Ghosts of Maple Hill Cemetery and Dead Children's Playground

When you left school that afternoon, you didn't expect to find yourself in its cemetery. It's just that you overheard Jordan at recess the other day talking about the bib mausoleum, about what you'll hear if you knock on the side of it. You love a good ghost story, but you know better than to trust Jordan, better to find out for yourself. And besides, Maple Hill Cemetery just so happens to be on your walk home. Now that you're here, though, your confidence waivers. It's one thing to enjoy the feel of goosebumps or rub thing across your skin after hearing a particularly chilling tale, and it's another to go seeking those terrors for yourself. You roll your eyes at your own cowardice. Most likely you'll knock and hear nothing. Besides, it's broad daylight. You're pretty sure that even the most evil spirit can't attack in broad daylight. You take a step closer to the mausoleum, shadows of trees patterning the otherwise drabbed white surface. You see your own shadows. Arms slowly rise, the hand forming into a fist, and knock, knock, knock. Of course, nothing happens now that you expected anything would, which can't help feeling a bit disappointed. Then you hear it, the unmistakably creak of a wooden rocking chair moving back and forth, and the measured hypnotic rhythm of someone who's had centuries of practice. You were prepared for this crypt wall, hear the rocking chair inside. The sound of the rocking chair isn't coming from inside, It's coming from right behind you. You whirl around, afraid of what you'll see, but even more afraid of not knowing what you're doing with Instantly, the sound stops. There's nothing there, and you take a lap around the mausoleum, and then another for a good measure, and still nothing. Not wanting to stick around to see if the ghost comes back, you take off. When you finally stop to catch your breath, you spice swings and a small play set through the trees in front of you. You've heard about this place too. The lonely park is almost creepyter than the cemetery, at least the dead belong and the latter. A fained giggle from somewhere ahead of you reaches your ears, and without hesitation, you turn around and keep running. You've had enough of ghost stories for one day. Huntsville, Alabama, has plenty of haunted locations. The city's first public cemetery, Maple Hill, unsurprisingly makes the list. The cemetery's haunted history, however, is almost overshadowed by a less likely locale right next door to Maple Hill Dead Children's Playground. This episode contains a multitude of tales from both cemetery and playground, including ones you won't find in guide books. My name is Edwin and here is a dark memory. Maple Hill Cemetery was established in eighteen twenty two, and although there is evidence that the land had been used to bury bodies since eighteen twenty, today the cemetery has over eighty thousand grave sites and it's home to many a restless spirit. The story you just heard was inspired by Mary Bib, a woman who married into the prominent Bib family. Mary had the misfortune of dying a slow death by poison she ingested on her wedding night in eighteen thirty five. To honor her passing, the Bib family built her a mausoleum at Maple Hill, and she is buried with her rocking chair. The story goes that if you knock on the wall of her mausoleum, her ghost will respond by rocking back and forth inside the crypt. Four years later, Tom has Bit, Mary's father in law and Alabama's second governor, passed away, and he was initially buried at his plantation bell Mina. Shortly after his body was moved to Maple Hill Cemetery. It seems to doesn't appreciate his final resting place, for on a full moon, a ghostly white carriage is set to arrive at his grave and carry him through the cemetery in a fruitless attempt to return home. Another tale of a lost spirit features Philip Flanagan, who died in eighteen thirty two and is buried in the oldest section of Maple Hill. Those who say they've spoken with Philip's ghosts relate two messages from him, one that he died too early and two that his house did not have rats. It seems a bit random, but both statements aligned with the rumor that his wife, Elizabeth Dale or her full name Elizabeth Dale Gibbons Flannagan Jeffrey's High Brown Route that's her real name, used rat poison to kill him. In fact, Elizabeth is rumored to have murdered all six of her husbands, earning her the nickname the Black Widow of Hazel Green. While visiting Maple Hill Cemetery, you might also encounter the ghost of Confederate Colonel William Huntley, who stands by his grave and simply nods at those who pass by. Or you might see the ghost of Albert Russell Erskine, a failed businessman who committed suicide and now is said to haunt his family's mausoleum. And they have you had enough of the cemetery yet, Whether you're there on a self guided tour or participating in the annual Maple Hill Cemetery Stroll. Long walks through a cemetery can be draining, especially