This afternoon, a friend and I drove through a really incredible cemetery near my house. I’d never been there before, somehow just never thought to check it out. The weirdest part though, was as we drove up, there were literally hundreds of crows guarding the entrance, just a little ways inside. They were on the ground, in the trees, flying overhead. I’ve never seen anything like it. I said it seemed like a bad omen, although I’ve never heard anything to that effect. Just that crows are associated with death, and to see so many gathered at sort of the “gateway to death” at a cemetery was a little bit spooky. I theorized out loud that it must just be because nobody bothers them at the cemetery, so they are free to congregate. But my real impression was that it seemed like they were the souls of the people there.

Anyway, I’m researching a bit about cemeteries and omens and superstitions associated with death. I found a really good page covering various aspects of that, and here is their information on cemeteries:

Make sure your loved one is not the first to be buried in a new cemetery. The Devil is said to claim the first person so buried and may send him back to harm the family. Others believed that if you were the first buried you would be the Churchyard Watcher. To avoid this after the new churchyard was consecrated, a dog would be buried there so it would not effect the first human.

Also some believed that if you were the last person buried in the cemetery, you would be doomed as the Churchyard Watcher forever, since no other corpse would come to relieve you.

It is considered to be very bad luck to break up a cemetery and use it for something else, and the people disturbed will probably haunt the person responsible for the decision.

The dead are best placed on an east/west axis facing east (where the sun will rise on the day of Resurrection) and on the south side of the church. This helps to protect them from demons and you from them. To keep the dead from getting up, place a cairn of stones or one heavy stone (a head-stone) on the grave. Put a cross on it to keep away devils and demons.

I really like that one about the “Churchyard Watcher.” Also, that thing about the first person buried in a cemetery belonging to the devil is pretty similar to the voodoo practice of dedicating the first person buried to Baron Samedi.

Anyway, here are a couple links about crow superstitions:

1. Wandering souls - crows & ravens
2. Myths about crows
3. Apparently there is actually a big tradition of Crow divination, partly based on the number of crows seen.
4. Crow-related links