Status: Maintained

Much like the patient cemetery at Kings Park Psychiatric Center, this is another that is very much not your typical cemetery. It appears to be a wide open field with only a few scattered markers here and there, serving as a mass grave for those who suffered from mental illness and died within the confines of Pilgrim State Hospital.

This overgrown cemetery was an even more pitiful sight than the Kings Park patient cemetery. Even the only sign that identified it was missing, the empty signpost surrounded by decaying wreaths and decorations that people likely dressed the graves of their loved ones with. It was very difficult to find the markers even though each section was marked with a street sign indicating which section was which.

In this cemetery, we stumbled across something disturbing that we never thought we’d see. While looking for random markers, we noticed some small piles of dirt. Upon further inspection, we discovered a rectangular shaped hole between the piles of dirt and it was clear to us that someone had been dug up! We suddenly felt like we were in the middle of a horror movie. It was enough to make ME shudder! After thinking about it for a while, we began to think that perhaps someone didn’t want their loved one kept for eternity in a forgotten cemetery that might someday have a shopping center built upon it and decided to give them a proper burial in another cemetery. This was a much more logical explanation than one that involves grave diggers and zombies!

- Ember, 2003