There are stories the world over of haunted cemeteries. In America we have many such cemeteries. Perhaps the one that comes to mind fastest is Resurrection Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois. This is a “hitchhiker” story. The story began in the 1930’s and goes like this. A young man meets a beautiful young woman at the Willow brook Ballroom. They dance and she is sweet if quiet. She is often cool to the touch. The young woman says suddenly that she must go home. The young man does not want to let the girl go home alone, and so they insist on taking her home. She gets in the car and gives directions that take them down Archer Avenue toward Resurrection Cemetery. Suddenly she insists that they stop just before the gates of the cemetery. She gets out of the car and hurries into the darkness. Some of the young men insisted that they saw her melt through the gates of the cemetery.
The young woman is said to be Mary Bregovy who died in a car crash in 1934. Others speculate that it is Anna Norkus who died in a car wreck in 1927 on her way home from Oh Henry Ballroom. Stories of young men meeting Resurrection Mary in other night clubs and ballrooms also abound, so perhaps Anna is the specter who loves to dance.
Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery in the suburbs of Chicago Illinois. This cemetery is the home of more than one ghost. There is the story of the “White Madonna.” This is a young woman seen walking the cemetery grounds at night rocking a baby in her arms. There are stories of a ghostly farm house that sits back a path on the cemetery grounds. The house once existed but has since been torn down. People occasionally see the house and are floored when a few minutes later it has disappeared. Similarly, a farmer and a mule are seen plowing at night not far from the house. The most famous photograph taken from the cemetery is that of the girl on a bench. People talked about seeing a young woman from the 1930’s sitting on the bench at the foot of her grave. A group from the area decided to try and capture her image. They used infrared film and shot daily for nearly a year before capturing the photograph. It is the photo at the top of the article.
Every state has its share of haunted cemeteries. Pennsylvania, too, has haunted burial grounds. Egg Hill Church at Spring Mills, Center County has a legend that a minister went nuts and murdered some of the congregation. There is no historical evidence of such murders, but the stories of the cemetery being haunting remain. This is surely an urban legend.
However, the story of The Black Cross in Butler County is all too real. Early in the 20th century a flu epidemic swept through the area killing many of the immigrants. The disease swept through the area so rapidly that the county officials had to cope with hundreds of deaths. The immigrants were buried in a mass grave to keep the epidemic down. A local priest was appalled that nothing was done to mark this grave so he had two railroad ties made into a big black cross that sat atop the grave. People claimed to hear cries of pain, moaning and voices speaking in foreign tongues at night at the site of the mass grave. Today the big black cross has rotted, but a new cross was put up. There are still stories of voices crying out, of screams and cries of pain and of people who need to be remembered trying to communicate from the grave.
There literally dozens of haunted cemeteries in Pennsylvania. Moonshine Church Cemetery where the bodies of five murderers and their victim lay in uneasy rest is one of them. In Tyrone there is an old cemetery where I personally felt something extremely bad. It is to this day the only place I left in fear. I have never experienced such negative feeling anywhere in my thirty years of ghost hunting.
In Blair County, outside of Williamsburg, is a cemetery where the spirits actually haunted a house on the grounds. In Huntingdon County there is a cemetery where Hessian soldiers have been seen. In Lancaster Augusta Bitner is said to haunt Lancaster Cemetery. Washington Square in Philadelphia is haunted by Leah, a Quakeress who had protected the graves there from thieves throughout her life. Now she still walks the cemetery watching over her graves.
We could go on and on. I believe that many cemeteries have spirits in them. I cannot help but remember a young woman who looked me up. She was not a ghost hunter, she was working on her family tree. She found her great grandparent’s graves in an old cemetery in the woods in Bedford County. She was using a tape recorder to record the information on the graves. At her great-grandfather’s grave she paused to read the information. When she played the tape back she clearly heard an old man say, “I don’t know you.” She was alone in the cemetery and no one lived nearby, so where did the voice come from?
Now I want to say that if you decide to visit a cemetery do it in the daytime. Be respectful of the graves and the dead, and do not do rubbings because that could damage the stones. Remember that these plots hold someone’s loved ones, so don’t use the names of the people or identify them in any way. Do not trespass.
If you get any results, please let me know.
My Supernatural World 