History

Now for a bit of History:

In 2006, a Writers’ Coven was meeting at the wonderful, but now defunct, used bookstore called Kate the Great’s Book Emporium in the Edgewater area of Chicago, Illinois. For one of their writing meetings, they went down into the dimly lit recesses of the basement to tell each other ghost stories on a cold October evening. After lots of giggling and a few chills that had more to do with the stories and less to do with the temperature, a discussion about the history of cemeteries began. Patty Templeton had been doing research for her Novel, There Is No Lovely End, when she came across this whole idea of cemeteries having guardians. It was believed in many different cultures and societies that a cemetery had a particular soul who had been left in the cemetery to protect the land and the other departed souls. Whether the protection was from visiting humans, or other evil forces, was not always clear. Some lore claimed the guardians volunteered for the job, others were appointed, and still others said that it was just whatever hapless fool happened to be buried first or last was called (or cursed) to be the cemetery’s guardian. From these talks, a little ‘zine called Cemetery Guardians was born. It was published by the House of Artemisia, had one artist, R. Huston*, and six authors – CSE Cooney, Allison Lake, Frank Stasik, Patty Templeton, Max Ulve and Jeanine Marie Vaughn.

For the October 2015 publication, as an online website, we will be using the original artwork* and some of the stories from the original publication.

*All artwork by R. Huston. Check out more of her art at: Heathen Ink

Sadly, two of the stories were got buried in a crypt and the Guardian won’t give them back. (Cemetery Guardians can be quite evil.) We only have a scrap with the title and the artwork by R. Huston:

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