America's first municipal Victorian cemetery and burial place of Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, this 196-acre landscape is also a pilgrimage destination with quiet local ghost lore.
1133 Mount Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public access during daylight hours. Guided tours and ghost walks are offered seasonally for a fee.
Access
Limited Access
Hilly Victorian landscape with paved roads and unpaved paths; many graves on steep slopes.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1838 · First municipal Victorian cemetery in the United States · Burial site of Susan B. Anthony (d. 1906) · Burial site of Frederick Douglass (d. 1895) · National Register of Historic Places (2018) · Active pilgrimage site on Election Day
Established in 1838 by the city of Rochester, Mount Hope Cemetery was the first municipally owned rural-style cemetery in the United States, predating Brooklyn's Green-Wood and Cincinnati's Spring Grove. Its 196 acres on the south side of the city were laid out across glacial drumlins and kettle hollows, producing the dramatic ridges, ravines, and overlooks that define the Victorian landscape today.
More than 350,000 people are buried at Mount Hope. Among the most-visited graves is that of women's rights leader Susan B. Anthony, who lived in Rochester from 1845 until her death in 1906 and whose attempt to vote in the 1872 federal election led to her arrest, indictment, and conviction. A long-running Election Day tradition draws visitors to place 'I Voted' stickers on her gravestone — an estimated 10,000 people visited the site during the 2016 election.
The cemetery is also the resting place of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who lived in Rochester from 1847 to 1872 and published his antislavery newspaper, the North Star, from the city. His grave is one of the most-visited memorial sites in upstate New York.
Mount Hope was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2018. It remains an active municipal cemetery, and the nonprofit Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery support its preservation and offer regular historical tours.
Sources
Regional tourism and ghost-tour sources list Mount Hope among Rochester's most folklorically active cemeteries. According to OnlyInYourState's coverage of New York cemeteries, visitors have described floating lights moving between monuments after dark, faint cries that seem to issue from older sections of the grounds, and figures that appear briefly along the ridges before vanishing.
Rochester's Candlelight Ghost Walk, run as a seasonal historical-paranormal program by Datesinthestates.com and the Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery, has documented guide and visitor reports including a recurring 'phantom jogger' sighted along the cemetery roads after sunset. Some local listings refer to a 'Devil's Bowl' area associated with informal rumors of late-night gatherings; this label appears in folkloric coverage rather than in cemetery records.
The graves of Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass are not associated with paranormal lore. Both are recognized memorial sites of national historical significance, and visitors are asked to treat them with the gravity owed to the figures interred there.
The Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery and the City of Rochester host historical walking tours that highlight the Victorian landscape and the graves of Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, and other notable residents.
Visit the graves of Susan B. Anthony (long a tradition for voters on Election Day) and Frederick Douglass, both prominently marked and signed within the cemetery.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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Historic Oakland Cemetery was chartered in 1850 as the six-acre 'Atlanta Cemetery,' renamed Oakland in 1872, and expanded to 48 acres. Approximately 70,000 people are interred, including roughly 6,900 Confederate soldiers (3,000 unidentified), four Confederate generals, six Georgia governors, 27 Atlanta mayors, Margaret Mitchell, golfer Bobby Jones, and Maynard Jackson, Atlanta's first African American mayor. The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 28, 1976.
Syracuse, NY
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Salem, MA
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