Cemeteries have always been simultaneously scary and attractive to kids.

For my friends and me growing up in Summit Hill, the cemeteries at the end of East Hazard, White and Ludlow streets were places where our peers would dare us to walk among the tombstones alone at night to see whether we were man enough to do it. While we fumbled and stumbled and felt our way in the darkness, they made weird, eerie noises to see whether they could freak us out.

It was a place where teenage friends could go to drink a few beers without fear of getting hassled by the borough police or our parents.

It was a place where lovers could escape to without the judgmental eye rolls of parents and townspeople. It was also where many borough residents — I was one of them — learned how to drive on the then-unpaved roads paralleling the cemeteries.

We had impromptu picnics; we made up ghost stories, and I ran like crazy once when I swore that I saw a monster rising from underneath one of the gravestones.

What we never did was vandalize tombstones or desecrate graves, because we considered them to be sacred. Some of my friends’ relatives were buried in these cemeteries. We also cleaned up our beer cans, papers and any other evidence of our having been there. We figured if the powers that be were unaware that we had put in an appearance, they would not step up vigilance to prevent our return.

All of this recollection came about after having learned last month that a teenage girl and a much younger boy damaged several historic tombstones that were more than a century old at the Grand Army of the Republic cemetery at the East White Street extension, apparently for no good reason.

Unlike in my youth, today there are cameras and other surveillance tools which help identify mischief-makers such as the two Coaldale kids, who now face juvenile court action.

Cemetery officials said about 50 gravestones have been damaged at the GAR cemetery so far this year.

Earlier this year, a vehicle operated by a Summit Hill woman was driven through the St. Joseph’s Parish cemetery in the Bloomingdale section of the borough and knocked down headstones — another senseless act. Vandals are attracted to cemeteries because they believe them to be easy targets with minimal security. Under cover of darkness, mainly boys, but girls, too, find them comfortable locations for underage drinking and sexual activity. Aside from the vandalism, not much has changed in the 65 years or so from when we hung out there.

According to Psychology Today, the vandalism which follows these illicit activities is part of anti-social behavior.

Experts believe that there are three types of cemetery vandals, the most common being those who don’t discriminate about what they damage. They damage tombstones without considering the heartbreak this deed causes the family. Other vandals are anti-Semitic, racist or are attempting to make some kind of a political or social statement. The third type is really rare — grave-robbers.

While some might be willing to pass off the vandalism in Summit Hill as youthful exuberance or shrug it off as something that kids have been doing since time immemorial, I do not. Even an 8-year-old should know that desecrating tombstones and graves is wrong.

While the Summit Hill incident was not a hate crime, it is troubling that more of these cemetery incidents are taking on the characteristics of hate crimes as they are aimed at ethnic groups, primarily Jews.

Hundreds of tombstones in Jewish cemeteries have been destroyed in a new wave of anti-Semitism across the nation. One of the most serious was in Philadelphia in 2017 where about 275 headstones were toppled and badly damaged. Thanks to volunteers and generous donors, the monuments were fully restored less than a year later.

When children are growing up, they need to learn respect for, among other things, the graves and tombstones in cemeteries. This lesson needs to begin at home.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com