Halloween Movie Night in the Cemetery Quickly Cancelled, Backlash from Loved Ones of the Dead

Photo by: Kalhh via Pixabay

What are your thoughts on a Halloween movie night in the cemetery? For one North Carolina cemetery, it seemed like a good plan and going by its online poll there was positive feedback – “over 200 responses, none of them negative,” according to Lafayette Memorial Park’s Facebook post.

However, within a few hours those plans were cancelled as families of the dead voiced their thoughts and objected to the event.

According to reporting from WTVD, veteran Sam Simpson and his family heard of the event and they were not pleased. “You want to do that, take it to Festival Park, do a memorial there.”

While the cemetery and owner Heather Bosher appeared to have good intentions with plans to host the movie night as a free public event in honor or her late grandparents who enjoyed going to the movies, not everyone agreed.

See Lafayette Memorial Park's full statement posted to Facebook below.

"Fayetteville is a diverse community with people from all over the world. With those people come diverse traditions.

We have been approached several times with the suggestion of a movie night. Since there are several cemeteries nationwide that host such events with great popularity, we embraced the idea.

We have a wonderful green space with plenty of room to hold such an event without infringing on any burial spaces. We have utilized it in the past with no objections.

Even so, we were concerned about how others besides us would feel, so a public poll was created and posted on our Facebook page.

The response we received was overwhelmingly positive. Our online poll had over 200 responses, none of them negative.

When we were approached by a family with an extremely negative outlook, we were surprised.

However, when other families with concerns started to become obvious, we decided to cancel the event out of respect to all. This all happened within a time span of a few hours.

Our only wish was to provide a family-friendly event in a way that was safe and free to the public much like our other events that bring joy and peace to those that are grieving. No disrespect was intended, only an alternative way to share a positive evening with our loved ones that are no longer here.

We never want families to feel distressed over any event at our facility. We are deeply sorry for any and all misunderstandings and we will continue to proceed with respect to all our families views."

Would you agree to movie night in the cemetery? Let us know in the comments below!