Ne’r do-wells at the Fan House Graves

To recount last week’s blog, “Fan House Graves,” I discovered (with the help of some friends) an abandoned wreck of a mining operation’s fan house during a routine cemetery run in northeast Pennsylvania. The complex, which had been built in compliance with the Mine Ventilation Law of 1870, housed enormous fans that pulled explosive gases out of the mine and brought fresh air in. The structure, along with the rest of the Dorrance Colliery, was abandoned in 1959.

1796 gravesto

A month or so after my initial trip to Wilkes-Barre City Cemetery and my sighting of the fan house hovering over it (which you can see in the photo above and read about in my blog posting, Fan House Graves), I made the trip back to further explore the fan complex as well as roam around this quaint old graveyard.

I arrived in Wilkes-Barre City Cemetery (est. 1871) around 9:30 on a sunny August Friday morning (this is 120 miles north of Philadelphia where I live, so its no small jaunt). The entrance gate was open and no one was around. I figured that this would be perfect for a little abandoned building exploration. Who would be around? There’s not even a staffed cemetery office. Afterwords, I would roam around the graveyard at my leisure. The cemetery is quite large, and the crumbling brick fan complex is on the downside of a hill, out of view of the traffic on River Street.  

Lower building in the fan house complex, Wilkes-Barre, PA

My car in front of fan house

I drove my car quickly through the grounds, down the washed out road toward the river to the monstrous tree-shrouded old cluster of buildings. Headstones are scattered around the area, some ominously placed right next to the enormous mining structure. Sparsely spaced, some stones may have been washed away in the flood of 1972, when Hurricane Agnes hit the area. The coal breaker associated with the Dorrance Colliery (of which the fan house was a part), used to be upriver about a quarter mile. There’s a MacDonalds there now, but I remember seeing the giant black mining structure from across the Susquehanna River when I was a kid. My grandmother lived in a house at the foot of the river dike in Kingston. Her house, incidentally, was one of the first to be flooded when the swollen river crashed through the dike during that flood.

Upper floor with graffiti and old machinery

My mom tells me that my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all worked at the Dorrance at some point in their mining lives. There were many coal mining companies in NEPA (Northeast Pennsylvania), but as she says, Dorrance was “the big one.” So the Hillman Fan House, as it is properly titled, has some personal meaning for me. 

Sort of a courtyard in the center of the fan complex

I parked the car near the bottom of the hill where the old graffiti-covered brick complex raises itself slowly out of the woods next to the graveyard. I grabbed my cameras, pushed through the weeds, and stepped into the ruins of the past. Red brick walls and dark doorways were everywhere. Stairs led to upper levels, lower levels, or to nowhere at all – their adjoining walls having collapsed beneath the weight of ancient rusting machinery. I walked through a sort of courtyard covered with weeds, at its center a pile of jagged metal, bricks, and old voltage. Trees cloaked the ruins in a dark shade. I snapped some photos here and there, glancing through the broken walls into upper rooms, in which were mounted motors of various types, their shafts no longer connected to belts or gears.

c. 1980s look at the inside of one of the motor rooms (ref.)

Creepy, is what this place is. On the opposite end of the courtyard, a doorway was visible. Hearts and names were painted in red around it. I made my way closer to the artwork, surprised at how all the vacuous entrance ways around me were just black; no doors, just black void. You couldn’t see beyond any transom, as if the place had secrets it was unwilling to share. I approached the hearts, and began taking some close-up photographs. I read the names, wondering about the young kids who dared bring themselves to such a place – the abandoned fan house behind the old cemetery – to declare their lust for each other.

I clicked away for about five minutes, rooted to the spot. Everything was silent. Satisfied with the capture as I reviewed the images on my camera’s digital display, I looked up to take my next step and … there was a man standing above me on a landing about six steps up! He was no more than twenty feet away, silently watching me, who knows for how long.

In his late twenties, long blonde hair, casually dressed, he did not appear to have slept here the night before. I was stunned and in an attempt to keep my fight-or-flight response under control, I stammered, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you.” He responded, “I’m just doing the same thing you are.” (For the record, I saw no camera around his neck.)

That’s when it hit me: − I broke my own basic rules for exploring abandoned buildings:  1) Don’t go alone; and 2) arm yourself. When going solo, I’ll at least carry a baseball bat. But here I was, in the middle of this old castle of a mining complex, behind the graveyard, well out of earshot of any other people on the road at the top of the hill. What was I thinking, that the ghosts of the Molly Maquires were going to guard me?

