Bagdad Cemetery

Bagdad Cemetery is a historic cemetery in Leander, Williamson County, Texas. It was established in 1857 with the burial of three-year-old John Babcock, whose father, Charles Babcock, later donated the land to the community. Among its other early burials are Civil War veteran John Haile and Colonel C. C. Mason, an early settler who played an important role in the development of the former community of Bagdad. The cemetery predates the city of Leander, which was founded in 1882 after the railroad bypassed Bagdad and the centre of settlement gradually shifted eastwards. Bagdad Cemetery continued to serve both communities and was enlarged in 1959 and again in 1966. It remains an active cemetery, with nineteenth-century headstones, family plots, tall stone monuments and a central limestone shelter surviving among later graves.

Bagdad Cemetery has appeared in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). The cemetery is used both for the film’s disturbing opening images of grave desecration and for the subsequent scene in which Sally and Franklin Hardesty stop to check whether their grandfather’s grave has been disturbed.

In The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Bagdad Cemetery provides the setting for the film’s opening sequence and one of the first stops made by Sally Hardesty, her brother Franklin and their friends. After the introductory narration, flashes of light gradually reveal decomposing human remains that have apparently been removed from their graves. The camera eventually shows two corpses arranged into a grotesque sculpture on top of a headstone while a radio report describes a series of grave robberies around the fictional community of Newt, Texas. The bodies and the headstone supporting them were props created for the production rather than actual remains or a real grave, although the surrounding monuments belong to the cemetery. A tall monument associated with Colonel C. C. Mason can still be identified in the background of the sequence. Later, Sally and Franklin stop at the cemetery after hearing about the desecrations because they want to make certain that their grandfather’s grave has not been disturbed. While Sally goes to investigate, Franklin waits among the graves and encounters an elderly local man who delivers an ominous warning about unexplained things happening in the area. The scene introduces the atmosphere of decay and disturbed burial that continues throughout the film before the group travels towards the Hardesty family property and encounters Leatherface and his family.

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