An 1865 burial ground on Grand Island near the site of the old Whitehaven settlement; local lore reports a glowing child's grave, a sorrowful mother, and other apparitions, tying into the island's well-known ghost stories.
290 Whitehaven Road, Grand Island, NY 14072
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free; a small public historic cemetery. Visit respectfully during daylight hours.
Access
Limited Access
Grassy cemetery grounds with older, uneven sections.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1865 · One of the oldest cemeteries on Grand Island (established 1865) · Associated with the historic 19th-century Whitehaven logging settlement · Adjacent to the Holiday Inn site tied to Grand Island's documented 1962 mansion-fire ghost story
Whitehaven Cemetery is located at 290 Whitehaven Road in the Town of Grand Island, Erie County, New York, roughly a mile west of the New York State Thruway. Established in 1865, it is among the oldest cemeteries on Grand Island and is documented in regional genealogical records such as WNY Roots and Find a Grave.
The cemetery takes its name from the historic Whitehaven settlement, a logging community that occupied the area beginning in the 1830s. In 1848, Grand Island supervisor John Nice purchased a mansion on nearby land for his large family. That mansion was destroyed by fire in 1962, an event that reportedly killed a young girl and which forms the documented basis for the famous ghost story at the Holiday Inn later built on the property — the island's best-known haunting, covered over the years by the Buffalo News and regional media.
The cemetery itself contains 19th- and 20th-century burials of Grand Island residents. Its proximity to the Holiday Inn site and the Whitehaven settlement has woven it into the broader fabric of Grand Island ghost lore, though the cemetery and the hotel are distinct locations with distinct stories that are sometimes conflated in popular retellings.
HauntBound notes that several specific origin claims attached to the cemetery in user-submitted sources cannot be independently verified, and presents the cemetery's paranormal reputation as regional folklore rather than confirmed fact.
Sources
According to regional ghost lore documented by multiple local media sources, Whitehaven Cemetery is home to several reported spirits. The most frequently cited is a little girl whose grave marker is said to glow, and a young woman believed to be a grieving mother who is seen seated near a grave holding a baby. Other accounts describe a male apparition said to be a soldier walking the grounds, disembodied footsteps near the gates, cold spots, and other tombstones that appear to glow. One 1998 account describes an orange orb that emerged from a grave, circled the cemetery, and returned to the ground.
According to WYRK (106.5, Townsquare Media Western New York), which ranks Whitehaven Cemetery among Western New York's most unsettling haunted cemeteries, these traditions — the glowing graves, the ghostly figures, the cold spots — have circulated among Grand Island and Buffalo-area residents for decades.
The original Shadowlands Haunted Places submission adds more specific and emotionally charged claims — including a woman said to have died in the early 1990s and a man said to have died in the Gulf War. These specific identifications cannot be independently verified and are not corroborated by historical or news sources, so HauntBound omits them as factual claims and treats them as unverified folklore.
Much of the cemetery's reputation appears to draw on, and sometimes blur with, the genuinely documented ghost story at the neighboring Holiday Inn, where a young girl who reportedly died in a 1962 mansion fire has been the subject of guest and staff sightings since the hotel opened in 1973. The cemetery and the hotel are distinct locations with distinct stories that are sometimes conflated in popular retellings.
Notable Entities
Walk the 19th-century Whitehaven Cemetery, one of Grand Island's oldest burial grounds, associated in local lore with a glowing child's grave and other reported apparitions near the historic Whitehaven settlement site.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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