History & local legend
Williamsport’s former Pine Street Cemetery became linked to a literary procession of the restless dead. A local newspaper adapted Mark Twain’s “A Curious Dream” under the title “A Remarkable Dream,” using the story to call attention to the neglected burial ground.
Twain’s skeletons have decided to move out because their descendants no longer maintain their graves. One carries a coffin over his shoulder; another struggles beneath a gravestone while towing his coffin by a string. Their complaints concern broken fences, ruined markers and the indignity of being forgotten.
The Thomas T. Taber Museum traces the original story to a Buffalo newspaper shortly before the Williamsport adaptation. Eventually, the local graves and headstones were moved to Williamsport Cemetery on Washington Boulevard. Old City Hall occupies the former cemetery site, where the town’s burial-ground history and Twain’s invented exodus became connected.
