Status: Abandoned

Most people who know me can tell you that I’m not the biggest cemetery enthusiast. Periodically, I will come across one that really makes quite an impression on me. This is the Weller Free Church Cemetery. It is located in Franklin Township, Warren County, New Jersey. It was established in 1762 as a plot for the Weller family, but was later used as the final resting place for many other family names. Here is a transcription. This piece of history from the Revolutionary period is in a state of perpetual decay. According to the latest dates on the headstones, it has been abandoned since the mid 1900s and hasn’t been maintained since. Most of the graves appear to have been desecrated, leaving them dug up, and/or with broken headstones.

As with many other places, this one is no exception when it comes to local legend and folklore. One story states that one year on Halloween, several surviving members of one of the families had come to leave flowers for their loved ones. They were murdered in the process, and then later buried here. Sources state that if one comes here on Halloween night, they can witness the earth moving above graves, hands poking through the ground, and in extreme cases, re-animated corpses roaming the woods. Not having witnessed these occurrences with my own eyes, and being of a highly skeptical nature, I will challenge the credibility of their sources.

- Ember, 2004