The story
The Broadway Cemetery Historic District gathers seven adjoining cemeteries along Broadway Avenue in Galveston, Texas, established from 1839 onward and holding the island's story in stone: founders and pirates' contemporaries, victims of the yellow-fever epidemics that repeatedly swept the port, and dead of the 1900 hurricane, still America's deadliest natural disaster. After that storm the island's grade was raised, and soil was layered over parts of the cemeteries — graves lie beneath graves, a fact that feeds the district's lore. Galveston calls itself one of America's most haunted cities, and the Broadway cemeteries anchor the telling: ghost tours pass the gates, and visitors describe figures among the monuments at dusk, lights, voices, sudden cold in the heat, and photographs that surprise their takers. The district is public and walkable in daylight, with respect for the graves and for mourners; after-dark entry is not permitted. These accounts should be presented as the island's accumulated folklore around real and often tragic deaths — the epidemics and the storm told as history, the hauntings as story.