Visions of the movie Deliverance swam through my head as I nonchalantly turned away and casually yet determinedly made my way toward the light of the graveyard. Was he alone? Who could tell? Was he just exploring the ruins, as I was? At ten o'clock on a Friday morning? He said nothing and I did not look back. I had no desire to be made to squeal like a pig.

My car was parked nearby, which gave me some comfort, so I spent another ten minutes trying to photograph the outside of the fan house through the trees. I couldn’t really do it justice. I studied the ruins for my little buddy, but he did not show himself again. The take-home message here is that I did something really stupid, and suggest that you not do the same.

Feeling a bit safer, I parked the car on the ridge overlooking the fan house graves and began to wander around looking for interesting tombstones. Some of the photos you see here were taken in this area. About five minutes later, slipping into the historical present, I hear music. Guitar strumming, and then a voice. I hoped it was a radio, but then, I was pretty far away from the public road. Workmen, perhaps? As the breeze changed directions it carried the sound a bit clearer, so I turned toward it. I was startled to see a man sitting on a tombstone, singing, and playing a guitar! Not the fan house guy, another fellow. Staring at him, I involuntarily gave a small wave when he caught my eye; he nodded to me.

The scene reminded me of the rockabilly guitar playing zombie in the 2008 zombie/slasher movie, Trailer Park of Terror (you can click on the link at the end of this blog to view part of the scene, but its not for the squeamish). There’s a tense build-up scene where you hear the guitar first, then as the camera pans back to show the trailer park at night, the vocal kicks in and its actually a zombie with an electric guitar singing on the roof of one of the trailers! (I know what you're thinking - "He watches too many movies." In actuality, I don't see nearly as many as I'd like. However, the few I do watch seem to have a profound affect on me!)

I guess I shouldn’t have been so weirded out by someone playing guitar in a cemetery, as I’ve done the same thing. I was inclined to walk the forty paces in his direction and talk to the gent, but I felt that maybe he was doing something very personal, like singing at his dead momma’s grave. Of course, there was always the possibility that he could be dangerous − or worse yet, not really there. So I skirted his perch while taking tombstone photos in the general vicinity. He never stopped playing for the additional half hour I was there.

All in all, a strange cemetery visit, complete with appearances by knaves and rascals, pochards and indiscrets, as the author James Thurber might say. Scary, yes, but really nothing compared to the horrors this chunk of land wrought on people’s lives in the past. As I was contemplating the mining disaster that shut down the fan house and entire Dorrance Colliery, I pictured all the tunnels under the cemetery filled with water. Ten men died in 1959 when the Susquehanna River broke through the Knox Mine upriver. My Mom tells me that my grandmother’s brother Andy “was one of the last men out" before the river broke through. How horrifying is that? Look at this photo of the giant whirlpool in the river caused by the void of the mines below.

Susquehanna River whirlpool, caused by Knox mine cave-in

Reminder of when coal was king

I looked down at the grass absentmindedly as a glint of something shiny caught my eye. I kicked at a chunk of black anthracite coal sticking out of the ground. Not unusual in this area, I used to see coal all over when I was a kid. Picking it out and pocketing the chunk, I viewed it as a lovely parting gift from the ghost of Asa Packer, the founder of the Dorrance Colliery.

Further Reading and References:

“Fan House Graves,” Cemeterry Traveler blog posting from September 4, 2012
For something even scarier than a zombie movie, check out this account of the 1959  Knox Mine disaster

Dorrancy Colliery Fan Complex
Archival images of Hillman Fan House

Trailer Park of Terror zombie guitar scene

Thanks to photographer Patricia Kinsman for telling me about the Hillman Fan House!

Graves of Lost Siblings

In a couple weeks I’m planning a trip, the trip of a lifetime. A few years ago, my Mom let it be known that she was in fact, not an only child. She had two brothers and a sister. They were all born seven to ten years after her, and all died shortly after birth. My Mom also let it be known that they were buried in a cemetery in Shavertown, Pennsylvania (near where she lives in northeast PA), the vicinity in which I was born and raised. I’ve asked her to take me there, to see the graves. I’m writing this before the fact. I’m not at all sure what I’m in for. So keep your hat on, we may end up miles away from here.

