The Creepiest Stories From Cemetery Groundskeepers

From Redditor /u/Nickbotic:

I’ve had a number of odd experiences with our crematorium. One such instance was in 2012, following a [service] for a very large man, roughly 375 pounds. I got the retort (cremation chamber) preheated while my wife set up a movie to watch while the [man] was cremated. I used the elevating platform and then slid [him] in, closing the door to the retort afterwards, and went to sit down.

About five minutes after I’d shut the door to the retort, we heard a thump. Neither of us paid it much mind but a few moments later there was another and then another. I stood up, worried that the man may have had a pacemaker still [inside him], however unlikely, as he had had his organs removed. The thumping and thudding got more hurried. We looked through the front window of the retort and couldn’t believe what we were seeing.

The [man] inside was flailing about, both of [his] arms and legs were bouncing around like he was in extreme pain. Now, it isn’t odd to see parts move while [someone] is being cremated - as the limbs are broken down, they will often contract as muscles and tendons snap - but this was most decidedly not that. The man’s fingers were balled up in fists and were banging against the windows, and his legs seemed to be kicking downward, as if to get out. The man’s mouth opened and first groans began emanating from within, then screams...

There was no way, absolutely no way whatsoever, that he could still have been alive. But for about 20 seconds after we'd gone to up to the retort, the [man] inside the cremation chamber screamed and flailed his arms and legs about. 

From Redditor /u/Nickbotic: 

My family has owned [a cemetery] for nearly five generations, and I’ve been working there since I was 12... The house that my family built on the property is about 30 yards back from the main office.

One night when they were kids, my grandpa and uncle were up late. My uncle happened to look out their window and swore to my grandpa that he’d seen someone walk behind one of the trees. The lamppost illuminated the very first handful of plots and headstones on the other side of the road, but at that point, they were undisturbed.

My grandpa and uncle stood at their window for a little while, with my grandpa ultimately teasing my uncle for being scared. However, when they woke up the next morning, the police were there. In the hours between when they looked out the window and saw the burial plots undisturbed (about 4 am) and the time they noticed the commotion (about 7 am), seven of the plots had been dug up. The headstones were stacked very deliberately, like a house of cards, and behind them the caskets were atop one another, the first one laying flat, the next one straight up, then flat, straight up, flat, straight up, with the final one flat. With basic casket dimensions taken into account, that’s nearly 30 feet high.

I’m sure you can imagine, even with machinery in the present day, that would take at least a little bit of time to accomplish. But nope, back in the 1950s, this was somehow done in a span of less than 180 minutes, with no one that lived in the house able to hear it going on.

From Redditor /u/mine_that_bird:

Dave is the oldest of the workers and has been here forever. I ask him, "Hey Dave, have you ever experienced anything creepy here?" Dave replies:

"Back in the '80s, I began working here with Old Frank. One afternoon, we had a funeral for a child whose last name was kinda odd and sticks with you: Eggleton. We lowered the casket without a hitch, his family was gone, it was just about eight of us. We started lowering the vault cover that his family bought, and my rope surprisingly snapped. My side came crashing down and took out the bottom right of the casket... I look down there, and there the kid was. All I saw was his leg... Black pants, creamy white shoes. I had to go sit down after that while they fixed the cover. I was sitting literally five feet from the guys on a bench when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked over and it was a young man. He had a watering can and was in an all-blue suit. I figured he was going to water flowers at another grave or something. He calmly chuckles, "You're definitely not the first person to do that, don't worry about it... We all end up buried." I laughed with him and watched him walk over to another grave under a maple tree and started watering the flowers at the stone. I walked over to check on the guys and just making sure - because I do believe in ghosts - ask, "Hey, Frank, is that guy actually there?"

Frank responds, "That's not funny, of course he's there."

I laugh but the next time we look over, he's gone. I've never seen Old Frank so startled in his life. He tells me, "That grave is a single and hasn't been dug yet. There's not suppose to be a tombstone." 

