Cemeteries — Vacation Spots for the Living?

Some cemetaries are already tourist destinations such as the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial pictured to the right.

According to Patricia Leigh Brown, In Need of Income, Cemeteries Are Seeking Breathing Clientele, NY Times, May 25, 2007:

Historic cemeteries, desperate for money to pay for badly needed restorations, are reaching out to the public in ever more unusual ways, with dog parades, bird-watching lectures, Sunday jazz concerts, brunches with star chefs, Halloween parties in the crematory and even a nudie calendar.

Laurel Hill, the resting place of six Titanic victims, promotes itself as an “underground museum.” The sold-out Titanic dinner, including a tour of mausoleums, joined the “Dead White Republicans” tour (“the city’s power brokers, in all their glory and in all their shame”), the “Birding Among the Buried” tour, and “Sinners, Scandals and Suicides,” including a visit to the grave of “a South Philly gangster who got whacked when he tried to infiltrate the Schuylkill County numbers racket.”  * * *

The new cemetery tourism — a subterranean version of the History Channel — is also a means of developing brand loyalty in the wake of what Joseph Dispenza, president of the historic Forest Lawn in Buffalo, calls a “diminishing customer base” [caused by more people choosing cremation].