Old Tallmadge Cemetery - Tallmadge, Ohio

Welcome to our third season of Cemetery Sundays where we tour local cemeteries, photographing their unique and beautiful old tombstones. Every Sunday in October, we'll post up photos from a local cemetery. Our goal is to document the beauty and detail that went into the tombstones of the past - precision and elegance that you won't find in modern cemetery plots. We hope these photos will also inspire fellow home haunters to create something complex and unique in their own haunts.

To start things off, we took an early morning drive to Tallmadge, Ohio to tour the Old Tallmadge Cemetery. We found tombstones dating as far back as the early 1800s and a number of old tombstones that were elegantly carved with incredible epitaphs and decorative elements.

One of my favorite stones in the grounds. A small headstone with an amazing combination of detail, color and weathering...
 

The next three tombstones were all together, part of a larger plot from the Fenn family dating from the early 1800s. The amount of text on each stone was amazing. I could only imagine how long it must have taken to carve each stone. It was also a bit chilling to see how many in the family didn't live to see 20 years of age...

This stone had long since fallen over, but it was one of the most detailed in the entire cemetery. The epitaph read more like a full eulogy, ending with a poem...

This old crypt was completely overtaken by ivy and trees. There was no longer a hint of an entrance anywhere...

At the top of the hill stood this old mausoleum, built in 1881. It's original purpose was to house caskets through the cold winter months when the frozen ground couldn't be dug up. After the Spring thaw, the caskets would then be buried in their proper plots...

When I got closer, I realized that someone had left the old steel doors unlocked. Dare I open it? What would be inside? A horde of zombies, ready to feast on my brain, or perhaps stockpiles of old caskets waiting to be lowered to their final resting places?

Unfortunately, this wasn't a Romero movie. Anything sinister or spooky had long since been removed. The mausoleum was empty, except for some scattered pieces used by the groundskeepers. My brain is safe for another week...