for kids. Thankfully, families can find some relief at Maple Hills Park on the east side of the cemetery. Once the sun sets. However, spirits grown free in Maple Hill Park. They're better known as Dead Children's Playground. As the park's nickname suggests. Many of these spirits are children who, like their living counterparts, just want to play. It was October nineteen eighteen. The weather was still summary in Alabama and five year old Josephine didn't understand why she felt so cold. She spent the day in bed, shivering under the wet cloth mommy held against her forehead. Mommy said all the doctors were sick too. Josephine didn't know doctors could get sick. That knowledge was what scared her more than her mom's worried face, or the poky pain in her head, or even the lumpy feeling when she tried to swallow. Mommy said to stay awake. Josephine was so tired she closed her eyes just for a few seconds, just a few Mommy wouldn't be mad at her, for just a few seconds, would she. When Josephine awoke, she was on a hill surrounded by flat gray stones. She looked around. Mommy wasn't there. Was still scared, but at least she wasn't cold anymore. Next time Josephine saw her mom and dad, she learned that they couldn't see her or hear her. Even when she cried and tried to cling to Daddy's leg, her arms passed right through every single time, so she stopped trying. Mommy and Daddy visited less as it got colder or at least. Josephine inferred that it was getting colder based on the pristine white snow covering the grass on her hill. She couldn't feel the cold, though, but she could feel the loneliness that the snow brought with it. There was still snow on the grass. The next time someone came to visit her. It wasn't Mommy or Daddy, but another girl, not as little as Josephine. She wore a plain dress, knit admittance and snug hat. She told Josephine her name was Florence. And Florence couldn't feel the cold either, but she hugged herself anyway. She leaned in and whispered, are we dead? Part of Josephine had known for a very long time. Part of her only realized that when Florence said the words out loud. They both cried that day. This time, Josephine had something to cling to. Her hands didn't pass through Florence. Afterward, Florence told Josephine how she died. She was eleven years old and had been very ill, just like Josephine. The Great War was over, the war against the Flu was just beginning. Florence's mommy had taught her a song so she'd remember to stay inside. I had a bird. Its name was Enza. I opened the window and name flew Enza was Florence did her best to remember, and when February came, they all thought it was safe to go outside and play. Florence got unlucky because when the snow melted, the grass came back, and so did her mom and dad. Florence's mommy visited too, but most of the time it was just Josephine and Florence. Joe and Flow, they call themselves. Until one day Joe woke up to another girl sitting in front of a stone right behind hers, Agnes. The girl introduced hersel fast. But you can call me Aggie. All my friends do every friends, Joe asked. Aggie shrugged, You might as well be. Aggie was less upset her first day than Joe and Flow had been. Maybe it was because Aggie had her grandma, who had died the year before, also from the flu. At thirteen, Aggie was the oldest. Even though she and Floe were older, They never left Joe out of their games just because she was little. The three of them were like sisters, and for years they played together. Sometimes they'd find other children to play with. At the end of the day, it was always the three of them, Joe, Floe and Aggie, always and forever. Josephinees and Sony died on October eighteenth, nineteen eighteen. Florence McLane and Agnes Brosmer both died the following year, the exact dates unknown. We don't know if their spirits are present at Dead Children's Playground, but it's easy to imagine kids who have been dead longer than they were alive taking advantage of a playground just next door to their eternal resting places. Of Next, we'll hear more stories that show why this unassuming park is one of the most renowned haunts in Huntsville, Alabama. Nestled in a wooded clearing surrounded by three looming walls of limestone sits Dead Children's Playground. It's relatively new, built in nineteen eighty five, yet it's a staple of hunts Bill's haunted history. Reports of swings moving on their own, the disembodied laughter of children and orbs, or other spectral sightings are common among those who have visited the park, especially between the hours of ten PM. And three am. One popular claim is that they are the spirits of children who died during the Spanish flu epidemic and were buried at the adjacent cemetery, and the story you just heard was inspired by three children who could have been infected by and died of the Spanish flu. The first reported case in Huntsville was in late September in nineteen eighteen. However, the pandemic had been raging through the United States and Europe since the