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Click here to view photos taken by Tina Edwards.
The Little Pennsylania Cemetery, AKA "Woolyburger" Cemetery, is located off the north side of London-Groveport Road, a little over a ½ mile west of Georgesville-Harrisburg Road, outside Darbydale, Ohio (Pleasant Township, Franklin County). The coordinates are 39° 51' 2.36" N, 83° 12' 5.24" W.
The Little Pennsylvania Cemetery is also known as London-Lancaster Cemetery. It sits at the end of a lane that is blocked off at London-Groveport Road by a large steel beam/gate. The township takes very good care of the grounds, but many of the gravestones have been very vandalized. It's always sad to see the gravestones in old cemeteries destroyed like the ones here.
Woolyburger Cemetery is supposedly haunted. There have been reports of strange lights seen around the cemetery. Several people also claim to have heard screams.
It is said that members of the occult come to this cemetery for their ceremonies and human/animal sacrifices. I guess there's an abandoned shack somewhere in the woods behind the cemetery, which is where most of the occult activites supposedly take place. I did notice a couple of very worn paths leading into the woods at the back corners of the cemetery. I didn't walk down them though, not because I was afraid of being sacrificed, but because it was just too humid and hot! A friend from work, Sean, told me that he and his friends used to walk back to the cemetery when they were in high school. However, they never went back there on Halloween, just in case the occult rumors were true!
I've heard that the cemetery got the name "Woolyburger" because a bigfoot-like creature called a woolybooger lives there. I didn't see any evidence of that, but it does remind me of a something I did once...the summer between my freshmen and sophomore years of high school I was a counselor at the beginner's 4-H camp. Fairfield County has their 4-H camp at Tar Hollow State Park in the Hocking Hills. I had a cabin of six nine year old girls for three nights. The camp was divided into different groups for competitions and stuff, and each group was comprised of two girl's cabins and two boy's cabins. I'm sure all of you can imagine how obnoxious a bunch of nine-year olds away from home can be, we had a difficult time getting them to follow some of the rules. One of the rules the kids had the most trouble with was staying on the paths to the cabins. We told them about the snakes, spiders, and other creatures living in the woods surrounding the paths, but they just didn't seem to care. So the other three counselors in my group and I decided to scare them by telling them a story about "woolyboogers". We didn't come up with the name woolybooger on our own. Each year the guy in charge of the camp would have a little skit in which someone would hide behind a wall and pull a brown wig attached to a string across the floor. One of the counselors would scream "Oh no, it's a woolybooger". I'm not sure what the purpose of the skit was, but we decided to use it to help keep the kids on the paths. In one of our group meetings we told the campers that woolyboogers are little furry creatures that live in the hills. They might not look too scary, but if you step off the path they'll release big, long, sharp claws (like Wolverine's from X-Men) and cut you with them. Telling them that seemed to do the trick, the kids were excellent at staying on the path after that! Our story did backfire on us a little though. One night, I think it was around 2AM, I woke up to screams in my cabin. Turns out one of the girls woke up when she heard some rustling in the trash bag...she was convinced that a woolybooger was in the cabin! It took me a LONG time to convince her that it wasn't a woolybooger, it was just a mouse! I guess it was probably mean for us to scare those poor little kids like that, but I'll admit that it was pretty fun! Anyway, now I'm rambling...
In June 2005, I received the following e-mail from Seth Ayers, a website visitor:
I'm not completely sure if Woolyburger is actually haunted or not. However, I do believe that a cult does have meetings there. My aunt lives just down the street from it and she has told me she has seen dark figures entering or exiting the cemetery while driving past it late at night. I have been there once myself, and there was dried black candle wax on a few of the headstones. Also, my cousin's boyfriend told me that if you stand on top of the big hill in the cemetery on a full moon night and look down the hill across the small creek in the woods, an old, creepy house will appear there and if you walk to it and try to step onto the porch, it disappears.
