A Prayer for Souls in Paupers' Field

All Hallows Eve, whose name has shortened over the centuries to “Halloween,” has a special significance for West Virginia University at Parkersburg because of the graveyard by the campus with 219 unmarked graves.

The graveyard is Wood County’s “paupers' field,” the burial place for the bodies of those who die indigent or unknown. Burials have taken place there in the last few months, and the field has been a graveyard for 200 years. It was the graveyard for the County Poor Farm which occupied the campus from 1877, and before that was the burial place for the Kincheloe family, who settled the land in 1798.

The Kincheloe family are remembered with well-marked graves, but there are more than 200 uninscribed white crosses in the little graveyard marking the burial places of folks whose names are unremembered by any living soul.

The beginning of November has for a very long time and for many cultures been a time to remember those who have died. The Church in Europe celebrated All Hallowed Souls Day on Nov. 1 from the eighth century. Catholics, Anglicans, Episcopalians and Lutherans still celebrate All Saints Day and/or All Souls Day at the beginning of November. In Mexico, the first days of November are Los Dias de los Muertos, the Days of the Dead. The prehistoric Celts met the onset of winter's chill, and the fear of death it brings, with intentional, reverent communion with the dead at Samhain, the astronomical midpoint between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice.

“Hallow e’en” (“Hallows even” from “Hallows evening”) has its origin in the all-night vigils kept before All Hallowed Souls Day in medieval Europe. The vigils of communion with the dead were, from the eighth century, held in churches, part of the religious ceremonies of the holy day, but the vigils over the years became wild and eventually were exiled from the churches to the streets.

Visiting the graves of relatives, we may say a prayer in the direction of the unvisited, forgotten graves, the ones with weeds instead of flowers. The purpose of All Souls Day is to go beyond the random prayer and the shiver of fear, and to focus the community in a prayer for all souls, whether they are remembered by relatives or not.

The WVUP campus is unusual in having a paupers' field, with many names lost to the past, in the daily sight of young students whose future is ahead of them (as Yogi Berra put it). There is opportunity for us to deepen ourselves if we can recognize our communion with the forgotten.

So on All Hallowed Souls Day, Tuesday, Nov. 1, let us say a prayer for the souls whose earthly remains lie under the unmarked white crosses on the little hill next to the school's parking lot. The prayer is more for us than for them, but we need it.