A Dispatch From the Other Side of the Veil

Author: Natasha Frost / Source: Atlas Obscura

Living candelabras sat or stood unflinching as hot wax dripped onto their bodies, forming incredible sculptures and shapes.

Sensible shoes and cocktail attire, living life to the fullest in the home of the dead, the flicker of thousands of tea lights across acres of mid-October gloom.

Over the two nights—Friday, October 13, and Saturday, October 14—of Atlas Obscura’s Into the Veil 2017, some 3,500 revelers went on a journey filled with contradictions and hints of the transcendent in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.

The Gothic arches of Green-Wood's chapel were underlit a deep crimson. — The Gothic arches of Green-Wood’s chapel were underlit a deep crimson.

Here, for posterity, are a few exceptional moments from these two extraordinary evenings.

The <em&gtBrooklyn Bluegrass Collective</em> played fiddle and banjo, to the beat of the steel taps of dancer's shoes. — The Brooklyn Bluegrass Collective played fiddle and banjo, to the beat of the steel taps of dancer’s shoes.

At the intersection of Pine and Central Avenues, guests in velvet and lace downed cider-sherry Jell-O shots, while the taps of a dancer’s shoes echoed into the night. Three members of the Brooklyn Bluegrass Collective played to a rapt audience, before “dirty gospel” band the Reverend Vince Anderson and the Love Choir took up a spot in the clearing.