Monday, November 21, 2011

The Witch Bonney

Atlas Obscura has this terrific legend about a family monument in the Lowell Cemetery, Lowell, Massachusetts:
The Witch Bonney is a statue of a woman with her arms outstretched on a rectangular tomb. Her hands clutch a veil that falls down behind her body as though it were a sheet billowing in the wind. Her eyes are holes staring at the sky. Under her left eye, a black tear stains through the greening tarnish. Her dress is toga-style and its folds fall off both shoulders, exposing the upper parts of each breast. The fabric falls at an angle where one could mistake its level of exposure. The legend as told by the local high school students is that her dress gets lower and lower starting each October until, finally, her breasts are fully exposed on October 31st. However, given the Wiccans who leave offerings regularly and congregate there each Halloween, this probably would have been corroborated by witnesses. Other legends include a fellow statue as her guardian, a lion tombstone just in the line of her gaze, and also a tale of her rebirth in a tree. Groundskeepers trim all potential resurrection places nearby.
I mean, who cares about calling the devil and all that nonsense? Here's a graveyard statue that gives teenage boys what really interests them.

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