Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainThe 1870s pioneer burial ground on Michigan Avenue, platted in 1888, where ghost-tour visitors report orbs in photos and shapes between the headstones
3200 Michigan Ave, Fort Myers, FL 33916
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Municipal cemetery, open to the public at no charge during daylight hours. Some downtown ghost tours include the cemetery's history as a stop.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Flat, grassy cemetery grounds with paved and unpaved drives; older sections have uneven ground around historic markers
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1875 · One of the Oldest Cemeteries in the Fort Myers Area · Platted by W. E. Loper in 1888 · Burials of Fort Myers and Lee County Pioneers
The cemetery on Michigan Avenue is the burial ground of pioneer Fort Myers. Records place its origins in the 1870s, when the settlement that grew up around the abandoned military post was a few hundred people on the Caloosahatchee. The ground was surveyed and platted by W. E. Loper on September 25, 1888, and was originally held in private hands before passing to the City of Fort Myers.
As the oldest of the city's cemeteries, it became the resting place for early settlers, merchants, and county officials from the decades when Lee County was carved out of Monroe in 1887 and Fort Myers incorporated as its seat. Walking the older sections is effectively reading the early roster of the town, with weathered markers dating to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The cemetery remains active and is maintained by the City of Fort Myers. Its long history and its place in the early town's story are the reasons it appears in downtown haunted-history tour narration, which uses the documented age of the ground rather than any single tragic event as the hook for its reputation.
Sources
The cemetery's ghost stories are the kind that attach to any very old burial ground. Visitors describe orbs turning up in photographs taken among the markers, shapes that appear to move between the headstones at the edge of sight, and sounds in the quiet older sections that they cannot place. None of it is tied to a specific named death or documented tragedy; the draw is the simple fact that this is the oldest ground in town.
Downtown Fort Myers ghost tours fold the cemetery into their route as a history stop, using its 1870s origins and pioneer burials to set the tone. Because it is an active municipal cemetery rather than a tour-operated site, the accounts are reported by daytime visitors and tour groups rather than collected on overnight investigations.
The reports stay at the low-key end of the spectrum: photo anomalies, peripheral movement, and a general sense of being watched among the older graves. Visitors are asked to treat the grounds with the respect owed an active cemetery and to keep their visits to daylight hours.
The cemetery is open to the public during daylight hours. Visitors can walk the older sections, which hold graves of Fort Myers pioneers and early Lee County officials. Out of respect for an active burial ground, visits should keep to daylight and stay on the drives and walkways.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Forest Park, IL
Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, grew from two adjacent cemeteries — German Waldheim (established 1873) and Forest Home (1876) — which merged in February 1969. The 220-acre site was chosen as a non-denominational burial ground, a policy that made it the only Chicago-area cemetery willing to accept the bodies of the Haymarket defendants in 1887.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPArcadia, FL
During WWII, the British Arnold Plan established No. 5 British Flying Training School at Carlstrom Field near Arcadia. Twenty-three RAF cadets died in training accidents between 1941 and 1943 and were interred in a dedicated section of Oak Ridge Cemetery maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Their American flight instructor John Paul Riddle is buried among them at his own request.
Key West, FL
In spring 1860, the U.S. Navy intercepted three American-owned slave ships — the Wildfire, William, and Bogota — and brought 1,432 Africans to Key West. During quarantine, 294 died and were buried in a sand ridge near the beach. The cemetery was forgotten for over a century until ground-penetrating radar rediscovered it in 2002. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.