Woodland Cemetery Chapel

Curse within earshot of Woodland Cemetery Chapel in Keene and locals say you'll walk away tasting soap. A ghost named Robert is blamed.

Don't swear near Woodland Cemetery Chapel. That is the rule everyone in Keene knows, even the people who don't believe in ghosts. The Sumner Knight Chapel sits in the middle of Woodland Cemetery on Washington Street, and local folklore holds that if you curse within earshot of its black wooden doors, you will walk away with the taste of soap in your mouth. A ghost, the story goes, objects to profanity and will wash your mouth out if given the chance.

It is a legend that survives because teenagers can't resist testing it. One retelling collected by the Keene Sentinel involves a teenage couple who tried it as a dare and ended up stuck in a prolonged involuntary kiss, tasting ashes instead of soap, unable to pull apart. Take that as you will.

The cemetery itself was consecrated in 1854 and runs across a wooded slope on the edge of downtown Keene. The chapel is built of heavy gray stone blocks, capped with a slate roof, with 'Sumner Knight and Family Memorial Chapel' carved into the lintel above the main entrance. The Knights were a prominent local family, and the chapel was their contribution to a Victorian-era vogue for cemeteries that doubled as public parks.

The resident ghost has a first name: Robert. He has been described in Keene Sentinel ghost-tour coverage as friendly, talkative, and in residence for roughly a century and a half, which lines up with the 1854 consecration. In one account, Robert gives a visiting ghost from California the full cemetery tour, pointing out Major General Simon Goodell Griffin of the 6th New Hampshire Volunteers, Peter Jeffery the longtime hotel employee, the Allen family plots, and the 193 graves from 1918. 'It was not a good year,' Robert allegedly says about the influenza epidemic. Those are real burials in real plots, which gives the story an anchor the soap-mouth legend doesn't have.

Outside the chapel, the reports get lighter. A little girl has been described peeking out from behind trees and tombstones, giggling. No one has a name for her, no one has a backstory, and that vagueness is part of why she sticks, since the cemetery holds plenty of Victorian-era child burials without matching legends attached.

Photographers post orbs. Paranormal investigators have run EVP sessions. The Keene Ghost Census, a local WordPress project that tried to catalog every haunted spot in town, treats the chapel as the single densest concentration of reported activity in the city.

The best argument for visiting isn't the ghost stories, though. Woodland is a working 19th-century rural cemetery in almost unaltered condition. The Knights, the Griffins, the 193 influenza graves, the weathered marble, the stone chapel, all of it functions the way a Victorian designer would have wanted. You walk in through an iron gate, follow the curving gravel paths, and feel like you have stepped into a very specific year.

Keene runs a walking tour each October. Guides stop at the chapel, tell the Robert story, tell the soap story, and let people decide. Most of the group shows up nervous and leaves charmed. Robert, according to the guides, is usually the reason.