[Old Frank] pulls me to the side and tells me to keep it between us. I walk around 10 paces to the [grave site], and my jaw drops. There's not a thing there. No tombstone, no nothing."

A few years go by, and [Dave passes away]. His burial was in an older section that rarely has burials anymore. We were lowering him, and an innocent part-time kid couldn't bear the weight of the vault cover and dropped it. We finished it, and I walked down to talk to [the kid] telling him not to worry, it happens to everyone. I brought a pail of water to fill up next to the bench so I can water the sad, lonely flower pot someone brought for Dave. I put my hand on the kid's shoulder and joked while filling it up. I started walking up the hill, and I noticed a grave with a name I couldn't forget, "Eggleton."  

I had tunnel vision right to Dave's grave and up to the maple tree it was under. I'm in shock, and I look all over my body while I'm wearing a navy blue suit. I immediately ran to the records cabinet to check to see when this grave site was bought by Dave... I went through pages and pages of years of binders filled with the records of purchases and who's where.

Dave and his family never purchased the grave. No one has ever purchased that grave.

From Redditor /u/Sanman79:

I was originally hired because the cemetery had a period of time where they experienced some people [sneaking] in to perform rituals. I was 21 years old, doing this as a side job, with [nothing to protect myself]. I was given a barcode scanner and was told to drive through the entire cemetery every hour or so to patrol, and to scan each of the pre-posted barcodes to prove I was actually doing it. Now this cemetery was massive. Pretty much broken into three parts - the newer part, the historic part, and the famous part where celebrities are buried.

I did this routine once and never did it again, going so far as to break the barcode scanner so I didn't have to do it. While I was driving, it was pitch black. Coming around a long curved road, my headlights picked up what I could've sworn were a pair of legs walking across the path, but only up to the knees. Shoes, pants, knees then absolutely nothing! I stopped in the road and just watched this pair of legs cross 10 feet in front me. I put the car in reverse, did what felt like the longest K-turn of my life, and noped it straight back to the parking lot.

From Redditor /u/Sanman79:

Normally my then girlfriend, now my wife, would drop by [the cemetery] around 8 pm and bring me dinner, since I couldn't really leave. I never told her about my [weird] experiences because I didn't want to freak her out. As I'm walking her back to her car to leave, I see her reach back and touch her ponytail then look around with a look on her face. I ask her what's wrong, and she says, "Nothing, I must've got my ponytail caught in a tree branch, I felt something."

So I pointed out to her that the closest tree was 20 feet away and that's impossible. Then she gets really pale and says it felt like someone ran their hand through her hair, front to back, and then pulled on the ponytail. We were both pretty freaked out, and she left. She never came and brought me dinner again.

From Redditor /u/Sanman79:

I worked the 4 pm - 12 am shift; the cemetery generally closed at 6 pm, so around 5:30 pm, I would lock the main gate, then would start driving through the cemetery to notify any visitors that we'd be closing soon.

So one day, I'm in the middle of my final drive-through and see an old lady slowly walking the sidewalk alongside a mausoleum. The mausoleum was hundreds of feet long, about 20 feet tall, and had no breaks in it; it was one long stretch. The road ran directly alongside the sidewalk of the mausoleum, so I pull up behind the lady (to tell her we're closing), get out of my car, take my eyes off of her for a split second as I'm getting out of the car, and when I shut the door and look up, she's gone. Completely vanished.

I didn't think anything paranormal at first, I just thought maybe I lost sight of her. But the sidewalk and road were completely empty. I ran all the way around the check the back of the mausoleum, but no one was there. Across from the mausoleum was a whole field of graves, and I eagle-eyed every row. Not a soul in sight. I finish up my round up and sit in my car the rest of the night, in a well-lit area. I saw a fully visible person, I know it. No tricks of light, no hallucination. Plain as day.