Haunted Cemeteries Read online

  It was rumored that several of the people buried there predated the cemetery’s official opening and were victims of the 1692 Candlemas Massacre, in which a hundred or more English settlers were killed by Native Americans during the French and Indian War. Given Cindy’s interest in Mary Nasson, she found one aspect of the story particularly interesting: After the attack on York, eighty surviving homesteaders were captured and led off to Quebec. To secure their release, Capt. John Alden delivered a ransom in February 1692. Three months later, he would be accused of witchcraft in Salem. Fortunately, Alden escaped before he was imprisoned.

  Cindy immediately recognized Mary’s grave. As she slowly approached it, a single large raven flew out from behind the headstone. She watched the ominous black bird’s flight as it disappeared into the treetops, a deep, rasping caw escaping from its heavy beak.

  “Huh!” involuntarily escaped Cindy’s lips. A raven: exactly as promised. Was the nefarious feathered creature really a devilish messenger from the Underworld? Or just a bird?

  Cindy bent down, then knelt by the grave to get a better look at the archaic lettering etched into the headstone. She carefully ran her hand along the weathered surface. It was slightly cool to the touch. The rough rock obviously didn’t absorb or retain heat from the sun. The same turned out to be true for the marker at Nasson’s feet.

  Cindy stretched out both arms and laid her palms, wide open, on the long, flat granite rock that covered the rest of Mary’s grave. Involuntarily she snatched back her hands, not in pain but in surprise. The stone was hot! Well, not exactly hot, but significantly warmer than the two markers. So the legend was true! Heat did radiate out of the grave. The only question was: What caused it?

  Skeptics say that the day’s heat is held in the stone because of its size and position, lying flat directly under the sun’s rays. But Cindy knew the true reason in her heart of hearts.

  So, too, do the residents of York Village, because many of them have experienced Mary firsthand. Some have seen a hazy visage hover around her grave or walk down Lindsay Road on dark nights. Others catch doors opening or objects moving on their own in a few of the hamlet’s old buildings, or they encounter unexplainable “cold spots” in some of the structures. The apparition of a mysterious Woman in White once visited youngsters outdoors at a nearby daycare—that is, until the playground monitor came over and the spirit suddenly disappeared. And invisible hands push children on a schoolyard swing not far away.

  Most people seem to agree: It’s Mary Nasson making herself known. The stone slab covering the Witch’s Grave hasn’t stopped her from coming back to visit one little bit.

  Part Three

  NATIONAL

  NIGHTSHADES

  Believe it or not, we’ve only just begun. With so many haunted graveyards in America, it’s impossible to include them all in a single volume. But we’re gonna make a run for it. Let’s top off our ghost tour of the United States with more than a hundred cemeteries full of phantoms. You’ll find brief descriptions of at least one for every state, sometimes quite a few more. I know that’s a lot of ground to cover. But then, you can never have too many spooks. Right?

  Chapter 20

  Fifty States of

  Shadowland

  So far we’ve checked out about fifty haunted cemeteries. But we’ve barely scratched the surface. Would it be too much of a pun to suggest we dig a little deeper?

  Every state in America has one graveyard—at a minimum—that locals say is haunted. Every spooky story in this chapter has occurred or continues to occur in one of the hundreds of haunted cemeteries throughout America. Interestingly, some of the biggest states have relatively few haunted burial grounds for their size, how densely they’re populated, and the age of many of their churchyards. On the other hand, several states with less territory and far fewer people have a disproportionately large number of haunted burial grounds. So settle in. It’s time for a road trip.

  ALABAMA

  Adams Grove Cemetery

  Sardis

  Adams Grove Cemetery accepted its first “resident” in 1848, and the Adams Grove Presbyterian Church was built on adjacent property five years later. The church is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and had an active congregation until 1974. The cemetery’s ghost is a Confederate soldier who tells people to get off the property. The old church building is now in private hands, and it’s haunted too! Its spirit is a former minister dressed in black.

