With Halloween fast approaching, it’s surely a match made in heaven, or at least somewhere in the afterlife, that the Samuel Worth Chapel is hosting a series of Haunted Screenings deep in the Sheffield General Cemetery just off Ecclesall Road.
Across the Halloween weekend, the recently renovated and award winning Chapel will screen a selected run of horror films. There’s a choice pair of family friendly films running during the day, classics Ghostbusters and The Addams Family. But when night falls, the mood turns to more grown up scares with a ‘torch-lit tour’ through the cemetery (the details what that will entail have been kept secret) followed by one of the evening films, The Others or The Sixth Sense.
Speaking of grown up – there’ll be a fully licensed bar for a drink with your movie, and film snacks of course. Get your tickets here from organisers Nostalgic Film Club, see their Facebook page for more info.
What’s on:
Saturday 28 October
Ghostbusters 4 – 6pm
The Others 8.30 – 10.30 pm
Sunday 29 October
The Addams Family 3.30 – 5.30 pm
The Sixth Sense 8 – 10 pm
A little bit about the cemetery…
More than just a venue for one off frights on All Hallows Eve, the cemetery reflects Sheffield’s rich past.
Founded in 1836 as a cemetery outside of the control of the established Church authorities, it was intended to be as much a functioning burial ground as a landscaped garden to be enjoyed by the living more than the dead. A tradition that the current trustees are trying to continue with its events schedule and tours.
The cemetery turns out to be fascinating resource for understanding the Steel City. It’s the final resting place of local heroes like Samuel Holberry, who fought and died for the Right to Vote, as well as 87,000 others, who all have their own stories to tell.
There are the old industrialists with their dominating statues, but also small and the humane monuments to people like the Russian boy racer Leopold Lichtenthal who was born in St Petersburg and died age 17, thrown from his horse mid race. The space ceased to function by the mid-20th century and fell into disrepair, becoming an overrun semi urban forest.
It now has a trust of dedicated and passionate people working to protect the graveyard, and they have seen to it that the grounds have been slowly reclaimed from the wilds. They have also very sympathetically restored the Samuel Worth Chapel, with its intriguing Greco-Egyptian Architecture, as a functioning and intimate events space.
It has recently been used as part of the Off The Shelf Literary Festival and the edgy Lush Spectra music festival. Later next month Tales from the Hills will use the Chapel to launch their new EP: Such Secrets.
There are regular tours of the site if you want to learn more about Sheffield’s rich past and connect with it a really surprising way. More details can be found here: gencem.org/
For more details of events happening in the Samuel Worth Chapel, head to their site www.samuelworthchapel.com/
