Ruined Cemetery in New Castle

I'm not sure what this graveyard in downtown New Castle is called, but it's just a couple of blocks from the town square, and it's a disaster.

I've ranted about the sorry state of many Kentucky cemeteries in the course of this blog before, but this one is perilously close to being past the point of no return. Many of the beautiful ancient headstones are utterly and completely destroyed, and more are well on their way to oblivion. Some of the graves even show possible signs of graverobbing, or at least currently stand as open invitations to it.

How can people drive by this mess every day - including local government officials - and not do something about it? Are people really so spooked by cemeteries that they avert their eyes and whistle past them without bothering to notice that their city's history is being destroyed? Evidently.



In 2011 I plan to push for state legislation that requires cities, towns, municipalities and county governments to follow Cave Hill's example of historical preservationism and security. Cemeteries - all cemeteries - should be fenced in and locked at night to keep idiot kids and sociopathic thieves out, and someone should be designated the official caretaker and groundskeeper of each. This will create jobs as well as put a stop to the historical desecration that has been steadily sweeping the state.

Graves Vandalized in Millwood

Some sick individuals are stealing people's gravestones in the Vol Layman Cemetery in Millwood. From the Grayson County News-Gazette:

Vandals that desecrated the graves of three World War II Veterans and a Korean War Veteran in Grayson County have stolen the special grave markers provided by the Veterans Administration.

Aileen Stewart, widow to one of the WWII Veterans whose grave marker was stolen, came to the cemetery with her son Carl Stewart JR. and viewed the damage first hand.

Her husband had fought in the war and she told stories of the time he spent defending his country.

“He fought for the freedom that these people are enjoying today and look what they have done," said Stewart. "Once he spent three months in a fox-hole and when he was finally able to take off his boots his skin peeled off with the boot."

A fourth vandalized grave has been discovered at the nearby Frank-Embry cemetery, same M.O. as the others: a military plaque removed from its concrete base.

Anyone with leads or tips on these crimes is encouraged to contact the Grayson County Sheriff's Office at 270-259-3024.

Richmond Cemetery Vandalized

The growing trend of cemetery vandalism rears its ugly head once again - this time in one of my very favorite graveyards.

From WLKY:

RICHMOND, Ky. -- The groundskeeper at a central Kentucky cemetery says more than 100 gravestones have been toppled and broken, and some are irreplaceable.

Mike Rice, director of grounds for the Richmond Cemetery, tells the Lexington Herald Leader the overturned stones were discovered Saturday morning.

Rice says the stones date from as recently as last year to back to the 1800s.

Rice was gathering names from the stones Monday in the hope of contacting descendants that might be in the area. He said he couldn’t give an estimate of the damage.

It just goes to show, despite the unusually strict rules for visiting the cemetery, it doesn't mean a thing if you don't have proper security to enforce them.

I'm not going to be able to make it to Madison County this week, but if anyone out there gets a chance to swing by Richmond Cemetery and take some photos, I'd really like to see just how bad the damage is, and which of the historic stones were destroyed. E-mail me.

Frankfort Cemetery Desecrates Its Own Graves

Many families with loved ones buried at Frankfort Cemetery were recently horrified to find that trinkets, mementos, sentimental items, crosses, religious icons, and plastic flowers have all been removed and tossed in a giant junk heap.

Superintendent Coleman Kincaid is the man responsible for this travesty, and he makes no apologies about what he's done.

"There are so many ways that objects near and around graves make it hard for us to do the maintenance that this cemetery requires. We have 20,000 graves here." Kincaid said to the State-Journal. "The rules have always been here. It’s just in the past they were loosely observed and I am the one now charged with enforcing them."

However, there are glaring problems with Kincaid's "rules are rules" excuse. For one, real flowers are permitted while plastic ones are not, so it doesn't make sense to say that it's just about the maintenance men having difficulty mowing and weed-eating. It's just as hard to mow around a real flower than a plastic one.

Let's just be honest here, Mr. Kincaid, and say what this is really about: aesthetics. Even in death, it seems, snooty and nosey people try to tell tackier people what they can't do in their own yard.

Some people think decorated graves are tacky, while others (like me) say that people who paid a fortune for an exorbitantly price-gouged funeral, headstone and cemetery plot should be able to leave trinkets at that grave without some Mrs. Drysdale-voiced society lady complaining about how gauche it is.

I don't know whether Cemetery Board Member Dorothy Wilson talks like Mrs. Drysdale, but it would be appropriate. From the State-Journal:

Cemetery Board Member Dorothy Wilson supports Kincaid and thinks the recent cleaning enhances the property’s beauty and serenity.

