For most of us, cemeteries represent a peaceful but sad place where we remember our lost loved ones and honor their memory. But graveyards can also be a terrifying place, especially at night when not a living soul is to be found there.
An eerie fog can surround the headstones, owls, black cats and all sorts of creatures of the night can roam around, and it seems like a lot of supernatural things can happen at a place that marks the final resting place of many people.
But has anyone ever died in a graveyard? Here are some strange and shocking stories about deaths that actually happened in graveyards.
7Kidnapping
In 1991, Jessica Keen, a teenager, was kidnapped in Columbus, OH. Jessica was somehow able to escape, and while she was running away, she entered a graveyard and tried to hide from her kidnapper.
However, Jessica ran between headstones, tripped over a fence and fainted. The kidnapper was able to find her and murder her by dropping a 70-pound headstone on her body. The murderer escaped, and Jessica was discovered after two days. It was only in 2008 that her murderer was found through DNA analysis, and was given a life sentence.
6Screaming for Help
In Honduras, Neysi, a pregnant girl aged 16 was buried after she fainted and never woke up. A day after she was buried, her family came to the tomb, and started to hear loud noises. As they moved closer to the tomb they realized that the noises were actually screams from inside the tomb.
Panicked, the family quickly opened the grave and saw that the lid of the coffin was broken. The girl was dead, but the family saw many scratches on the coffin as well as bruises on the girl’s hands. Neysi’s body was moved to a hospital, where it was confirmed that she was dead.
Doctors later believed that the girl passed out because an anxiety attack caused her heart to stop. Neysi woke up in her coffin and started screaming for help, only to die in her grave due to oxygen deprivation.
5Groundskeeper Murdered
In the spring of 1997, in Pennsville, NJ, William Reese, the only groundskeeper of a local cemetery was shot and killed in the basement of a building on the premises.
After two months, it was discovered that the groundskeeper was murdered only for his pickup truck. The strange thing about this graveyard murder is that William Reese’s killer was Andrew Cunanan, the notorious serial killer who murdered the famous Gianni Versace and later took his own life in the summer of 1997.
4Shocking Murder on Camera
In 1992, Emilio Nunez asked a TV network to document his daughter’s tragic suicide. Yoandra, Emilio’s daughter, was buried in Florida and the father agreed to film an interview at the cemetery.
However, the interview was interrupted by the sudden arrival of the father’s ex-wife. As soon as Emilio saw Yoandra’s mother, he suddenly took out a gun and started shooting at her.
The cameras didn’t stop filming as Emilio shot the woman 12 times, right next to their daughter’s grave. Emilio blamed the woman for his daughter’s death and was later arrested and taken to prison, only to receive a life sentence 7 years later.
3Don`t Play With Death
Back in 2012, a family visited a historic cemetery in Utah when their son, Carson, started to play and jump around on top of an old tomb from 1889. As the child was playing on it, the 250-pound headstone broke and crushed the boy.
Even though people ran to help the child, it was too late. Similar accidental deaths involving children and groundskeepers have also occurred in graveyards throughout the years.
2Military Funeral
A quite brutal event happened in Ireland in 1988 during a military funeral when a freedom fighter started attacking, shooting and throwing grenades at the crowd. However, in an unexpected turn of events, the large crowd retaliated and started to chase the shooter.
The attacker was pinned down, beaten and later arrested. The attacker killed a member of the Irish army, and when his funeral was held a few days later, during the funeral procession, members of the British army drove a vehicle into the crowd.
However, the crowd once again reacted and pulled the men out of their car. The crowd took the attackers to a field and murdered them.
1Unexpected Discovery
In 2016, two bodies were discovered in the middle of a graveyard in Batavia, NY, and many illegal substances were placed around their bodies. However, the condition of their corpses suggested that something else had caused their deaths, as they were covered in burns.
The authorities found out that a storm broke out in the area just 12 hours before the two people died. Even though the circumstances of their deaths were suspicious, it was discovered that they died due to a lightning strike.
