A rural Craighead County chapel and cemetery south of Jonesboro, long attached to local legends of crying-baby sounds, ghost lights, and stalled cars — and cited by the Encyclopedia of Arkansas as one of the state's legend-rich burial grounds.
2401 Kellers Chapel Road, Jonesboro, AR 72404
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free; a rural cemetery on a country road. Respect posted hours and do not trespass after dark.
Access
Limited Access
Rural cemetery grounds off a country road; uneven grass and gravel.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1890 · Historic Keller family chapel and community cemetery in Craighead County · Approximately 1,200 interments, including ~75 Keller family members and nine Keller infants · Cited by the Encyclopedia of Arkansas among the state's legend-rich cemeteries
Keller's Chapel Cemetery lies on Kellers Chapel Road south of Jonesboro in Craighead County, Arkansas, reached by traveling south on Highway 49 from the Highway 63 bypass to Mount Carmel Church and turning onto Kellers Chapel Road. The cemetery is associated with a small rural chapel and serves a farming community that settled the area in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The burial ground contains roughly 1,200 interments. About 75 of these are members of the Keller family for whom both the chapel and cemetery are named, reflecting the typical pattern of a rural Arkansas family graveyard that grew into a broader community cemetery. Among the Keller burials are nine infants, a sobering record of the high childhood mortality that families in rural Arkansas faced before modern medicine.
The site has been documented by local genealogical organizations including the Greater Searcy County / Craighead County cemetery projects and BillionGraves, which has cataloged the headstones with GPS coordinates. Keller's Chapel has also become a fixture of northeast Arkansas folklore and was profiled by Jonesboro television station KAIT8 in its 'Arkanhaunts' Halloween coverage. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas, the state's peer-reviewed reference work, cites the cemetery of Keller's Chapel as one of the Arkansas burial grounds with a substantial body of attached ghost legends.
Sources
Keller's Chapel is among the most legend-laden cemeteries in northeast Arkansas. The best-known story, recounted by arkansashauntedhouses.com, HauntedPlaces.org, and Jonesboro's KAIT8 television station, is that visitors hear the sound of babies crying on the grounds. Local tradition ties this directly to the nine Keller infants buried in the cemetery, giving the legend an unusually specific and documented anchor compared with most rural ghost lore.
Other reported phenomena include ghostly lights that appear to follow visitors as they move among the graves at night, and an interactive legend in which a person who knocks on the chapel door will hear an answering knock from inside the locked, empty building. A widely repeated automotive variant holds that anyone who turns off their car engine at the chapel gates will find the vehicle will not restart for several hours, effectively trapping them on the grounds — a 'stalled car' motif common to rural haunted-site legends across the South.
The site has drawn paranormal investigators and amateur ghost hunters from the Jonesboro area, and was featured in KAIT8's 'Arkanhaunts' Halloween segment. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas notes that the cemetery has 'dozens of legends attached to it,' placing Keller's Chapel firmly in the documented body of Arkansas folklore. As with all such legends, the phenomena are unverified, and visitors are reminded that the cemetery is private community ground best visited respectfully and by daylight.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Visit the historic Keller family chapel and burial ground during daylight, walking among roughly 1,200 interments including many members of the Keller family for whom the site is named.
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