Bingham Hill Cemetery – In A Colorado Minute (Week 258)
Bingham Hill Cemetery
(between Fort Collins and Laporte, Colorado) may or may not be a
haunted cemetery. It is definitely an unusual pioneer graveyard.
Established around 1862, it originally held mostly unmarked grave sites.
Even if there was a stone, it didn’t necessarily have writing on it –
and there were no burial records.
In the 1980s, over a hundred
years later, local farm owner Rose L. Brinks managed to discover the
names of over 150 people buried in the cemetery and published the book “History of the Bingham Hill Cemetery.” Those people are listed on two large stones at the back of the grounds.
Since
then, many of the graves have received new tombstones. This is
something I have never seen (at least not on such a scale): modern
gravestones with birth and death dates from the 1800s! Even more
fascinating, I found the combinations of seeing the same name and dates
on an old grave marker and on a modern one right next to it.
Being
used to mostly urban cemeteries in Europe, I was also struck by all the
pennies and dimes on the stones and the toys around graves of children
who had died 150 years ago. I’ve not seen those traditions before.
Personally, I also found the juxtaposition between faded plastic flowers
and ancient rocks very photogenic.
As with most of my 1-minute
videos, I’ve had to decide to not show a lot of what I filmed. One
decision was easy, I wasn’t going to include any of the memorials to
people who have passed away in the last few years out of respect to them
and their families. Photos of other things I had to leave out of the
video, I will post on my personal blog soon…
I
am a bit disappointed that I couldn’t find room to include the amazing
huge and hollow tree along the path to the cemetery – especially with
the big goose sitting on top of it when I returned an hour later to pick
up the sunglasses I had dropped in the graveyard – or did a ghost pull
them out of my back pocket?
While there are accounts of ghosts and spirits in the cemetery,
I didn’t encounter anything unusual – but then I’m also not looking for
something on that level. I can tell you that it was super windy and
freezing when I first got there – but then it became sunny and warm. And
my dog Whiskey had as much fun as she always does.
Unfortunately,
the reported guest book was no longer there. Apparently, people had
been stealing the books so often that there isn’t one any longer. People
can be so lame!
The song in this video is called “Acoustic Meditation” and was written and performed by Jason Shaw, who made this song available via the CC BY 3.0 license. Thank you, Jason!
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| Bingham Hill Cemetery, Colorado |