Atlanta's oldest cemetery — 48 acres, ~70,000 burials including roughly 6,900 Confederate soldiers, Margaret Mitchell, Bobby Jones, and Maynard Jackson — routinely cited among Georgia's most-haunted sites.
248 Oakland Avenue SE, Atlanta, GA 30312
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free general daytime admission. Guided historical tours and seasonal 'Sunday in the Park' / Capturing the Spirit of Oakland Halloween tours are ticketed through the Historic Oakland Foundation.
Access
Wheelchair OK
48 acres of paved roads and brick paths; some sections uneven; significant elevation change in older sections.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1850 · National Register of Historic Places (1976) · Largest Civil War Confederate burial ground in Atlanta · Victorian rural-cemetery design
Atlanta Cemetery was established in 1850 on six acres of land south of the original city limits. Renamed Oakland in 1872, it expanded through the second half of the 19th century to its present 48 acres. The cemetery is laid out in the Victorian rural-cemetery tradition, with a Bell Tower, a Sexton's office, and curving carriage paths through hilly terrain.
During the Civil War, Oakland served as the principal burial ground for Confederate dead from the 1864 Battle of Atlanta and surrounding engagements. Approximately 6,900 Confederate soldiers are interred there, including roughly 3,000 in unmarked graves. Four Confederate generals are buried at Oakland. Sherman's army occupied the cemetery briefly during the Battle of Atlanta and used its hills as artillery positions.
The cemetery includes a segregated African American Grounds, established in the era of racial segregation in Atlanta burial practice; it contains the graves of many freedmen, post-Reconstruction Black Atlantans, and Maynard Holbrook Jackson (1938-2003), Atlanta's first African American mayor. Jewish sections include Jewish Hill (Hebrew Benevolent Congregation) and Jewish Flat. The Potter's Field contains burials of the poor and unclaimed.
Notable interments include novelist Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949), golfer Bobby Jones (1902-1971), six Georgia governors, and 27 former Atlanta mayors. The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 28, 1976. The Historic Oakland Foundation, established after the NRHP listing, manages restoration and interpretation in partnership with the City of Atlanta.
The foundation has invested significant resources into restoration since the 1976 listing, including post-2008-tornado reconstruction after that year's downtown Atlanta tornado damaged numerous monuments. Annual programming includes the spring Sunday in the Park and the Halloween Capturing the Spirit of Oakland tour.
Sources
Oakland Cemetery is consistently included on Georgia's most-haunted lists. Thrillist named the cemetery the creepiest place in Georgia in coverage republished by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Atlanta History Center's own 'Haunted History: Stories from a City of Spirits' feature documents the cemetery's paranormal reputation.
The Atlanta History Center's haunted-history feature describes the Confederate Burial Ground specifically: 'the ghosts can still be heard answering roll call, restless in their final resting place.' Approximately 6,900 Confederate soldiers, including roughly 3,000 unidentified, are buried at Oakland — the largest concentration of Civil War dead in Atlanta.
Atlanta Ghosts and Paranormal Traveler document additional recurring reports during after-dark ghost tours: figures in tattered Civil War-era uniforms seen wandering among the headstones at dusk; a recurring 'Lady in White' said to glide near the lots of prominent 19th-century citizens; faint sounds of muffled weeping in the older sections; and the cold-spot and equipment-anomaly reports that are standard fare in cemetery paranormal investigation.
Hauntbound notes the sensitivity context: Oakland is an active municipal cemetery, the burial ground of identifiable individuals, and a site where the Confederate burial ground and the historically segregated African American Grounds sit in close proximity. The cemetery's own interpretation does not romanticize the Confederate dead, and Hauntbound's narrative follows the Historic Oakland Foundation's lead in framing the cemetery as a documented site of Civil War mass burial and Atlanta's racially layered history, rather than as a Lost Cause tableau.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Walk the 48-acre cemetery chartered in 1850 as Atlanta Cemetery (renamed Oakland in 1872). Sections include the original six-acre core, the Confederate Burial Ground, the African American Grounds, the Jewish sections, and the Bell Tower at the visitor center.
Docent-led historical tour covering Atlanta's Civil War history, the Battle of Atlanta from the cemetery vantage, notable burials (Margaret Mitchell, Bobby Jones, Maynard Jackson, six Georgia governors, 27 Atlanta mayors), and the cemetery's 1976 listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
Long-running seasonal Halloween night tour featuring costumed living-history reenactors at notable grave sites. Cemetery is also stop on Atlanta Ghosts after-dark tours.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Atlanta, GA
Oakland Cemetery was founded in 1850 as Atlanta Cemetery on six acres purchased from A. W. Wooding on the city's southeastern edge; renamed Oakland in 1872 for its oak and magnolia trees, it expanded over the late 19th century to 48 acres and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 28, 1976.
Rochester, NY
Founded in 1838, Mount Hope was the first municipal Victorian cemetery in the United States. The 196-acre landscape adjacent to the University of Rochester is the resting place of more than 350,000 people, including Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.
Savannah, GA
Bonaventure Cemetery is a Victorian-era burial ground in Savannah, Georgia, established as part of the city's 19th-century cemetery expansion. Its most famous burial is that of Gracie Watson, a young girl who died of pneumonia on April 7, 1889, two days before Easter. Her father, W.J. Watson, manager of the Pulaski Hotel in Savannah, commissioned sculptor John Walz to create a life-sized marble statue as a memorial—a monument that has become one of the most visited graves in Georgia.