Moonlight & Memento Mori

Every autumn, after summer has given up her fight and the leaves are falling all around, I lure individuals into a moonlit cemetery- led only by lantern light- with promises of an unsettling experience.

And they do indeed come.

Together, we walk through the ornate Victorian gates onto hallowed ground that has stood for over three centuries. We assemble in a crescent shape, around the lichen-covered gravestones. And I begin to speak…

And the stories come to life amid those graves. Many lean in to listen carefully. Some pull their coats a little tighter. But all are silent. As I lower my voice, relish in the words of the antique leather book, and pause just long enough for the wind to move through the trees…the modern world falls away.

In the light of the lantern, I share thirteen stories tied to the haunted history of the Rahway Cemetery. Rumored apparitions. Unexplained sounds. Lives cut short. Tragedies that linger in the shadows. The darker corners of local lore. The kind of tales that make people glance over their shoulders as we move from stone to stone.

But here is the quiet truth...My real work is in history.

Beneath every haunting is a person who lived a life. Beneath every ghost story is a moment in time that shaped this community. Epidemics. Deadly skirmishes. Family plots that speak of devotion and loss. Infamous murders that are positioned in pivotal times.

The hauntings, you see, are a mere vessel for my ultimate desire: To share history.

The lantern light lets me do something that historic sites sometimes cannot effectively do. In the darkened cemetery, people feel first. And when people feel, they listen carefully. And when they listen, they connect on a deeper level to the stories, lived experiences, and events that shaped their community.

I do all this to make them unaware that they are learning in those eerie moments.

They do not notice that while they are waiting for the ghost to appear, they are absorbing the story of a nineteenth-century epidemic. That while they are peering at a shadow, they are studying funerary symbolism. That while they are laughing nervously, they are making a connection to the very real people who built the city they live in.

In those moments, history stops being a distant, static thing. It becomes immediate, human, and present.

I created Spirits of Rahway: A Lantern-Lit Tour of the Rahway Cemetery in 2011 with the promise to unsettle. And to be fair, there are moments when the air feels heavier than it should, when the darkness presses in just enough to make even me pause.

But the true intention has always been something quieter and, to me, far more powerful. It is an invitation to stand among the past and feel the continuity between then and now.

It is a reminder that cemeteries are not only places of mourning, but outdoor museums. Sculpture galleries. Genealogical maps. Social histories that are written in stone.

It is proof that if you wrap history in just the right amount of mystery, people will follow you anywhere.

Even into a cemetery at night.

So yes, I promise them an evening of hauntings. I let the lantern light flicker dramatically. I let the pauses stretch just long enough to make hearts beat a little faster.

And they leave delighted, a little breathless, and certain they have brushed up against the supernatural.

Meanwhile, they have spent an hour and a half immersed in local history.

But that can be our little secret.