The graveyard is not a dead end - it is a system. Tend your graves and spirits settle over a few nights and stop rising; neglect them, or bury the wronged, and they stay restless or turn bitter.
In The Beyond, the same graveyard becomes your reach into other towns: the dead you keep are a host you can send to haunt a rival Salem, and your own lanterns are what wards their dead away from you.