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South Park Street Cemetery is one of the earliest ‘non-church’ graveyards that exists in the entire world and, at the time it was founded, was the largest outside of Europe and America.
This Cemetery is an 18th-century Gothic non-church cemetery, one of the earliest in the world. It is now a heritage site in Kolkata and maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India.
Most of the tombs in the South Park Street Cemetery are aesthetically beautiful and very attractive. It, thus, has a unique charm that draws tourists in large numbers. Some tombs have a mysterious while some have a soothing vibe.
One such tomb is grave number 363 which is the oldest and belongs to a woman who never wished to have her name revealed. The tomb architecture is mostly a mix of Gothic and Indo-Saracenic with miniature replicas on stone.
The cemetery originally opened in 1767, around the time that the British Empire started to develop in Bengal.
It was built as the old burial ground was getting full and was receiving too many bodies.
Back then, the area was called ‘Burial Ground Road’. Many of the British and European colonial residents in Kolkata caught ‘tropical diseases’ which couldn’t be cured back then. So, a lot of them died very young.
The cemetery is very well-maintained and has spacious pavilions lined with tall green trees and monuments for the dead. The cemetery has a melancholic charm that cannot be missed.
South Park Street Cemetery is said to have a haunting vibe which many claim to be true. Several visitors had some haunting experiences when they visited the cemetery. They explain the feeling to be eerily unusual and often claim to have seen images and experienced dizziness. Some tourists had captured unusual images in their photographs which couldn't be explained as they never saw anything like that when they clicked the pictures. Some visitors have also spoken about a feeling of breathlessness they have experienced in spite of being absolutely healthy.
The cemetery has an unusual charm that is attractive as well as unsettling.