Haunting Return To Adelaida Cemetery

This afternoon I took a Sunday drive out in the country west of Paso Robles via Adelaida Road into the Adelaida area to pick up a chain saw at a friend's house. I wanted to kill two birds with one stone and visit the nearby old abode of a late friend whose body I found there in 2010 which I did and is worthy of and shall soon receive a blog posting all its own. After stopping by that house I decided to drive only slightly out of my way to visit a place relatively renowned locally for being haunted. There as a child visiting from out of the area I experienced a feeling of fright that sent me fleeing to my family's car. This was before I knew the place had a reputation and I was not a child given to frights or superstitions and had visited other cemeteries with no such feelings experienced. I had mostly forgotten about this little footnote to my youth but of late it has crept up into my consciousness and today I decided to renew my acquaintance with whatever scared me as a child... and we did. It is worth noting that a simple check via search engine will bring up many web pages devoted to the creepiness of this cemetery.
Also check out my subsequente Adelaida Cemetery Cool Headstone Compendium a few weeks henceforth.

It felt slightly strange being at an out-of-the-way obscure locality I actually remember visiting before I even lived in the area back when I was no more than 10 years old and where something scared me.

I could not help but feel that this seemed ever-so-slightly foreboding located to the left of the iron gate as I entered the cemetery... an abandoned, muddy, pair of women's shoes. A creepy start to my visit!

Even this nominally-Christian memorial structure possesses distinctly pagan elements... like an obelisk.

A cross on an obelisk with two colors of highly polished granite.

I like it and I don't like it. I like stone and I like black and red but here they seem a bit menacing.

Mr. Abernathy is no longer here but something is... I sense it.

That is Adelaida Road just south of the intersection with Chimney Rock Road.

I like the creepy effect of the rusted wrought iron with the stones and pavers.

This is the hilltop of my childhood fright... but I am no longer a child.

Mary K. Burnett died at age 48 in 1878... which was probably about average in those days.

A 10-year old child's grave who died in 1890.

I fail to see why these graves are paved over if they are dug deep enough... unless they are not. 

This leaning manzanita caught my attention.

This pioneer cemetery looks so, so, so very.....  cemetery-ish... as if it was a set in a horror film... and yet it is very real.

The dead lay under the dirt and in the dirt and are dirt all over this hilltop.

This foundation reminded me of a Tolkien-ish ruin somewhere in Middle Earth... I half expected to see a Barrow Wight.

This marks the burial of a child who departed in its "terrible two's" in 1868. This marker no longer rests on its base which is too un-level and was until recently sitting upright and yet today was gently leaning at an angle against its old base.

None of these trees were alive when these people were planted here.

This open gate seemed to bid me welcome to enter the inclosure.

The Ramage Family plot in foreground.

Entrance to the Ramage family plot.

These concrete grave structures give rise to the question of are they to keep something out or in?

The purpose of this structure is not immediately obvious to me.

But as with other features of this cemetery brings to mind pagan funerary traditions elsewhere.

Offerings atop the alter?

Hilltop view upon the lower reaches of the cemetery... with my monster Tequila digging up the dead.

I wonder what Wesley Burnett got in return or expected in return for his donation?

All images by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved)