by Tom Ogden
VERMONT
Green Mount Cemetery
Montpelier
Green Mount Cemetery, with three thousand interments, was founded on thirty-five acres in 1854. The hillside on which it was located already had graves dating back to 1799. The ghost of an eight- or nine-year-old girl haunts the burial ground. She smiles and talks to people. Most visitors who see the youngster mistake her for a flesh-and-blood girl until she abruptly disappears.
The cemetery is also famous for its monuments, sculptures, and other funerary art. Paranormal aficionados are fascinated by one work in particular. Its Austrian-born sculptor, Karl Bitter, called the statue Thanos, Greek for “death,” but it has acquired a more sinister nickname: Black Agnes. The statue marks the grave of John Erastus Hubbard, a Montpelier businessman who died in 1899. Locals claim that there are dire consequences for anyone foolish enough to climb up and sit in Black Agnes’s lap. Legend varies as to what will happen to the transgressor, but none of the options are pleasant. One version says the offender will either suffer three strokes of bad luck or be doomed to an unbroken series of misfortunes. An alternate telling of the tale alleges the wrongdoer will die within seven days. A variation contends the person will die only if there’s a full moon when he or she hops up onto the statue; another says death comes to anyone who lies down on Black Agnes’s lap. A story circulates that three teenage boys once decided to tempt fate and sat on the statue, one after the other. The next week one of them was in a horrific car crash, another broke his leg, and the third drowned in a canoeing accident on the Winooski River. (Compare this tale to the Black Aggie legend on page 195.)
Williamsville Cemetery
Williamsville
Williamsville Cemetery dates to 1793 and has about six hundred graves. How long it’s been haunted is uncertain, but a tale concerning two of the people interred there has entered local folklore. They were a married couple, deeply in love. The wife passed away first and was buried on one side of Depot Road, a small street that runs through the cemetery. When the husband died several years later, for some unknown reason he was interred on the other side of the road rather than next to his wife. Ever since, every autumn on the night of their anniversary, their spirits materialize and meet for one brief evening in the center of Depot Road.
VIRGINIA
Hollywood Cemetery
Richmond
In 1869, two years after Hollywood Cemetery was opened, a ninety-foot granite pyramid was erected to commemorate the more than eighteen thousand Confederate soldiers buried there. Eerie moaning sounds are heard near the stone memorial, but that’s not the graveyard’s only paranormal activity. Jefferson Davis’s mournful spectre has been seen near his grave. (His ghost more often appears in the casements of Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, where he was held for two years after the Civil War ended.)
After a little girl was buried in Hollywood Cemetery in 1892, local merchants donated a cast-iron statue of a dog to mark her grave. The youngster must like the figure, because her apparition has been seen playing with it. Disembodied barking dogs are heard in the burial ground, but not from around the child’s grave. Instead, they come from the area where author Ellen Glasgow is interred. When she died, her two pet canines were buried with her.
McDowell Cemetery
Fairfield
On December 14, 1742, Capt. John McDowell led a local militia that attacked a band of Iroquois (specifically, Oneida of the Delaware tribe) that was passing through the area. Initially, the Native Americans were peaceful and were welcomed by the McDowells, but as the Indians continued southward they reportedly began to terrorize locals. Responding to pleas by their neighbors, the militiamen assembled to escort the Native Americans out of the region. Unfortunately, at Balcony Falls, a warning shot by one of the soldiers set off a full-blown skirmish with the Indians. The resulting battle has become known as the Massacre of Balcony Downs. It ended with at least seventeen Native Americans and eight settlers dead, including Captain McDowell.
McDowell was buried in the family cemetery on his farm. The small graveyard. about 188 feet by 76 feet, is still there. Folks have whispered for years that the ghost of a headless soldier wearing a long overcoat walks among the cemetery’s headstones. Some have suggested it’s McDowell, even though he wasn’t decapitated in the fight. One ghost hunter has described seeing several phantom soldiers marching in formation in the burial ground. The sound of shrieks and flickering lights also emanate from the site.
Monument Hill at Sweet Briar
Sweet Briar
When Indiana “Miss Indie” Fletcher Williams died in 1900, she left a million dollars and her eight-thousand-acre Sweet Briar plantation to establish a woman’s college. The property included the old family burial ground. Technically named Monument Hill at Sweet Briar, the graveyard is also known as the Fletcher-Williams family cemetery and the Sweet Briar Columbarium. Interments there include Williams’s daughter Daisy, who died at the age of sixteen. Shortly after the school was founded, someone pried a stake out of the graveyard’s fence and smashed Daisy’s tombstone. (Some think the vandal may have been a disgruntled relative who was unhappy with the will.) A new marker was built, and a tall pillar was erected as part of the monument, topped by a statue of Daisy. The sculpture has been nicknamed the “Screaming Statue” because it emits high-pitched, whistling sounds. According to popular legend, the phenomenon is Daisy’s ghost announcing her presence. (Spoiler alert: More likely, the whine is caused by wind blowing through a hole in the figure’s hand.)
WASHINGTON
Bayview Cemetery
Bellingham
Visitors to Bayview Cemetery have experienced hot spots and, now and then, spectres floating about. The graveyard is most famous for legends surrounding two of its grave markers. The story goes that anyone who lies down on the so-called Death Bed, a columned monument with a flat top, will die within days—or at least have an early death. A statue nicknamed “Angel Eyes” is believed to be the “home” of an unidentified apparition that roams the cemetery.
Black Diamond Cemetery
Black Diamond
Founded in 1884, Black Diamond Cemetery is the final resting place for many local coal workers, including some of those who died in mine explosions in 1902, 1910, and 1925. Many children, victims of epidemics in the early 1900s, and one or more Civil War veterans are there as well. The four-acre burial ground was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. The spirits of several miners, sometimes carrying lanterns, have appeared in the graveyard at night. A disembodied whistling sound has often been attributed to them. Many visitors have reported the sensation of being watched by unseen eyes, and a few have seen a phantom white horse walking among the graves.
Carnation Cemetery
Carnation
If it’s not the most haunted graveyard in Washington, Carnation Cemetery, also known as Old Tolt Cemetery, in certainly in the running. The ghost that’s seen most often is a Woman in White. Like many self-respecting spectres, she instantly vanishes if you try to approach her. Another female spirit is sometimes seen carrying a spectral baby. Urban legend says this second adult was a pregnant woman who died in a car accident. Because of her untimely demise, some people think she may be the source of headaches, sharp pains, and blurred vision they experience while on the grounds. (Some have suggested that the two adult apparitions are the same phantom.) Other paranormal activity includes the sounds of whispering, a baby crying, and footsteps.
Comet Lodge Cemetery
Seattle
Comet Lodge Cemetery was a sacred burial ground for the native Duwamish Nation in the early 1800s, but in 1881 the site became a graveyard for white settlers. By the 1930s, families were burying their kin elsewhere, and the cemetery on Beacon Hill fell into despair. Then in the 1980s, the City of Seattle allowed some of the property to be bulldozed for real estate development, including a section in which pioneer children had been buried. Perhaps that’s why most of the ghosts seen wanderin
g the graveyard are youngsters.
Maltby Cemetery
Bothell
Maltby Cemetery, also known as Paradise Valley Cemetery, is one the most talked-about graveyards in Washington State, but the infamy doesn’t come from its ghosts. Yes, visitors have seen nighttime phantoms there, mostly spectres of women and children in torn and tattered clothes. But most of the old wives’ tales concern a set of thirteen steps that supposedly led down to an underground crypt belonging to a very wealthy family. There was nothing to be found at the bottom of the staircase, but it was claimed that when people turned to walk back up, they saw a terrifying vision of Hell. Some of them screamed or felt disoriented and light-headed. Others fainted or went insane—or died. The cemetery was never fond of after-hours trespassers, and the rumors about there being a portal to the Underworld on the grounds didn’t help. The stairway was covered over and the earth leveled, so it’s now impossible to test whether Maltby really does contain “Thirteen Steps to Hell.”
Thorp Cemetery
Thorp
As in much of the Old West, there were clashes in Thorp between the Native Americans and frontier settlers in the nineteenth century. According to one tale, in the 1890s unknown assailants hanged a Native American woman named Suzy in Thorp Cemetery, and her ghost has haunted the graveyard ever since. Most of time she’s seen riding a white horse, but she’s also been spotted standing next to tombstones, crying.
WEST VIRGINIA
Highland Cemetery
Mannington
Highland Cemetery, a tiny, rural burial ground, has had fewer than fifty interments. Nine burials, dated from 1929 to 1989, are identified with markers. Despite its small size and few occupants, the graveyard has two spectres. Urban legend says that they were a married couple named Sarah and Tusca. She was a witch; he was a warlock. Today their spirits materialize near Sarah’s grave, but they both vanish if anyone tries to come near them.
Isaac-Sloane Cemetery
West Hamlin
Isaac-Sloane Cemetery, containing about two hundred souls, was founded in the late 1800s. Two of the three spirits haunting the modest graveyard are twin baby girls, Faith and Hope, who died at birth in 2000. A few visitors claimed that they saw their ghosts, but most people simply hear them crying or laughing. The other phantom is a grown woman who sneaks up behind folks and blows on or into their ears. Sometimes she’ll even whisper a question of some sort.
Spry Cemetery
Harts
There’s an old wives’ tale that an apparition named Dixie haunts Spry Cemetery. She’s said to have died giving birth and was buried next to her stillborn baby, Charlie. On evenings with a full moon, Dixie’s spectre can be seen rocking a phantom infant in her arms. Both spirits are softly crying. Because they’re dressed in white, they seem to glow in the moonlight—as do the inscriptions on their tombstones. Like all good ghost stories, the yarn has some basis in fact. There is, indeed, a Dixie V. Counts buried in the cemetery. In 1932 she gave birth to a daughter, Nora Louise. Born premature, the girl only lived for twelve hours. Dixie had another baby, Charles, in 1938. Dixie died of tuberculosis the following year, and Charlie succumbed to the disease two months later, shortly after his first birthday. Close enough?
There’s another urban legend concerning the graveyard, this one dating back to the 1950s. It’s a common story in folklore and has been attributed to many places. A notoriously ill-tempered man boasted to everyone in town that he was strong and wily enough to beat the devil. Well, the next night as the man was walking by Spry Cemetery, the devil appeared on the footbridge leading into the burial ground. The man dared the demon to come over to the road to fight, but the devil simply laughed. He said the man only made the boast because he knew the devil couldn’t cross running water. The demon then disappeared. The next day, cloven hoof prints were discovered on the wooden bridge, burned into the planks.
Stewart’s Road Cemetery
Philippi
Stewart’s Road Cemetery, or just Stewart Cemetery, has fifty interments, ten of which are marked. It’s said that drivers approaching the graveyard round a bend to find a woman standing in the middle of the road, pointing at them. As they smash into her, she evaporates. No evidence of an accident is ever found. Folks who enter the cemetery at night say they feel phantom bodies and hands pushing up against them from all sides.
Woodlawn Cemetery
Bluewell
Also known as Woodlawn Memorial Park, this large graveyard, established in the early 1930s, covers thirty acres. There have been more than sixteen thousand burials over the past eighty years, but almost all the ghosts appear in the oldest sections of the cemetery. If encountered, they invariably tell visitors to leave. The graveyard’s Waterfall Mausoleum, built in the 1960s, is also haunted. Sometimes at night, tapping is heard coming from inside the tomb. Daytime visitors occasionally catch a whiff of inexplicable, obnoxious odors near the sepulcher. Others have run into spectres outside the mausoleum, not realizing they were ghosts until they suddenly disappeared.
WISCONSIN
Dartford Cemetery
Green Lake
Dartford Cemetery takes its name from the village of Dart-ford, which later became Green Lake. There are more than 2,500 interments in the graveyard, some of them dating back to the mid-1800s. The burial ground’s best-known ghost is Chief Highknocker, the last Winnebago chief in the area. His real name was Hanageh, but settlers from the East nicknamed him Highknocker because of the tall stovepipe hat he always wore.
The chief drowned while trying to swim across a local river in 1911. Rumor has it that he was inebriated at the time and took up the challenge as a dare. Most sources say it was the Fox River, although the Green Lake Visitors Guide maintains it was the Puchyan River, a tributary of the Fox. Highknocker was buried along the river until the 1930s, when his son moved his remains to the Dartford Cemetery to be closer to the chief’s beloved lake. The grave is marked with an upturned boulder taken from the lake and is inscribed with a folk-art drawing of the chief. His spirit roams the graveyard as well as its surroundings. Visitors have also seen dark human-shaped shadows and light orbs in the burial ground.
There are apparitions of Civil War soldiers, too, seen separately and in small groups marching through the cemetery. People will hear odd sounds and often feel they’re being watched or followed. Tombstones move or disappear. And near the south end of the graveyard there’s an aboveground tomb with a rounded top that contains an entire family, including several children who were felled by the same disease, reportedly polio. The youngsters’ spectres are occasionally spotted walking around the cemetery. According to legend, anyone who sits on top of their mausoleum will be pushed off by invisible hands.
WYOMING
Fort Bridger Cemetery
Fort Bridger
This 1,100-grave cemetery dates to the early 1840s. It’s no longer haunted, but a ghost story from thirty years ago is worth retelling. In May 1987 a local man named Carl Vestal Dean died at the age of sixty-six and was buried in Fort Bridger Cemetery. Within a few months, his apparition started to appear on the burial grounds. The tall spectre, wearing a cowboy hat, would follow the caretaker, Ramon Arthur, sometimes helping with chores. At first the caretaker didn’t recognize the man. Once he did, of course, he realized he was seeing a ghost. The encounters continued until the following June, when Dean’s widow, Alma Grace, died. Once she was buried beside Carl, his ghost never returned.
Iona-Kane Cemetery
Greybull
The Iona-Kane Cemetery, also known as Kane Cemetery, has about a hundred burials dating back to 1903. Its most interesting spook is The Blue Lady, so-called because she’s enveloped in a bluish aura. She’s beautiful when spotted from a distance but gets more and more hideous as she approaches. Similar to the La Llorona legend in Mexican folklore, it’s said that The Blue Lady had an abusive husband, went mad, and drowned her children. She’s now fated to wander the earth in search of them.
Mount Pisg
ah Cemetery
Gillette
Almost six thousand people are buried in Mount Pisgah Cemetery, a pioneer burial ground dating back to the late 1870s. Multiple ghosts populate it. Most of the spectres linger by their graves, although one of them—a Woman in White with no face—roams the entire cemetery. There’s also a phantom male jogger who’s seen only during the day. He materializes in late afternoon but is gone by sunset.
WASHINGTON, DC
Congressional Cemetery
Congressional Cemetery has sixty-five thousand interments, but just three ghosts are known to haunt it. The first is John Philip Sousa, known as “the March King.” The celebrated longtime conductor of the Marine Band wrote such classics songs as “Semper Fidelis,” “The Washington Post,” and, of course, “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” On nights when there’s no moon, visitors hear the spectral sound of a sousaphone emanating from the area of the composer-conductor’s grave.
Photographer Mathew Brady is famous for his mid-nineteenth- century portraits as well as the stunning but graphic Civil War images he and his men captured on the battlefields. He shot the photos at his own expense, assuming the government would want to acquire them later for their historical value. By the time Congress finally purchased them in 1875, Brady was penniless and too deep in debt to recover. Veterans from the 7th New York Infantry paid for his funeral and burial in the Congressional Cemetery. People believe that Mathew Brady’s ghost is the slouching, elderly, bearded spectre they see walking among the gravestones in a wide-brimmed hat and overcoat.