  Bladon Springs Cemetery

  Silas

  In 1908 Norman T. Staples, a successful steamboat captain and designer, launched the James T. Staples, a stern-wheeler named for his father. By then, however, the steamboat era was nearing an end, and Staples soon found it impossible to repay his loans. In December 1912 he lost everything, including the James T. Staples. As if that weren’t heartbreaking enough, Staples had suffered the deaths of his infant son, James Alfred; two daughters, Mable Claire and Bertha Jedetta; and an unnamed stillborn baby over the previous six or seven years. Feeling a failure and overcome by depression, on January 2, 1913, the captain aimed a shotgun at his chest and fired. He was buried next to his children in Bladon Springs Cemetery.

  Within days of Staples’s death, the crew of the river-boat, working under new owners, started seeing their former captain’s ghost in the cargo hold, the engine room, and, more ominously, the boiler room. Spooked by the very recognizable spirit, most of the crew, including all the firemen, quit. Some versions of the Staples legend say that rats began to flee from the boat as well—always a bad omen. On January 13, the James T. Staples was docked on the Tombigbee River at Powe’s Landing, unloading freight and taking on supplies. About noon—purportedly the same time Captain Staples had shot himself—the steamboat’s boilers exploded, killing the new captain and twenty-five others. The remaining passengers and crew, twenty-one of them severely injured, made it to safety as the boat became engulfed in flames. Before long, its mooring ropes burned through, and the boat began to drift downriver. A ruined shell, the James T. Staples sank just a few hundred yards from Bladen Springs Cemetery. The captain’s phantom now roams the graveyard. Sometimes he’s seen with his hands against his forehead in remorse. Most often he appears near the graves of his four children.

  Church Street Graveyard

  Mobile

  Church Street Graveyard was founded in 1819. It officially opened the following year as Mobile’s primary burial ground, replacing the older Campo Santo located close to downtown. The new cemetery was closed in 1898, but the city has allowed a few modern interments.

  When Nathaniel Frost was found stabbed to death in the Church Street Graveyard in May 1833, his friend, an out-of-work printer named Charles R. S. Boyington, was accused of murdering him. The only evidence against him was the fact that the pair often walked through the cemetery admiring the headstones, and they had been seen together near the burial ground the day before Frost’s death. Boyington was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to hang. Before his execution was carried out on February 20, 1835, he once again swore he was innocent and said that, as proof, an oak tree would grow from his grave, just above his heart. Because of his murder conviction, Boyington was denied burial in the cemetery proper, so he was laid to rest in a potter’s field near the wall of the cemetery. (Some sources say the grave was actually located outside the wall.) Sure enough, within months an oak tree started growing out of the gravesite. The mighty oak still stands, surrounded by small white posts, at the edge of a parking lot on Bayou Street. Boyington’s ghost has never been seen, but people have claimed to hear the man’s mournful sobs when wind whips through the tree.

  Harrison Cemetery

  Kinston

  The ghost haunting Harrison Cemetery is the revenant of Grancer Harrison, a wealthy cotton planter who had moved to Alabama from Virginia in the 1840s. Harrison was renowned for holding square dances, barbecues, and horse races on his large property along the Pea River. Before his death in 1860, he had a brick mausoleum co
nstructed and covered with a wooden shelter for protection from the elements. He left strict instructions that he was to be buried wearing his dancing shoes and lying on his feather bed instead of being placed inside a coffin. Almost immediately after Harrison’s interment, visitors to the cemetery began to hear the sound of tap dancing on the floor inside the tomb, sometimes inexplicably accompanied by the lively playing of a fiddle. Some say they’ve heard a ghostly male voice—Harrison’s?—calling out square dance moves as well.

  Musgrove Chapel Cemetery

  Winfield

  When Robert Musgrove, a railroad engineer, was killed in a train wreck on April 22, 1904, his family erected an eight-foot white marble obelisk above his grave. The rail man’s ex-wife, Collette Vernier, was among the mourners at the funeral. Although Musgrove and Vernier had gotten divorced, they had remained close. Not long after the services, Vernier moved to Honolulu, where she died a year or two later.

