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The Dead Die Twice: Abandoned Cemeteries of Nova Scotia
Steve Skafte has lived his entire life in Annapolis County—or what he calls “The Dead Centre”—a place with more forgotten history than anywhere else in the country. In search of those forgotten stories, Skafte stumbled over a couple of overgrown cemeteries, and began his quest for what was hiding in the hundreds of cemeteries and burial grounds that lie abandoned in the woods all over Nova Scotia. En route, he discovered twisting trails of indifference, forgetfulness, and desecration.
Featuring 80 haunting colour images and more than 20 deeply poetic tales of discovery, The Dead Die Twice: Abandoned Cemeteries of Nova Scotia chronicles Skafte’s year of exploring abandoned cemeteries, pushing through walls of scratching brush, cutting a path to the past, and unearthing buried stones and half-forgotten stories.
Steve Skafte is a writer and photographer from Bridgetown, Nova Scotia, where he's lived all his life. Since he turned twenty in 2007, he’s kept and shared an uninterrupted daily journal online, with stories and adventures from all over the wilds of the province—and how it felt to be there. Much of his time is wrapped up in finding forgotten human history that has been left behind in the woods.
Featuring 80 haunting colour images and more than 20 deeply poetic tales of discovery, The Dead Die Twice: Abandoned Cemeteries of Nova Scotia chronicles Skafte’s year of exploring abandoned cemeteries, pushing through walls of scratching brush, cutting a path to the past, and unearthing buried stones and half-forgotten stories.
Steve Skafte is a writer and photographer from Bridgetown, Nova Scotia, where he's lived all his life. Since he turned twenty in 2007, he’s kept and shared an uninterrupted daily journal online, with stories and adventures from all over the wilds of the province—and how it felt to be there. Much of his time is wrapped up in finding forgotten human history that has been left behind in the woods.
120 pages, Paperback
Published March 28, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 21, 2023
I went into this with no expectations and was pleasantly surprised. If you're expecting this to be a deep dive into the lives of the people lost in these cemetaries, it isn't that. Instead, it is a sort of poetic self-reflection while admiring these old cemetaries peppered throughout the province and how life continues around these sites.
As a Nova Scotian who used to explore old cemetaries, this was a wonderful read.
As a Nova Scotian who used to explore old cemetaries, this was a wonderful read.
April 26, 2023
As a history nerd, I look at cemeteries differently. I don't see graves but stories. Each headstone tells the story of someone's life whether they barely breathed or lived 100 years. The Dead Die Twice is the perfect encapsulation of my love of cemeteries as morbid as others might deem it. Steve Skafte brings a keen eye to beautiful photos and a prose which feels like poetry. The stories he uncovers are often heartbreaking but a reminder to himself that he is still alive. There is a sense Skafte is healing himself in these trips and mentions of a lonely childhood pop up from time to time. Regardless, the book is both beautiful and poignant.
June 14, 2024
There is an almost undefinable feeling of reverence when happening across a worn, fallen, old gravestone while walking in the woods--a revived awareness of life and death, the shortness of the former and the forever of the latter. Well-kept cemeteries abound but will they still exist on prime city land a century from now? The Dead Die Twice, Steve Skafte suggests in his book of Abandoned Cemeteries of Nova Scotia, and too often they do, once when buried, again when lost to memory and history. I think of ancient, revered graveyards around centuries-old churches in England, and am saddened to read of the many burial places overturned in Nova Scotia for farming or industrial purposes. Perhaps the difference lies in the very newness of the new world, where many families buried their dead in small plots on their own land, destined to be sold to others or simply overgrown, overturned, lost to the indifference of time and weather.
In Skafte's book he has shared his own fascination in discovering some of these old family plots and small cemeteries. A lonely child himself, he is particularly touched by the abundant graves of lost children, for a century ago populations were decimated by disease, and gravestones tell of short lives, the unbearable losses in so many families of one after another of their children. (I, too, am drawn to the melancholy of child and baby graves.) When the narrative occasionally goes beyond the finding of lost names and dates to locating obituaries, the reader learns the causes of death, enhancing the experience of awe and respect.
Thank you, Steve Skafte for your relentless search for lost burial places in our province, for directions to their locations in case any readers care to see for themselves the places you describe, for your photography, and the poetic descriptions of the quest and what you found, and for bringing the twice-dead back to a touch of remembrance.
In Skafte's book he has shared his own fascination in discovering some of these old family plots and small cemeteries. A lonely child himself, he is particularly touched by the abundant graves of lost children, for a century ago populations were decimated by disease, and gravestones tell of short lives, the unbearable losses in so many families of one after another of their children. (I, too, am drawn to the melancholy of child and baby graves.) When the narrative occasionally goes beyond the finding of lost names and dates to locating obituaries, the reader learns the causes of death, enhancing the experience of awe and respect.
Thank you, Steve Skafte for your relentless search for lost burial places in our province, for directions to their locations in case any readers care to see for themselves the places you describe, for your photography, and the poetic descriptions of the quest and what you found, and for bringing the twice-dead back to a touch of remembrance.
March 31, 2023
THE DEAD DIE TWICE: Abandoned Cemeteries of Nova Scotia by Steve Skafte.
This was my most anticipated book of 2023 and I absolutely loved it!
