Inactive 1811 Burial Ground in Erie County's South Wales
Goodleburg Road off Vermont Hill Road, South Wales, NY 14139
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages (daylight only)
Cost
Free
Free. Public road; cemetery has been heavily vandalized over decades, and police patrol regularly.
Access
Limited Access
Small inactive cemetery; uneven and overgrown
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1811 · Early Erie County Settlement · Town of Wales Founding-Era Cemetery
Goodleburg Cemetery is a small inactive burial ground in the South Wales section of the Town of Wales, Erie County, New York. The cemetery operated from 1811 until 1927 and contains approximately 69 documented memorial records. Many of the early settlers of the Wales region are interred here.
The cemetery sits on Goodleburg Road off Vermont Hill Road, a narrow rural route in the rolling country south of Buffalo. The site has been catastrophically affected by vandalism over the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; many original markers have been broken, displaced, or stolen entirely.
A verified tragedy attaches to the location: in June 2003, a Western New York paranormal investigator was killed by an oncoming car on the road outside the cemetery during a night-time visit. The incident is well-documented in regional press and stands as a sobering warning about the actual risks of visiting an unlit, narrow rural road at night.
Sources
Goodleburg Cemetery has accumulated an extensive and unusually grim body of regional folklore. The most-repeated version names a Dr. Goodleburg, said to have performed illegal abortions in the late nineteenth century and to have buried mothers and infants who died from the procedures on or near the cemetery grounds. None of these specific allegations appear in available court records, period newspaper archives, or Erie County medical-society documentation; Hauntbound presents the cluster as folklore rather than as established history.
Visitor accounts collected on Western New York paranormal sites describe a woman in white seen on the grounds, the cry of an infant in the surrounding woods, a man in 1920s-era attire walking the road, and a large black dog said to be struck by passing vehicles that subsequently find no animal at the scene. Photographic orbs and unexplained fog are also commonly reported. These are anonymous, retrospective community accounts.
The documented June 2003 death of a paranormal investigator on the road outside the cemetery is the most concrete historical event attached to the site and gives weight to the police caution about late-night visits. Local police patrol the road, particularly during the Halloween period.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
View from the road during daylight. The cemetery has been catastrophically vandalized; almost no original markers remain intact. A 2003 pedestrian fatality on the road outside the cemetery underscores the need to stay off the pavement and visit during daylight only.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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