  Sometime in the 1960s, visitors to the grave noticed that a strange mark resembling the silhouette of a woman in a Gibson Girl outfit had appeared on the obelisk. Locals who were alive at the time of the engineer’s burial remembered that Vernier had worn a similar dress to the funeral. The Winfield Journal printed an article about the phenomenon, and before long paranormal enthusiasts were coming from all over the country to see the peculiar image on the stone. The family had the stain sandblasted off, but it returned. Today the obelisk is cracked and broken in a few places, and the Gibson Girl outline is almost imperceptible. But it’s still there! Nonbelievers would say that the faint silhouette had been etched into the tombstone by some unknown hand years earlier and that it had gone unnoticed until erosion and discoloration made it more visible. But who’s to say?

  New Cahaba Cemetery

  Orrville

  A ghost town today with little more than a couple of buildings, some ruins, and an old graveyard, Cahaba (also seen as Cahwaba) was Alabama’s first “permanent” capital. It’s maintained today as a state historical park. The town had two cemeteries. The second, the New Cahaba Cemetery, opened in 1851, and it’s where the ghosts “live.” Paranormal activity there includes disembodied voices, such as the sound of children laughing. The most haunted area of the site is around the grave of Col. John Bell, who, with his son, was gunned down in a shootout on the main street of town in 1856. Perhaps Bell’s spirit is restless because his killers were never brought to justice.

  Oakey Streak Methodist Church Cemetery

  Red Level

  Oakey Streak Cemetery is currently in use and well maintained. More than a hundred of those buried in the graveyard were babies or small children, but none of the ghosts seem to be youngsters. Instead, a variety of other spectres seem to roam the grounds. A large black dog with gleaming red eyes—known in occult circles as a hellhound—is said to wander among the headstones. The ghosts of a regiment of marching soldiers, a Klansman, and an old man in a pickup trying to run drivers off the road have also been seen in and around the cemetery. A wooden church stands next to the burial ground, and, according to legend, a wraith wails and shrieks if someone inside the building is destined to die.

  Some hypothesize that these ghosts are not separate phantoms—that all the paranormal activity is caused by a single unknown entity that assumes whatever shape is necessary to scare visitors off the property. Regardless of how many there are, though frightening, the ghosts seem to be harmless enough. And hauntings there are not new. Native Americans are said to have stayed clear of the area long before the grounds became a cemetery.

  Oak Hill Cemetery

  Birmingham

  At twenty-two acres, Oak Hill Cemetery is Birmingham’s largest graveyard. The city acquired the property in 1873, but there was already at least one grave on the grounds by 1869. People report disembodied whispers near some of the larger grave markers, and a strange legend surrounds a mausoleum near the back of the cemetery. Visitors often see several seashells on the tomb’s steps; if they’re removed, more shells are back on the stairs by the next day.

  ALASKA

  Bayview Cemetery

  Ketchikan

  The Bayview Cemetery south of Ketchikan is located just off Stedman Street, the main route through town. People driving by the cemetery at night have reported momentarily seeing the ghost of a headless woman walking or standing at the side of the road. Seconds later, the phantom’s head appears on the street before quickly disappearing.

  Birch Hill Cemetery

  Fairbanks

  Birch Hill Cemetery opened in 1938. It sits on a hillside overlooking the north side of the city, replacing the Clay Street Cemetery as Fairbanks’s main burial ground. Sections of the graveyard have been set aside for Alaska Natives, Catholics, and fraternal organizations. Although cremation burials continue, the last casket interment at Birch Hill Cemetery took place in 1995. Several apparitions have been observed there, including a seven- or eight-year-old boy in 1930s-style clothes who wanders all over the grounds. There’s also a black, nondescript human figure as well as light orbs floating to and fro. The cemetery’s most famous ghost is the so-called White Lady of Birch Hill, a young girl wearing—what else?—a white dress dating to the early 1900s.

  Kenai Municipal Cemetery

  Kenai

  For such an isolated community, Kenai’s main cemetery certainly has its share of spooks. The one seen most often is that of Arthur Johnson, a former miner who’s often mistaken for a caretaker because he’s seen tending his grave as well as those of others. It’s only when visitors notice the man is translucent that they realize he’s a ghost. A second apparition, an older, overweight woman nicknamed Marie, shows up less frequently. People also occasionally spot one or more unidentified spectres wandering around the back of the graveyard. Legend has it that the anonymous spirits were servants of a wealthy man who brought them to Alaska to help him look for gold. When his fortunes ran sour, the man secretly killed and buried them rather than continue to pay their wages or to send them home.

