Karie Bible - Cemetery Tour Guide & Film Historian
Karie was born on Halloween night, has two different colored eyes, and yes, her last name really is Bible. She embraces a very vintage lifestyle from her fashion to the 1920s garden court apartment she calls home. As a little girl, Karie didn’t like Barbie, she liked Boris Karloff. Dracula was the first film she saw and it launched her lifelong passion for movies.
Upon arriving in Los Angeles 20 years ago, Karie fell in love with Hollywood Forever almost immediately. She recalls getting invited to a silent film event at the cemetery, long before Cinespia was a summer staple. “It kind of cast a spell on me,” she shared, and when she found out the cemetery didn’t have a tour guide, she thought, “Maybe that could be me?” That was in 2002 and she’s been giving tours several times a month since.
When asked if anything interesting has ever happened on a tour, she joked, “Every week. How many hours do you have?” Karie talks with an immense amount of passion and enthusiasm for the cemetery but what really brings her joy is seeing people’s emotional reactions on tours. She gets to witness first hand, how the power of a celebrity’s legacy and artistry can still be so present with people, despite how long they’ve been gone. In regards to Judy Garland, she shares, “I’ve had people walk in there and tears just start pouring down their face because of what she meant to them.” With a lot of the cemetery’s residents, their life and legacy symbolized so much more for their followers. They weren’t just actors or musicians.
Like all of us, Karie’s day to day has changed a bit since Covid hit. It’s also made us reconsider mortality. “This may seem strange but during the pandemic I’ve actually bought my own grave,” she declared. Which at first does feel a bit morbid, but Karie has a very comforting way of speaking about death. She shares that her family is 3,000 miles away and this is her way to have an organized plan. “Dealing with grief and death is hard enough. I’m going to try to avoid total chaos in that situation as much as I can,” she explained. And yes, her final resting place will be at Hollywood Forever.
Karie doesn’t see herself as strange or weird, necessarily. She elaborates by saying, “What is normal is incredibly relative. It’s like Morticia Adam says, What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.” Cemetery tours are just her side gig. She has a day job at a box office reporting firm, does some lecturing, love to garden, and has co-written two film history books. “People like to slot you into one thing but we’re all nuanced creatures.” She’s also spent part of the pandemic working on a video series she calls “Hollywood Kitchen” that is part cooking demo, part film history talk show, and part vintage dinner party. Bela Lugosi’s favorite dish, stuffed cabbage wraps, was first on her list to recreate.
The pandemic has had a tremendous effect on other tours in Los Angeles and Karie feels profoundly grateful that she can work at this time, especially when colleagues aren’t as fortunate. Being a tour guide at Hollywood Forever is more than just a side gig for her, “a lot of these people were artists and innovators and really remarkable people. I just want to make sure their stories are remembered.”
You can catch Karie on one of her cemetery tours at the infamous Hollywood Forever theater by heading to https://www.cemeterytour.com/. Day tours occur every Saturday and the newly added “Night Walk” series offers guests the opportunity to view the cemetery in moonlight. Tours sell out fast so check back on the website frequently to secure your spot.
This post has been a collaboration between Strange Los Angeles and The Making Waves Project for 13 Days Of Strange – a social distanced, Halloween photo series spotlighting spooky and strange Angelinos. Visit our homepage for more.
