HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
An 1854 hillside cemetery in Montpelier whose Thanatos statue, nicknamed 'Black Agnes,' carries a death-curse legend
250 State Street, Montpelier, VT 05602
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public access to the cemetery grounds during posted daylight hours. This is an active cemetery; visit respectfully.
Access
Limited Access
A 35-acre hillside cemetery with sloped paved and gravel roads. The terrain rises steeply; the Hubbard monument sits up the hill from the State Street entrance.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1854 · Rural Cemetery Movement · Karl Bitter Sculpture · Saint-Gaudens Adams Memorial Lineage · Vermont Civic Burial Ground
Green Mount Cemetery was established in 1854 on a steep hillside above Montpelier, on land purchased from Isaiah Silver. Laid out in the rural-cemetery style of the period, the 35-acre grounds hold the graves of Vermont governors and a broad cross-section of the capital's civic history.
The cemetery's best-known monument marks the grave of John E. Hubbard, who died in 1899 a wealthy and, by most accounts, unpopular man. A bequest from Hubbard funded the cemetery's chapel-vault, completed in 1905, and the figure over his own grave. The monument is a seated, shrouded bronze representing Thanatos, the personification of death, executed by the sculptor Karl Bitter. The composition descends from Augustus Saint-Gaudens's Adams Memorial in Washington, a much-copied grief figure of the era.
The popular name 'Black Agnes' is a misnomer. The shrouded figure is not a woman named Agnes; the name was borrowed from 'Black Aggie,' an unauthorized copy of the Saint-Gaudens figure that marked the Baltimore grave of Brevet Gen. Felix Agnus and that had already attracted its own haunting legends. Over time Montpelier's statue absorbed the same folklore, attaching the imported name and curse to Hubbard's very different story.
Sources
The curse attached to Green Mount Cemetery's most famous statue is specific: sit on the figure's lap at midnight, often told as during a full moon, and you will fall ill, be cursed with bad luck, or die within a week. Some versions extend the misfortune to the visitor's friends as well. The seated bronze, dark with age, has drawn dares and ghost-story telling in Montpelier for generations.
The folklore is documented but, by the cemetery's own historians, imported. The Vermont Historical Society and local writers trace the legend to Baltimore's 'Black Aggie,' an unauthorized copy of the Saint-Gaudens grief figure that marked Gen. Felix Agnus's grave and had already become a regional curse object before its reputation migrated north. Montpelier's statue, which depicts Thanatos rather than any woman, acquired the borrowed name and the borrowed curse.
What is genuinely local is the figure beneath the bronze. John E. Hubbard died in 1899 having spent years at odds with his community over inheritance and money, and the public works his bequest eventually funded read as a late attempt at redemption. The reporting on the monument tends to land on that point: the documented story of Hubbard's life is more unsettling than the borrowed legend draped over his grave.
Notable Entities
Walk or drive the cemetery's hillside roads to the John E. Hubbard monument, where the seated, shrouded bronze figure popularly called 'Black Agnes' overlooks Montpelier. The grounds also hold the graves of Vermont governors and other civic figures across the 35-acre Victorian-era cemetery.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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