spring of that year. Despite its name, the Spanish flu did not originate in Spain. In fact, patient zero may have been in the US, introducing disease to Europe via American troops fighting on the front lines of World War One. A health report from April nineteen eighteen documents three deaths by flu in Haskell, Kansas, but the first flu victims were soldiers at Fort Riley, Kansas, who got the disease that March. The pandemic ultimately claimed over six hundred and seventy five thousand American lives, plus twenty to fifty million globally. The flu arrived in Huntsville during its second wave, the deadliest of three between nineteen eighteen and nineteen nineteen. By October fifth, there were over one thousand cases and seven deaths in the city. Two days later, the governor of Alabama closed down public places, and by the thirteenth most physicians and pharmacists were infected and thus were forced to close up shop too. In addition to flu victims, some claim that a serial killer is responsible for the hauntings at Dead Children's Playground. In the mid twentieth century, several children disappeared off the streets of Huntsville, never to be seen alive again. The remains of these children were rumored to be found beneath what is now Dead Children's Playground, corpses and skeletons that were tested to reveal that these kids endured trauma and malnourishment. Their ghosts might have made a home at the playground, seeking a playful afterlife to make up for their horrific fate. Our team got in touch with the local historian to get an insider's view of what's actually happening. Jackie Reeves with the Huntsville Ghost Walk insists that the serial killer's story is completely false. Well, yes, and what I do know is I do want to stress absolutely there was not a serial killer that was varying children out there. I also write true crime, and if there was I wouldn't know about it. Jackie was kind enough to share with us two stories she's heard about Dead Children's playground. In the first, a young man came across the spirit of a little girl in a unique dress. The girl told him I know who you are. When he described the encounter to his parents, noting the dress, his mother began to cry. She proceeded to pull out a photo album and show the young man a photo of that same little girl in that same exact dress, a sister one that he'd never known, who died before he was born. The second story is even stranger and doesn't have to do with children at all. A group of teenagers was hanging out at the playground at night when they witnessed a group of monks and brown robes and hoods emerged from the woods on one end of the park and then cross single file and complete silence to the other end. That story was told to Jackie on two separate occasions by two people who didn't know each other. The closest monastery in Huntsville is Saint Bernard's Abbey, about an hour away. From the city. However, the monks at Saint Bernard's don't match the descriptions of those at Dead Children's Playground. They were white or black robes, not brown. Jackie also mentioned young poor children who worked in cotton mills who might have died on the job and sought the playground to reclaim the childhood that they lost to unfair labor. Another possibility is that Dead Children's Playground is haunted by the half dozen Cabinist children who never reached adulthood, all of whom were buried at Maple Hill. And this was in the early eighteen hundreds, and in those days, you know, they really couldn't tell what they died from, but they were listed. Their deaths were listed as caused by teethings, which is crazy. I mean, nobody dies from teeving. It's no surprise at a cemetery as old as Maple Hill boasts a significant number of ghost stories, some more sad than spooky, and some more strange than sad. The ones to come out of Dead Children's Playground check all three boxes. There's something beautiful about a playground frequented by the ghost of children, a place for them to laugh and play, to just be kids again. Think of our trio, Joe Flow and Naggy for the older sister in the unique dress, or any of the other children's spirits that may haunt the park. It's disheartening to think of the many young lives that were cut too short, but imagining their ghosts pushing each other on the swings or running around the playground laughing and bring some comfort. If you ever visit Dead Children's Playground and happen to encounter one or more of these spirits, try to smile for them, even if you can't help the chill and running up your spine. This episode of A Dark Memory was written and researched by Tess Redman and produced by me at Winkowarrubias. A special thank you to Alabama story in and author Jacqueline Proctor Reeves. Do you have an idea for us? Let me know via email or through the website at a Dark Memory dot com and if you're up for it, find my other show called True Scary Story on your app right now to listen to people share their creepiest experiences. Thank you very much for listening, See you soon.