Hobbs hosts workshop

Do dead people just pop up here and there? If you are Abby Burnett, you see them often.

Burnett is an independent researcher who studies all aspects of burial in the Arkansas Ozarks. Her

book, Gone to the Grave; Burial Customs of the Arkansas Ozarks, 1850-1950, was featured on AETN’s cemetery documentary, Silent Storytellers. Burnett lives in a log cabin in the Boston Mountains, when she’s not out photographing tombstones in rural cemeteries.

Tombstone portraits, popular in this country since the 1700s, depict how the deceased looked in life, or occasionally, after death. Burnett tells us, “Though somewhat scarce in Arkansas, it is possible to find photos, cameos and statues adorning tombstones, and to learn about the lives these images represent. Whatever form they take, these portraits have stories to tell — some of them quite Gothic.”

Burnett’s upcoming program at Hobbs State Park, “I See Dead People,” will give the stories behind a few of the most unusual portraits found in Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas and Kentucky. This free workshop will be offered at 2 p.m. Oct. 14 at Hobbs State Park visitor center on Ark. Highway 12, just east of the Ark. Highway 12 and War Eagle Road intersection.

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