Emily Chan
A historic cemetery in Chester, New Hampshire, is unlike any other. It contains gravestones bearing elaborately carvings of strange faces that seem to watch over the souls resting in the ground below.
The eerie and enigmatic visages within the dark beauty of Chester Village Cemetery evoke a sense of mystery and intrigue.
The individuals behind the designs were two brothers, Abel and Stephen Webster. During the late 1700s, they carved faces that sported both smiles and frowns.
In the New England area, it is common for gravestones to display the faces of cherubs and angels. The unusual part is the scowls on many of the stones. It’s almost as if they were meant to deter visitors to those graves.
Nobody knows why the Webster brothers chiseled these facial expressions onto the stones, but as always, people have come up with their own theories.
Some have speculated that the smiling faces were for projects they were compensated for, while the frowning faces marked the people who did not pay their bills.
Others have guessed that one of the brothers carved the happy faces while the other did the upset ones.
As a result, the facial expressions were based on the personality of each brother. The most popular idea was that the faces had something to do with how the brothers felt about each person and their odds of getting into heaven.
The smiley faces were reserved for those who had a good shot of passing through the pearly gates, and the scowls were for the individuals who didn’t stand a chance.
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