A Genealogist’s Halloween: Cemeteries, Ghost Towns and the Dead People We Spend Our Time With

October is the month when perfectly normal people suddenly become interested in cemeteries, ghosts, abandoned buildings and stories about the dead.

Genealogists, of course, call that Tuesday. We don't need Halloween as an excuse to wander through a cemetery looking for people who died 150 years ago. We willingly spend afternoons reading death certificates. We photograph gravestones. We search old newspapers for obituaries. We get excited when we discover a cemetery that isn't on Google Maps.

And while other people plan vacations around beaches, restaurants and museums, genealogists have been known to say things like, "There's a courthouse only twenty minutes out of the way!"

I know because I've done it. My recent travels through Canada included plenty of beautiful scenery, wonderful towns and good food. But they also included archives, churches, historic communities and places connected to people who have been dead for hundreds of years. And I loved every minute of it.

So, in honor of Halloween, let's celebrate some of the slightly spooky things genealogists do all year long, and why they can lead to some of our best family history discoveries.

We Spend an Awful Lot of Time in Cemeteries

Tell a non-genealogist that you're spending Saturday afternoon at a cemetery and you may get a concerned look. Tell a genealogist and the response is more likely to be, "Which one?"

Cemeteries are one of my favorite places to research because a gravestone can tell you much more than someone's birth and death dates. Look at the stones around your ancestor.

Who's buried beside them? Are several family members together? Is there an infant you didn't know existed? A second spouse? An unfamiliar surname that turns out to belong to a daughter? Sometimes the most important clue isn't on your ancestor's gravestone at all. It's three stones away.

And don't overlook the cemetery itself. Religious cemeteries, family burial grounds and community cemeteries can provide clues about where your ancestors worshipped, who their neighbors were and the community they considered home.

Suddenly, wandering around looking at dead people's names doesn't seem quite so strange. Well...maybe a little.

We Get Excited About Ghost Towns

Most travelers see an abandoned town and think, There's nothing here. A genealogist thinks, There must be records somewhere. Ghost towns and communities that disappeared from modern maps can explain some of genealogy's most frustrating mysteries.

Perhaps your ancestor didn't move at all, and the town changed names. Maybe the post office closed. A railroad bypassed the community. A mill shut down. A flood destroyed it. Residents relocated after a mine closed or farmland failed. Sometimes an entire community simply fades from the map while its former residents scatter into neighboring towns and counties.

That's why historical maps can be invaluable. If you can't find the place listed on an ancestor's record today, try finding a map from the period when your ancestor actually lived there. You may discover that the mysterious place you've been searching for really did exist. You're not chasing a ghost after all.

We Read About People's Deaths for Fun

Let's admit this one. Genealogists can become alarmingly enthusiastic about finding a death certificate. "Look! I found his death record!" This would be a very strange thing to announce enthusiastically in almost any other hobby.

But death records can contain extraordinary amounts of information: parents' names, birthplace, occupation, spouse, residence, burial location and sometimes the name of the person who supplied the information. That last detail is important.

If the informant was the deceased person's spouse or adult child, he or she may have known the family history well. If it was a hospital employee, neighbor or someone else with limited knowledge, those parents' names and birthplaces deserve another look.

And then there are obituaries. A good obituary can be a genealogical jackpot, naming siblings, married daughters, grandchildren, hometowns, churches, occupations and relatives who seemed to vanish between census records.

Morbid? Perhaps. Useful? Absolutely.

We Search for Skeletons in the Family Closet

Every family has stories. Some are true, while some are partly true. And some become considerably more interesting once you start checking the records.

The respectable great-grandfather may have had a previous marriage nobody mentioned. The ancestor who supposedly arrived from Ireland may actually have been born in Ohio. Someone may have changed his name, abandoned a family, spent time in jail or simply disappeared.

Then there are the stories that sound scandalous but turn out to have perfectly reasonable explanations. This is where genealogy becomes detective work. Court records, newspapers, probate files, military records and land records can reveal parts of an ancestor's life that never made it into the family stories passed down to us.

The important thing is not to go searching for scandal. Go searching for the truth.

And remember that our ancestors lived in different times, under different circumstances, with pressures and choices we may not completely understand today.

We Talk About Dead People as Though We Know Them

Spend enough time researching one ancestor and something strange begins to happen. They stop being only a name. You know where they lived. You know what they did for a living. You know when they married and how many children they had. You know that they moved three times in ten years and that their youngest child died before reaching adulthood. You may even recognize their handwriting.

Eventually, you find yourself saying things like, "Michel was still in Canada then," or "George was living in Vacherie by that point," as casually as though Michel and George are people you spoke to last week.

That's one of the things I was reminded of during my recent genealogy travels in Canada. There is something remarkable about standing in a place you've previously encountered only in old records. A town name you've typed into your family tree dozens of times suddenly has streets, buildings, churches and a landscape.

The people are still gone. But the places where they lived are real. And somehow that makes them feel a little less distant.

Try a Little "Spooky Genealogy" This October

Halloween might actually be the perfect excuse to explore a different part of your family history. Instead of trying to add another generation to your tree, choose one ancestor you already know and investigate the world around them.

Visit the cemetery where they're buried or explore it online if it's too far away. Look for an old map of their hometown. Search historical newspapers for their name. Find out whether their community survived or disappeared. Read their probate records. Look at the people buried nearby. Research the epidemics, disasters, wars or economic events that occurred during their lifetime.

And, of course, investigate those family stories everyone insists are true. You never know what might be lurking in the records. You could uncover a forgotten town, an unknown relative, a family secret or simply a story about an ancestor you never knew before.

After all, genealogists don't really need haunted houses. We have archives. And unlike ghosts, our ancestors usually leave a paper trail.