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It’s the time of year when Halloween-loving folks are drawn to the macabre, the ghastly and the downright terrifying.
For many, their list of creepy things includes cemeteries and graveyards. (Fun fact: Technically, a graveyard is a burial place on the grounds of a church, and a cemetery is a resting spot anywhere else.)
We’d guess that Choice Mutual, a life insurance agency that specializes in final expense insurance, has burials on the brain year-round, but its researchers recently asked more than 3,000 Americans one question: “Which graveyard would you be least prepared to visit alone at night?”
The results generated a 150-item list, and while there are three places in Arizona represented, one cracked the top 10.
Tombstone’s famous Boothill Graveyard came in at No. 5 on the list. The report says, “It’s tourist-friendly by day, but after dark, Boothill’s bravado gives way to something colder. The wind hums through tilted wooden crosses, and some swear they’ve heard bootsteps crunching the gravel long after the gates close. Buried here are outlaws, gunfighters and innocents caught in between – all reminders that Tombstone’s Wild West never really went quiet.”
The rest of the top 10 is:
1. Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow, New York
2. Gettysburg National Cemetery, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
3. Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Los Angeles, California
4. Pine Hill Cemetery (“Blood Cemetery”), Hollis, New Hampshire
6. Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum Cemetery, Weston, West Virginia
7. St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans, Louisiana
8. Old City Cemetery (Historic City Cemetery), Sacramento, California
9. Salem Cemetery, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
10. Old Hill Burying Ground, Concord, Massachusetts
Two other Arizona burial spots are much farther down the list.
Phoenix’s Pioneer & Military Memorial Park came in at No. 105. The report states, “Hidden among downtown traffic, this pocket of 19th-century graves feels startlingly out of time. Office towers loom over cracked marble and rusted fences, and night watchmen report the faint scent of pipe smoke drifting through the air. Locals say one soldier’s ghost still stands guard — forever pacing his post beneath the streetlights.
The Jerome Cemetery in Jerome just made the list at No. 149. “Perched on a mountainside above the old copper town, Jerome’s cemetery has a reputation for restlessness. Visitors tell of strange lights weaving between headstones and sudden pockets of freezing air. Maybe it’s just the elevation — or maybe it’s the spirits of miners who never left their claim. Either way, few stick around long enough to find out,” the report reads.
You can see the full list of America’s scariest cemeteries on the Choice Mutual blog.
