An 1854 Catholic cemetery operated by the Archdiocese of St. Louis on 470 acres, the burial place of Dred Scott, William Tecumseh Sherman, Tennessee Williams, and Kate Chopin, and home to long-told 'Ghost on the Hill' and 'Blue Velvet' legends.
5239 W Florissant Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63115
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free general admission during cemetery hours; this is an active Catholic cemetery, not a paid attraction.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved drives suitable for vehicles; some hilly walking on grass
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1854 · Dred Scott grave — Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) · General William Tecumseh Sherman grave · Tennessee Williams and Kate Chopin graves · Largest cemetery operated by the Archdiocese of St. Louis
Calvary Cemetery was founded in 1854 by the Archdiocese of St. Louis on 470 acres immediately adjacent to the (non-Catholic) Bellefontaine Cemetery, a layout reflecting the era's denominational separation of burial grounds. It is the second-oldest cemetery operated by the Archdiocese, after Old Calvary, and is its largest. Today the grounds contain more than 300,000 interments.
The cemetery's most historically significant burial is that of Dred Scott (c. 1799–1858). Scott was an enslaved man who, with his wife Harriet, sued for his family's freedom in the Old Courthouse in downtown St. Louis on the grounds that they had been held as slaves in free states and territories. The case ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857 as Dred Scott v. Sandford, which ruled against the Scotts and held that Black Americans were not citizens — a decision widely understood as among the most consequential and damaging in the Court's history, and one that helped precipitate the Civil War. The Scotts were eventually manumitted, but Dred Scott died of tuberculosis in 1858 in St. Louis. His grave at Calvary is a frequent destination for visitors paying tribute to the family's role in U.S. civil rights history.
Also interred at Calvary are Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, playwright Tennessee Williams, author Kate Chopin (The Awakening), and other notable Missourians. The cemetery remains active and is operated by the Archdiocese of St. Louis.
Sources
Two recurring legends appear in regional ghost literature about Calvary. The 'Ghost on the Hill,' described by stlghosts.com and 97.9 KICK FM, is said to appear in the southeast corner of the cemetery on a hill overlooking Calvary Avenue. The same sources name the spirit as Thomas Reynolds, who is interred with his wife Heloise (who predeceased him by five years) in a hillside mausoleum; the lore casts the figure as a residual loop of Reynolds's daily visits to her grave.
The 'Blue Velvet Ghost' follows the classic vanishing-hitchhiker template: a local driver picks up a woman in a blue velvet dress walking near the cemetery in the rain, drops her off at her home, and forgets his coat in her care. When he returns the next day, the woman who answers the door reports that the woman he described had died years earlier and was buried in that blue velvet dress.
We present these as folkloric narratives circulated by regional ghost-literature sites; they are not anchored to documented paranormal investigation. Critically, Calvary is also the resting place of Dred Scott, an enslaved man whose name is associated with one of the most consequential civil-rights cases in U.S. history. We do not attach paranormal narrative to the Scott grave or its surroundings: the site is treated as a historic civil-rights destination, with cemetery ghost lore confined to the unrelated Reynolds and Blue Velvet accounts.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Walk or drive the 470-acre Catholic cemetery to visit notable graves including Dred Scott (whose 1857 Supreme Court case shaped U.S. history), Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, playwright Tennessee Williams, and writer Kate Chopin.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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Kirksville, MO
Highland Park Cemetery in Kirksville, Missouri holds a concrete chair sculpture installed around 1890–1891 as a memorial commissioned by William Baird, a prominent Kirksville banker, to honor deceased family members. Sculptors Charles Grassle and John C. Baird crafted the piece. The chair belongs to a 19th-century cemetery tradition of mourning chairs — resting places for visitors to contemplate alongside the dead.
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