Rest In Peace

CONTINUATION OF FEATURE...

Visiting Old Gray Cemetery after midnight reveals no "Black Aggie" but rather serenity among the stones

Around this time of year, Alix F. Dempster’s phone inevitably rings, some paranormal group or pesky journalist on the other end wanting to know more about “the legend of that Black Aggie” who roams Old Gray Cemetery.

Dempster, the cemetery’s executive secretary for more than 20 years, always responds kindly, though she’d just as soon be discussing any number of the other purported “haunted” landmarks in Knoxville — or maybe even the weather.

“I really would just rather Old Gray not be mentioned around Halloween,” she says, an apologetic yet almost pleading tone in her voice. “But to answer your question: I’ve never seen anything, and don’t know where people come up with these things.

“Is it just some phase people go through? I don’t know. Every year we have vandals come in and do something to this beautiful art we have, some of it costing as much as $20,000.”

I’m rather embarrassed to admit later in the conversation that I myself went ghost hunting off Broadway for a few post-midnight hours recently before the frigid fall breeze finally decided to descend upon our city.

Up front: I didn’t see a thing. Not a ghost, goblin, imp, demon or zombie. Though I did notice a large cross had been knocked off its base and a miniature stone statue of a decapitated angel, likely the handy work of Dempster’s vandals.

Once my three companions and I became acquainted with the intermittent sound of walnuts not yet void of their outer green shells thudding to the ground, all was surprisingly peaceful at Old Gray. The moon was full and bright, and the 12 recently erected Heritage lampposts lining the cemetery’s center lit the headstones in a serene sepia blaze.

But we were there for an earnest attempt at spotting the “Black Aggie.” So we retired to the darkness beneath a stone wall bordering the south along Cooper Street. Floodlights from the adjacent building shone just over the top of our barricade, cloaking us in black and giving us an “I can see you but you can’t see me” view of all that rests there.

Old Gray has resided on North Broadway since 1850, 13.47 acres to be exact, extending northwest to a partition wall that separates it from the Knoxville National Cemetery. The cause for obsession comes from its rich history and its century-old Victorian sculptures still intact — and the abundance of dead bodies buried there.

An estimated 5,700 bodies have been interred at Old Gray, including the father of famous playwright Tennessee Williams and revered Tennessee Whig editor and reconstruction Gov. William Gannaway “Parson” Brownlow.

(Citizens of West and Middle Tennessee who had sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War hated Brownlow, a Union supporter, when he was elected after the South surrendered. Theorists suspect he is the apparition floating through the cemetery at night, but there is no concrete evidence behind that reasoning and the legend itself is rather vague.)

Peering out into the expance of graves, I wondered where it came from: This infatuation with the dead. And when had we decided the acronym “R.I.P.” no longer held any significance?

During the early 1800s, after a series of devastating epidemics swept the United States, cities began to create large garden cemeteries in rural areas to keep disease from spreading throughout townships. The public enjoyed the new creations, more so than the church and parish graveyards full of solemnity they had grown accustomed to visiting.

Garden cemeteries became a place of tranquility, a place for fellowship. When municipal parks were developed years later, architects actually took their design cues from cemeteries, and citizens early on described them as “cemeteries without the monuments.”

“Before we had city parks, cemeteries were used for recreational purposes,” Dempster says of Old Gray’s beginnings. “We still encourage families to pack a picnic and enjoy this beautiful place. Families used to come and truly enjoy the cemetery, and they used to talk about death in a revered way and make it a part of their everyday life.