Since my Dad died eight years ago, my Mom has been talking. This may seem unusual. However, my Dad was overbearing to the point where he monopolized all conversations and didn’t allow other people to speak − and this was one of his better qualities. Our lives basically revolved around his family. My Mom’s family was seldom mentioned, and never visited – the living or dead.

So after he died, my Mom started to talk. It’s been great. I’ve learned wonderful things about her family – my family. The most shocking thing was the existence of Robert Daniel, Daniel Robert, and Joyce Elizabeth − and the fact that she knew where they were buried.

I didn’t know any of this back in 1981 when my first wife was pregnant with our first child. It died in utero and had to be aborted.  My mother, after the fact, wanted to have a tree planted in the baby’s memory in a local park. Both my ex-wife and I thought that was ludicrous. We just wanted to forget the horrific experience. About twenty years later, my mother told me that she had gone ahead anyway and had that tree planted. I figured, whatever, if it means that much to you, fine. I forgot about the tree until she began telling me about her lost siblings.

I realized in a flash how meaningful it was to her to plant that tree. She needed something like that to hold on to the memory of what, at the time, would have been her first grandchild. People cherish things they’ve lost in all sorts of ways, and far be it for me to criticize any of them. Over the past thirty years I've provided my mom with FOUR wonderful grandchildren, all of whom she loves and adores. Perhaps even more than she would have if she had not lost the first.

My mom, Beverly Snyder, at the grave of her grandparents

So the fateful day arrived when we planned to visit the cemetery where her siblings are buried. We did this yesterday – my Mom, my brother Tim, and I. After literally months of ninety-degree weather and near-drought conditions in this part of the country, this is the day it rained like hell. I made the wet, hundred mile drive to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the general area in which my Mom lives. We all jumped into my brother’s car and drove out to Shavertown, where Evergreen Cemetery resides. I lived around here for the first nineteen years of my life and never knew this cemetery existed.

My great-grandparents' grave, Evergreen Cemetery

My mom, it turned out, had not been to Evergreen since 1945, when her newborn sister Joyce Elizabeth died, and was buried here. She surprised herself by remembering approximately where the plots were, but we had to search a bit for the actual grave markers. First we found the Jones plot, in which are buried her grandparents, Daniel and Elizabeth Jones. Seeing my mom standing on her grandparents’ graves and looking teary was heartbreaking, as she said that my deceased father had not allowed her visit these graves. Daniel and Elizabeth had a son, Daniel Jr. (who is not buried here), who became my mom's father. Daniel Sr. died in 1920 and Elizabeth later remarried Robert Berwick, whose family plot is about fifty feet away. My mom’s siblings are all buried at the larger Berwick plot.

Brother Tim and my Mom

Until I saw the headstones, I thought it unusual (or even uncreative) to name your first-born boys Robert Daniel and Daniel Robert. But seeing the names engraved on the stones explained all: Daniel was the children's (including my mom) biological grandfather and Robert was their step-grandfather. (My middle name, by the way, is Daniel.) As I said, I always thought my mom was an only child. Her parents Daniel Jr. and wife Anna tried to have more children after my mom was born (in 1938), but the children did not live. Daniel Robert contracted pneumonia and died shortly after birth. Robert Daniel was born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and died at birth. (My twenty-one year old son Christopher was also born with the cord wrapped around his neck, but as the delivery took place in a tertiary care medical center in 1990, he received better medical care and survived.)

My mom was six or eight years old when her brothers were born (and died) and does not remember much about the situation. She was ten, however, when her sister Joyce Elizabeth was born. She remembers the baby had a dislocated hip, among other problems, and died shortly after birth. Although the boys were buried at the Berwick family plot, she was not present at the burial. She does remember, however, being present at Joyce Elizabeth’s burial. She said “I remember them lowering that little white casket into the ground.” I just about broke down when she said that. 

Tim and Mom at the Berwick plot

Standing on their graves sixty-seven years later, she added, “They were all beautiful babies. I wonder what they would have looked like if they lived.” I suggested, "Like you?" She smirked and said, "What, short and fat?" None of the children’s names appear on the Berwick stone, for whatever reason. A gigantic evergreen shades the plot. As I was standing beneath it with my family, feeling firmly present in my past, I thought about that tree my mother had planted for my almost-firstborn. I can’t imagine ever being strong enough to visit it, wherever it is.

Cemetery Exploring: Scranton PA and its Environs

It seems I’ll be allowed to go on being Ed Snyder for a while longer. Just got home from having surgery on my inner ear and am waiting for the power headaches to kick in. Pass the Darvocet, please. As I write this, I’m flying higher than angels.

