Evans City Cemetery Road

In 1967, 45 years ago, fledgling filmmaker George Romero and others started filming Night of the Living Dead in Evans City, Pennsylvania. The opening scene in the movie was filmed in Evans City Cemetery just a few miles from where I live. There was a series of tornadoes that went through Pennsylvania in 1985 uprooting trees and toppling 361 headstones, but you can still recognize the chapel and tombstones used in the movie. The rest of the movie was filmed at an old farmhouse nearby but it is no longer there.

The opening scene has siblings Johnny and Barbara visiting their father’s grave. An incident from Barbara’s childhood has made her afraid of the cemetery and her brother teases her near a tombstone with the name Blair on it. The gravestone used for their father has the name Cole . A coped gravestone of a Civil War veteran Nicholas Kramer is where Barbara clutches the stone in panic as the zombie attacks her brother.

The cemetery was established in 1891 and the chapel built in the 1920’s