100 Steps Cemetery

A Civil War-era cemetery located on a steep hill along US Route 40 between Brazil and Terre Haute. Also known as Carpenter Cemetery, visitors must climb approximately 100 stone steps to reach the summit.

One Hundred Steps Cemetery -- officially known as Cloverland Cemetery or Carpenter Cemetery -- sits on a hill in rural Clay County, Indiana, about halfway between Brazil and Terre Haute off U.S. Route 40 near the unincorporated community of Cloverland. Established around the time of the Civil War, this small hilltop burial ground has become widely regarded as the most haunted cemetery in Indiana, its legends attracting visitors from across the Midwest for over 150 years.

The cemetery's central legend is a supernatural challenge that has been passed down since at least the late 1800s. At midnight, under a moonless sky, a visitor must climb the stone steps leading up to the cemetery while counting each one. If the count reaches exactly one hundred at the summit, the ghost of the cemetery's original caretaker will appear and reveal to the visitor the date and manner of their own death in a spectral vision. The visitor must then descend, counting again -- but the number of steps on the way down never matches the ascent, with most counters arriving at only ninety-eight or ninety-nine. Some versions of the legend warn that the missing final step leads directly to hell itself, while others claim the caretaker will kill the visitor on the spot if the count is wrong.

Numerous variations of the legend have accumulated over the decades. In one telling, the visitor's feet sink into the stone steps as though the solid surface has turned to quicksand, trapping them while disembodied voices grow louder around them. In another, unseen hands push the climber back down with increasing force on each step, making it impossible to reach the top. A woman in white has been spotted among the headstones, and some visitors report the steps simply vanishing behind them as they climb.

The cemetery has a documented history of grave desecration that may have fed its sinister reputation. The Indianapolis Journal reported on November 20, 1892, that the body of George West's daughter had been stolen from her grave. When Mr. West had the coffin exhumed to move it to another location, he was horrified to discover the coffin had been placed upside down in the ground and his daughter's body was missing entirely -- the work of body snatchers who plagued rural Indiana cemeteries in the late nineteenth century.

Folklore scholar Jan Harold Brunvand documented the 100 Steps legend while studying at Indiana University in the 1950s and 1960s. His research at the university's folklore archives helped establish Indiana as a center for urban legend study and contributed to the cemetery's prominence in American paranormal lore. By the 1950s, when teenagers were driving out to spooky rural locations as a rite of passage -- a practice folklorists call "legend tripping" -- the rituals of 100 Steps had become firmly embedded in the community. The cemetery is also linked with Hell's Gate Bridge in nearby Brazil as part of a folk tradition identifying seven alleged Midwestern passages to hell.

The cemetery recently underwent renovations, with the original deteriorating concrete steps replaced. Some observers have noted the actual step count is closer to sixty than one hundred, and skeptics question whether the legend can survive the renovation. When paranormal author Matt Engel of Tripping on Legends visited at midnight in 2017, he reported that "nothing happened" supernaturally -- though the broken, slippery stairs and complete darkness made the experience genuinely unsettling regardless. The cemetery is officially open only from sunrise to sunset, making the midnight visits central to the legend technically unlawful. Still, the 100 Steps Cemetery remains one of Indiana's most enduring supernatural landmarks, its simple premise -- count the steps, and know how you will die -- as compelling today as it was a century ago.