At the end of the path stands a beautiful Victorian house, its lamplight breathing behind the glass: welcome to The Mourning Room.
You come up a path you do not quite remember choosing. At the end of it stands a beautiful Victorian house, all gables and shuttered windows, lamplight breathing behind the glass. On the gate hangs a sign, freshly lettered, as though someone knew you were on your way.
It reads:
You found a secret door. Welcome. You have arrived at the Mourning Room, a way of looking. We are a small company of people who got curious about the things the dead left behind and never quite recovered. Knock, if you like. We are usually in.
So you knock … and the door opens before your knuckles leave the wood.
Come in, come in! We were hoping someone would wander up tonight!
You have found the Mourning Room. We are several, not one, leaning over the same long table, conversing about what a weeping stone figure meant in 1480 and why it still lifts the hair on your arms today. You see carved alabaster mourners with their faces buried in their hoods … a pickled punk adrift in its jar of clouding spirits, kept on the parlor shelf the way an older century kept its relics. These are the small, stubborn objects made to remember a body long after the body is gone. We think these things still have something to say, and we have decided to keep listening. You caught us mid-conversation. That is the best time to arrive.
Wander as you like. Read the strange entries, follow the footnotes down into the dark, scribble in the margins, argue with us. If something here catches under your skin, we want to hear about it. Better yet, bring us something of your own. A photograph of a tomb you cannot stop thinking about, an object that feels a little haunted, or even a question you have not managed to put down. The room, true to its name, has room.
Pull up a chair. The candles were lit before you knocked.
Yours in the company of the beloved dead,
The Mourning Room