The Cemetery As The New Party Place

This may not be for everybody, but I happen to enjoy going to cemeteries. I find them interesting, peaceful and often very beautiful. In fact my favorite place to visit while in Paris is the famous Pere Lachaise Cemetery where Jim Morrison, Isadora Duncan, Chopin, Delacroix and Edith Piaf are all buried (among other notables and not-so-notables). Parisians spend hours on the weekends strolling through the cemetery visiting their favorite luminaries.

Apparently there is a group that takes it one step further and encourages people to picnic and party at the cemetery. This from Cool News:

"We want the cemetery used as part of the fabric of the community, not to just be lost in time," says Raymond E. Tubbs, president of the Friends of Center Cemetery, in East Hartford, Conn., and is actively promoting graveyards as a great place to have a party. He's not the only one: "All over Connecticut, foundations and organizations charged with maintaining cemeteries are opening their grounds to other groups as a way to raise money or raise awareness of how much it takes to maintain them."

A Hartford-based "business leadership group" is among those responding to the idea that burial grounds are cool, and hosted an "annual social gathering" at Cedar Hills. Cedar Hill boasts some 270 acres of cemeterial beauty, and, in addition to throwing parties and socials, "also hosts jazz concerts and a variety of tours highlighting both the cemetery's flora and fauna and notable people, like J.P. Morgan, Samuel Colt and Katherine Hepburn, who are interred there." Cedar Hill's biggest annual event is, of course, it's "haunted history tour at Halloween."