For those of you that don’t know, I’m an obsessively avid reader. During the last two years of living in California, I was clocking in about 50 hours of audiobook time per week, every week. I was able to get through a lot of long book series’ easily and one of the most enjoyable ones I read in 2015/6 was The Dresden Files.

I appreciate the Dresden Files for a few reasons. Being a native Chicagoan, it’s fun to go on adventures through a city that I know very well. I can imagine all the different neighborhoods that Harry Dresden goes through as his does his urban wizarding detective work.

One of the places that I hadn’t ever been to and that makes frequent appearances in the books is Graceland Cemetery. In the story, Harry has an open grave there that one of his enemies created to taunt him. Harry visits the Cemetery many times throughout the 15 books that exist so far. I was curious to see what the cemetery was really like.

During a recent visit to Chicago, I decided to check it out. It’s a 45 minute walk from my dad’s apartment, so I decided to invite my friend Annie along and we went for a summer walk to the cemetery from the Dresden Files.

Photo by Justin K Prim

The cemetery is a huge Victorian monument to the dead. It’s located on the North Side and it’s been there since the mid 1800′s. Beside Harry Dresden’s, the site contains many notable and famous tombs.

Photo by Justin K Prim

In the book series, Graceland is known as Chicago’s largest graveyard, and its walls keep the spirits within them. The ghost of Inez resides there and next to her statue, Bianca St. Claire reserved a grave for Harry Dresden. It is a white marble gravestone inscribed with a gold pentacle set in the center, with the words: “HERE LIES HARRY DRESDEN ✬ HE DIED DOING THE RIGHT THING”.

Photo by Justin K Prim

It’s a really cool cemetery if you like that sort of thing. It has lots of really ornate mausoleums with stained glass windows and a lot of really interesting and use gravestones. I love visiting sites from my favorite books and movies and this one was a good one that I won’t soon forget.