In October 2006 I received an e-mail from Tina Edwards regarding the Little Pennsylvania Cemetery:
I have a friend, who is a firefighter, that went fishing behind the cemetery. It got late, and they got creeped out. It was after midnight and they decided to leave. He said that as they left through the cemetery, fog crept upon them - it was so thick they had to join hands to stay together. They all saw what they thought to be a old shed or old house, and being a little afraid they didn't check it out. The next day they came back and retraced their steps - the house, shed, or whatever it may have been was no longer there. I have always heard the legend of the old house appearing and disappearing, maybe they had that experience.
Click here to see Tina's photos from the cemetery.
In October 2007 I received an e-mail from Jen C. regarding her trip to the Little Pennsylvania Cemetery:
I went last night...just after midnight (of course). There was another group of people that had already been in there. Nothing strange happened. A couple of the guys I was with kept freaking out, thinking they were seeing lights even after we knew the group of people that were previously in there were gone. One of them said it looked like someone was out there with a flashlight.
Once you get to the top, by the cemetery, there is an opening to a path off to the right of it. Walking to the top of the path IS kind of creepy, especially when you psych yourself out. I didn't go past the end of the path, that opens into ANOTHER area, where people say that everything starts happening (supposedly). The reason I didn't go any further is because two of the guys I was with said they saw a shadowy figure in the brush just 20 feet away from us. They thought they saw a flash of light, and they took off running.
My friend and I didn't really want to be alone, so we started walking back down. We heard the guys screaming at the end of the path, saying we were stuck. We ran back toward the cemetery, and both of them said there was a black car at the end with their lights off, and someone ran across the hill up to the cemetery from one side to the other, with flashlights. I personally didn't see anything paranormal or out of the normal. But then again, I didn't go past the end of the path where everything supposedly starts happening.
My friend went up through there during the day, got to the top of the path, and there was like four other paths on the other side of the opening, leading to other places. I've heard there's a pond or lake back there. He said he saw a log cabin, or something like that, on one of the paths. He said he went back later that week at night. Went down the same path and didn't see anything. Just a huge square area of dirt where the cabin used to be.
I personally didn't see any flashing lights or anything abnormal. I did hear a bunch of what I thought was coyotes. And a lot of leaves rustling around.
Figured I would give a little bit of what I saw and experienced. And on all nights, Halloween night.
I didn't see any cults either. The shadowy figures that people are seeing as they drive by are probably random kids wanting to scare themselves. Especially on Halloween.
In February 2008 I received the following e-mail from Jef P. regarding the cemetery:
Tonight myself and two friends were at Woolyburger and didn't see anything (though both my friends felt a strange "creeping feeling"). Well, although we didn't see anything while we were in Woolyburger, on our way out we noticed that our torch (a brand new 3 watt LED Maglight) didn't have the reach it did on the way in. We stood at the gate looking towards the drive, and though there was no fog (at all, none) my light shining towards the gate seemed to hit a wall of fog that would not allow us to see the gate. On the way in we looked back and clearly saw the gate, so we knew the light would reach. Thinking it was fog, I shined the torch to the right, left, and behind us, and the torch had normal reach...yet when we shined the light back towards the gate, it hit that "wall" again. Thinking it was odd, we continued our trip out and began to make our way back towards the gate. Upon reaching the gate, we all shared an odd feeling and turned towards Woolyburger once again. Shining the torch back up the hill, we found it hit the same wall of fog that we had just seen where we now stood. Only this time it was now at the other gate. Anyway, I thought it was odd. We're checking it out and planing a trip again soon. But I thought I would share this with you.
In April 2008 I received the following e-mail from an anonymous website visitor regarding the cemetery:
It was about 2 years ago now. My sister, two of our friends, and myself were driving home. It was around 10:00 PM and we were coming back from London. We were all joking and laughing about something one of our other friends had said. My sister was driving so she was paying close attention to the road. We were about a minute from the cemetery when my sister started screaming. We all were like what!! We almost had to pull off so someone else could drive, but she wouldn't let us. So we started asking what was wrong. We didn't get anything out of her till we got home. She said there was something standing on the side of the road. We all asked if it was a person, and she said no, it was a thing...it was a shadow like thing. I still to this day can't get much out of her about it, and she will not drive that road at night.
Here are some additional links to pages about the cemetery:
Forgotten Ohio - Woollyburger Cemetery
Franklin County Cemeteries - Little Pennsylvania Cemetery
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