Paris, France: A Walk Through Montparnasse Cemetery

All I’ve Ever Wanted…

…is to drink wine with a ghost. Is that so much to ask for? Ever since I was in middle school performing fake seances with my friends on a Ouiji board we purchased at Toys R’ Us, I’ve been tragically disappointed not to have a ghosty friend to have watch over me at night, or come face to face with a strangely neurotic poltergeist who just needs to tell that girl that he loves her in order to pass on to the other side.

I’ve heard so many anecdotes from friends about how they’ve encountered the supernatural, but for me it’s all just a far away dream that I’m afraid I’ll never experience. I wish I could have a nice scare at home alone, the creaking of a door or the slamming of a window that I never had opened… I want to be the protagonist in my own creepy movie. It’s totally normal, right?

I’ve always had a fascination and strange comfort with cemeteries. The calmness, the peace, the subdued beauty that doesn’t have to be flashy to be powerful and resonant is a nice change of pace. Cemeteries are sacred places of rest, where we are able to hold a small attachment to those we didn’t want to lose. Ornate carvings, smoothed stone and marble, gently falling leaves, flowers left by a mournful lover, friend, family member— It’s a beautiful reminder of how humanity isn’t completely hopeless, not quite. We spend so much time and effort to maintain grave sites, so much money to provide a funeral service to say goodbye. The dead are blissfully unaware, but yet we still keep them in our memories and acknowledge them as still among us, accompanying us on our adventures, living in our memories.

Paris, city of romance and cemeteries

On a week long stay Paris, I wandered around Montparnasse one afternoon, ending up in the most beautiful cemetery. Walking through in October was sort of gorgeous, and I couldn’t have timed the leaves any better.

Adjacent to Raspail subway station, the Montparnasse Cemetery is a home for many notable people buried in Paris, including Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, and Edgar Quinet. Walking was such a cute time, especially walking around in the most inoffensively elegant city that I’ve been in. Paris has a way of wrapping you up in its strange, soothing grayness and gently covering beauty over you like a cloak hood.

This park is lush and beautiful, perfect for a romantic stroll or a history lesson tour. I appreciate the work involved to make tombstones into works of art. Sometimes the sculptures in cemeteries have such a passion and soul behind them, invoking emotion and sad reverence.

If you’re traveling with children, why not make a quick scavenger hunt to find the artistic elite buried here? It’s a way to teach about why they’re so important to society while at the same time allowing them a structured game outdoors. Unless your kids are crazy hyper or tiny hurricanes of destruction… and then maybe don’t bring them on vacation in the first place. You probably need a break.

If you meet a ghosty friend along your peaceful walk in the cemetery, please let me know how it was. I’d love to be casually browsing the flowers and then see this mysterious ghost making a flirtatious eye in my direction.

If you think that’s crazy, you should see the movie The Spirit of Christmas, in which an ordinary career woman falls in love with a very hot ghost who haunts a beautiful house in the countryside. I’m not the only one who has had this idea. It was a very good story,

And you know, Pet Cemetery didn’t have to be so scary. Why can’t there be a movie about dogs and cats and bunnies being buried in a haunted land plot and then coming back fluffier and sweeter than before? They had a very nice nap and now they’re ready to cuddle with you just as tightly as before.

A girl can dream.

I encourage anyone wanting to visit Paris to take a look at Montparnasse Cemetery; some of the tombs here are phenomenal pieces of artwork, carvings of longing and reluctance to leave the Earth, of romantic attachment, of family bonds that were broken too soon. It’s nice to be undistracted by the hustle of the city without having to leave it.