Graniteville Cemetery

An unidentified sick boy pulled off a train in October 1855 died in a Graniteville hotel room, and visitors have left toys on his grave for over 160 years. The cemetery is also haunted by a woman who places flowers on children's graves at night.

The headstone just says "The Little Boy, October 1855." Nobody ever found out his name.

In October of that year, a train running between Charleston and Hamburg passed through Warrenville, half a mile from Graniteville. On board was a boy, alone and unconscious. The conductor pulled him off at the station and locals carried him to the Graniteville Hotel. He woke up long enough for people to try talking to him, but he couldn't tell them who he was or where he was going. He had no identification. He died a few days later in a room full of strangers.

The town buried him properly. A local cabinetmaker built a casket. Townspeople donated scraps of satin and silk to line it. William Gregg, the industrialist who founded Graniteville and its cotton mill in 1845, had already set aside land for a cemetery around 1850. He gave the boy a plot. For over 160 years, visitors have left toys on the grave. Stuffed animals, matchbox cars, wooden blocks. Nobody knows exactly when the tradition started, but it picked up after the grave was restored, and it hasn't stopped.

Graniteville Cemetery holds graves dating back to the 1700s, many of the earliest marked with nothing more than wooden stakes bearing names. The town itself was a planned mill community, one of the first in the South, and the cemetery reflects that history. Mill workers, their families, Gregg himself for a time before his wife had him exhumed and moved to Charleston.

The hauntings center on two figures. Visitors describe a woman they call the witch, though she doesn't seem malicious. She walks through the cemetery at night placing flowers on children's graves. The other is the boy himself. People who visit at night claim to see a small figure near the toys, playing with the gifts left for him.

The cemetery also gets loud on full-moon nights. Visitors report gunshots, screams, and laughter coming from the back of the grounds where unmarked graves cluster together. Some say they've felt hands grabbing at their ankles from the ground. Voices answer questions nobody asked.

Graniteville has seen more than its share of train-related tragedy. The worst came at 2:39 AM on January 6, 2005, when two Norfolk Southern freight trains collided near the Avondale Mills plant. The crash ruptured a tank car of liquid chlorine. Nine people died from the gas, and over 250 were treated for exposure. A memorial in the cemetery marks that disaster too. Three major train incidents in one small cotton town, going back generations.