Cathy Howe has a cemetery in her Intervale Road backyard. Rose Lincoln/Bethel Citizen
BETHEL — Cathy Howe is not afraid of ghosts or cemeteries and never has been.
Howe moved into her current home in 2009; it had been her grandparents.
In her backyard on Intervale Road is Stanley Russell cemetery. There is a large tree that has a face. The ancient tree has massive arms that reach out above the several graves.
“Uncle Fred,” was a rascal, she says of one of the relatives buried back there. “Cracker” Stanley drove cars he no longer wanted down the hill into the river.
She lists the 20 or so other residents out back: “Kent; Uncle Fred; Mom and Dad; my mother’s brother Kermit, who died when he was three; my grandparents on one side…
“There is something that is shaped exactly like a grave [on top of the ground] and doesn’t have any headstone. That’s a little spooky since I have filled it three times and it keeps sinking,” said Howe.
Howe grew up about eight miles down Intervale near the graves of her other grandparents in the East Bethel Cemetery. She and her family tended their graves regularly. “It was common to go to the cemetery,” she said.
“Being spooked at a cemetery is foreign to my experience,” said Howe, as Halloween approaches.
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