Tomb Raider

Night tour of Presbítero Maestro Cemetery (photos courtesy Daniel Noriega Reto).

In the spirit of Halloween, Friday night I took a night tour of the Presbítero Maestro Cemetery in the Callao district of Lima.  What was meant (at least in my mind) to be a creepy adventure turned into two hours snapping photographs of the cemetery’s statues and mausoleums.  This was through little fault of the tour company itself: they did their best by offering the night tour,  guiding us through dimly lit spaces, recounting the most haunting cases of illness and suicide, and once, even enlisting the help of an actress to recite the work of Peruvian writer Mercedes Cabello Llosa de Carbonera—who, plagued with syphilis and suffering from dementia, spent her final years in an insane asylum—in a tone eerily reminiscent of ¨The Raven.¨  But the lighting and the stories never quite cut it for me: the monuments were too beautiful.

The word ¨beautiful¨ may seem like a disturbing way to describe a cemetery, but that´s the only adjective that comes to mind.  (Though I admit, it could simply be because in the past few years, I´ve visited more haunted houses with gimmicky hands reaching up from the earth than actual graveyards.)  The most impressive structure in the cemetery is the Paneteón de los Próceres, which houses the heroes of the War of the Pacific (1879-1884), fought against Peru´s most unfriendly neighbor, Chile.  This two story structure looks more a museum that a mausoleum with its pristine, spacious corridors and neoclassical architecture.  The biggest tombs there are reserved for military leaders Francisco Bolognesi and Miguel Grau, although as our tour guide soon revealed to us, the latter´s remains are not actually kept there.

Paneteón de los Próceres

Family tomb.

Beyond the Paneteón, Presbitero Maestro Cemetery offers a collection of marble statues and ample land for the final resting places of several historically important families.  Reflecting their wealth, the private graves are set up like small estates, with a set of stairs climbing down to the tomb´s main entrance.  The only difference between the grave and the home is that here, the doors are always locked: guests aren´t welcome.

Something´s missing...

Yes, all seemed a little too quiet at Presbítero Maestro Cemetery last Friday.  That is, until we passed through the corridor reserved for agnostics and suicides. Scanning the wall, I noticed something unsettling: one of the coffins had been removed. The space that once contained a body now looked dark and empty; inside, only a few burnt scraps remained. 

When asked by a fellow visitor what had happened to the body, our tour guide offered up the following explanation: destroyed by witchcraft.