Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainA small 1890 pioneer cemetery north of Ritzville in Adams County, Washington, holding many early settler and children's graves; local lore describes it as the most haunted spot near Ritzville, with fog and ghostly children reported after midnight.
Marcellus Road (approx. 8.5 mi north of Ritzville), Ritzville, WA 99169
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Rural community pioneer cemetery; no admission. Treat as a respected burial ground, not an attraction.
Access
Limited Access
Rural roadside cemetery on gravel road; uneven ground.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1890 · Established 1890 with land donated by pioneer settler William C. Griffith · Contains numerous early Adams County homesteader and children's graves · Documented in Adams County interment and genealogical records · Associated with the vanished frontier locality of Griffith/Marcellus
The Griffith Pioneer Cemetery serves the rural farming community north of Ritzville in Adams County, in the wheat country of eastern Washington. According to Adams County cemetery records, William C. Griffith donated two acres of land for the community cemetery in 1890; the dedication and legal description were later formally filed in 1923. The Griffith family had emigrated from Canada between roughly 1876 and 1897 to homestead and farm about half a mile south of the burial ground.
The cemetery's interment records document the hardships of frontier settlement, including numerous children's graves. Among the early burials are Gracie Clara Griffith, who died in 1891 at age nine, and Sarah A. Griffith, who died at twenty days old in 1890. The prevalence of infant and child graves is typical of late-19th-century homesteading communities, where disease and limited medical care took a heavy toll on the young.
The cemetery is reached by driving about 8.5 miles north of Ritzville on Marcellus Road, near the small locality of Marcellus. It remains a maintained rural pioneer cemetery and is documented through Adams County genealogical and interment records. HauntBound presents it primarily as a historic burial ground deserving of respect.
Sources
According to a Shadowlands Haunted Places Index submission, echoed by a regional haunted-cemetery aggregator and a local Facebook group that calls Griffith 'the most haunted place near Ritzville,' the cemetery is the focus of children-centered ghost lore. The seed account describes a child's grave whose flowers reportedly never die, a spirit that supposedly tries to make visitors fall onto an open coffin, and a midnight fog said to roll in and leave small child-like handprints on parked vehicles.
Independent corroboration comes from a 2005 Halloween feature in the Columbia Basin Herald, the regional daily newspaper for Adams County. The Herald reported on the ghost legend of Griffith Cemetery, noting that 'a fog comes up after midnight and the souls of the many children buried in the cemetery begin playing tricks on people,' and confirmed the cemetery's founding by William C. Griffith in 1890 and its association with the vanished locality of Griffith/Marcellus. Local officials cited by the Herald were uncertain about the legend's validity and noted most references came from internet sources, but the newspaper's independent coverage establishes the haunting tradition as a piece of documented local folk culture rather than a claim traceable only to Shadowlands.
The more lurid elements (the open-coffin and fog-pulling details) bear the hallmarks of embellished folklore. What is verifiable is the cemetery's genuine history as an 1890 pioneer burial ground with many children's graves, a context that naturally gives rise to poignant ghost stories. We ask visitors to treat the site with the respect due any cemetery.
Notable Entities
Visit the small Griffith Pioneer Cemetery, established in 1890 by the Griffith family, with headstones for early Adams County homesteaders and several infant and child graves from the 1890s.
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