Old Biloxi Cemetery

This was actually my first documented trip to the Biloxi Cemetery. This graveyard is located near Highway 90 in Biloxi, literally right off the beach (though the address is on Irish Hill Drive). It sustained some pretty substantial damage during Hurricane Katrina, but the city has done a wonderful job repairing most of it. The graves here are dug pretty shallow, so not to strike water. Immediately following Katrina, one grave had washed out so badly that I could actually reach in and touch the coffin inside.

Since you don't have to dig far to hit water, many gravesites at this cemetery are above ground. This includes masoleums, like you see in New Orleans (Biloxi is about an hour and a half drive from N.O.).

There are graves in this cemetery dating back to the 1700s, and people are still buried there today. There's a lot of ambiance here--majestic oaks drenched in Spanish moss are pretty much everywhere.

The coolest part of this cemetery is the Asian section. It seems that locals of primarily Korean and Vietnamese heritage tend to buy plots in the same section. Several of the gravestones have rosaries hanging from them, and many of them have vases near them where family members place sticks of burning incense. You can see the remnants of the little burnt sticks inside the vases.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Cheers,

Jes

Biloxi City Cemetery

Click link above for the actual photos sans slideshow.

Welcome!

Hopefully my blog description up there has enlightened you a little bit about my little bit of intarweb space here. My name's Jes (or Jessie, or Jessica, whatever really) and I am really excited about starting up this little project. And what a fantastic month to start--October!

First, a little history--I've been fascinated by cemeteries since I was a little girl. Odd fascination, isn't it? I think it started on a field trip to Beauvoir Mansion when I was in fifth grade. They let us take grave rubbings in the old Confederate cemetery, and I've been hooked ever since. I've sneaked into many a graveyard after dark (and gotten busted) back home and it's a love that just grows with time.
I love knowing that I'm remembering someone for whom no one may even be alive to remember anymore. The family may have died out, moved on, or the deceased is just so far back into the family tree that no living family members know they ever existed. To me, every graveyard is a little museum.

So what I'm going to be doing here is posting the photographs I take in cemeteries all across the Southeast (but probably mostly from Mississippi, since that's where I live and I'm a financially-challenged college student) and giving as much history on these graveyards and families as I can. I want this to be a collaborative project, so if you know something I don't, or would like to share something (pictures, history, what have you), please email and let me know!

This place will most definitely not be limited to only graveyard photos. I have a fascination with the occult that would probably deeply upset my grandmother, so I'll be including photos of alleged haunted places, orbs, and any and all creepy urban legends and/or ghost stories I come across. Again, this is a collaborative website--so speak up!

Cheers,
Jes