A cemetery or graveyard is a place (usually surrounded by a fence) where people bury corpses and honor dead people. Many of them have gardens and other green areas to symbolize life and honor those who are dead.
The intact or cremated remains of people can be interred in a grave, commonly known as a burial, a “grave on the ground ” (resembling a sarcophagus), a mausoleum, a columbarium, a niche, or other building. In western cultures, funeral ceremonies are often observed in cemeteries.
These ceremonies or rites, incidentally, differ according to cultural practices and religious beliefs. Cemeteries modern often include crematoria, and some grounds previously used for both, continue as crematoria as a principal use long after the burial areas have been filled.
Traditionally, cemetery management only involves assigning land for burial, excavating and filling graves, and maintaining the grounds and landscaping. The construction and maintenance of tombstones and other grave monuments are often the responsibility of surviving families and friends.
However, increasingly, many people consider the resulting collection of individual headstones, concrete slabs, and fences (some of which may be deteriorated or damaged) to be aesthetically unpleasant, leading to new developments in cemeteries either standardizing the shape or design of headstones or plaques, sometimes providing a standard shaped marker as part of the service provided by the cemetery.
In many countries, cemeteries are places believed to have characteristics of superstition and legend, which are used, usually at night, as an altar in alleged black magic ceremonies or similar clandestine events, such as devil worship, grave robbing (gold teeth and jewelry are preferred), exciting sexual encounters, or drug and alcohol abuse unrelated to the aura of the cemetery.
The legend of the zombies, as idealized by Wade Davis in The Serpent and the Rainbow, is not exceptional among cemetery myths, as cemeteries are believed to be places where witches and wizards obtain skulls and bones necessary for their sinister rituals.
