Perfect backdrop for a Stephen King movie

That said I find cemetery art beautiful and revealing. Not only do these markers tell a history of the people in a community but also they are filled with interesting art.

Greencastle's Forest Hill Cemetery would be the perfect setting for a Stephen King movie. With all the old mausoleums built into the hillsides and down in the little valleys of the park, you can just picture zombies or mummies rising up and walking down the road. Still there is a beauty to those buildings.

There are also some interesting monuments there and in other cemeteries. One of my favorite stones is one of a little girl sitting on a crumbled wall. She is barefooted and has her hand on her cheek. I think she is very comforting for those of us who see her. Her marker says she was only three years, four months and one day old when she died in 1892.

I picture her parents, particularly her mother visiting this monument and feeling some comfort talking to her little one.

Other stones I find fascinating are the ones that look like limbless trees. These are fairly common around Putnam County and there are several in Forest Hill and in Beck Chapel. The tree trunks represent the brevity of life.

Because few birth and death records were maintained in Putnam County prior to the early 1880's and those records that were kept were not always complete, it's important to record the history of these cemeteries.

For instance, many infants that were born and died at home were not recorded in birth or death records. Sometimes the best record and only ones are those on tombstone inscriptions.

Early monuments were often wooden crosses or stones marking a resting place. It was during the Victorian area that stones became much more elaborate with carved marble and other stones. There are lots of pillars, vines, flowers and other symbols of everlasting life.

And monuments or burial sites are adapted to the environment. In New Orleans, which is below sea level, bodies are put into graves above ground. Having been in several of the cemeteries there, I admit it was a little creepy to move amid some of these old stone monuments.

Oddly enough, there was a very well known band taking photos for an album cover in the St. Louis Cemetery in New Orleans when I was there. So there must be more people like me who appreciate the art of the cemetery.

One of my favorite spots in Putnam County is at the top of the hill of Boone Hutchison cemetery looking down the hill toward the Houk Covered Bridge. What a glorious place to be laid to rest. In the fall the fields running down the hill are a golden color and the leaves in the trees a mix of red, orange and gold.

In the spring the fields are full of wild flowers. In the summer there is so much green you can barely make out the bridge below. In the winter it is a soft, quiet quilt of white. It is lovely and peaceful.

From the Victorian era to today, monuments have become sleeker and less elaborate. Still they reflect something about the person buried from a saying to a picture. As baby boomers age, bury their parents, and prepare for their own death they are embracing cremation and shifting away from burying bodies.

Go to google.com and enter unusual graves or burials. You'll get hits for burials at sea, or from airplane pilots willing to scatter ashes from the sky.

I told my own kids I wanted to be cremated and my ashes scattered in the Smoky Mountains. My daughter told me I still needed to have a monument so she would have someplace to come talk to me.

I told her what my Dad always told me. "I am, and will always be here in your heart. You can always find me there." I like that.

But maybe, just for kicks, I'll come back as a ghost and haunt them all. Maybe that's why I like hanging out in cemeteries.