This morning I took off on my bike in search of that old ‘hidden’ graveyard that Alan and I were discussing ever since he claimed to have spotted out it’s location on a map in the Sanford museum. Much to my surprise, I did indeed find it. To be fair, it was not hard, it was located in the graveyard. But once you walked past the carefully tended grounds the lawn quickly turned into trees and brambles. But the graves did not stop, they just spread off and vanished into the woods. It was a little eerie, to be walking through a patch of woods to stumble across an old grave stone.
My photo tour:
This was in the front and tended area. It was not so much a grave stone as a political statement. I found it irritating.
This guy was hardcore. A big phallic-shaped gravestone engraved with HE PLEASED GOD. I am in awe.
The saddest puppy toy you will see today.
I spotted out a few corpse eating turtles. They had their turtle tunnels dug that led straight into old tombs.
He’s down there eating it.
OMG! He got OUT!
Finally at the end of the graveyard the woods started and I began to see old forgotten tombs jutting out of the forest.
I scratched my legs up pretty good on brambles forging out to these tombs.
Some of them were quite old. Whatever had been inscribed had been erased by time. All that’s left is a rock jutting out of Florida scrub forest.
Some of the gravestones appeared to be hand made, perhaps by poor folk who could not afford a real tombstone.
These folks lived just a few streets down form me. Hi, neighbors.
And, finally, this last image of flowers for the grave left to go to rot and reduced to dead brown leaves drifting out of rusted holders deserved to be turned black and white.
2026 Update
Eighteen years ago, Ed is on a Florida bike odyssey to find dead neighbors and receive a bramble tattoo.
Ah, 2008, when a hidden graveyard was something you had to discover with a paper map in a museum and a bicycle, not a filter category on your phone. Photoblogging was practically archaeology: you carried a separate camera, uploaded to a blog, and typed OMG like a digital pioneer. Now we have apps that catalogue every stone, satellite views that spot the brambles from space, and a cemetery that would get a two-star review for turtle congestion. Also, the audience of 2008 accepted turtle tunnels as a fun adventure; in 2026 we would have a live-stream from inside the tomb, someone arguing with the groundskeeper, and a drone hovering over the handmade gravestones like a vulture. The political-statement headstone would be memeified within minutes. And the dead flowers? They would not be rusting in holders—they would be laminated selfie props. You scratched your legs for this, Ed. The future lets people disturb the past without leaving their couch, but I kind of admire that you had to earn your eerie. The brambles, the imperfect stones, the turtles—that was a real graveyard, not a curated feed.
“2008 Ed, after you scratched your legs for that hidden graveyard and made fun of the HE PLEASED GOD stone, did you ever go back and tell the neighbors their handmade family stones were the best part—or did the turtles finally claim you?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2008 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, the turtles haven’t claimed me yet, though I did find one of their tunnels and spent a good ten minutes wondering if it was wide enough for a Heffernan. It wasn’t. As for going back and telling the neighbors their handmade stones were the best part—honestly, I didn’t. I’m not great at talking to people, living or otherwise. But I did think about it a lot, especially the ones that were just rough concrete with scratched-on names, you know? Those folks put everything they had into a rock, and time went and wiped half of it away anyway. That’s droll in a sad sort of way. So no, I never said it out loud. But I figure they know. And maybe I’ll bike back there someday with some clippers and clear a few brambles off their graves, just as a neighborly hello.