“I think Coleman and the men who work here have done a nice job and definitely think it looks better,” Wilson said.

She too has received complaints, and many who called were very angry, she said.

“We (the board) began discussing the condition of the cemetery two or three years ago and the fact that there was a policy and it is on every contract, but had not been enforced,” said Wilson, the board member.

“When Coleman came on as superintendent last summer, we explained to him that the cemetery needed to be cleaned up.”

Although it may be true that stipulations about trinkets on graves are indeed buried deep in the fine print of the cemetery's contract (and who reads such contracts closely when they're wracked with grief for a loved one?), Wilson has, by her own admission, acknowledged that the policy had not been enforced. This means that a prospective customer, looking around and seeing graves festooned with bric-a-brac, naturally and logically would assume such things were permitted - because, in fact, they were.

The Frankfort Cemetery Board - consisting of seven people selected every five years - needs to overcome their obsession with aesthetically "cleaning up" other people's graves. The State-Journal notes that many people are furious with the Board, and say those who sit on the board are insensitive to their grief.

But that's not the only problem on their hands.

In someone's zeal to "clean up" the place, actual grave markers have been removed from the baby section of the cemetery. From the State-Journal again:

Pat Woods, of Frankfort, is among those upset by the policy.

“They even removed things that were sitting on tombstones and just threw them in a pile,” Woods said. “What respect have they shown for us or our loved ones?”

Woods is especially distraught that markers are gone in a section many refer to as the baby cemetery. “When my brother and sister died in the 40s, my parents could not afford tombstones,” Woods said. “I recently purchased new markers and replaced the old ones. They are gone.” A wooden cross that marked one child’s grave is no longer there, she added.

Grandma and Grandson Graverobbers

And still another cemetery desecration... according to the May 26 edition of the Courier-Journal:

A Mount Washington grandmother and grandson are accused of trying to sell bronze vases from a cemetery for scrap.

Geraline Hilbert, 63, and Joshua Taggart, 21, were arrested Saturday, May 23, and each face 22 counts of violating graves and one count of theft by unlawful taking over $300, Mount Washington Police Detective Buddy Stump said.

They were taken to the Bullitt County Detention Center, where Hilbert posted a $4,000 bond. Taggart was still being held on a $4,000 bond on Tuesday.

Stump said police received a call from a staff member at Highland Memorial Gardens, 279 Landis Lane, about 8 a.m. Saturday saying someone was stealing vases that had been set next to headstones.

Family members pay $598 for each vase and often fill them with flowers on Memorial Day weekend, Stump said.

After getting a description of the suspects and the van they were using, police called Amen Auto Parts in Shepherdsville, which is the closest business that buys scrap metal.

Hilbert and Taggart were arrested there. The vases have been returned to the graves, Stump said.

I do hope the authorities investigate whether other cemeteries have been targeted by these two. Bronze vases have similarly been stolen from other places, like Louisville Cemetery on Poplar Level in Schnitzelburg, and Eastern Cemetery on Bardstown Road (where the above image was taken).

Ebenezer Cemetery Vandalized

Just noticed this news story of yet another instance of cemetery vandalization a couple of weeks ago. This time it's in Jessamine County, at the Ebenezer Cemetery - A historic site with many Revolutionary War and Civil War graves. According to the story:

More than a dozen headstones were knocked over, vandalized, and destroyed over the weekend.

Jeff Smith says it's not what he ever wanted to see.

"It kinda hurts my feelings someone would come out here and destroy things. It's disgusting", says Smith.

Smith says not only did people destroy the headstones of people he knows, they also broke into the church.

"They used a cinder block trying to break the door down. When that didn't work they tried to kick the door in", says Smith.

In fact, whoever was responsible left their footprint on the door of the church doors. Smith says within the last month they have recently done other damage around the cemetery.

"A lot of trash and beer bottles and things like that", says Smith.

However, this time around it hit Jeff Smith hard. That's because he knows a part of history is now damaged.

Other recent cemetery desecrations have occurred here and here and possibly here.

Head Without A Face

This grave in Louisville's Cave Hill Cemetery features a striking female bust nestled inside a great scalloped shell... but there's no face.

I'm not sure if this is vandalism or natural erosion. The rest of the grave seems much better preserved than the face, so maybe the former. The effect is quite eerie to me, like some sort of Venusian shrine, utilizing one of those styrofoam wig-heads.

Crypt of Cremains?

As mentioned here recently, in 2005 it was reported that a large crypt at Louisville's troubled Eastern Cemetery was unlocked, and filled with boxes of cremains (cremated human ashes), many of them mixed together in the same container.

