Lancaster County's White Werewolf Burying Ground
Old River Rd near Rowenna, Marietta, PA
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
No formal entry fee; the cemetery sits on a quiet stretch of Old River Road between the Susquehanna River and a wooded slope.
Access
Limited Access
Small wooded plot with uneven ground and old field stones
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1700 · Pennsylvania-German Settler Family Cemetery · Lancaster County Folklore
Hans Graf — sometimes anglicized to Hans Groff — was a Swiss Mennonite immigrant who settled in the region that became Lancaster County in the early 1700s, part of the William Penn-era colonial migration. The Graf family was among the founding Pennsylvania-German settler families of the county, and members of subsequent generations are interred at the small Old River Road cemetery between the Susquehanna and a wooded slope west of Marietta.
Hans Graf himself is reportedly not buried at the cemetery that bears his name; the plot holds several generations of his descendants. The grounds are unmaintained beyond occasional family clearing and have no formal interpretation, signage, or preservation status. The cemetery's place in regional folklore substantially exceeds its formal historical recognition.
Sources
Hans Graf Cemetery occupies a distinctive position in Pennsylvania Dutch country folklore. Local tradition collected in Uncharted Lancaster and other regional sources holds that several Graf descendants were killed in the eighteenth or nineteenth century on accusations of being werewolves — a folk-belief category active in Pennsylvania Dutch communities during the period. In response, the story goes, Hans Graf laid a perpetual protective curse on the cemetery, leaving a guardian white wolf to attend the family's graves.
The most-told variant of the lore is the seven-circuits curse: anyone bold enough to walk seven times around the cemetery under the light of a full moon will not survive to dawn, hunted down by the guardian wolf. Less catastrophic accounts describe a white wolf or ghostly canine that howls when visitors arrive at night and continues until the visitor leaves; nearby local dogs are reported to join the white wolf's calls.
Additional reports describe glowing orbs captured in nighttime photographs, brief shadow figures moving among the older field stones, and the impression of being watched. Lancaster County ghost-hunter Rick Fisher has investigated the site repeatedly; his findings circulate in regional reporting but have not been published in peer-reviewed paranormal investigation. The cemetery's status in regional folklore is well-attested even though the historical anchor for the werewolf accusations is undocumented in surviving Lancaster County court records.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Visit the small Graf family plot on a quiet stretch of Old River Road between Marietta and Rowenna. The cemetery holds members of one of Lancaster County's earliest Pennsylvania-German settler families. Approach respectfully; the site is not actively interpreted.
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