Atlas Obscura at Mount Moriah

Atlas Obscura at Mount Moriah
Producer: Michael O’Reilly

In an age where everything seems to have been explored and there is nothing new to be found, Atlas Obscura celebrates a different way of looking at the world. If you’re searching for miniature cities, glass flowers, books bound in human skin, gigantic flaming holes in the ground, bone churches, balancing pagodas, or homes built entirely out of paper, Atlas Obscura is where you’ll find them.

Atlas Obscura (AO) is a book and website and an event-holding organization, but at its heart it is a collaborative project. A community of explorers helps to discover amazing places and share them with the world. Anyone, anywhere in the world can add a place to the Atlas.

Dylan Thuras, one of the co-founders of AO, tells about just such an event – a tour of Mt. Moriah cemetery – a cemetery largely left to its own devices for the past few decades in Southwest Philadelphia. Relatively unknown to most of the population of Philadelphia, Mt Moriah still stands after 161 years. It turns out, events and tours like the one put on by Atlas Obscura, are helping to stabilize the cemetery, by generating revenue, interest and volunteers.

Voices of the Cemetery
Edited by Nick Gandolfo-Lucia

This piece explores the surreal landscape of Mount Moriah Cemetery in Southwest Philadelphia through the lens of the Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery, an organization committed to rehabilitating the decaying cemetery. Using disembodied drone footage and voice over, the short invites the viewer to appreciate both the vastness and the intimacy of the cemetery.

 
Thomas Hackney Extended Interview
Edited by Madison Wagner
An extended interview with Thomas Hackney about his ties to Mt. Moriah cemetery, and his ancestor that fought in the Civil War in the battle of Gettysburg.