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
Dialing the clunky black machine to May 2007: Ed is hunting a hidden graveyard and getting scratched by brambles for our amusement.
Well well, 2007. You had to hear about a hidden graveyard from a friend who saw a map in a museum, then pedal your bike around Sanford until brambles ate your legs. Now a phone would draw you a blue line straight to the GPS pin while a subscription service tries to sell you tombstone cleaning. Even your photo tour would have been a story for three platforms and an algorithm, not a blog post read by the six people who cared. The world still has HE PLEASED GOD headstones, I'm sure, but they are photographed by thousands with better contrast. The handmade graves of neighbors still erode in the Florida scrub, though someone has probably started a Facebook group to catalog them. And corpse-eating turtles? They still exist, but now we read about them in a creepy-facts subreddit. You at least got scratched, sweaty, and startled. That is more than my feed has offered me since April.
“2007 Ed, you saw turtle tunnels running into old tombs and wrote that he was down there eating it — why did you keep exploring instead of sprinting home? Were you not worried the thing in the tomb would look at your scratched legs and decide it wanted dessert?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, that is a fair question, and I admit the turtle tunnel thing had a certain horror-movie vibe to it. But here's the thing: I spent the whole ride out there telling myself I was being adventurous, and if I'd sprinted home over a few brambles and a suspicious turtle, I'd have had to admit I was just a guy who rode his bike to a graveyard and got scared by a turtle. Also, I'd already scratched my legs up pretty good, so dessert-wise I figured I was mostly thorns and sweat, which any self-respecting tomb turtle would probably spit right out. Plus, I had my little camera with me, and I wasn't about to let a possible monster keep me from taking pictures of old rocks. So I kept walking, talked to the dead neighbors, and made it home with nothing worse than itchy legs. Take that, foul tomb critters.
