1834 garden cemetery, Pet Sematary filming site, and an October 'Darker Mount Hope' tour
1048 State St, Bangor, ME 04401
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Grounds are free to enter during daylight hours. The Bangor Historical Society's seasonal 'Darker Mount Hope' tour is ticketed; contact the society for current rates.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved drives through rolling, landscaped cemetery grounds with grassy sections and some hills
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1834 · One of the oldest garden cemeteries in the United States · National Register of Historic Places · Burial place of Vice President Hannibal Hamlin · Pet Sematary (1989) filming location
Mount Hope Cemetery was incorporated in 1834, two years after Mount Auburn in Cambridge, Massachusetts, making it one of the earliest rural or 'garden' cemeteries in the country. The garden-cemetery movement treated burial grounds as landscaped parkland, with winding drives, plantings, and monuments arranged across rolling terrain rather than in dense churchyard rows. The cemetery is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The grounds hold a number of notable burials. Hannibal Hamlin, who served as Abraham Lincoln's first vice president, is interred there, as are four governors of Maine and Civil War-era military figures. The cemetery's records and monuments make it a frequent stop for genealogists and local historians.
Mount Hope reached a wider audience through Bangor's most famous resident author. The cemetery appears in the 1989 film adaptation of Stephen King's Pet Sematary, which was shot in the area, and King has said he drew character names from headstones he saw in Bangor cemeteries. The Bangor Historical Society now runs walking tours of the grounds, including a Civil War-focused 'Soldiers at Rest' tour and the seasonal 'Darker Mount Hope.'
Sources
Mount Hope's place in popular culture comes mainly from Stephen King. The cemetery was a filming location for the 1989 movie Pet Sematary, adapted from King's novel, and the author, a longtime Bangor resident, has said he took character names from headstones in the city's cemeteries. That connection draws fans who want to walk the same grounds that appear on screen.
The cemetery itself is better known for its scale and its garden-cemetery design than for specific apparition accounts. The Bangor Historical Society's seasonal 'Darker Mount Hope' tour uses costumed performers to tell stories about the people buried there, ranging from moving to unsettling, and the society also runs a 'Ghostly Bangor' walking tour downtown in October. Visitors looking for atmosphere will find it in the older sections, among nineteenth-century monuments set under mature trees, rather than in any single documented haunting.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Mount Hope's landscaped grounds are open to the public during daylight hours. Visitors can walk the drives past the graves of Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, four Maine governors, and Civil War-era figures, and find the headstones Stephen King has said inspired character names in his fiction.
On select October dates the Bangor Historical Society runs the 'Darker Mount Hope' tour, in which costumed performers tell dramatic and somber stories about people buried at the cemetery. The tour meets at the Superintendent's Lodge. Dates and tickets are arranged through the society.
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