The London Cemetery Company opened nondenominational Highgate Cemetery in 1839. Following in the fashion of Paris’s Pere Lachaise and Boston’s Mount Auburn, Highgate was designed as a “garden cemetery” where Londoners could escape the smoke and dirt of their city. The graveyard offered restrained nature beside the wilderness of Hampstead Heath.

Londoners flocked to Highgate Cemetery throughout the 19th century. They strolled its lanes and picnicked beneath its trees, taking pleasure in the statuary and landscaping—and most of all, the view. As the Cemetery Company had hoped, some people liked the place so much that they wanted to stay. At its height, Highgate averaged thirty funerals a day.

Then came the chaos of the 20th century. England sent her young men off to fight World War I, where one of every three soldiers perished. In 1918, the influenza pandemic swept the country, killing hundreds of thousands. One-quarter of the British population died. World War II wiped out most of the next generation of men.

By the 1950s, whole families had died out. No one survived to tend Highgate’s graves; no money came from new burials in family plots. Without income to pay the army of gardeners, Highgate Cemetery was abandoned to nature. A forest of ornamental trees overshadowed the old Victorian cemetery. Wildlife, including foxes, hedgehogs, and rabbits, migrated in from the Heath.

In 1968, the cemetery served as the backdrop for Hammer Studio’s Taste the Blood of Dracula, starring Christopher Lee. Perhaps that led to the outbreak of real-life vampire hunting that mutilated the cemetery in the 1970s. Tombs were broken open and corpses dragged out into the paths. Overwhelmed, the cemetery’s owners simply padlocked the gates and walked away. (I’ve written more about the vampire hunters atcemeterytravel.com/2016/09/20/a-restless-wind-is-blowing-through-highgate)

The Friends of Highgate Cemetery formed to restore the cemetery in 1975. FOHC volunteers cleared brambles, felled invasive trees, and reopened access to gravesites. Eventually, the Friends bought the entire cemetery. They now sell guidebooks and offer tours to fund their work and a limited number of graves are once again for sale.

On the Thursday evening I visited last summer, the Friends were offering a sunset tour of the western side of the graveyard — the original, more fragile side — which is only open with a FOHC guide. My family joined the silent group already waiting in the Anglican chapel. Before the tour began, my daughter helped me pick out some postcards for my collection from the FOCH shop.

Our guide was a Canadian woman who led us out into the old carriage turnaround. During her introduction to the cemetery, the first drops of rain pattered down. I fished the umbrella out of my bag. Thunder rumbled, coming closer.

To tell you the truth, it never occurred to me to drop out of the tour. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d toured a graveyard in a rainstorm. It was simply the first time I’d stood at the highest point in London during a thunderstorm. This is how I will die, I thought: standing under a centuries-old tree in a graveyard during a lightning storm. I decided, with a shrug, there were worse ways to go.

Highgate Cemetery has almost 180,000 burials spread over 37 acres on both sides of Swain’s Lane. Legacy denizens of High gate Cemetery include Karl Marx, authors Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Radcliffe Hall, and various balloonists, menageries, and scientists. Newer burials include Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), punk impresario Malcolm McLaren (whose monument includes his death mask), and Alexander Livingstone, a defector from Russia who was assassinated with radioactive poison in a cup of tea in 2006.

Highgate Cemetery in June was amazing. So many shades of green crowded the paths. I struggled to keep up with the tour group while trying to take notes and photographing everything that caught my eye. There was too much to take in.

In Glorious Highgate CemeteryThe sky was an ominous mass of gray as my family walked down from Highgate Village. The app on my phone predicted thunderstorms. I hoped they would hold off until our graveyard tour was over

It is said that travelling to this place is forbidden after the sunset and before sunrise. This is instructed, not by the locales around, but by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

It is said that travelling to this place is forbidden after the sunset and before sunrise. This is instructed, not by the locales around, but by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

People say that the place is haunted by the ghosts of a ‘tantrik' Singhiya and the princess of the palace, Ratnavati. Many have known to be dead or let's say, never returned after visiting the place by flouting instructions.

Folklore vouches by the spooky stories of this place. Each of them has their own story to tell, each of them would say that the place is possessed by the spirits.

Around 220 Kms from Delhi, Bhangarh Fort is actually, no less than a city in itself having temples, market places, royal palace, ‘havelis' and several entry gates. The fort is seated on the foot of the Aravalli Hills, in the state of Rajasthan.

As one enters the fort through the main gate, several temples in dilapidated state can be seen; though, completely abandoned by the people around. The temples around are of Hindu deities. They are Hanuman temple, Gopinath Temple, Someshwar Temple, Keshav Rai Temple, Mangla Devi Temple, Ganesha Temple and Navin Temple.

Screaming Tunnel - Niagara Falls, Ontario.

The Niagara Falls resident slips seamlessly from one project to another, whether it is the Niagara’s Most Hauntedtelevision program, working in film or writing books, he somehow manages to keep on top of things.

And we haven’t mentioned his radio work. Nary a day goes by where Sacco isn’t guesting on a radio show somewhere in North America or hosting his own show, Matters of the Mind on the ListenUp Radio web-based station.

Sacco, though, is set to mark the release of his latest published work, a novella based on Niagara’s notorious Screaming Tunnel. It is his contribution to a set of stories by various authors calledBewitching Love.

“They (Kellan Publishing) contacted me to complete a short story about haunted places in Niagara,” Sacco said.

The story – "The Tunnel of Lost Love" — chronicles a family’s lineage from the Mayflower landing at Plymouth Rock to the early 1800s, where the legend of the Screaming Tunnel is first launched after a woman named Hannah was burned for being a witch. Readers are transported to modern day Niagara and the tunnel under Warner Road. It is here a young man named Barry first encounters Hannah.

“He falls in love with her,” Sacco said. “He’s the only one who can see her.”

Sacco is keeping the rest of the details are under wraps until the book’s release on Valentine’s Day.

He does, however, plan to make the story a part of his own anthology of stories using haunted places around Niagara as a setting.

“It’s going to be done for Halloween,” Sacco said. “It’s a roundabout way of promoting the Niagara Region.”

Some of the six or seven stories Sacco is planning will feature Ball’s Falls in Vineland, a story of a woman who haunts the Roselawn Centre in Port Colborne and apparitions said to haunt sections of the upper and lower Niagara Parkway.

“People have seen her hitchhiking,” Sacco said of the woman along the lower parkway. “They pick her up and she dematerializes inside the vehicle.”

Besides his writing and radio show, Sacco has also found himself immersed in the world of film, serving as an executive producer for Fragile Storm, a short film starring Lance Henriksen (The Black List, Hannibal, Millennium).

“He is amazing,” Sacco said of Henriksen’s performance as Norman, a man caring for his wife who has Alzheimer’s disease. The film won the award for Best Short Film at the Idyllwild International Film Festival.

“It’s better that The Notebook,” Sacco said, comparing Fragile Storm to the 2004 film based on the Nicholas sparks novel