Thirteen American Burial Grounds Said to Be Poor Places for Quiet Repose

THE UNITED STATES — With autumn upon the nation, Atlas Obscura has published a guide to what it calls America's most haunted cemeteries, thirteen in all. The writer opens by suggesting that death is not an endless sleep for everyone, and that some souls have unsettled scores, ravaged graves or broken hearts to blame.

At Colonial Park Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia, the guide says some believe Union soldiers moved headstones and altered names during the Civil War, and that the aggrieved spirits now drift about as clouds of light or green mist. Visitors are barred at night, it notes, but some sit on benches outside the fence to watch for apparitions.

Elsewhere the accounts vary. In Williamsport, Pennsylvania, a fireman said to have feared burial alive designed a mausoleum that opens from within, and he can reportedly sometimes be heard moving about. In LaPlace, Louisiana, the guide says, Julia Brown, a rumored voodoo priestess buried apart from the 1915 hurricane victims, is said to appear to kayakers behind layers of fog. At St. Omer Cemetery in Ashmore, Illinois, a gravestone bearing the impossible date of February 31, 1882, is taken by some as proof of its occupant's supernatural powers. The guide adds that photographers' claims of film failing to develop do not apply to digital cameras.

The list also reaches Tonopah, Nevada, where a cemetery stands beside a Clown Motel. According to the guide, recordings made there have captured voices saying "We mined." Other entries include a playground beside a Huntsville, Alabama, cemetery, where swings are said to move unaided, and San Diego's El Campo Santo, where a Kupa chief, Antonio Garra, is described as a frequently reported specter.

The guide concedes nothing to doubters, but it does offer practical advice. Some of the sites forbid night visits, and the staircase at Greenwood Cemetery in Spokane, Washington, is now private property, so climbing it counts as trespassing.