Denver’s lovely Cheesman Park was once a cemetery, says the Denver Library. It first opened in 1858, when Denver was little more than a collection of dusty buildings. By 1893, the city had become the state capital of Colorado, and the burial ground held an estimated 5,000 graves. Also by then, city leaders had soured on the idea of having a large graveyard in the middle of their growing city. Wouldn’t a park be much nicer?

Thus, the City of Denver began the arduous task of moving the thousands of burials to other cemeteries throughout the city. It hired undertaker E.P. McGovern to oversee the project, but McGovern turned out to be a crook. According to The Haunted Heart of Denver, McGovern was paid per burial. So, he split body parts into different coffins in an attempt to earn more commission. He was also criminally sloppy, leaving human remains and burial ephemera strewn about the site. The city fired him but never bothered to hire a replacement. Instead, workers quietly pulled the headstones and went ahead with construction. Today, there are as many as 3,000 bodies still buried at Cheesman.

Many swear that the park is full of ghosts. Denver’s KUSA reports that visitors claim to encounter spirits both in the park and surrounding homes. A writer staying in a nearby mansion was so spooked that their experience inspired the 1980 ghost film, The Changeling.

It would be strange indeed if a burial place as old as London’s Highgate Cemetery didn’t have the odd ghost story or two. Opened in 1839, reports Atlas Obscura, it’s infamously atmospheric. Oh, and it could have a vampire infestation.

It’s odd, considering the many thousands of graves in Highgate, that the cemetery would become best known for hosting a possible vampire. Then again, the story, as related by Vice, is bursting at the seams with high gothic drama and ghoulish hijinks.

It began in 1967, when two teenage girls claimed to see dead folks walking around inside the cemetery. In 1970, things got gorier when numerous animals were found in the area, drained of blood. In February of that year, a local named David Farrant wrote to the newspaper Hampstead & Highgate Express, saying he’d seen a supernatural figure there. Sean Manchester, another local, cemented the legend by saying that figure was nothing less than a vampire.

It was the beginning of a long rivalry between the two men. Both staged rituals and stalked the graveyard with stakes, says the journal Folklore. Farrant was even arrested for trespassing in a nearby churchyard. It all supposedly ended in 1973, when Manchester said he vanquished the vampire.

Eighteenth-century Paris had a real problem. The city, which had been around since 52 BCE, says History, was overflowing with graves. Over the centuries, many thousands of people had died and been buried within Paris. Now, their bones were everywhere, emerging ghoulishly from packed graveyards and causing illness and contamination citywide.

City leaders soon realized that the solution was right in front of them, says Les Catacombes de Paris. For centuries, people had been quarrying rock from beneath the city. Most mining operations had been abandoned after several building collapses, but miles of empty underground tunnels remained. Moving under cover of night to avoid public censure, workers took remains from graves and mausoleums throughout the city and stacked them beneath the Parisians’ feet. After people stopped moving the bones in 1860, says Smithsonian Magazine, visitors were allowed to tour the spooky underground. In some of the public spaces, bones had been arranged in patterns and images, making for a striking tourist story to share with the folks back home. 

Some wonder if the people of Paris past still linger. According to World’s Most Haunted Places, the Catacombs Museum, where many visitors can access a small portion of the network, is haunted by ghostly voices. Other tourists just can’t shake the feeling that there’s an eerie presence watching them down there.

Where other graveyards might have a complement of ethereal specters and eerie noises, Stull Cemetery near Lawrence, Kansas, has a far more devilish reputation. Local legends claim that the place isn’t merely a quiet resting place but is, in fact, a portal to Hell.

The confirmed history of Stull, Kansas, reveals that the place was once small but prosperous, says Haunted Lawrence. As the 20th century rolled on, however, the place slid into gentle obscurity. The devilish legends about the cemetery didn’t really begin to pop up until the 1960s. That’s when people claimed that the grave of Bettie and Frankie Thomas was damaged by a tree because the pair were evil witches. The rather slanderous legend morphed into tales about devil worshippers.

Other legends, as reported by American Hauntings, include a wild tale that claims a half-human child was born to a woman who had congress with Satan. The infant only lived a few days, but legend says that his tiny ghost still walks through the cemetery. Others say that devil worshippers gather there, that a secret stairway leads directly to the underworld, and that even the pope redirected his plane so he wouldn’t have to fly over such evil ground.

Even if there is some grain of truth, local residents have grown sick of vandals and looky-loos, says Kansas’ KCTV News. People who trespass on nearby private property may have to worry about more tangible dangers than ghosts or demons.

The Union Cemetery in Easton, Connecticut, may look like any other old New England burial ground. Yet, as some investigators claim, it may be one of the most haunted cemeteries in the United States.

Many ghostly stories of Union Cemetery focus on the White Lady. According to NBC Connecticut, she’s said to roam the graveyard and its adjoining roads at night. One man, Rod Vecsey, says that he saw her while driving around at roughly 1:00 AM. Not only did he see the White Lady standing by the side of the road, but a man appeared in his passenger seat. Then, the road seemed to turn red, until Vecsey reached a church at the bottom of a hill. In another story related by Haunted Connecticut, an unnamed driver also witnessed a reddish glow come over the road. He saw the White Lady standing in the road and hit her. Though he felt the impact and later saw a dent in his truck, there was no trace of the woman.

Tales of the haunted Union Cemetery became so widespread that famous paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren staked out the burial ground. The married pair, who drew interest and skepticism for their work with other legendary scares like Annabelle the doll, were drawn to the legends surrounding the cemetery. Their book, Graveyard, collects other frightening stories, like the ominous “dark man” seen by the cemetery sexton.