Est. 1847 · Historic Cemetery · USS Maine Memorial · Civil War Burials · Literary Heritage
An October 1846 hurricane scoured the original Key West cemetery on Whitehead Point near the West Martello Towers, washing remains out of the coastal sand dunes and into the streets. The disaster prompted the city to relocate the burial ground to higher inland terrain. The new cemetery opened in 1847 on what was the highest point on the island. Surviving graves from the Whitehead Point site were moved to the new location.
The cemetery has accumulated an estimated 100,000 burials over its 178-year operating history, more than three times the current population of Key West. The high water table of the limestone island has made above-ground crypts a structural necessity for many sections; the result visually resembles the Cities of the Dead cemeteries of New Orleans. Several sections are organized by community heritage, including Bahamian, Cuban, and Catholic sections.
The USS Maine plot holds approximately two dozen sailors killed in the February 15, 1898 Havana Harbor explosion that triggered the Spanish-American War. A central copper sailor statue marks the plot. Civil War veterans, Cuban revolutionary supporters, and several generations of Key West's literary and bartending culture are also represented; Sloppy Joe Russell, Ernest Hemingway's fishing companion and the original Sloppy Joe's Bar proprietor, is buried in the cemetery.
Key West Cemetery is widely cited for the wit of its epitaphs. The most frequently quoted inscriptions include 'I told you I was sick' and 'I'm just resting my eyes.' Twentieth-century burials have added literary references including 'So Long and Thanks For All The Fish' (Douglas Adams) and 'GROK - Look It Up' (Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land). The cemetery is administered by the City of Key West and remains an active burial ground.
Sources
- https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/key-west-cemetery
- https://www.amusingplanet.com/2017/03/the-witty-epitaphs-of-key-west-cemetery.html
- https://www.floridarambler.com/historic-florida-getaways/key-west-cemetery/
ApparitionsCold spotsOrbs
The dominant paranormal narrative at Key West Cemetery concerns a Bahamian woman whose figure has been reported by tour guides, cemetery staff, and visitors during both daylight and evening hours. The figure is consistently described as becoming agitated when visitors disrespect the burial ground by sitting on tombstones or walking across graves. The story has circulated within the Key West tour industry for decades.
The cemetery is also entangled with one of the strangest stories in American forensic history: the case of Carl Tanzler, a former radiologist at Marine Hospital who claimed an obsessive love for Elena Milagro Hoyos, a young tuberculosis patient who died in 1931. Tanzler removed Hoyos's body from her Key West Cemetery crypt in 1933 and kept it in his home for nearly seven years before the case was discovered in 1940. The Hoyos crypt remains a stop on many cemetery tours.
Visitors have also reported the standard cemetery folklore: cold spots, orbs in photographs, and the sensation of being followed through the older sections. The Historic Florida Keys Foundation, which manages many of the cemetery tours, treats the lore as part of the property's cultural history rather than as confirmed paranormal incident. The site's combination of architectural unusualness, literary epitaphs, and genuinely strange biographical history gives the cemetery atmospheric weight independent of any ghost stories.
Notable Entities
The Bahamian Woman
