Stepp Cemetery

A small, secluded cemetery in the Morgan-Monroe State Forest, accessible only by a dirt walking path. The land was originally owned by Reuben Stepp, who purchased it in 1856.

Stepp Cemetery is a small, isolated burial ground deep in the Morgan-Monroe State Forest near Martinsville, Indiana, accessible only on foot through dense woodland. The cemetery contains just twenty-five graves, with the oldest tombstone dating to approximately 1851 -- that of Isaac Heartstock, a War of 1812 veteran. The grounds became part of the state forest in 1929, and the cemetery's remote location, surrounded by towering trees and accessible only by a narrow trail, has made it one of the most legendarily haunted places in Indiana.

The cemetery's most famous ghost is the Lady in Black, a spectral woman dressed entirely in dark mourning clothes who has been spotted sitting on a tree stump at the edge of the burial ground, humming softly to an infant cradled in her arms. A 1972 academic study by Clements and Lightfoot documented twenty-seven distinct variants of her legend. In some versions, she is a grieving mother whose child died in infancy, driven to madness by loss, who visits the grave nightly to rock and comfort her dead baby. In others, she is a widow mourning a husband killed in a logging accident, or a woman whose daughter was killed on a nearby road. One particularly disturbing variant describes the mother obsessively exhuming and reburying her child each night. A conservation officer investigating the legends actually identified a real woman who claimed to visit her buried child at Stepp Cemetery, though she denied making nightly visits and reported receiving harassing phone calls from people who had heard the stories.

The stump where the Lady in Black sits became known as the Warlock's Chair or Warlock's Seat. According to legend, anyone who sits on the stump during a full moon will be cursed to die within exactly one year. The original stump was burned down in 1974, possibly by vandals or legend-trippers, but the curse legend has survived the physical destruction of the seat itself.

The grave most associated with the Lady in Black legend belongs to Baby Lester. Research by the Paraholics investigation team traced the identity to Paul Lester, a stillborn child born to O'Leatha Pryor Lester and Harley Lester in 1937. The Martinsville Reporter-Times documented: "The infant, stillborn this morning to Mr. and Mrs. Harley Lester, was buried this afternoon in the Steppe cemetery." Family members have reported that the grave was continually vandalized, with the marker replaced at least twice, and expressed distress at the urban legends that grew up around their relative's resting place. Visitors still leave toys and trinkets at the tiny grave.

The Hacker family history adds to the cemetery's tragic atmosphere. Sir Malcolm Dunbar Hacker and his wife Ann had eight children, yet half died before reaching the age of twelve. All ten family members were eventually interred at Stepp, their graves a testament to the brutal mortality rates of frontier Indiana.

Stepp Cemetery was also associated with the Crabbites, a fringe snake-handling Christian sect active in the early twentieth century. The Crabbites' genuine historical existence has been confirmed, and legends grew that they conducted rituals at the cemetery involving animal sacrifice and ecstatic worship. A conservation officer who investigated found no traces of cult meetings, only the remains of campfires -- likely from teenagers rather than worshippers.

During the 1950s, a young girl was murdered near the cemetery, her remains deposited in the surrounding woods. The killer was never apprehended. Most documented paranormal reports at Stepp Cemetery date from the 1950s through the 1970s, when teenagers frequently visited the abandoned burial ground as a rite of passage. The Astonishing Legends podcast devoted a detailed episode to the cemetery, examining its folklore and separating documented history from accumulated legend. Today, Stepp Cemetery remains open to visitors within Morgan-Monroe State Forest, its twenty-five graves quietly enduring in the Indiana woods while the Lady in Black continues her vigil in the stories of those who have seen her.