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Free Online Talk · The Forgotten Dead: Lost Cemeteries of the American Asylum with Historian Dr. Kate Benson
Monday November 9, 2026
7pm ET (NYC time)
Free! RSVP with email at checkout
Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out two hours before the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email hello@morbidanatomy.org.
Across the United States, thousands of people who died in asylums and other public institutions were buried in cemeteries that have since faded from public memory. Graves were marked only with numbers and many of them have disappeared beneath forests, parking lots, farmland, or vacant fields. These burial grounds remain hidden in plain sight, their stories nearly forgotten.
"The Forgotten Dead" explores the history of these lost institutional cemeteries and the people buried within them. Through historic photographs, archival records, cemetery maps, and firsthand accounts from ongoing preservation efforts, this lecture uncovers how these landscapes came to exist, why they disappeared from public consciousness, and what they reveal about changing attitudes toward disability, mental illness, poverty, and death.
Far from being places of horror, these cemeteries tell deeply human stories. They challenge us to look beyond sensationalized images of the "haunted asylum" and instead consider the lives of the patients, residents, and families whose histories were often reduced to institutional records and numbered grave markers. As forgotten burial grounds are rediscovered across the country, historians, descendants, and preservationists are working together to restore names, document cemeteries, and ensure these individuals are remembered with dignity.
Drawing on years of archival research, field documentation, and work as co-chair of a statewide commission dedicated to identifying and preserving institutional cemeteries, Dr. Kate Benson offers a rare look inside one of the least-known chapters of American history. Blending cemetery studies, disability history, material culture, and historical detective work, this lecture invites audiences to reconsider how societies remember—and sometimes erase—their most vulnerable citizens.
These forgotten cemeteries are more than historical curiosities. They are landscapes of memory that ask a timeless question: Who is remembered after death, and who is allowed to disappear?
Dr. Kate Benson is a historian, educator, and researcher whose work explores the intersection of disability history, institutionalization, death, and memory. She serves as co-chair of the Massachusetts Special Commission on State Institutions, where she helps identify, document, and preserve forgotten institutional cemeteries throughout the Commonwealth.
Her research on unmarked institutional burial grounds has been published in the Historical Journal of Massachusetts and presented at the Association for Gravestone Studies. She is currently writing a book on America's forgotten institutional cemeteries and the histories they reveal about disability, remembrance, and the ethics of memorialization.
A frequent public speaker, Benson combines archival research, cemetery studies, and material culture to uncover stories that have long been hidden from view. Her work invites audiences to reconsider not only how societies remember the dead, but how they choose whom to remember.
Monday November 9, 2026
7pm ET (NYC time)
Free! RSVP with email at checkout
Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out two hours before the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email hello@morbidanatomy.org.
Across the United States, thousands of people who died in asylums and other public institutions were buried in cemeteries that have since faded from public memory. Graves were marked only with numbers and many of them have disappeared beneath forests, parking lots, farmland, or vacant fields. These burial grounds remain hidden in plain sight, their stories nearly forgotten.
"The Forgotten Dead" explores the history of these lost institutional cemeteries and the people buried within them. Through historic photographs, archival records, cemetery maps, and firsthand accounts from ongoing preservation efforts, this lecture uncovers how these landscapes came to exist, why they disappeared from public consciousness, and what they reveal about changing attitudes toward disability, mental illness, poverty, and death.
Far from being places of horror, these cemeteries tell deeply human stories. They challenge us to look beyond sensationalized images of the "haunted asylum" and instead consider the lives of the patients, residents, and families whose histories were often reduced to institutional records and numbered grave markers. As forgotten burial grounds are rediscovered across the country, historians, descendants, and preservationists are working together to restore names, document cemeteries, and ensure these individuals are remembered with dignity.
Drawing on years of archival research, field documentation, and work as co-chair of a statewide commission dedicated to identifying and preserving institutional cemeteries, Dr. Kate Benson offers a rare look inside one of the least-known chapters of American history. Blending cemetery studies, disability history, material culture, and historical detective work, this lecture invites audiences to reconsider how societies remember—and sometimes erase—their most vulnerable citizens.
These forgotten cemeteries are more than historical curiosities. They are landscapes of memory that ask a timeless question: Who is remembered after death, and who is allowed to disappear?
Dr. Kate Benson is a historian, educator, and researcher whose work explores the intersection of disability history, institutionalization, death, and memory. She serves as co-chair of the Massachusetts Special Commission on State Institutions, where she helps identify, document, and preserve forgotten institutional cemeteries throughout the Commonwealth.
Her research on unmarked institutional burial grounds has been published in the Historical Journal of Massachusetts and presented at the Association for Gravestone Studies. She is currently writing a book on America's forgotten institutional cemeteries and the histories they reveal about disability, remembrance, and the ethics of memorialization.
A frequent public speaker, Benson combines archival research, cemetery studies, and material culture to uncover stories that have long been hidden from view. Her work invites audiences to reconsider not only how societies remember the dead, but how they choose whom to remember.