Despite their macabre associations, graveyards aren’t usually ground zero when it comes to reported hauntings—maybe because the connection is just too obvious. Nevertheless, there are a collection of strange graves around the country that have more than their fair share of legends, often nourished by disease epidemics and unusual inscriptions.
Several of them are favorite spots for Halloween excursions, although if you visit, remember to respect the dead no matter how creepy their grave. Better yet, make yourself a seasonal beverage and enjoy these spooky tales from the comfort of your own home. You’re much less likely to get cursed.
THE WEEPING WOMAN – CALIFORNIA
The Adelaida Cemetery in Paso Robles is a favorite haunt for local ghost-hunters, who describe strange mists, glowing scarlet eyes, and the sounds of footsteps following them around the graveyard. But the most persistent legend among the moss-draped trees relates to Charlotte M. Sitton, supposedly a Mennonite woman whose children both died in a diphtheria epidemic.
A distraught Sitton ended her own life, according to some accounts by hanging herself in the local school. Today she’s said to appear every Friday evening between 10 and 11:30 p.m. to lay flowers at her childrens’ grave, and then to wander among the trees and headstones in a white dress, weeping.
THE VAMPIRE’S GRAVE – COLORADO
Perhaps it’s not surprising that a grave with “born in Transylvania” etched on the stone would invite vampire comparisons, but the people of Lafayette have really gone all-out. Local legends say that a tree growing over the grave sprung from the stake that killed the vampire inside, and that the red rosebushes nearby are his bloody fingernails still growing after death.
There are also reports of a tall, slender man in a dark coat with black hair and long fingernails who sometimes sits on the tombstone, and a local police chief said he once found a doll stuck with pins through its heart laying on top of the grave. It’s not clear what the man who bought the plot—Fodor Glava, a miner who died in 1918—would have thought of all the stories, especially since he might not have actually been buried there.
Nevertheless, his crudely etched tombstone (its evident haste perhaps the result of the 1918 flu epidemic) has become a popular place to take pictures on Halloween.
MIDNIGHT MARY – CONNECTICUT
The Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven is home to another grave with an unusual—and far more troubling—inscription: the phrase “The people shall be troubled at midnight and pass away” ring the top half of Mary E. Hart’s grave. Hart reportedly died under unusual circumstances in 1872, and her quick death combined with her odd tombstone have given rise to some strange legends.
It’s said that Hart was a witch and that the inscription on her grave is a curse, and that if you visit her final resting place at midnight, she’ll rise from the grave and make sure you die a horrible death. If you strike her grave at any time, you’ll die that night at midnight. (Killjoy myth-busters like to point out that the line is actually a Bible verse, from Job 34:20.)
THE UNDEAD CRYPT-KEEPER – NEW YORK
In the bucolic West Edmeston cemetery off Route 8 near the Unadilla River stands an austere mausoleum in honor of one Eunice Welch. There was nothing unusual about Eunice’s death—she was in her seventies when she died in 1922 of natural causes—but in the decades since, a legend has arisen of an undead crypt-keeper living inside her mausoleum.
Supposedly, if you knock on the door, you’ll soon hear a rustling from inside the brick, and after a few moments your knock will be returned.
There are even reports of a voice hissing “Leave me, leave me, go!” from inside. By some accounts, the mausoleum is a former winter storage space where bodies were kept before the spring thaw—when it was too cold to dig graves—so it’s possible that whoever is haunting the crypt today has nothing to do with Welch herself. In fact, her actual grave is located in another part of the cemetery.
THE CURSE OF THE COLONEL – MAINE
The gray stone tomb of Bucksport town founder Colonel Jonathan Buck looks ordinary enough, except for a rather suspicious-looking stain. The mark resembles a person’s lower leg and foot, and is said to have come about after Buck burned a witch, whose leg then rolled out of the fire.
Seeing his mother’s charred appendage, the witch’s deformed son allegedly shouted “Your tomb shall bear the mark of a witch’s foot for all eternity!” According to Roadside America, the fact that Buck didn’t have the authority to be burning any witches hasn’t stopped the grave from becoming a bonafide tourist stop, complete with a wheelchair-friendly ramp leading up to the site and its image emblazoned on local postcards.
Supposedly, Buck’s heirs have repeatedly tried cleaning the grave, but the stain always comes back … clear evidence of a curse, or perhaps a particularly stubborn crack that lets in the rain.
