HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
Vermont's oldest burying ground, with 1777 battle dead and Robert Frost's grave
1 Monument Cir, Bennington, VT 05201
Research updated August 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public access during daylight hours.
Access
Limited Access
Sloping cemetery ground with grass paths and old, uneven headstones
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1762 · Battle of Bennington (1777) · Revolutionary War Burials · Robert Frost Grave · Oldest Vermont Burying Ground
The burying ground in Old Bennington predates the founding of the United States. Its earliest dated stone, from 1762, places it among the oldest cemeteries in Vermont. It spreads across the slope behind the Old First Church, the Congregational meetinghouse rebuilt in its present form in 1805, and has long been called Vermont's 'sacred acre.'
The cemetery's place in American history rests on the Battle of Bennington, fought in August 1777. American militia under General John Stark defeated a detachment of British, Loyalist, Hessian, and Indigenous troops sent to seize supplies, a defeat that helped lead to the British surrender at Saratoga. Soldiers from both sides who died of their wounds were buried in Bennington, and the cemetery holds American dead alongside British and Hessian mercenaries who never returned home.
The most-visited grave belongs to the poet Robert Frost, who died in 1963 and is interred in the family plot. His marker carries the line he chose for himself: 'I had a lover's quarrel with the world.' Five Vermont governors are buried here as well, and a Bennington-area victim of the 1912 Titanic disaster.
The Bennington Battle Monument rises a short walk away, and the cemetery has been a pilgrimage point for generations of visitors drawn by the Revolutionary War history and by Frost's grave. It remains open to the public during daylight hours.
Sources
Unlike many sites on the dark-tourism circuit, the Bennington Centre Cemetery is known for documented history rather than reported phenomena. Its weight comes from who is buried here. The graves of American, British, and Hessian soldiers killed or mortally wounded in the 1777 Battle of Bennington sit only steps apart, including German mercenaries who died thousands of miles from their homes in a war that was not their own.
Visitors commonly describe the burying ground as solemn and unusually quiet, especially in the older sections near the 1762 stones and the battle graves. The Frost family plot draws a steadier stream of visitors, many leaving pens, coins, or small objects at the marker bearing the poet's chosen epitaph.
The cemetery's atmosphere is the product of its age and its dead rather than any single haunting tradition. It is best understood as a Revolutionary War pilgrimage site and a literary one, where the history is enough to account for the hush that visitors notice.
Notable Entities
Walk the grounds behind the Old First Church to see graves dating to 1762, the markers of American, British, and Hessian soldiers from the 1777 Battle of Bennington, and the Frost family plot. A short walk from the Bennington Battle Monument.
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