For any student who lives in one of the Foss Hill dormitories, the graveyard, nestled at the top of the hill, is a familiar sight. Sometimes known as “The College Cemetery,” the graveyard serves the University community as a solemn backdrop for clandestine initiation ceremonies, as an impetus for student reflections on mortality, and as a favorite haunt of the fabled Wesleyan Grim Reaper. That the graveyard has had a subtle yet permanent presence on campus since 1837 has meant that generations of matriculated students have walked through and lived near this iconic, yet oft-overlooked, part of campus.

However, for most students, it is just another facet of the campus landscape, as familiar as an image of Usdan at dinnertime or a squirrel running through the CFA.

Tal Levran ’15 explains his lack of interest in the graveyard as stemming from his belief in the rumor that there are no longer any bodies buried there.

“But if [the bodies] were there,” Levran said, “it would be wrong somehow…college students running and drinking over people’s graves. I wouldn’t even care who was buried there.”

A 2009 Argus article discussed the rumor that a group of students had dug up the Foss Hill bodies in the sixties. However, administrators seemed to doubt this claim.

“I assume that people are still buried there,” Clifford Ashton, Director of Physical Plant, said in 2009. “I have not heard any story that students had unearthed bodies in the 60s.”

Student indifference to or disbelief in the bodies buried on Foss was a sentiment underscored in an alumnus’s 1968 complaint about the graveyard’s state of disrepair. He describes how students had worn a footpath over the graves by regularly using it as a shortcut to the Nicolson dormitory. The graveyard had apparently become such a staple of the students’ surroundings at the time that they had no qualms (as many surely still do not) about traversing it out of convenience.

On the other hand, the graveyard makes other students uneasy enough that they avoid walking through it altogether. Especially around Halloween and Friday the 13th, students become more aware of the presence of the Foss Hill graveyard, employing it to help set a spooky mood and as fodder for scary stories.

Taylor Goodstein ’14 discussed her own spectral connection to the graveyard.

“Well, the last time I was there I’m pretty sure I was propositioned by the ghost of an 1870s Civil War veteran, so I can’t speak much to the politeness of its occupants,” Goodstein said. “But for the most part I enjoy the sort of spooky romance it adds to my bi-fortnightly strolls from Olin to the Nics.”

Current student attitudes regarding communion with the dead are not such a far cry from the builder’s original intent for the graveyard. Both the Foss Hill Graveyard and nearby Indian Hill Cemetery were intended to be spiritual places for the living to reflect upon the dead.

In the 1850 dedication of the Indian Hill cemetery, Reverend Frederic Goodwin expressed this sentiment:

“To linger among the resting places of the departed remind[s] us of the frail and transitory character of this our earthly being. How plainly does it instruct us, as to the true value of life, its duties and its destination.”

The construction of Indian Hill cemetery was part of a broader movement toward the “rural cemetery” that emerged at the beginning of the 19th century, which envisioned graveyards as communal areas, as landscapes on the outskirts of a surrounding neighborhood. The goal was for people to have “free access” to burial spaces, which would welcome visitors with their layout and architecture, in contrast to the less well-kept and less organized graveyards that pre-dated them.

One student, Blake Valenzuela ’15, wrote about his experience visiting Indian Hill on his blog, Story of My College Life.

“Well yeah, taking a walk to Indian Hill was bracing in that one can’t help but take in the beauty of nature[….]I can just remember looking at the trees sway, the tombstones in the distance, and the breeze that flurried the sky.”

This sensibility echoes earlier thoughts on the graveyard. Charles Collard Adams, class of 1859, considered the Foss Hill graveyard to be an important part of his Wesleyan career. He referred to it fondly as “Wesleyan’s ‘God’s Acre.’”

“I was drawn to the college cemetery where I was in communion, as it were, with the spirits of Fisk and of Olin,” Adams said.

It seems odd, in the 21st century, to even consider viewing the graveyard as a place to commune with “the spirits” of past University presidents. But Adams’ comment about the graveyard is indicative of a sense of community still inherent to the University—a connection between the past and future.

The graveyard includes not just famous University faculty, but also a number of students who perished during their time at the school, and even a few alumni who felt so connected to their alma mater that they wanted to make it their eternal home.

Professor Christine Lalande, Visiting Instructor in Romance Languages and Literatures, supported the idea that having a graveyard on campus can be a valued part of student life.

“I find the presence of graveyards here cool because, in my opinion, death is very natural,” Lalande said.

Lalande seems to hold a minority opinion, however. The University has, in recent years, been reluctant to emphasize the role of the graveyard by allowing modern burials. To be buried in the Foss Hill graveyard involves a tedious process of appeals to the Board of Trustees; the last time someone was successful in that appeal was 1980.

In an 1840 Wesleyan publication known as The Classic, one alumnus waxed poetic about the potential for the graveyard to become a truly communal area for the Wesleyan dead, and even the living.

“As years pass away, the boundaries of this dwelling place of the dead will be enlarged. Many a youthful form will be laid there. The teacher, too, will mingle his dust with the scholar. May all that hereafter rest in this spot, rest in hope like those who are there now.”

This vision of an extensive and open burial space has yet to come to fruition. Though it is possible that the communal importance of the graveyard will be resurrected in the future, current students seem to be content with viewing the graveyard as just another pastoral feature of the campus landscape.