Many may think that loving a book about cemeteries is morbid, morose, weird. I think none of that. My father was killed when I was four and visiting his grave in Dall Cemetery in Shelburne County brought me much comfort. My visits had an added attraction for often when I was there I met fellow visitors who had known my father and who told me stories about him as a young man. I got to "know" my father in the present through the stories of his past. Another beautiful reason for me to spend time at the cemetery.
Reading Steve Skafte's Facebook daily diary posts I am continually struck by the desire to stop and ponder his "take" on his, and our, world. His writing is beautiful, evocative and haunting and the stories in this book are no different . To use Steve's own words - "Abandoned cemeteries are like stories read backwards...Pushing deeper takes me nearer the beginning until I stumble over where it started." Steve quite literally stumbles over gravesites, often having tripped over lichen covered foot stones which we learn were commonly used prior to the early 1900's.
Each headstone/cemetery picture included in this book is accompanied by a carefully worded and beautiful remembrance (found through Steve's research) of the known story of the people who once lived and whose souls, I believe, now inhabit each of these grave sites.
This author has a rich voice. His stories are crafted from his heart and with much introspection. His soul goes into his writing and shines through his words.
"The dead stopped coming to this place in the 1930's..." One of my favourite opening sentences.
"I'm woken up by the tales we've left behind." It is obvious Steve has spent hours and hours with these cemeteries and has developed a caring and compassionate affinity for those so long forgotten.
"All of these have one wish in common - they want to be known. The universal voice of all abandoned cemeteries, their unquenchable need to be remembered one last time." Thank you, Steve, for visiting and remembering these souls. Thank you too for taking time to clear and pay respect to these historical markers of people who once lived and loved. People who built beautiful Nova Scotia and who died on the soil there.
"The dead don't care at all, but somehow still deserve every bit of love we've got."
Steve needs to be commended for his careful preservation of our Nova Scotia past. The stories of how Steve discovers these abandoned cemeteries is truly fascinating. He has definitely done his research. He speaks for those who no longer can. In this book he is giving us voices and stories of those long abandoned and forgotten. I found myself stopping to mourn the loss of the souls buried in Nova Scotia soil and who have long been forgotten. We must not neglect our dead.
I would love to one grey, rainy day have Steve show me some of these abandoned places. I would bring along my copy of this book for him to sign - I feel certain he would.
This was my most anticipated book of 2023 and I absolutely loved it!
Many may think that loving a book about cemeteries is morbid, morose, weird. I think none of that. My father was killed when I was four and visiting his grave in Dall Cemetery in Shelburne County brought me much comfort. My visits had an added attraction for often when I was there I met fellow visitors who had known my father and who told me stories about him as a young man. I got to "know" my father in the present through the stories of his past. Another beautiful reason for me to spend time at the cemetery.
Reading Steve Skafte's Facebook daily diary posts I am continually struck by the desire to stop and ponder his "take" on his, and our, world. His writing is beautiful, evocative and haunting and the stories in this book are no different . To use Steve's own words - "Abandoned cemeteries are like stories read backwards...Pushing deeper takes me nearer the beginning until I stumble over where it started." Steve quite literally stumbles over gravesites, often having tripped over lichen covered foot stones which we learn were commonly used prior to the early 1900's.
Each headstone/cemetery picture included in this book is accompanied by a carefully worded and beautiful remembrance (found through Steve's research) of the known story of the people who once lived and whose souls, I believe, now inhabit each of these grave sites.
This author has a rich voice. His stories are crafted from his heart and with much introspection. His soul goes into his writing and shines through his words.
"The dead stopped coming to this place in the 1930's..." One of my favourite opening sentences.
"I'm woken up by the tales we've left behind." It is obvious Steve has spent hours and hours with these cemeteries and has developed a caring and compassionate affinity for those so long forgotten.
"All of these have one wish in common - they want to be known. The universal voice of all abandoned cemeteries, their unquenchable need to be remembered one last time." Thank you, Steve, for visiting and remembering these souls. Thank you too for taking time to clear and pay respect to these historical markers of people who once lived and loved. People who built beautiful Nova Scotia and who died on the soil there.
"The dead don't care at all, but somehow still deserve every bit of love we've got."
Steve needs to be commended for his careful preservation of our Nova Scotia past. The stories of how Steve discovers these abandoned cemeteries is truly fascinating. He has definitely done his research. He speaks for those who no longer can. In this book he is giving us voices and stories of those long abandoned and forgotten. I found myself stopping to mourn the loss of the souls buried in Nova Scotia soil and who have long been forgotten. We must not neglect our dead.
I would love to one grey, rainy day have Steve show me some of these abandoned places. I would bring along my copy of this book for him to sign - I feel certain he would.
May 9, 2023
My family has been in Nova Scotia for 225 years. The village they settled in grew, prospered and died.My earliest ancestors are gone, their graves lost to erosion into the sea. The graves of my Great-Grandparents and Grandparents survive. I try to visit them at least once a year; often in the Autumn. Steve's book brings the past and my lost relatives back to me. Far from sad, it evoked the past. I enjoyed it very much.
August 21, 2024
What Steve Skafte does for the dead is outstanding. He has spent time and a lot of effort bringing attention to those who are forgotten. Nova Scotia history goes back further than any of the provinces. People settle, they live, and they die. So, do the memories as time goes on. He brings the lost back so the rest of us can remember.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews