Haunted Cemeteries Page 8

  Jim turned his Cherokee up the gravel path and parked at the edge of the cemetery. The graveyard was completely surrounded by a chain-link fence, and a red-and-white “No Trespassing” sign hung prominently by the locked gate.

  Jim looked around. There was no one in sight. What harm could it do to hop the fence? Yes, if he were caught, the maximum fine would be one thousand dollars and up to six months in prison. But he was a reporter. Didn’t he have some kind of immunity?

  As Jim was about to climb over, a patrol car with flashing red lights came up the drive and stopped next to his Jeep. The county sheriff swung out of the car and sauntered over to where the reporter was standing.

  “Yes, Officer. Can I help you?”

  “Well, I was about to ask you the same thing. What brings you up here to the old cemetery?”

  Jim explained who he was and how his editor wanted some new take on the legends about the son of Satan being buried there. It was said that the devil-boy could cause buildings to burn down. And his voice had allegedly been caught on video and tape recorders. Was any of that stuff true?

  “Nope, never seen or heard anything like that,” the sheriff assured him. “Nobody has. But every year about this time we get hundreds of crazies out here trying to see for themselves. The locals don’t like it much. Can’t say as I blame ’em. How would you feel if some of your family was buried here and a bunch of drunken, stoned kids started running all over the place, spray-painting tombstones, knocking them over? That’s why we put up the fence. Not that it stops ’em half the time. If no one’s around, they just jump over.”

  Before Jim had a chance to admit he had been considering doing the same thing, the policeman offered to tell him the whole story if he followed him to the diner where he was about to have lunch.

  Jim went along, and he got an earful.

  According to the old wives’ tale, sometime in the ancient past Satan decided that every Halloween at midnight, he would collect the souls of all the people who had died violently during the previous year. They would meet at two places on opposite sides of the globe. In the 1850s, the devil made Stull, Kansas, a permanent gathering site because of a nefarious murder that once took place in the hamlet.

  There were two other reasons he chose Stull Cemetery. It would give Satan the chance to visit one of his favorite witches, who was buried in the graveyard under a tombstone bearing the name “Wittich.”

  Plus, the cemetery held the remains of his son, who was half-demon, half-human. (The boy’s mother was also a witch.) There have been many descriptions of the infant, but all of them suggest he was misshapen in some terrible way. Some say he had red hair covering his entire body; others insist he had two rows of sharp teeth on each jaw. One tale alleges he was a hermaphrodite.

  In some versions of the devil-boy story, he died as a baby, but in most tales, he lived to be about ten years old. In those, he was chained under a house so that townsfolk would never see him, but he escaped by chewing off one of his own hands. The lad was on the loose for almost a year, murdering anyone he came into contact with. Eventually a farmer tracked him down and killed him. The residents of Stull, unaware of the boy’s parentage, allowed the fiendish child to be buried in the nearby cemetery, but they never put a marker on the grave.

  Because of its purported connection to the devil, Stull Cemetery acquired many nicknames, such as “Satan’s Burial Ground” and “The Cemetery of the Damned.” But the one that seems to have stuck is “The Seventh Gate to Hell.”

  “But how can anyone believe such stuff?” Jim asked the officer incredulously. “And how did the stories get started?”

  The sheriff told him that the folklore has been part and parcel of Stull for more than a century, but the tale never took hold until it appeared in the student newspaper at a Kansas university in 1974. The article changed the legend slightly, claiming the devil appeared in Stull Cemetery twice a year—on Halloween and the vernal (or spring) equinox.

  On the evening of March 20, 1978, more than 150 people, mostly rowdy college kids, showed up at the burial grounds to see Satan and his lost souls appear at the stroke of midnight. Many decided that the spirits of all the people buried in the cemetery, no doubt including the demon boy, would rise up and join them.

  The unrestrained crowd trampled the grounds, causing extensive damage. Unfortunately, the free-for-all that night wasn’t a one-off. Visiting the graveyard on the last night of winter and on October 31 became an annual ritual. By the late 1980s, almost five hundred people, from the merely curious to hard-core devil worshippers, were showing up on Halloween. In the 1990s deputies had to be brought in to maintain order, and by the end of the decade, conduct had become so bad that police were disbursing crowds long before the Witching Hour.

  “Something had to be done,” the sheriff told Jim as he finished up dessert. “And that’s why no one is allowed on the property anymore without permission. It’s sad, but at least the people buried there can rest in peace.”

  Or could they? Although Jim was given a perfect hook on which to hang his story that year—the debunking of the devil baby by an officer of the law—the infamous legends would never really go away.

  People still say the ghost of Satan’s son walks the grounds and that he’s a shapeshifter. He can change into a cat (always a witch’s favorite), a fiery-eyed hellhound, or, most often, a werewolf.

  When Pope John Paul II attended a World Youth Day conference in Denver in 1993, he is said to have ordered his pilot to change the plane’s flight path so that he wouldn’t fly over unholy ground.

  Spirit orbs and luminescent ghost lights are said to pop up all over the property throughout the year, especially near the ruins of an old church that used to sit high up on the ridge overlooking the cemetery. The chapel, built back in the nineteenth century, had been unused since 1922. It stood there, deteriorating for years, until it was torn down in 2002.

  Finally, the ghost of a witch who’s buried in the graveyard (and who may or may not be Satan’s favorite or the devil-boy’s mother) allegedly materializes in the form of a tall, withered banshee with stringy white hair. She’s been known to curse anyone who accidentally walks on her unmarked grave.

  Locals not only swear that the ghost stories are a bunch of hogwash, but they’re also upset about the trouble, heartbreak, and vandalism the rumors have caused the community. All they can do is tell the truth and hope folks will listen. But, in the end, it all comes down to what people want to believe.

  Chapter 12

  The Lady in Gray

  Shortly after the Civil War, an unidentified woman dressed all in gray began to visit the Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery, always looking for one specific grave. Years later, she Crossed Over herself. The Lady in Gray, as she’s called, has returned from the Afterlife to once again roam the burial ground.

  The men setting the new headstones watched as a silent figure walked through the cemetery gates. The graveyard had been part of the Civil War–era Camp Chase, which was decommissioned after Appomattox. All the buildings in the fort were torn down almost immediately, and the wood was used for other projects in the city. But the burial grounds were left intact. Now here the men were, forty-one years later, replacing the old wooden markers over the graves with granite tombstones authorized by the federal government.

  The stranger didn’t seem to notice the workers. She was dressed in a gray traveling outfit, complete with the high collar and long pleated skirt that had been popular decades earlier. The woman seemed to know exactly where she was heading among the hundreds of markers. She finally paused over a single grave and bowed her head. The somber young lady quietly knelt and then broke into tears. Who is the enigmatic mourner? the workers wondered. Was it a mother, a sister? A sweetheart or wife?

  After watching her for several minutes, the men went back to work. They never saw her depart. It was only when their shift was done that they noticed she was no longer holding vigil. Curious, one of the guys walked over to check out the gr
ave where the ghostly figure had been. It belonged to a Benjamin F. Allen, who had been a private in the Fiftieth Tennessee Regiment, Company D. The woman had left behind a handful of flowers.

  The workers didn’t know that they weren’t the first to see the mysterious soul. Although memories of her earliest visits are lost to history, it’s thought that the nameless woman began coming to the cemetery immediately after the War Between the States was over, when civilians would have first been allowed to enter the grounds.

  At the time, no one thought to ask the visitor who she was. It was clear from her composure that she wanted to be left alone. Intruding on the private reverie of a woman was something that just wasn’t done, so she became known simply as the Lady in Gray.

  Whenever she showed up, her routine was always the same. She would be spotted already on the grounds, without anyone having seen her arrive. She’d head straight for where Allen was buried, then spend several minutes in solitary meditation at his grave. At some point people would realize that, somehow, she was gone. And every time, a small bunch of flowers was left as a reminder of her stay.

  Time passed. Years went by. Still, the faithful caller showed up at the soldier’s grave. By the end of the century, however, her visits were becoming less frequent. Then, one day, they stopped altogether. It was feared that the soldier’s soul mate had died.

  Imagine everyone’s surprise when, after an extended absence, the curious woman began to turn up again. But she seemed, well, different—more radiant, spirit-like, bearing some sort of ineffable lightness about her.

  Also, rather than walking solemnly among the head-stones the way she used to, she appeared to float among them. In fact, it sometimes looked as if she floated right through them. The same was true whenever she approached the cemetery walls or one of the few trees scattered around the property. She never seemed to divert her path to go around them, yet one minute she was on one side, then inexplicably on the other.

  By the middle of the twentieth century, with every survivor of the Civil War era gone and the woman continuing to manifest at Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery, the truth became obvious: The Lady in Gray was a ghost.

  In time, her appearances became the stuff of myth, in large part because her figure often remained invisible. But people passing by Allen’s grave could hear her sad, disem-bodied weeping. Sometimes, even on days when no one had seen or heard the spectre, it was obvious she’d been there, because flowers were found neatly placed at the base of the soldier’s headstone. Often the caretaker opening the cemetery in the morning would discover that fresh-cut flowers had unaccountably appeared overnight while the graveyard was locked up tight.

  Few visiting the cemetery today can appreciate the importance the site once held during the bitter struggle of the Civil War. Although seven Southern states had already seceded from the Union by the time Abraham Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861, the first shots weren’t fired until Rebel forces attacked Fort Sumter on April 12. Overnight, the North needed additional staging grounds to train and process recruits to fight against the Confederacy. They would also need someplace to muster out soldiers when their enlistment was over.

  Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio, was built on six acres of farmland leased by the government four miles west of downtown. Established in May 1861 as Camp Jackson, it was dedicated under its new name a month later, on June 20, in honor of Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Portland Chase, former governor of Ohio. The camp’s main entrance was on the National Road, now Broad Street. The fort was bordered on the other sides by present-day Hague Avenue (to the east), Sullivant Avenue (to the south), and Westgate Avenue (to the west).

  By the middle of 1862, the facility was being used to hold Confederate prisoners of war as well as political prisoners. Over the next three years, the inmate population grew to reach just under 9,500. The numbers always exceeded stated capacity; as a result, the men suffered from inadequate housing, bedding, clothing, medical supplies, and food rations. Many considered themselves lucky to be inside out of the weather. There were more than 150 buildings, but some of the soldiers were forced to sleep outside in tents.

  Conditions in the overcrowded huts were claustrophobic, though. Often two men had to share a single bunk. The close quarters were a breeding ground for the rapid transmission of disease. During a smallpox outbreak, about five hundred men died in a single month.

  In 1863, about two acres of the camp were set aside as a graveyard, its perimeter marked off by a low fence. The remains of prisoners who had been buried up to that time in the Columbus City Cemetery were moved to the camp and reinterred next to their comrades.

  Initially the marker for a Confederate soldier was no more than a slim piece of wood with the grave’s number and the person’s name. But when William Knauss, a retired Union colonel, came upon the abandoned and overgrown cemetery in 1895, he made it his mission to have the place refurbished and decent markers provided for the fallen.

  He began to hold memorial services to honor the soldiers, and soon the public began to view the renovation of the Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery as a moral imperative. In 1902, with the restoration complete, Ohio governor George Nash dedicated a tall, commemorative arch in the center of the burial grounds, topped by a bronze statue of a Rebel soldier, standing with rifle in hand. The granite arch-way spanned a large boulder, which had irregular lettering etched into the stone reading: “2260 Confederate Soldiers of the War 1861–1865 Buried in This Enclosure.” A single word was engraved in the arch’s keystone: “American.”

  In 1906, the US Congress approved legislation to replace all the worn wooden markers with marble tombstones similar to those for veterans found in all federal cemeteries. The two-foot-high, triangular-peaked headstones, placed in evenly spaced rows, were designed to be identical save for the inscriptions. Each marker lists, in five lines from top to bottom, the location number of the grave, the deceased’s name, company, regiment, and, finally, military affiliation.

  For most of those buried in the cemetery, that last line was C.S.A., for Confederate States of America. But anyone who died while working at the camp or otherwise serving the country could be buried in the cemetery. As a result, a few of the people interred there were identified as “citizen.” And, as is traditional, there was also a headstone put in place for the Unknown Soldier.

  In 1921 a permanent stone wall topped by a wrought-iron fence was constructed to enclose the graveyard. Today, the Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery can be visited by one and all. A memorial service is held there each year by the Daughters of the Confederacy, and as the last remnant of one of the North’s largest prisoner-of-war camps, the graveyard is of special interest to history buffs.

  It also has a special fascination for ghost hunters.

  The Lady in Gray doesn’t announce her visits in advance, so chances are slim that you will ever be there at the right time to see her. But, please, if you do, respect her privacy. Allow her the few minutes alone she needs to lament her tragic loss. Once she’s gone, you’ll be able to see the flowers on Benjamin Allen’s grave for yourself.

  Whatever you do, don’t feel sorry for her. Instead, rejoice in the knowledge that love can be eternal—even extending into the Next World.

  Chapter 13

  The Queen of Voodoo

  St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 in New Orleans is home to the tomb of Marie Laveau, the notorious nineteenth-century Queen of Voodoo. Or is it? Her restless spirit is said to appear in the graveyard in the form of a gigantic black crow or a phantom black hellhound— that is, when she’s not walking through the French Quarter.

  “Chaos” was perhaps too strong a word. But to Sharon, Mardi Gras was everything she had heard it would be and more: loud, colorful, frantic, riotous, uninhibited. And most of all, fun.

  Yes, she was sure the celebration wasn’t as grand as it was in the “old days,” that is, before Hurricane Katrina, as so many people had pointed out after discovering it was her first time to New Orleans. Nevertheless, betwe
en the parades and floats, the music, the costumes, and merrymakers in the street, Sharon had gone into sensory overload.

  Mind you, she probably hadn’t truly gotten into the complete Mardi Gras spirit, proven by the fact that she could remember it. She did, however, get her token neck-load of beads—even though, she was quick to point out, she had obtained them without having to flash any skin. (She had no interest in showing up in a stranger’s YouTube video or as a bonus cut on Girls Gone Wild.)

  Sharon was surprised she had made it all the way through. True, she had only been there for the last three days for the climax of the festivities. Carnival parties had been going strong for nine days before that. But who has that kind of stamina? she wondered. How do the locals cope every year?

  Of course, Mardi Gras celebrations have been a Big Easy tradition literally from the day the town was born. In 1699, as part of France’s attempt to colonize its holdings in what is today Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, French Canadian explorer Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne sailed up the Mississippi River and anchored about sixty miles south of what is today New Orleans. Because he made landfall on Fat Tuesday, he named the spot Pointe du Mardi Gras. Thus, if in name only, Mardi Gras has always been a part of Louisiana’s heritage.

  The city of New Orleans was founded on May 7, 1718, named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who was then regent of France. By the 1730s, Mardi Gras (already a European tradition) was being celebrated with elaborate society balls and masques. A hundred years later, costumed roisterers were filling the streets. In 1875, Mardi Gras was made a legal holiday.

  And the rest, as they say, is history.

  Sharon woke with a start. She rolled over and looked at the bedside stand in her hotel room. What time was it? Seven a.m.? How could she possibly have woken up so early? She hadn’t gotten to bed until almost three, and even then she’d had to fall asleep to the sound of the saturnalia still going on outside her window.