LOON LAKE CEMETERY

Some distance south of Lakefield, Minnesota, lies an abandoned and forgotten graveyard called the Loon Lake Cemetery. Legend has it that this place has been haunted for many years by a variety of ghosts who have appeared since the last burial here, in 1926. These ghosts are not your average spirits either. They are strange, and they are many.

There is no longer a road that goes back to Loon Lake Cemetery, but those who seek the place can still find it, despite swampy and trecherous ground. The only people who still come here today are ghost hunters, curiosity-seekers, and the occasional visitor searching for some family history. The abandoned and remote setting serves to keep most people away, and those who do visit may actually be risking death!

The cemetery is said to be haunted by the spirits of three witches who were buried here many years ago. It is also said that anyone who violates their resting places will die an unnatural death. One of these three witches is remembered as Mary Jane, who allegedly died in 1881, when the townspeople of Petersburg cut off her head. Anyone who walks over the grave of this woman, the story goes, will also die—usually within seventy-two hours.

Trying to avoid crossing over Mary's grave is tricky, however, since her headstone was lost many years ago. Some say that it was removed to protect it from vandals, but others believe that the disappearance was the work of thieves, who died a gruesome death because of it. Regardless, the missing headstone of Mary Jane, as well as the vanished stones of most of the other inhabitants of the graveyard, add to the mystery of the place. At least sixty-seven tombstones once stood in Loon Lake Cemetery, but today only about eighteen remain.

While there are no records to say that anyone has ever really died from walking over the witch's grave, perhaps they have just been lucky. Or maybe they have simply not lived to tell the tale.