When you go under general anesthesia, you’re never a hundred percent sure you’ll wake up, you know? (That is, unless you checked the appropriate box on the “Advanced Directive” form.) But hey, aren’t these the best conditions under which to write a cemetery blog? I certainly can’t go exploring in a local graveyard– my equilibrium is off and I might fall over a cliff or something. Boneyards around here are like that. Of the literally scores of them in the Philadelphia area, many are not kept up that well. There are the ones with sunken graves, open crypts, tombstones spilling into the river, the ones with dealers and hookers and burned out cars, voodoo offerings and long rusty saws and knives hidden in weeds. As for this last one, I’m not referring to the self-defense weaponry with which I typically arm myself when I explore such places. I’m referring to the giant carving knife I found stuck inside a child’s grave monument (shown above) in an abandoned Philadelphia cemetery. Intertwined with the memorial ’s faded and soggy stuffed animals was a melon vine. So I’m sure some homeless guy was using the knife only for good. The only thing worse than abandoned cemeteries is abandoned people.

Too bad you don’t dream under anesthesia. You have no brain capacity for that − they basically kill you, while keeping you alive. Thanks to Tommy for that comforting thought, and for driving me to the hospital this morn − Whoops – I was listing to port for a moment there, felt a bit of my brains leaking out my ear. Better right myself and prop up with some pillows. There. Any “Distance Reiki” practitioners out there willing to send some positive energy my way?

I need to recuperate well, you see, and not lose any white matter. The Cemetery Traveler will be heading up to Scranton, PA in a few weeks and he needs all his faculties. He also plans to stop talking in the third person, as it gets on his nerves. I was offered a spot at St. Luke’s Church as an exhibitor during Scranton’s First Friday Art Walk for November. I will be showing my photography (prints framed and unframed), greeting cards, and books – all for sale. As it will be in a church, I may need to go easy with my usual tongue-in-cheek banner ads, like “Death Images – Just in Time for Xmas!”

I don’t have a lot of work from the Scranton area (even though I grew up around there), but I do intend to show some of the images sprinkled throughout this article from the nearby towns of Wilkes-Barre and associated environs. In fact, my signature image, “Folded Hands” (which you see at the beginning of this article, on my Facebook page, business cards, and the cover of my “Stone Angels” book) was made in the Exeter Cemetery, across the Susquehanna River from Wilkes-Barre. I shot it some years ago around seven o’clock one misty morning, roughly twenty minutes after I left a sleeping woman in bed to zip back to Philadelphia. As I closed her locked front door behind me, I realized I left four pounds of fresh Polish kielbasa in her freezer. Damn!

Slovak Cemetery, Exeter, PA

Occasionally I post images on the Facebook page, “Cemetery Iron,” like this gate from the Exeter cemetery. (“Cintorin” is Slovak for ‘cemetery.’) The wrought iron fencing reminds me that for the next few months, all my food will have a metallic taste. Side-effect of the stapedctomy (ear surgery). My doting wife Jill just allowed me to devour a hot dog, which tasted much like one would expect a piece of cemetery iron to taste, were it served up on a bun. Maybe later, I’ll try a metallic Nutella sandwich.

Oww! Sorry − just tore off an errant ECG electrode they left on my right leg. Funny how when they were monitoring my vital signs, they complimented me on how “normal” I was! Hah! Me! Normal! If only they were to read this blog! Anyway, I’m glad I had the bionic ear installed (my hearing acuity will be so amazing I’ll be able to hear what people are thinking! Imagine that.). A benefit of hearing well is that when I do shows now and meet people face-to-face, I’ll actually be able to hear what you’re saying (instead of faking it, as I’ve been doing.  No that’s not true – I’ve learned to read lips. Again, not true. I can kind of hear, but I do sometimes allow my imagination to fill in the gaps. Much like how I write, since my memory is less than perfect. I’ve had considerable hearing loss since I was twenty years old, when I spent way too much time next to the PA speakers at several KISS concerts. I’ve also come to suspect that my parents may have dropped me on the head as a small child.

So anyway, while in Scranton for the Art Event, I intend to spend some time in the nearby Dunmore Cemetery, as recommended by my Facebook Friend,Wendy Conrad Belaski, who is a member of  The Dearly Departed Players (who give tours of the cemetery while reenacting the personalities buried there).

