Rev up your Mystery Machine and grab your Scooby Snacks for a tour de fright through Minnesota’s most haunted cemeteries. Curious cats are lured by these hallowed haunts around the state in search of things that go bump in the night.
Urban legends (and a little bit of truth) have made several cemeteries in Minnesota popular destinations for both teenage mischief and serious paranormal investigations. These are those ghastly graveyards and the spooky stories that haunt them.
1. Lakeview Cemetery | Buhl
Lakeview Cemetery is a haunted hotspot for ghost hunting in Minnesota. As the legend goes, the nearby Shaw Hospital, established in 1919, was rumored to have buried its deceased patients in unmarked plots near the cemetery. Embellishers of the story speculate that those laid to rest here suffered from tuberculosis or mental illness, upping the horror story ante.
Visitors have reported several spine-tingling experiences attributed to the ghosts of the old Shaw Hospital. Some have heard footsteps and felt a presence behind them; some recount seeing shadowy figures around the gravestones; and some recall hearing screams. Others are certain they’ve captured paranormal activity with video and sound equipment.
It doesn’t get much creepier than a haunted hospital—which the urban explorers of abandoned sanatoriums and the creators of “Silent Hill” know all too well.
2. Greenlawn Cemetery | St. Peter
Dating back to 1865, Greenlawn Cemetery is one of the oldest cemeteries in Minnesota. Many of the area’s early colonial missionaries are buried here.
Nine years ago, amateur documentary filmmakers researched the lore contained in this St. Peter cemetery, said to be connected to tragic family tales and encounters between Minnesota’s settlers and its native people.
The filmmakers also collected area residents’ stories about their experiences when visiting the cemetery. Some believe they have seen the spirit of one of these settlers’ wives, Susan Humphrey, in photographs—and many others have heard her shriek in the night. It is rumored that if you visit certain sites in the cemetery, you will see her apparition among the graves.
Not to get meta, but this is starting to feel like the first act of “The Blair Witch Project,” isn’t it?
3. Beltrami Park | Minneapolis
Think this Northeast Minneapolis park is just a park? Think again. This plot of land was known as Maple Hill Cemetery before it became Beltrami Park—and the unsettling stories about this resting place are more fact than fiction.
Maple Hill Cemetery became crowded in the first decades of its operation, with many of those 5,000 dead buried in shallow graves. The cemetery was more or less abandoned by the 1890s, and an estimated 1,300 were relocated, while 3,700 remained.
As the unkempt cemetery fell further into disrepair, caskets began to emerge from the earth, attracting grave robbers. “Graves desecrated by inhuman gangs,” an old newspaper headline reads.
Today, you can find a few gravestones dispersed throughout Beltrami Park, with thousands still six feet under. Beware of Victorian-era visitations!
4. Ferguson Cemetery | Norwood Young America
Many thrill-seekers come to visit this ultra-creepy cemetery in Minnesota that is steeped in spooky stories about the presence of malicious spirits. The graves here date back to the late 1800s, silently stowed away on a square plot of land, eerily cordoned off from the surrounding farmland by a fence of trees.
Several accounts describe being toyed with—supposedly by the evil spirit of a little boy. Others describe wind rising as they entered the cemetery and settling as they left. One superstition is that the trees within the cemetery’s bounds will disappear, appear, and rearrange themselves during your visit.
Based on these accounts, it seems like spirits here demonstrate their supernatural powers to delight and frighten nocturnal adventurers, putting on a show for those who make the trip.
A partial gravestone sits off in a far corner, isolated from the rest, which visitors say belongs to the boy who haunts the cemetery, adding to the complicated backstory of the resident ghost.
5. Greenwood Cemetery | Duluth
This mysterious cemetery in Minnesota is little more than a large clearing in a field, where 4,705 St. Louis County laborers were buried between 1891 and 1947. The land contains a handful of headstones, but most are sites with small, numbered grave markers. Cemeteries like this were known as Potter’s fields, where the poor and unknown were buried—the ghosts of the Gilded Age.
The mystique of such a secluded, strange burial site attracts paranormal investigators, who try to convene with the many, many souls believed to haunt the grounds. Like scientists of the afterlife, spectral researchers bring recording equipment and cameras, wave EMF meters and “spirit boxes” around, and spend nights at Greenwood Cemetery searching for evidence of messages from beyond.
6. Loon Lake Cemetery | Jackson
The legend of Loon Lake has long gripped locals, entombed in books about the supernatural and well-trod by paranormal YouTubers.
Mary Jane Terwillegard died young, at just 17. As the legend goes, she was believed to be a witch, was beheaded with an axe, and buried with the instrument of her execution in 1880. According to the story, she was not the only witch in town. Supposedly, she and other witches were buried in the Loon Lake Cemetery, where they cursed those who would traipse upon their graves.
The Loon Lake Cemetery has been abandoned for more than 100 years, adding to its eerie aura. As the graveyard has fallen into disrepair over the century, many of its headstones have been removed or damaged—save for the few that serve as evidence a cemetery was once there.
Today, area residents and historians are disturbed and saddened by what has become of Loon Lake, and by the vandalism it has endured as a perpetual subject of urban legend. Long-told ghost stories have done more harm than good to this antique cemetery. Consider it a cautionary tale!
7. Roselawn Cemetery | Roseville
Gorgeous graveyard by day, supernatural spectacle by night, Roselawn Cemetery is a beautiful burial ground with ornate monuments and a chapel designed by the accomplished Midwest architect, Cass Gilbert. Once dusk falls upon this elegant cemetery, though, its spirit comes (un)alive!
Roselawn’s most prominent lore is a ghost named Smiling Jack who haunts the grounds.
It is said that locals heard the cries of someone trapped in a mausoleum and reported it to the police. But when the police arrived, all they found was the image of a smiling figure depicted in the tomb’s stained glass. Late-night visitors still scour the grounds in search of the grinning ghost.
This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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