The CMC at the 'Cemetery of the Unnamed', Vienna

For this year, I have decided to make photos of my Cutie Mark Crusaders plushies from Onlyfactory at the, in Vienna very famous, "Cemetery of the Unnamed" ("Friedhof der Namenlosen") in the former fishermen's village "Albern" at the borders of Vienna. This picture shows Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle in front of a memorial in the middle of the cemetery.
Laid out in 1854, the cemetery served to bury the dead bodies of people who drowned in the Danube River. A water vortex, that existed in the region at this time, washed ashore the bodies of the drowned, bloated by the water and most of them unidentifiable.
The identity of some of those people was found out later on, but most of them could never be identified. The crosses on the graves of those unknown people have either no sign or they have a sign with the short inscription "Nameless" attached to them:

i.imgur.com/fSV7LN9.jpg

As no one knew who those people were, it was also unclear if they died by suicide, if they were victims of murderers or if they died per accident. But since many people who wanted to commit suicide at this time decided to "go into the water", they were assumed to be suicide victims and because the catholic church did not grant such people the right for a traditional, christian funeral on one of Vienna's cemeteries, the people of Albern laid out a cemetery of their own so that those people would have a place to find peace.
But since this cemetery was located directly at the shore of the river, it was often destroyed by floods and so a new cemetery was laid out behind the levees in 1900. The old part of the cemetery was not used anymore since then. 478 dead people were buried there over the course of the fourty-six years it was in use.
Responsible for burying the deads as well as for the maintaining of the cemetery was the local gravedigger, the last one going by the name of "Josef Fuchs" until 1939. In this year, the cemetery was closed because, due to the construction of the harbor and changes in the course of the river that were made during this process, the water vortex disappeared and no new bodies were washed ashore anymore.
The gravedigger continued to take care of the cemetery, though, and his family does so until today. The last body was buried on the cemetery in 1940, a german harbor worker who died in an accident at work, but the cemetery is protected as a site of historic interest, so it's still existing. It is host for 104 bodies.
Unfortunately, this protection only counted for the new part of the cemetery. The old part was leveled two years ago in February 2013 to build a recreation centre there.
The bodies of the dead people, however, were not exhumed and relocated and remain under the ground until today.



So much about the history of the Cemetery of the Unnamed. But there are more stories about it to tell. Stories about which most people don't like to talk.
Since many years, the Cemetery of the Unnamed is also well-known as a haunted place with many occurences of paranormal phenomenons. In 2001, a ghost-hunting group called "Vienna Ghosthunters" was founded to scientifically examine the scary occurences there.
Many people who went to the cemetery reported about an aggressive, threatening atmosphere that could be felt there, which was especially strong in the old part of the cemetery. A feeling like they were not welcome.
Sightings ranged from mysterious figures in fog that was only visible on photos to more tangible stuff like shadows that walk restlessly between the graves, the manifested ghost of a little girl and an invisible hand that came out of a grave.
Some of the figures in the fog can be seen here, but they need a bit of imagination to be identified and the descriptions are unfortunately only in german, with no english translation available:

viennaghosthunters.net/seiten/…

There are also many stories related to the people buried there. One story is about a little boy who was raped and murdered by his father.
Desperated about what he did to his son, as the guillt about the crime began to wash over him, he placed the dead, little body into a box, went to the cemetery and confessed everything to Josef Fuchs, the current gravedigger there, before he killed himself in front of him.
The boy and his father were both buried on the Cemetery of the Unnamed. Since the father of the boy was abusive and the shadows on the cemetery only hunt female team members, the Vienna Ghosthunters have developed the theory that the shadow is the ghost of the boy's father who can't find peace after his gruesome crime.
More stories like this can be found on the homepage and in the forum of the Vienna Ghosthunters, all the reports and posts are only written in german too unfortunately.
The Vienna Ghosthunters also recorded a lot of EVPs (= Electronic Voice Phenomenon; ghost voices on tape) there, which they unfortunately don't give away.

For myself, I couldn't see or hear anything unusual there when I made these photos. But it is possible that this was due to the fact that I went there in daylight, while the most things happen at night, and that I was exhausted because I had to do a long walk through the heat before I arrived there. Maybe I visit the place again one day in a better condition.
If you want to see more pictures of the cemetery, you can find a video here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpGbuc…



An interesting bit of trivia about the Cemetery of the Unnamed is that it's one of the locations of the 1995 Hollywood movie "Before Sunrise". If you want to see the short scene that took place there, you can find it here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieA_kD…

The movie also shows a lot of the rest of Vienna, so if you're interested in Austria's capital city and want to learn some things about it, go watch it! I don't know for how long it will be possible, but currently you can watch it for free on YouTube under the link I posted. (The movie has disappeared from YouTube now, but I replaced the link with the scene the Cemetery of the Unnamed appears in.)



And that's about it. There are a lot more things about the Cemetery of the Unnamed that I could tell, but it's getting full here and I'm already happy if anyone reads all of what I've written so far.
Before I have decided to visit the Cemetery of the Unnamed for this year's event, I've also gotten the idea to make my own, little series for Ponies Around the World when I thought on it that I already was at a similar scary (but, in fact, much scarier) place last year:

cmc--scootaloo.deviantart.com/…

Which means, every year from now on, I will visit a scary/haunted place in or around Vienna for the Ponies Around the World event to show something of Vienna's dark and morbid side. So, be prepared for more scary places! See you next year for Ponies Around the World 2016!