ cities of the dead.
In the city of Cleveland,Tennessee is a legendary mausoleum haunted by the spirit of young girl killed in a tragic accident at a railroad crossing. Legend says if you circle the tomb seven times and then approach it's entrance, the metal door will swing open and invite you in. Yet this legend isn’t what made the ornate marble mausoleum the basis of one of the most infamous ghost stories in East Tennessee— it’s that the marble tomb seems to bleed.
