Westfield, Indiana was founded in 1834 by U.S. settlers, many of whom relocated from North Carolina. The founding population was predominantly Quaker, with a strong abolitionist orientation that distinguished the town from many of its central-Indiana neighbors. The Quaker community established institutions specifically organized around opposition to slavery, including the Anti-Slavery Friends Cemetery, which remains an active heritage site today.
The Underground Railroad ran through Westfield in the antebellum period. Quaker households along Union Street, Penn Street, and the surrounding residential blocks operated as documented stations on the route, providing safe-house refuge for escaping enslaved people moving north toward Canada. The town's historical infrastructure for this work is well documented in regional historical-society records and in the published research of Indiana abolition historians.
Michael and Nicole Kobrowski of Unseenpress.com, Inc. have authored multiple books about Indiana hauntings and have led Historic Indiana Ghost Walks across central Indiana since 2002. Their tour itinerary includes Indianapolis neighborhoods, the Noblesville town square, downtown Anderson, and the Westfield Underground Railroad route. The Westfield tour blends documented Underground Railroad history with regional ghost folklore — including more recent reports involving modern-era figures.
The tour starts at 130 Penn Street and covers approximately 1.5 miles through the historic residential and cemetery sections of Westfield. Riverside Cemetery in Noblesville and the Anti-Slavery Friends Cemetery in Westfield are documented in the tour's published material as the locations where strange experiences are most often reported.
Sources
- https://www.unseenpress.com/westfieldugrr
- https://www.unseenpress.com/tours-events
- https://www.visithamiltoncounty.com/event/westfield-historic-underground-railroad-ghost-walk/75503/
- https://www.visitindiana.com/blog/post/central-indiana-ghost-walks/
ApparitionsPhantom voicesPhantom sounds
The tour combines two distinct narrative threads. The first centers on the Quaker households and the Anti-Slavery Friends Cemetery, where folklore associates reported activity with the figures who operated the Underground Railroad and with people they helped escape. Tour guides emphasize that ghost sightings are not guaranteed; the tour's published material is explicit on this point.
The second thread covers a more recent layer of Westfield folklore involving 20th-century gangsters and what tour materials call 'modern day mischief from Westfield's haunted history.' This section connects the older Quaker-era narratives to the town's later evolution.
Reports from past tour groups, collected by Unseen Press, describe activity concentrated at the Riverside Cemetery in Noblesville and at the Anti-Slavery Friends Cemetery in Westfield itself. The Kobrowskis' research methodology emphasizes archival documentation and primary-source historical record alongside the witness accounts collected from tour participants and local residents.