Crying Angel is crying wolf

By Rosie Lukanc
For The Post

Back in West State Street Cemetery, there is a statue of an angel. It isn't a gravestone, it isn't a monument, but it is said to cry real tears.

According to "the Spook files" at Alden Library, the Angel is meant to be the marker of unknown children's graves.

Joanne Prisley, curator of the Athens Historical Society, has her own take on the Athens folklore.

"All of these stories are silly. I'm just not in to that sort of thing," she said. "I don't know where this all got started. If I did, I'd put a stop to it."

She and her co-workers at the historical society have done work at the West

State Street Cemetery and have examined the angel up close. They could find no trace of tears.

"We all stood there and tried to see what would make [people] see it, but there was nothing."

She believes the legend is the product of students’ overactive imaginations.

Prisley said she hopes people will look to cemeteries as historical guides to

Athens past, not material for ghost stories.

"I think cemeteries just aren't scary; they're informative," she said.

Prisley said that people should look more into the factual side of Athens history, instead of the mystical.

Lifelong Athens resident Karen Jones, the administrative associate at Alden Library Archives and Special Collections, has a different view since she grew up near the West State Street Cemetery.

"All cemeteries are scary!" she said.

Jones said she and her classmates had to walk past the cemetery every day to get home.

"Once in the morning, once for lunch and once at night," she said. "We'd end up running through every time."

Although she is nervous about the cemetery itself, Jones has no fear of the crying angel.

She said she sees it as a hoax and didn't know much about it until the Fox Family television program last year.

She helped the crew from the Fox Family Channel do its research for last years' special on Athens, but said she thought the show over-exaggerated many facts, and misconstrued information.

"The photo they showed, which they claimed to be 'Margaret' was actually an

unidentified patient. There's no photo credit," she said. "That's just what happens, things get misunderstood."