My Hometown in Weird Missouri
Last Thursday evening we were out and about in the county and swung into a Barnes & Noble bookstore. On the way out, I noticed a pile of books titled Weird Missouri: Your Travel Guide to Missouri’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets (Weird)
I picked up a copy and flipped to the table of contents. There was a special section on cemeteries. Flipping to the page, I found the short 2 paragraphs about my home town of 632 people.
The little cometary at the edge of town is known locally for it’s glowing tombstones. You drive by on a clear night and see a few of the tombstones sort of flash as you pass them. Of course, if you get out and stand still they actually stay on and appear to glow. It’s that way on a clear moonless night as well. That’s about as far as the book goes. The whole story, of course, always comes with a legend. As ours goes, the original glowing tombstone was that of a woman who had lost her husband in the Civil War. She was not convinced her husband had died and waited up every night on the porch with a lantern, hoping for him to come home. She still stays up at nights with her lantern even now waiting for him.
Aren’t legends fun? While I’m not aware of any detailed investigation into the cause of the glowing tombstones, I’ve always assumed there is some sort of phosphorescent material in the rock that picks up sunlight during the day and shines it back out at night. Regardless, it was still fun to see a blurb about my tiny little hometown in a book at a major book store.
