Princeton Cemetery

This renowned resting place dates back to 1757 and contains the graves of notables including President Grover Cleveland, Aaron Burr, and the parents of the Menendez Brothers. The historic cemetery is part of guided ghost tours.

Established in 1757, Princeton Cemetery earned the moniker "The Westminster Abbey of the United States" from historian John F. Hageman in 1878. The original one-acre parcel was acquired by the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) from Judge Thomas Leonard, and the cemetery has grown to nearly 19 acres containing approximately 23,000 interments. The Presidents' Plot along Wiggins Street holds the remains of most past presidents of both the College and Princeton Theological Seminary, creating what many believe to be a concentrated wellspring of spiritual energy in these hallowed grounds.

The cemetery's first burial was Aaron Burr Sr., the College's second president, who died in 1757. His son, Aaron Burr Jr.—third Vice President of the United States and killer of Alexander Hamilton—was buried here in 1836 following his funeral at Nassau Hall. The Aaron Burr Association placed a commemorative plaque at his grave in 1995, and visitors today frequently leave trinkets and mementos, a phenomenon amplified by the Broadway musical Hamilton. But it is the younger Burr's restless spirit that has captured Princeton's imagination for over a century.

Those who believe Aaron Burr Jr.'s shade drifts about the town have existed since the 1800s. In 1892, a student wrote in the Nassau Literary Review that while tramping along McCosh Walk "during the moony time of evening," he encountered Burr's ghost, who explained that "the mood of the campus had summoned him from other realms" and that he returns "always in Princeton for a while before examinations." By 1940, the Daily Princetonian documented a university tradition: "The first rainy night of the fall term, a group of sophomores would herd a bunch of first-classmen down Witherspoon Street to see Aaron Burr arise from the goodly company of great Americans which surrounds him and flit about the graveyard."

Visitors have reported encountering Burr not only at his grave but across campus and, remarkably, as far away as New York City—where his spirit reportedly frequents One if by Land, Two if by Sea, a West Village restaurant that was once his carriage house and stables. His father, Aaron Burr Sr., is said to haunt nearby Nassau Hall, "checking up on the progress of his beloved college."

The concentration of luminaries buried here creates what paranormal investigators describe as powerful spiritual residue. President Grover Cleveland—the only commander-in-chief to serve non-consecutive terms—rests here alongside his wife Frances Folsom Cleveland and their young daughter Ruth. Theologian Jonathan Edwards, the Great Awakening's leading voice, died in 1758 just thirty-four days after becoming the College's third president, succumbing to complications from a smallpox inoculation. John Witherspoon, the only active clergyman and the only college president to sign the Declaration of Independence, lies in the Presidents' Row. Mathematician Kurt Godel, whose incompleteness theorems revolutionized logic, is buried here alongside Nobel laureate physicist Eugene Wigner and computer pioneer John von Neumann—about twenty yards apart, the three giants of twentieth-century mathematics maintaining proximity even in death.

Perhaps most unexpectedly, Jose and Mary "Kitty" Menendez—parents of convicted murderers Lyle and Erik Menendez—were buried here in an unoccupied corner of the cemetery in August 1989. The brothers, who had grown up in Princeton before the family moved to Beverly Hills, reportedly offered an additional ,000 for the entire corner of the cemetery—a swath equivalent to about seventy plots—though this request was declined.

Ghost tours led by Princeton Tour Company take visitors through the cemetery on October evenings, though the approach inside the gates differs markedly from the paranormal investigations conducted elsewhere on campus. "What we do outside the gates of the cemetery versus inside is very different," tour guides explain. Outside involves EMF meters, dowsing rods, and thermal meters to detect spectral activity; inside the gates, they treat it as a final resting place, offering historical discussions at the tombstones of Burr, Cleveland, and university president James McCosh rather than active ghost hunting.

The cemetery remains open daily from dawn to dusk, welcoming visitors who wish to pay respects to the remarkable individuals interred here—and perhaps encounter the spirits who refuse to leave.