You can easily peer into the crypt through the openings in the now-locked gate, and I took these photos. The blue boxes are definitely containers for cremains, and the brown boxes on the floor may also be. I'm not sure if authorities rescued the cremains in 2005, and these blue boxes are just empty leftovers, or if they just slapped a padlock on the door and these boxes still contain cremated human bodies.

Louisville Crematory and Columbarium / Eastern Cemetery

The abandoned Louisville Crematory and Columbarium is part of Eastern Cemetery, which was shut down in 1989 when a sick discovery was made: that cemetery officials had been secretly burying multiple people in the same grave since the 1920s, and deliberately mishandling cremations as a cost-cutting measure.

In 2005 it was discovered that a walk-in crypt in the cemetery was actually unlocked, and filled with boxes of cremains (cremated human ashes)! Some of these boxes of ashes were labeled with multiple names, and still others simply said "unknown." From a WLKY news story that year:

"It was the burial ground for nearly all of Louisville's prominent 19th-century black leaders and many other dignitaries, but historic Eastern Cemetery has turned into a chilling horror story that only gets stranger as the years go by. It's basically abandoned after the discovery a decade ago that bodies are literally stacked on top of each other -- 48,000 people buried in 16,000 graves ...then a state investigator determined 95 percent of the infant graves here are as shallow as 6 inches deep. Now, we find a crypt on the middle of the property, not locked, containing what appears to be the cremated remains of dozens of people."

A shed in the back is filled with gravestones, some damaged badly. It would seem that no one is now able to determine where these stones are supposed to go. Even before I found out the backstory of these horrors, I've felt palpable vibes of despair - practically cries for help - emanating from this place when I drive by it.

A few years ago, in an article I wrote for the now-defunct Louisville Guide magazine, I interviewed a fellow who was sick and tired of how everyone had abandoned the cemetery. He took it upon himself to start mowing the lawns there, and to attempt to fix the damage done by vandals. I'm not sure if he's still taking on that herculean task, but someone is indeed still mowing it.

Grave desecration is commonplace here. When I drove through there today, I noticed numerous columns and headstones knocked over that had not so before. And I heard a rumor from a reputable journalist friend of mine that there is evidence of some sort of ritual animal sacrifices taking place here recently, whether by some arcane occult weirdos or by stupid goth kids (probably the latter). Four panels of marble have been forcibly removed from the mausoleum and the containers are now empty. Bronze nameplates have also been pried off of other panels. It's truly sickening.


Since Eastern Cemetery is adjacent to Cave Hill Cemetery, whose concertina-wire-lined superwall runs along two sides of the place, doesn't it make sense that it should just be taken over by them? Without some sort of major protections in place, this already tragically damaged cemetery will rapidly be destroyed completely at this rate.

The Crematory and Columbarium has been permanently bricked up, apparently to prevent vandals from gaining access. In so doing, however, they performed a sort of vandalism to the building themselves, by destroying the beautiful ornate entryway which had been the only nice thing about the edifice in the first place.

(Postscript: Very similar atrocities have occurred in Cincinnati's Wesleyan Cemetery... is it something about the dark mojo of the Ohio River that encourages such things?)

German Reformed Presbyterian Church Cemetery

It had been awhile since I'd been by one of my favorite cemeteries, the German Reformed Presbyterian Church Cemetery (which apparently also somehow doubles as the Jeffersontown Lutheran Cemetery). This past weekend I dropped in and was surprised to find an enormous amount of damage to the graves.

This place has always been in some state of disrepair, but this is more extreme than the last time I was here.




The cemetery had previously undergone restoration in 1967, but I do believe it's time for another.

Versailles Cemetery Vandalized

This past Tuesday night, unknown vandals, continuing the rash of cemetery desecration that's been going on around the state lately, knocked over 152 headstones in Versailles Cemetery. This is the biggest single instance of vandalism to a cemetery that I've ever heard of, in all my years of gravewatching.

According to the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Versailles police continue to seek clues about those responsible, and have offered a $2,000 reward for information leading to their arrest and conviction. Felony charges are possible including institutional vandalism, said police spokesman Pat Melton. The cemetery is owned by the city of Versailles.

The cemetery gates were locked, so it appeared the vandals jumped a 4-foot rock wall, Melton said. Cemetery manager Terry Brown said he was shocked by the extent of the damage.

"I've been here 20 years. I've never seen anything like this," Brown said. "I think there probably had to be three or four or five people, because some of the stones are quite large."

Grave Desecration in Echols

According to an article in the Evansville Courier & Press, some vandals recently desecrated the Hopewell Community Cemetery near Echols, KY.

