Night at the Cemetery

Cemetery of Crespi d’Adda, Capriate San Gervasio, Bergamo
April 2017

The first time I went to the Cemetery of Crespi was in the mid-90s and I was 16 years old, a classmate’s dad accompanied our group of friends in the middle of the night.

At that time we had not internet and the information about that place was handed down as stories. It was said that in the crypt Satanic rites took place, there were ghosts and will-o’-the-wisps, and heroin addict med behind the graveyard. Rumors were circulating that if you looked inside the mausoleum where the Crespi family rests, you would be unlucky for life. Susceptible persons claimed they felt different kinds of supernatural presence and had a bad night after being there. As underage boys we entered climbing the wall.

What is true and documented is the presence of tombs of children who died of Spanish flu, all the same stone crosses arranged in rows on the lawn, with small lamps. You reach the cemetery gate on foot through a long boulevard lined by cypress trees, and when there is fog only the mausoleum emerges from afar. It’s a humid place and the temperature is always a few degrees lower than in the town Capriate, being at the level of the Adda river. There are particular atmosphere and tranquility, being far from the inhabited center.

Once the good Fausto, a friend of mine who is gone, told me that he entered the crypt with a friend during the opening hours, and both drunk found empty burial recesses , they had the brilliant idea of lying inside to find out what it feels like to be in the place of a dead man. They had the feeling of having done something wrong and did not dare to go out, so the time came when the gates close automatically and they spent the night there. He told me that they were found the next morning by incredulous elderly ladies.

Then twenty years ago I went to the cemetery of Crespi together with two girls and a friend, one believed herself a witch and before reaching the gate she reported several visions, including the White Lady, the Black Lady and a series of fire crosses dancing around her, the other longed to be a witch and reported paranormal sensations, the friend was mad of seances and he too succeeded to see some shadow of demon or bat. I was laughing at them.

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