Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainAn abandoned, never-completed cemetery in Brunswick near Troy, New York, incorporated in 1897 and unattended since the 1970s — the focus of some of the Capital Region's most persistent ghost legends, several of which have been debunked.
387 Pinewoods Avenue, Brunswick, NY 12180
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The cemetery is abandoned; portions are on or adjacent to private and posted land. Visitors should not trespass and should respect any posted signage.
Access
Limited Access
Overgrown, abandoned cemetery grounds with collapsed monuments, brush, and uneven, partially wooded terrain
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1897 · Abandoned 'failed' cemetery incorporated 1897 · Designed by Garnet Douglass Baltimore, first African American RPI graduate · Subject of long-running Capital Region folklore
Forest Park Cemetery was incorporated in 1897 by a group of wealthy Troy businessmen operating as the Forest Park Cemetery Corporation, though older gravestones indicate the land had been used for burials since at least 1856. The original plan encompassed more than 200 acres of former farmland in then-rural Brunswick, New York, just east of Troy, and was intended to rival and even surpass Troy's prestigious Oakwood Cemetery.
The cemetery's landscape was designed by Garnet Douglass Baltimore, who in 1881 became the first African American graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and went on to a notable career as a civil engineer in the Troy area.
The ambitious venture never succeeded. Facing financial difficulty, the corporation sold all but roughly 22 acres to the neighboring Country Club of Troy for a golf course, and the corporation itself went bankrupt during the 1930s. Burials continued only sporadically, ending around 1975, after which the cemetery went entirely unattended. (A 2007 note in the source folklore record indicates at least one burial occurred as late as 2004.)
Left abandoned, the grounds deteriorated into the overgrown, collapsing state for which they are now known, with toppled monuments and at least two headless statues. The combination of an abandoned 'failed' cemetery, decaying statuary, and proximity to a college town fueled decades of urban legend, making Forest Park / Pinewoods one of the most talked-about allegedly haunted sites in the Capital Region.
Sources
Forest Park / Pinewoods Cemetery is one of the Capital Region's most enduring 'haunted' destinations, documented in regional outlets including the Rome Sentinel, radio station Q105.7, the New York Haunted Houses directory, and the Restoration Obscura photo-essay series. Reported phenomena over the years include apparitions, unexplained sounds, and anomalies in photographs, and the grounds are widely nicknamed the 'Gateway to Hell.'
Several of the cemetery's most famous claims have been examined and largely debunked, and we present them as folklore rather than fact. The legend that the cemetery's headless statues 'bleed from the neck' during a full moon is attributed by researchers to a red-staining moss on the stone that turns reddish when rubbed on humid days — not to any supernatural cause. The claim that the cemetery was 'built on an Indian burial ground' is unsupported folklore with no documentary basis. And the often-repeated story that the site appeared in a Life magazine 'Top Ten Most Haunted Places in the Country' article could not be verified; the Brunswick Town Historian has stated she has never located such an article, and it is now considered another part of the legend itself.
The site's genuine eeriness comes from its real history — an ambitious cemetery that failed, was abandoned, and decayed with its monuments collapsing and statues losing their heads to vandalism and time. We deliberately avoid the 'ancient curse' and 'Indian burial ground' tropes here, both because they are unsupported and because such framings misrepresent Indigenous history. The cemetery remains a popular subject of local ghost lore and a cautionary example of how an abandoned place accumulates legend.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
View the abandoned Forest Park / Pinewoods Cemetery from Pinewoods Avenue. The grounds are overgrown and partially bordered by private and posted land; this is a folklore landmark best appreciated from public roadway during daylight rather than entered.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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