Lexington Cemetery

Established in 1848, this 170-acre Victorian cemetery is one of the oldest and most beautiful in Kentucky. The grounds feature stunning monuments, ancient trees, and the graves of Henry Clay, John Hunt Morgan, and other notable Kentuckians.

The Lexington Cemetery was established in 1849 after the Kentucky General Assembly approved an act incorporating the Lexington Cemetery Company on February 5, 1848. The garden-style cemetery was created on 40 acres of land to address the overcrowding and public health crises that plagued the city's older burial grounds, particularly after devastating cholera epidemics including the outbreak of 1833. Over the years, the grounds expanded to 170 acres and became the final resting place for some of Kentucky's most distinguished figures. Henry Clay, the great statesman and three-time presidential candidate, was interred here after his death on June 29, 1852, and a towering 120-foot Corinthian column surmounted by his statue marks his grave. Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan, the Thunderbolt of the Confederacy, also rests here, alongside more than 500 Confederate and 1,100 Union veterans — a reminder that Kentucky was a border state torn apart by the Civil War.

The sheer concentration of the dead — soldiers, statesmen, enslaved people, and ordinary citizens spanning nearly two centuries — has given the cemetery a persistent reputation for paranormal activity. The mausoleum is the most actively reported site. Visitors describe hearing disembodied voices, strange noises, and what some have called blood-curdling screams emanating from inside the structure. A dark, shadow-like figure has been observed moving near the back of the mausoleum, and witnesses who encounter it report being overwhelmed by an intense sense of anger, as though the entity resents intrusion.

Among the more sorrowful apparitions is the ghost of a man holding an infant, seen walking among the headstones. According to accounts passed down through cemetery visitors, the spirits are waiting for the man's wife to die so the family can be reunited. The identity of this spectral father and child remains unknown, but the story endures as one of the cemetery's most affecting legends. On warm days, visitors have reported sudden, inexplicable chills while walking among the tombstones, and misty apparitions have been seen drifting between the monuments at dusk.

One of the cemetery's most historically significant ghosts has a name: Bouviette James, the enslaved nursemaid of the Hunt-Morgan family who died in 1870 and is buried in an unusual position — placed diagonally outside the main family plot and given a child-sized headstone despite being an adult. Her grave has become a stop on the self-guided "A House Divided: Lexington Cemetery and the Civil War" tour, created by historian Jonathan Coleman and available through the Mary Todd Lincoln House website. Bouviette's ghost story is widely considered Lexington's most famous — her apparition, identifiable by the distinctive red leather shoes the family gave her, has been reported not at the cemetery but at the Hunt-Morgan House, where she is said to appear to sick children even in death.

The cemetery remains open to visitors and is included on multiple Lexington ghost tour circuits. The Lizzie Borden Ghost Tours operation leads walks through the grounds, inviting participants to meet the lingering spirits of Civil War soldiers, tragic lovers, and restless pioneers who have never left these rolling hills.