  ARIZONA

  Boothill Graveyard

  Tombstone

  Tombstone is etched into America’s consciousness as one of the archetypical frontier towns of the Old West. Located southeast of Tucson, the city is most remembered as the site of the notorious 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in which Wyatt Earp, his brothers Virgil and Morgan, and Doc Holliday fought outlaws Billy Claiborne, Ike and Billy Clanton, and Tom and Frank McLaury, collectively known as the Cowboys. Billy Clanton and the McLaurys were killed in the fight; Virgil and Morgan Earp and Holliday were wounded. Ghosts are said to haunt the area where the battle (which lasted all of thirty seconds) took place. Several other spots in the historic area of Old Tombstone are also haunted, including the saloon now known as the Bird Cage Theatre and Big Nose Kate’s restaurant and bar (formerly the Grand Hotel).

  Then there’s Boothill Graveyard, also seen as Boot Hill Graveyard. The pioneer cemetery in Dodge City, Kansas, was the first known to be have been called Boot Hill, possibly because many of the people buried there had died violently “with their boots on,” but the name has become almost synonymous with the graveyard outside Tombstone. Between 1878 and 1884, more than two hundred people were interred there, including the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton. The number no doubt goes much higher. (Many of the head-stones have been lost, worn, vandalized, or stolen.) The graveyard was closed in 1886 when the new City Cemetery was opened. Today’s visitors sometimes see odd lights and hear mysterious sounds. Now and then, spectres appear— even in photographs. It’s also said that from time to time Clanton’s ghost can be seen rising from his grave or walking along AZ 80 from the burial ground into town.

  Ehrenberg Cemetery

  Ehrenberg

  The small town of Ehrenberg was founded in 1869. It was named for German-born Hermann Ehrenberg, who from 1863 until his murder in Dos Palmas on October 9, 1866, served as the Indian agent for the Mojave tribe on the Colorado River Indian Reservation. The town became a riverboat stop on th
e Colorado, and by the mid-1870s it had a population of about five hundred. After steamboat traffic ended and the railroad bypassed it, Ehrenberg became a ghost town. All that remains on the site is the old graveyard. A sign placed there by the La Paz County Historical Commission reads: “Pioneer Cemetery. First used sometime after June 16, 1862. Some of Arizona’s earliest pioneers, people of every race and moral persuasion, lie here in eternal peace. The last burial was on April 22, 1988.”

  But not all the souls buried there do lie in peace. A local resident and author, Martha Summerhayes, wrote as early as 1908 that hauntings were common in the graveyard. Phantoms would frequently wave to her and other passersby. Modern-day visitors have reported dank odors with no obvious source and glowing orbs. And the ghosts are still there, too! They include the apparition of a little girl, wan and visibly ailing, carrying a rag doll.

  ARKANSAS

  Avon Cemetery

  DeQueen

  There’s a water well in the middle of the Avon Cemetery that long predates the burial ground, which was founded in 1902. If you drop a rock down the well in the middle of the night, you’ll hear the ghostly sound of a baby crying. Some people have even seen the apparition of the infant’s mother running toward them from the area where a church once stood. It’s said that way back when, in the pre-graveyard days, a woman sat her child on the edge of the well while drawing water. The baby fell in and drowned, and the tragedy has led to the hauntings.

  Evergreen Cemetery

  Judsonia

  Evergreen Cemetery was established in 1874 and contains about three thousand interments. Many of its early graves were marked with elaborate, unique statuary. The sculpture of interest to paranormalists is located near the front entrance of the burial ground. The figure represents a young woman (or, some say, angel) holding a wreath, and it stands over the grave of Laura Lee Henson. She died at the age of eighteen on November 25, 1914, from injuries she received in a fire. The statue can be unexpectedly intimidating: If you stand directly beneath it at night and look up, the figure appears to be gazing directly at you. Sometimes its eyes glow a bright red.