Iowa Family Cemetery with a Memento Mori Epitaph
Russell, IA
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to view from the public road.
Access
Limited Access
Rural gravel road, small cemetery on uneven ground
Equipment
Photos OK
Stoneking Cemetery is a small family plot east of Williamson, in southern Iowa's Lucas County. The cemetery serves the Stoneking family and contains a small number of nineteenth-century markers. Lucas County researcher and journalist Frank Mitchell, who writes the Lucas Countyan blog, has documented the cemetery and the Stoneking family in several posts, including a December 2012 piece situating the family within the county's broader settlement history.
The cemetery's most documented feature is the headstone of Joseph Stoneking, which carries a memento mori epitaph reading approximately, 'As you are now, I once was. As I am now, you soon will be. So, come face death and follow me.' This epitaph, and small variations of it, was a common American gravestone tradition from the late eighteenth century through the early twentieth, drawing on older English Puritan and Latin Christian memento mori traditions. The epitaph is not unique to the Stoneking marker; it appears on stones across New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Midwest.
The Shadowlands folklore narrative includes a claim that the Joseph Stoneking headstone was featured in the original 1984 Children of the Corn film, attributed to a community submitter who acknowledged needing to verify the detail. Research did not surface confirmation of that connection in published Children of the Corn production records or Iowa film-location documentation; the cemetery should not be promoted as a Children of the Corn shooting location without further verification.
The abandoned Stoneking family home referenced in some folklore accounts is no longer standing, per the February 2004 update appended to the original Shadowlands entry. The cemetery remains accessible from the public road and is maintained at the level typical of small rural family cemeteries in southern Iowa.
Sources
The principal Stoneking legend is a traditional cursed-cemetery story: visitors who walk behind a particular row of trees at the rear of the cemetery may see Joseph Stoneking sitting on his own grave, and those who do are said to die within a week. The Shadowlands narrative attributes a specific instance to the legend, citing a man who reportedly saw Stoneking and then died in a motorcycle accident a week later. Lucas County researcher Frank Mitchell has noted in his cemetery posts that a February 2004 update to the original story acknowledged that there are no actual graves behind the trees, weakening the spatial logic of the legend.
A second strand of folklore describes figures observed in or near the cemetery with severe burns or missing hands. The origin of these accounts is unclear; no documented fire or mass-casualty event tied to the cemetery surfaced in research. A third element describes a bright moving light that approaches visitors at night, similar to the ghost-light traditions of cemeteries across the United States.
Frank Mitchell's June 2013 post 'The ghosts of Stoneking' takes a skeptical view of the cemetery's folkloric reputation, framing the lore as the inevitable response of regional teenagers to a quiet rural family plot with a memento mori epitaph. Hauntbound shares the broadly skeptical reading: the epitaph is documentary rather than supernatural, and the cemetery's most interesting feature is its nineteenth-century gravestone tradition rather than its folklore. Visitors should respect the descendant Stoneking family, the active small-cemetery character of the site, and the surrounding private property.
Notable Entities
Drive to the small Stoneking family cemetery east of Williamson in Lucas County, Iowa. The cemetery contains the grave of Joseph Stoneking, whose memento mori headstone bears a traditional 'as you are now, I once was' epitaph. The site is rural and quiet; the abandoned Stoneking family home referenced in earlier folklore is no longer standing.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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