Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainFlint Hills burial ground with the long-running Devil's Chair folklore
Alma, KS
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public cemetery. No fees.
Access
Limited Access
Grass and dirt paths on rolling Flint Hills terrain
Equipment
Photos OK
Wabaunsee County Burial Ground · Flint Hills Folklore
Alma is the seat of Wabaunsee County, Kansas, founded in 1857 in the rolling Flint Hills of eastern Kansas. The town is one of the better-preserved small county seats in the region and is sometimes promoted as the City of Native Stone for its concentration of native-limestone buildings.
Alma Cemetery serves the community as a typical small-town nineteenth-century burial ground. No newspaper archive, Kansas Historical Society file, or county record accessed during research substantiates the Shadowlands narrative of a farmer killed in his own well and a well-cap turned cemetery feature. The lore is best read as community legend-tripping folklore rather than documented history.
The so-called Devil's Chair is reported by local visitors to be a well-cap on private agricultural land adjacent to the cemetery, not a feature inside the burial ground itself. Visitors should not cross posted fences in an attempt to reach it.
Sources
Local tradition holds that the land the Alma Cemetery now occupies was once owned by an ill-tempered farmer who refused repeated town offers to sell his property for cemetery use. The narrative describes the farmer being pushed into his own well by an unknown person, the well being boarded and locked, and the property being absorbed into the cemetery shortly thereafter. None of these specifics appear in the public archival record accessed during research; the story circulates entirely through community retelling and aggregator ghost-folklore sites.
A secondary layer of the legend describes a 1980s incident in which a teenager was dared to sit on the well-cap and disappeared. The same disappearance narrative recurs with variant casts in later retellings. No Wabaunsee County missing-persons report consistent with the legend has surfaced in public sources.
The well-cap that local visitors identify as the Devil's Chair is reported to be on private agricultural land adjacent to the cemetery rather than inside the cemetery itself. The folklore is a well-traveled regional example of the well-curse / dangerous-seat motif that recurs throughout the Plains. Visitors should remain inside the cemetery boundary and respect adjacent posted property.
Notable Entities
A small Flint Hills cemetery serving the community of Alma, Kansas. Visit during daylight; the much-told Devil's Chair legend attaches to a well-cap on private land adjacent to the cemetery, not to a feature inside the burial ground itself.
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