Angel, Hollenback Cemetery

Another favorite graveyard of mine in the area is the Hollenback Cemetery, which is across the street from the Wilkes-Barre General Hospital (click here for a view of its rather unique entryway). My Dad died there in 2004 (the hospital, not the cemetery). Hollenback is a quaint old hilly Victorian cemetery along the river, which is where I shot this angel. As for the cemetery where my Dad‘s ashes reside, that’s an unassuming little back-mountain graveyard in an area north of Wilkes-Barre that is so “out there” it’s just called the “Back Mountain.” I don’t believe there’s even a town associated with it, just a sand pit.

"Damaged Woman with Dog"

Here’s a photo a little statue near my Dad’s grave. Looks like the woman had some surgery done to her head. Which prompts me to break here and apologize since I, your favorite content provider, seem to be jumping around a bit, ah, content-wise. It’s the drugs. But hey, if it worked for Hunter Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, etc.), should work for me, right? Gee, I wonder if Microsoft Word has a plug-in for correcting dyslexic text? (Try to say that quickly three times! .. or just ONCE, actually…) It’s taking me much longer than usual to type this article since the effector neurons sending impulses from my brain to my fingers seem to be regularly misfiring. Have to keep going back to make corrections. Maybe I’ll lighten up on the next load of painnkilerz.

"Old Man"

You look at pictures like this “Old Man”  (double-exposed and cross-processed Ektachrome) from the Hollenback Cemetery, and you wonder if this guy had anything to live for when he reached the stage in his life when the sculpture was made.  Me, I certainly do have a lot to live for and to be thankful for – a wonderful wife, four lovely children. Oh, and the ability to go on being Ed Snyder for a while longer, until my peep-hole into the world is finally closed, as Kurt Vonnegut would say (or said, rather, as he’s dead). Vonnugut’s work, by the way, is one of the few things you can read when you’re drugged up and loopy, and still have it all make sense! This last image is for him:

Epitaph, Hollenback Cemetery, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

Cemetery Flood

My obcession with graveyards may have begun with a teenage dare. When I was fourteen (1972), Hurricane Agnes caused major flooding in Northeast Pennsylvania (or NEPA as they say). After sandbagging the Susquehanna River dike all day, the rising river water blew out of the street storm drains like geysers. This caused some minor flooding, but it wasn't enough to equalize the water pressure--the dike at the cemetery in the town of Forty-Fort blew out. Not only was the Wyoming Valley under sixteen feet of water for days, but the cemetery was gutted.

When the flood waters receeded, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers made some major repairs, facilitated a massive cleanup, and boarded up the cemetery. Rumors had it there were coffins everywhere! As a teenage boy, this is exactly the cool stuff you want to hear.

So after a couple weeks, residents were allowed back to their homes to facilitate their own massive cleanup. My cousin Albert and I wandered down to the cemetery, only to find 8-foot sheets of plywood attached to the existing wrought iron fencing. Hardly a deterrent, we went exploring. In not much time, we found a washed out space under one of the plywood sheets that was big enough for a boy to crawl under. Needles to say, that's what we did. Nothing could have prepared me for the stench!

As we walked around the grounds that day in the late June heat, who would've thought the experience would affect me for a lifetime? You had to mouth-breathe just to keep from passing out from the asault on the nasal passages. The fetid aroma was no doubt accentuated by the heat, but oddly, you couldn't smell it from outside the plywood fencing.

There were giant holes in the ground, with coffins and vaults sticking out of them every which way. These were either caskets that were not washed away or ones the Army had returned to the cemetery. Later, the disinterred coffins would be buried in a mass grave with a memorial marker. The dike was still non-existent, but the water level was back to normal, so the cemetery was an expanse of dry, baked mud. As we climbed through the mess toward the dike to see how high the river was, we passed a big oak tree with a casket propped up against it. The lid was open. I assumed it was empty and walked on by.

Moments later, Albert turned back around, let out a shriek, and threw up! I whipped around and saw that the casket was not empty! Inside was the partially decomposed body of a woman in a black gown, arms crossed over her heart, with two hunting arrows sticking out of her chest! Obviously some freakish archer had been there before us and used the corpse for target practice. Kind of wonder in retrospect, if the arrows were silver-tipped...

Did I photograph this atrocity? Of course not! But not because I'm above that sort of thing. At fourteen, I didn't carry my little Kodak 110 film camera everywhere I went but the experience certainly planted the seed for my interest in cemetery photography.