Disturbing the Dead: Running in Cemeteries

Running allows for exploration and sometimes the places we explore ask us to think about what it means to be living.

If you know me, then you know I have a fascination with the macabre. I’m a horror movie fanatic who often thinks about death. I’m also — unsurprisingly — a fan of cemeteries. I find them to be beautiful, contemplative places; they’re transient in that they exist between life and death. In a cemetery, I feel separated from the noise and speed of the world, instead washed in silence and remembrance. Time folds in on itself like a paper map; headstones from the late 1800s with their eroded rock and lichen blooms sit next to gleaming headstones with laser-etched surnames of the recently deceased.

Before last weekend, I had never run in a cemetery before. Something about running in a cemetery made me uncomfortable, as if my ragged breath and the patter of my footsteps would wake the dead. But, I needed somewhere to run. A few days before heading to Stamford, Connecticut, for StokerCon, an annual conference for horror writers, I reached out to my Airbnb host to see if she had recommendations for nearby running routes or paths. A few hours after I sent my question, she suggested I run in the cemetery across the street, saying that many people in the neighborhood use it for walks and runs.

Woodland Cemetery, Stamford, CT

I had never lived near enough to a cemetery for it to be a place to train, even though I know of some cemeteries — like Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta¹ — that serve a dual purpose as both a resting place and public park. As a kid, my best friend’s house bordered a reportedly-haunted cemetery. It was old, one of those places where headstones jutted out of the earth at odd angles. A big maple tree grew at the center and from my vantage point in my friend’s driveway, I watched its branches stretch and contract in the wind. The tree was so big it nearly covered the whole of the small cemetery, as if protecting it from something.

I spent nearly every weekend at her house and always wanted to visit, but we never did. Wherever I was in her yard, I could see the cemetery and the glint of mica in headstones, hear the gravel footsteps of a visitor in the summer daylight. Once I was home, I’d spend hours reading and re-reading the same articles about the cemetery, trying to discern if I’d ever be able to see a ghost. I desperately wanted to. Sometimes I think back to childhood and think of my memories of “visiting” the cemetery, even though I know I never did. My mind combined my research and long summers in the hot sun in my friend’s yard to create the feeling as if I were there in my basketball shorts and heavy cotton t-shirts, fulfilling my preteen self’s macabre desire.

So, when the Airbnb host recommended I run in the cemetery, I took the opportunity. I drank some water and ate an unfrosted poptart, donned my running clothes, laced up my shoes, and warmed up during my walk to the cemetery’s entrance, around the corner from my stay. Black iron gates, connected to worn brick columns, sat open. The sun had only just begun rising over the horizon; light speckled through the trees and flitted around the asphalt road that looped around the cemetery.

I started running, my head on a swivel to read as many headstones as I could. I captured names and epitaphs as I ran, thinking about how these people were buried here to be remembered and I, far removed from their existence, thought about them. I think that’s the real magic of the cemetery. I don’t live in Stamford and, yet, I had the opportunity to overlay my living, breathing self over the history of the place. I may not know the people, but I can certainly think about them and wonder about them. I wondered what happened to the woman who died at — according to my quick math — just 26. Loving daughter. Loving wife, her headstone read. She died decades before I was born.

A few of the headstones caught my attention so much that I stopped to take a picture of them. These I wanted to remember, mostly because they stood out for either their beauty or their inscription. One of them stated the last name of the deceased, “STEVENS,” without a first name or a date. Near the bottom of the headstone, in a smaller font, was the epitaph: Just Asleep.

STEVENS, “Just Asleep” | Woodland Cemetery, Stamford, CT

After I finished my run, I sat in a wooden kitchen chair drinking water and trying to cool down. I started reading about other runners' experiences of running in cemeteries, coming across a commonly asked question: “Is it disrespectful to run in cemeteries?” I, of course, had considered this, but since my host recommended it — and I saw other runners and walkers in the cemetery during my run — I had gone forth with my actions, not feeling any type of way about it. An article in Runner’s World reminds runners to be respectful of not just the dead, but also the mourners and atmosphere of memorialization inherent in cemeteries. In a Reddit thread, one user writes, “I don’t think the residents mind one bit.”

But why do we ask these questions? Why do we want to run in cemeteries?

I think the answer is personal. Some might find solace in a place to run with few people and even fewer vehicles. Others, like myself, might enjoy the quiet macabre in spending time with the deceased. Some runners, like freelance writer Hannah Belle, see the line between life and death become more distinct while running in cemeteries. She also says, on the other hand, “Running next to death serve[s] as a reminder that I am closer to death than I think. I am literally always running toward it.”

Remembering the fact of our mortality can do us all some good because it invites us to run faster, to be kinder, to appreciate the gift of being alive. Yes, I think about the day when, after my death, I’ll be memorialized, my ashes planted with a tree in a quiet grove, but I also think of the days it will take to get there, whether few or many, and what I must do with them to celebrate that I get to do what I love.

1. For my fellow spooky friends, the Atlanta Track Club hosts the Run Like Hell 5k in Oakland Cemetery every October.