A historic 1905 cemetery in Inglewood with over 100,000 interments including Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, and César Romero — where visitors and staff have reported vanishing figures, phantom children, and the ghost of a man who appears to be fixing his own headstone at night.
720 East Florence Avenue, Inglewood, CA 90301
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free admission during operating hours
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved drives and paths throughout 295-acre grounds
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1905 · Founded 1905; first interment July 20, 1906 · Built California's first community mausoleum (1913) · More than 100,000 interments; more than any other individual CA cemetery · Notable burials: Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Edgar Bergen, César Romero, Chet Baker, Sugar Ray Robinson
In 1905, a group of Centinela Valley businessmen founded the Inglewood Park Cemetery Association, recognizing the need for a dedicated burial ground as the area's population grew. The cemetery received its first interment on July 20, 1906, and expanded rapidly through the early decades of the 20th century. In 1907, a two-story white granite chapel was completed at a cost of approximately $40,000, which stands today as one of the cemetery's architectural landmarks. In 1913, Inglewood Park pioneered the concept of affordable community mausoleum entombment for California, building the first community mausoleum in the state.
Over the following century, the cemetery grew to encompass 295 acres in the city of Inglewood in Los Angeles County, performing more interments than any other individual cemetery in Southern California. More than 100,000 individuals are interred there, including nearly three dozen Civil War veterans and early regional settlers, as well as a remarkable concentration of 20th-century entertainment, sports, and cultural figures.
Notable interments include musician Ray Charles, actress Betty Grable, ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, actor César Romero, jazz trumpet player Chet Baker, restaurateur Caesar Cardini (inventor of the Caesar salad), boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, Mayor Tom Bradley, and jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. The cemetery's cultural significance has been documented by PBS SoCal in a feature on its role in Southern California music history.
Sources
Paranormal accounts at Inglewood Park Cemetery have been documented by The Scarecast podcast and the Tombs of Tinseltown feature on The Lineup. Witnesses have reported a small girl in a white dress running around a large tree during daylight hours — whose feet, upon closer observation, were not touching the ground. Both a witness and their supervisor independently confirmed observing the figure before it was gone. A second frequently cited account involves a man working on a headstone after regular hours who appears extremely pale; when asked what he is doing, he responds that he is correcting a misspelling of his name, before disappearing.
Additional traditions — reported by podcast listeners and local accounts collected by The Scarecast — include vanishing hitchhikers encountered on the grounds after dark, mysterious figures in mariachi suits visible in the evening, and the sound of children laughing echoing through the cemetery at night when no children are present. Given the cemetery's vast size (295 acres), its cultural significance to Los Angeles's Black and Latino communities, and its more than century of continuous operation, it is unsurprising that paranormal lore has accumulated alongside its documented history.
Explore 295 acres of historic grounds, notable monuments, the 1907 white granite chapel, and the graves of Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Edgar Bergen, and César Romero among more than 100,000 interred.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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