This doesn't sound like your usual garden-variety idiot-teen vandalism, though: they used a backhoe. The article states:

Caretakers believe the heavy equipment was used to dig into the grave of James Franklin Welborn and perhaps a couple of other graves, Benton said. The backhoe driver apparently became mired in the mud and damaged or disturbed eight to 10 other graves and knocked over tombstones, the sheriff said.

In all, an area 50 to 60 feet long and about 25 feet wide was disturbed, Doolin said.

"It appears they might have been looking for some type of artifacts," he said.

After the dirt was moved, heavy rains filled the holes with water. No one knows for sure exactly what is missing from the graves or how deep the holes are, said Benton and his wife Ruth. They aren't sure what would normally be left in a 50-year-old grave.

Welborn, who occupied the disturbed grave, was a World War I veteran who died in 1958at a Dayton, Ohio, veterans hospital, Benton said.

"It's a puzzle to everybody." No one has a clue what someone might be seeking in the graves, he said.

In the immortal words of Fox Mulder, "I think this might be an X-File".

Central State Hospital Cemetery

A huge area of Anchorage, KY, including all of the vast E.P. Sawyer Park, was once the dreaded Central State Mental Hospital and its sprawling grounds.

In 1873 the place was the Lakeland Home for Juvenile Delinquents, which soon thereafter expanded its purpose to become an insane asylum. No asylum of that era was ever a friendly place to be, but this one takes the proverbial cake. For decades, hellish conditions, improper care, senseless deaths and unchecked madness lent a continually greasy patina of very bad karma to this land.

Think of every horror story you’ve ever heard about psychiatry, and it’s all here: overcrowding, abuse, insulin “therapy,” forced freezing cold showers as “treatment,” crude lobotomies, electroshocks, you name it. According to Jay Gravatte of the Louisville Ghost Hunters, wards with a capacity for 1600 persons were containing more like 2400, and in 1943 the Kentucky grand jury discovered that Central State was unfairly committing and imprisoning people who were not mentally ill.

Today all the original buildings are demolished, and a new complex of modern clean edifices stand down the road, at the corner of Lakeland and LaGrange. The old asylum's site can be seen here on Google Maps, and if you scroll just a bit south, you'll see the present facilities.


Voices, purportedly of the dead, have been tape-recorded late at night by ghost hunters in the hospital's long-abandoned cemetery, which is also now part of the E.P. Sawyer park grounds. Most of the stones are now missing, and the ones that are still extant are misplaced and piled haphazardly around nearby trees. You can still tell where the graves are, however, by the prominent sinkholes that dot the landscape. It’s one of the most neglected and poorly maintained cemeteries I’ve ever seen, and these people interred here were unhappy enough from the getgo without having their final resting place so shoddily treated.

I have heard the tape and, for what it’s worth, voices are clearly heard although I can’t make out any of it. I remain dubious about the whole EVP concept.

The Hardin County Graverobber

This is an article from Elizabethtown's News-Enterprise that I saved a few years back, and used to have featured on the old Unusual Kentucky website back in the day:

"Convicted grave robber dies, is cremated"
By BRIAN WALKER

The death of an elderly Rineyville woman who was convicted of grave violation for swiping items left at the graves of numerous children has brought a small piece of closure to some families.

Lois Bonnell Dupuis, 80, died Sunday at Hardin Memorial Hospital and was cremated.

She was convicted of stealing hundreds of stuffed animals, wreaths, toys and trinkets left on the resting-places of babies and small children by their families and friends.

But Dupuis herself will not have a grave marked with flowers, candles or other gifts left by mourners. The only relative listed on her obituary is a nephew who is currently serving a lengthy prison sentence.

"I hate it that someone passed away," said Kevin Young. Items were stolen numerous times from his daughter Alexus Nicole Young's grave. "But maybe there is some peace for us knowing that maybe something won't happen to her grave anymore."

Kevin and Jamie Young have visited their daughter's grave at least once a week since she was stillborn in March 1999. He said they always went to spend time with her, but there was also the added fear they'd find something missing.

He said he and other parents who were victimized began to mark the items left on graves with their names and other information for identification purposes.

"We'll still do that," he said. "Because she's not the only person who has ever done this."

Donna Heaverin, whose daughter Madison Adair Heaverin died after 56 minutes in July 1999, said she feels some relief with Dupuis' passing.

"I'm not glad she died, but now maybe I won't worry so much," she said.

Heaverin said all of Madison's stolen gifts except a wind chime were found in Dupuis' home and returned by authorities.

