I love the evocative trio of Halloween (yesterday), All Saints’ Day (today) and All Souls’ Day (tomorrow). But that should come as no surprise from someone who’s just set up a Twitter account as TheCemeteryGirl. All week I’ve been contemplating these celebrations and I’m excited about making my first pilgrimage to Flores Cemetery in Buenos Aires tomorrow to see the Bolivian community commemorating the Day of the Dead, the Latin American version of All Souls’ Day.

Even on Monday, Recoleta Cemetery had more than the usual air of Halloween about it. After a night of torrential rain that turned subway tunnels into rivers, there was a determined drizzle that gave the cemetery an unfamiliar eeriness. Speckled with water the cobwebs stood out more, and stripped of light the abandoned vaults seemed the stuff of horror movies with their heavy dark caskets covered in debris and dismembered coffin handles strewn on the floor. The unexpected sound of rain plinking inside one of the tombs startled me, but I jumped even more when the wooden door of a caretaker’s hideaway creaked open on its hinge of string (and, yes, there was someone inside).

As it was a wet, camera-free visit, here’s a shot from my archives of a mausoleum I stopped to admire. It’s my Ghost & candelabra II (you can see an earlier version of the same reflection here) and it seemed spot-on for this soulful time of year.