Sumner Knight Chapel in Keene
Beaver Street, Keene, NH 03431
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public cemetery during posted daylight hours.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved roads through the cemetery, with grass plots and gentle slopes
Equipment
Photos OK
Woodland Cemetery, often called Woodlawn in informal local usage, is the principal Keene cemetery and is located along Beaver Street in southwestern New Hampshire. The cemetery merges into the adjacent Greenlawn Cemetery to the east, a block off Washington Street. The cemetery contains a substantial archive of nineteenth and twentieth-century burials from Cheshire County.
The Sumner Knight Memorial Chapel stands on the cemetery grounds and is the focal point of much of the cemetery's local folklore. Section 16 of the cemetery served historically as a pauper field; the section lacks headstones for many of its burials, reflecting the period when the city interred unclaimed dead and indigent residents at public expense without permanent markers.
The City of Keene maintains the cemetery, and a comprehensive history titled The History of Keene's Cemeteries and Burying Grounds by Esther P. Cook is available through the City Clerk's office and the Keene Public Library. The Historical Society of Cheshire County also maintains records on the site.
Note: the Shadowlands index lists the cemetery under both Woodlawn and Woodland spellings; the official municipal designation is Woodland.
Sources
Woodland Cemetery's folklore concentrates on the Sumner Knight Memorial Chapel. The Seven Ghostly Haunts blog and the Hauntedplaces.org community page collect several recurring local accounts.
The most reported figure is a young girl, sometimes described as following visitors from behind the trees, visible briefly between the older sections, and audible as a faint giggle. A separate account describes an unhappy adult presence near the chapel itself, with visitors describing a heavy atmosphere within the building. A humorous regional tradition known as the Soap Spirit holds that those who swear near the chapel will taste or smell soap shortly after, a piece of folklore that combines the chapel's solemnity with local-color storytelling.
The Shadowlands entry's description of a loud male voice yelling at midnight in summer, calling out questions, and a crowd of whispering voices is not extensively corroborated in published sources for this specific cemetery. The folklore generally engages atmospheric and human-scale figures rather than the more disruptive scenario in the original narrative.
The cemetery is a working municipal burial ground and should be visited during daylight hours with quiet respect.
Notable Entities
Walk Woodland Cemetery on Beaver Street in Keene, viewing the Sumner Knight Memorial Chapel and the older sections that include the pauper field in Section 16. Note: the Shadowlands entry refers to this cemetery as Woodlawn Cemetery, which is the local oral name; the official municipal designation is Woodland Cemetery.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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