Dupuis served several stints in jail in the last five years, twice for four months each, for the crime of violating graves, a misdemeanor.

Despite her claims in court that she was not a threat to commit further crimes because of her age and health, Dupuis was also convicted for stealing license plates and vehicle registration decals from stores and car lots in Jefferson County in 2002.

A search of her home by the Hardin County Sheriff's Office in the spring of that year yielded 422 items stolen from graves, mainly from Elizabethtown Memorial Gardens Babyland.

Sheriff's Detective Bob Hornback said at the time that Dupuis was known to frequent other cemeteries and that the house "was quite full of trinkets."

Although she claimed she couldn't get around well, several families visiting cemeteries caught Dupuis running away and fleeing in a van when confronted with stolen items in her hands.

Major Bob Baker with the Sheriff's office said in 2002, despite her age, "she can run like a deer."

Long recognizing the theft problem at Elizabethtown Memorial Gardens, Baker said the sheriff's department spent more than 100 hours watching the cemetery, even setting up surveillance equipment to catch the thief.

It is also unclear when, if ever, Dupuis had a driver's license. Searches of driving records found no record of anyone by her name.

Sir Robert E. Lee King

Almost walking distance from Bondurant's Pharmacy lies another mysterious piece of puzzling evidence about the human condition - or at least it did at one time.

In 2003 (when these photographs were taken), I was wandering around in the Hillcrest Memorial Park cemetery at 2089 Versailles Road in Lexington. I was looking for interesting gravestones and this one caught my eye with the royal name.

But upon closer inspection, I realized that someone had defaced King's photo on the grave, gouging out part of his face. It took a few moments to realize that "CSA" meant "Confederate States of America"..... and then I saw the Rebel flags on a second stone bearing his name.



The odd inscription on the main stone baffled me most of all:

Here lies a boy dead to the world

He loved once and was loved once

But now he is dead

It was also very surprising to me that the grave desecration hadn't been repaired by anyone. Even removing the photo plate altogether would be better than leaving the defaced one up. From the looks of it, it had been damaged for some time.

But the drama didn't stop there.

Near Sir King's grave, I found the grave of one Leslie D. "Dougie Do-Right" King, 1941-1997. Dougie's stone has an odd inscription similar in style, syntax and theme to Sir Robert E. Lee King's, and makes reference to someone named Jo Ann Kearns. For unknown reasons, someone has tried really, really hard to obliterate Jo Ann Kearns' name. What is up with these people??



This weekend, driving home from my book-signing event at Morris Book Shop, I drove by Hillcrest Memorial Park and decided to stop and check in on Sir King and Dougie. I thought I knew exactly where they were, but I drove in circles for twenty minutes and couldn't find them even though I'm convinced I was in the right spot. My guess is, someone finally got fed up with the grave desecration, had the bodies exhumed and moved them somewhere safer. If they're still there and I just missed them, drop me a line and let me know.

As with all reports of unusual and interesting graves on this site, we intend to show our respect to these people by featuring them here. Our sometimes waggish tone should not, not, not be construed as not taking grave desecration seriously. We have zero tolerance for cemetery vandalism, and even though Mr.King is a total stranger to us, if we ever found out who damaged his headstone, we might be tempted to hurt them real bad in seven places and smite them with the Curse of Grillo's Grandfather.

Bowman Cemetery

This is a very neglected cemetery, with many of its gravestones displaced or grown over. Several stones are leaning against this tree, and its unclear where they're really supposed to have been situated. Many other stones are seemingly lost.

That's a shame, because Bowman Cemetery in Calloway County is the final resting place of the great Nathan Stubblefield, the Kentucky farmer who invented radio years before Tesla, and years before Marconi stole Tesla's ideas.

See more about Nathan on page 100 of Weird Kentucky.

The Lost Maxwell Cemetery

A few years back, workers digging in a Lexington construction site where the former South Hill Station was being converted to condominiums made a disturbing find: very old human remains.

Archeologists descended upon the Bolivar Street site, and their digging produced many more bones. Apparently, they've rediscovered the lost and forgotten Maxwell Cemetery, which originally stood on the site until buildings were unceremoniously erected right over it. Oops.

According to an article in the Lexington Herald-Leader, among the persons buried there are John Maxwell, one of Lexington's original founders, and the Rev. Robert Cloud, an "eccentric minister". No wonder South Hill Station was such a miserable failure - obviously the place is cursed, and I'd say it's certainty there's a high likelihood of unfriendly hauntings in the condos that occupy the land now. (Have any reports of ghostly activity there? Contact us!)

"Haunted till you die"

I've always loved this note found taped to a mausoleum in Louisville in 2005.