Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainIron Range burial ground adjacent to the former Shaw Hospital Potter's Field, where TB and psychiatric patients were interred under numbered cast-iron crosses
Township Road 7936, Buhl, MN 55713
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free, publicly accessible cemetery
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Limited Access
Rural cemetery with uneven ground, grass, and gravel paths; adjacent to unpaved township road
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Photos OK
Est. 1913 · Iron Range Tuberculosis Era (1913 onward) · Shaw Hospital Potter's Field — numbered cast-iron cross markers
The Iron Range city of Buhl sits in St. Louis County, a region built on iron ore extraction in the early twentieth century. The Shaw Hospital opened in 1913 to serve a population with elevated rates of tuberculosis — a disease that spread readily in the close quarters of mining camps and boarding houses throughout the Mesabi and Vermilion ranges.
Lakeview Cemetery developed alongside the hospital, with a designated Potter's Field section for patients who died without family to claim their remains or without the means for a private burial. The graves in this section were marked with numbered cast-iron crosses rather than inscribed headstones, a standard institutional practice of the era that identified the deceased only by record number. The numbered markers remain a visible feature of the cemetery today.
The Iron Range underwent significant depopulation as iron mining mechanized through the mid-twentieth century, and many small communities like Buhl saw their institutions consolidate or close. The connection between Lakeview Cemetery and the former hospital grounds gives the site an unusual character — a public cemetery that functions simultaneously as a community burial ground and an unmarked record of institutional mortality.
CBS Minnesota has listed Lakeview Cemetery among the state's most-cited haunted graveyards, a designation that has brought occasional visitors to this otherwise quiet rural site on the edge of Buhl.
Sources
The paranormal tradition at Lakeview Cemetery in Buhl centers on the identity of those buried in the Potter's Field — unnamed patients whose connection to the living was severed in death by the same institutional anonymity that marked their graves with numbers instead of names.
The most frequently cited figure is described as a man in period dress, moving methodically between the cemetery sections in a way that witnesses interpret as purposeful — consistent with a gatekeeper or groundskeeper performing familiar tasks. Several accounts describe apparitions in clothing identified as consistent with the 1920s, which overlaps with the period of highest mortality at the adjacent hospital during the tuberculosis epidemic years.
Additional reported activity includes disembodied voices, shadow figures observed between headstones, and an ambient unease that visitors describe as distinct from the typical quiet of a rural cemetery. The numbered cast-iron crosses in the Potter's Field section draw particular attention from visitors, as the absence of names gives the section an unresolved quality uncommon in most public cemeteries.
Notable Entities
A self-guided visit to Lakeview Cemetery and the adjacent Potter's Field section, where numbered cast-iron crosses mark the graves of patients who died at the nearby Shaw Hospital — a tuberculosis and psychiatric facility that operated beginning in 1913. The numbered markers reflect the institutional practice of anonymous burial for those who died without family or means.
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