Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainA public cemetery in La Porte holding a monument to approximately ten unidentified victims of Belle Gunness, placed in 2008
Pine Lake Ave, La Porte, IN 46350
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public cemetery; free to visit during daylight hours
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Wheelchair OK
Grassy cemetery grounds; some uneven terrain between headstones
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Photos OK
Belle Gunness Victims Memorial · La Porte County Serial Homicide History · Unidentified Victims Memorial
Belle Gunness operated a farm north of La Porte from around 1901 until 1908, when the farmhouse burned in April of that year. Excavations of the property following the fire uncovered the remains of numerous individuals — farmhands, suitors who had responded to matrimonial advertisements, and others who had come to the farm and never left. Gunness herself was never conclusively identified as either a victim or a survivor of the fire.
Among the recovered remains were approximately ten individuals who could not be identified. Their bones were divided into two caskets and interred at Pine Lake Cemetery because no families stepped forward to claim them. For a century, their burial received no formal recognition.
In 2008, a monument was placed at the burial site to mark the location and acknowledge the unidentified dead. The stone memorial serves as the primary commemoration for victims whose names remain unknown, making Pine Lake Cemetery the site where the human cost of the Gunness case is most directly remembered. The cemetery has since been documented in regional paranormal literature, though the site functions primarily as a historical remembrance location rather than a paranormal attraction.
Sources
The La Porte Herald-Dispatch documented paranormal activity claims at La Porte County cemeteries — including Pine Lake — in coverage of a book on haunted Indiana cemeteries. The nature of those claims centers on the cemetery's unusual history: a mass burial of unidentified homicide victims interred together under circumstances that left no individual families to grieve them.
The site draws visitors who treat it as a pilgrimage point in the Belle Gunness case, and the 2008 monument has given those visitors a specific location to acknowledge. The reported activity is consistent with what is documented at other mass-victim burial sites — a sense of unresolved presence — rather than sensational phenomena.
Notable Entities
The cemetery holds a monument placed in 2008 to the unidentified victims of Belle Gunness. Visitors come to pay respects at the memorial stone, which marks a mass burial site for approximately ten individuals whose remains were recovered from the Gunness farm but never identified. The Belle Gunness farm site itself is a separate location north of La Porte.
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