The Best 5 Cemetery Tours In New England

Touring a burial ground is like stepping into a chiseled storybook, where each stone signifies a love immortalized. Sure, you can wander on your own, reading epitaphs. But the guides who lead New England’s best cemetery tours are there to help you dig deeper. Here are our five favorites.

The Best 5 Cemetery Tours In New England

Center Church Crypt Tour New Haven, CT

While around 5,000 souls attend the typical event on the New Haven Green, the number of colonial settlers buried beneath this 16-acre park could be double that. The names of most are forever lost, but venture down to the basement of Center Church for a free, volunteer-led tour and you’ll meet Benedict Arnold’s first wife; President Rutherford B. Hayes’s grandmother; poor Sarah Whiting, the “painfull mother of eight children” who died on the Fourth of July before that date meant anything; and Sarah Trowbridge, whose 330-year-old gravestone is the oldest of all. When this congregation’s fourth meetinghouse was built in 1814, it capped a crypt unlike any burial ground in New England, protecting the identified remains of 137 early residents. Donations help save headstones from the ravages of water and age. Saturdays, April–October. centerchurchonthegreen.org/history/crypt

Dead of Night Ghost Tours Plymouth, MA

Join the paparazzi on Burial Hill, cellphone flashes popping, as they angle for ghost shots. By now the deceased Pilgrims, frozen-to-death sailors, the unfortunate bride, and other inhabitants of Plymouth’s oldest surviving cemetery are accustomed to the nightly attention. It’s been 16 years since Jan Williams began offering lantern-lit tours of New England’s oldest town. Her career change from paramedic to paranormal expert was sparked by spectral visits; she bought her first hearse on eBay, and her cellphone is loaded with images of restless spirits. But her tours are more fun than frightening, especially when she asks bearded gents to stand on cemetery stairs for a Bachelor-style chance to win a kiss or embrace from a lovelorn wraith. If you want to be scared to the bone, add on entry to two haunted historic houses, where the power of suggestion alone will give you goose bumps. Year-round; departs from Plymouth Rock. deadofnightghosttours.com

Ghosts & Gravestones’ Boston Frightseeing Tour Boston, MA

There’s only one way to (legally) prowl around Boston’s historic cemeteries after dark. Join a gravedigger, a black widow, or one of the other sinister characters who lead these 90-minute, PG-13 excursions. The North End’s Copp’s Hill cemetery and downtown’s Granary Burying Ground—eternal home of patriots such as Samuel Adams and Paul Revere—are unforgettable settings for the tour’s fascinating mix of horror, humor, and history. Guides are hired for their dramatic flair, but the stories they share during your trolley ride and walk on the city’s dark side are factually and chillingly accurate. With a deep trove of lore to draw on, no two tours are alike. April through mid-November; departs from the corner of State Street and Atlantic Avenue. ghostsandgravestones.com/boston

New England Curiosities’ Shadows and Stones Cemetery Tour Portsmouth, NH

Cemeteries are “art galleries,” says folklorist Roxie Zwicker, who has visited more than 400 in New England. Few are more alluring than Portsmouth’s Point of Graves, the destination of one of her most popular walking tours, where the compelling stories etched on stone stretch back to 1682. You can rely on Zwicker for lighthearted banter and intriguing tidbits about gravestone symbolism, Seacoast history, and living and dying in the 17th and 18th centuries. Once you meet her “co-guide,” though, things get unpredictable. Elizabeth Pierce died of consumption in 1717, but the cemetery’s sociable spirit often taps visitors on the shoulder and always responds when Zwicker uses L-rod dowsing to communicate with her. Even if you don’t verbalize questions, you may receive answers relayed from your own spiritual guardians. The staunchest ghost-doubters sometimes wind up in tears. Select Fridays, late April through October; departs from Deadwick’s Ethereal Emporium. newenglandcuriosities.com/shadows.htm

Spirits Alive’s Eastern Cemetery Walking Tour Portland, ME

Portland’s oldest historic landscape was neglected, weathered, vandalized…until a nonprofit friends group vowed to bring Eastern Cemetery back to life. A decade of labor later, Spirits Alive volunteers have conserved hundreds of gravestones, and devoted guides lead walks through this iron-fenced resting place, which will mark its 350th anniversary in 2018. You’ll hear the latest insights unearthed by tour program leader, board member, and author Ron Romano, whose books dig into everything from cemetery segregation to the artistry of local stonecutter Bartlett Adams, whose work adorns 700 headstones (including the ones for six of his own seven children). On dark nights as Halloween approaches, ghostly storytellers stationed among the buried will tingle your spine. Cemetery tours Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, July through mid-October; Halloween tours October 19–22, 26–29. spiritsalive.org

Kim Knox Beckius

Kim Knox Beckius is Yankee's travel & branded content editor. A longtime freelance writer/photographer and Yankee contributing editor based in Connecticut, she has explored every corner of the region while writing six books on travel in the Northeast and contributing updates to New England guidebooks published by Fodor's, Frommer's, and Michelin. For more than 20 years, Kim served as New England Travel Expert for TripSavvy (formerly About.com). She is a member of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) and is frequently called on by the media to discuss New England travel and events. She is likely the only person who has hugged both Art Garfunkel and a baby moose.

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