Crown Hill Cemetery

The third-largest non-governmental cemetery in the United States, encompassing 555 acres. Established in 1863 at Strawberry Hill, it is the final resting place of President Benjamin Harrison, John Dillinger, and other notable Hoosiers.

Crown Hill Cemetery was incorporated on September 25, 1863 and dedicated on June 1, 1864, during the height of the Civil War. Landscape architect Frederick Chislett of Pittsburgh designed the grounds on scenic farmland on Indianapolis's north side, creating a 555-acre park-like burial ground that is now the third largest non-governmental cemetery in the United States. Over 225,000 people are interred here, including President Benjamin Harrison, three U.S. vice presidents, ten Indiana governors, poet James Whitcomb Riley on the summit of Strawberry Hill, Colonel Eli Lilly, and the notorious bank robber John Dillinger, whose coffin was buried under massive slabs of concrete and scrap metal to deter souvenir hunters after his 1934 burial drew a crowd of 5,000 that nearly rioted. In 1866, 707 Union soldiers who died during the Civil War were reinterred at Crown Hill, and in 1931, 1,616 Confederate prisoners of war who perished at Camp Morton between 1862 and 1865 were moved to the Confederate Mound.

The most haunted area of Crown Hill is Section 37, known as Community Hill, where a 30-by-50-foot mass grave holds the remains of 699 children who died from disease, starvation, and neglect at the Indianapolis Children's Asylum, the Children's Guardians Home, and the Asylum for Friendless Colored Children between 1892 and 1980. Slightly more than half were boys, two-thirds were white, and their ages ranged from a few months to fifteen years old. The Hearts Remembered Memorial, dedicated on June 4, 2006, now stands over the grave with a statue of a weeping woman to remember these forgotten children. Visitors to Section 37 consistently report hearing the sounds of children laughing and playing near the memorial, and the sound of crying coming from the mass grave area. The site drew the attention of paranormal investigators Keith Age, John Zaffis, and extreme haunting specialist Steven LaChance, who featured it in the 2007 documentary Children of the Grave. During filming, the sound crew reportedly captured what sounded like children screaming during preliminary sound checks when no one else was present.

Throughout the broader cemetery grounds, visitors and employees have reported a woman holding a baby wandering among the headstones as though lost, trying to find her way home, who vanishes without a trace the moment she is spotted. According to local legend, a young mother was unable to find her way out of the cemetery at closing time and wandered to the fence along 38th Street, but no passersby came to help the wailing woman, and she was never seen alive again. Apparitions of American soldiers in period uniforms from every major war have been observed walking among the graves before disappearing when approached. A ghostly horse-drawn carriage has been reported traveling along the cemetery's 25 miles of paved roads at night, and unexplainable lights have been documented floating among the headstones. Near the Robertson family plot, a weeping angel statue is said to weep blood, mourning the loss of John and Sarah Robertson's child who died during birth. Crown Hill embraces its reputation with annual Ghost Stories at Crown Hill events, where storytellers share the cemetery's most chilling tales among the graves.