St. Augustine's Oldest Protestant Burial Ground Since 1821
Huguenot Cemetery, Old City Gates, St. Augustine, FL 32084
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The cemetery is accessible for self-guided daytime visits. Evening ghost tours pass by the cemetery and may include entrance; check individual tour operators for pricing.
Access
Limited Access
Compact less-than-one-acre grounds with uneven historic grave surfaces
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1821 · Yellow Fever History · Spanish Colonial Era · Protestant History in Catholic Florida · National Register Eligible
The Huguenot Cemetery's founding was an act of medical necessity compounded by religious exclusion. In 1821, just weeks after Florida's formal transfer from Spanish to American governance, a yellow fever epidemic struck St. Augustine with devastating force — at its height, the disease was killing thirteen to fourteen people per day. The Catholic cemeteries within the old Spanish city limits refused burial to Protestants, and the new American administration established a separate ground outside the city walls for those who died outside the Catholic faith.
The cemetery served a religiously diverse Protestant population: Huguenots (French Protestants who gave the cemetery its name), Lutherans, Methodists, and other denominations who found themselves without sanctified ground inside the city. It operated from 1821 to 1884, accumulating approximately 436 burials in its less-than-one-acre plot.
The site's position just outside the Old City Gates — one of the most intact pieces of Spanish colonial fortification in the United States — places it at the threshold between the historic city and the space beyond its walls. This liminal positioning, combined with the density of yellow fever victims buried within, gives the site its particular atmospheric character.
Notable burials include Judge John B. Stickney, interred in 1835, and Reverend James Rees, a Methodist minister.
Sources
The Huguenot Cemetery generates an unusual volume of anomalous visitor photographs. Orbs appear in clusters, not isolated — multiple exposures from the same visit often produce different configurations. Shadow figures appear behind visitors in images where no second person was present. A white mist has been documented in photographs taken in conditions that should not produce lens condensation.
Judge John B. Stickney is the cemetery's most named presence. Stickney died in 1882 and was interred in the cemetery, but a subsequent exhumation — the reason for which varies across accounts — was accompanied by theft: the judge's gold teeth were removed from the body. This desecration is the stated reason for Stickney's continued presence. He is described by witnesses as appearing in 1830s formal attire, gesturing as if delivering legal argument. The teeth are not recoverable.
The second reported figure is a young girl, estimated to be in her early teens, who died during the yellow fever epidemic at the cemetery's founding. Her body was apparently left at the Old City Gates — the entry point just beyond the cemetery — and interred in a pauper's section. Witnesses describe her wandering among the smaller headstones, appearing disoriented rather than distressed. Some describe a white dress.
At certain hours — investigator accounts cluster reports between 3 and 5 a.m. — other phenomena occur: temperature drops that arrive quickly rather than gradually, erratic compass behavior, and audio recordings that capture voice patterns not audible to those present. Some witnesses have reported hearing what they describe as hymns in multiple languages emanating from the cemetery grounds during periods of confirmed occupancy by no living visitors.
Notable Entities
The Huguenot Cemetery sits just outside the original Spanish city walls at the Old City Gates — one of the most photographed spots in St. Augustine. The less-than-one-acre grounds contain approximately 436 burials from 1821 to 1884, including victims of the 1821 yellow fever epidemic. Photography here is particularly productive; anomalous orbs and shadows appear in visitor photographs with unusual frequency.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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