The Grim: Haunted Cemeteries & Graveyard Tales – Details, episodes & analysis

In America's oldest city, beneath sighing oaks draped in Spanish moss, lies a cemetery that opens its gates to the living only three hours a month. The spirits, however, keep their own hours.

In this episode of The Grim, host Kristin walks the grounds of Tolomato Cemetery in St. Augustine, Florida — one of the oldest planned cemeteries in the United States, and one of its most restless. Long before the first headstone arrived, this soil cradled a Franciscan mission for the Guale Indians, displaced from their Georgia homeland and guided south in search of sanctuary. When British forces destroyed the mission, the ground became something else entirely — a refuge not for the living, but for the dead.

What followed was centuries of layered grief. Menorcan refugees, brought to Florida as indentured laborers and driven north by cruelty, buried their dead here in 1777 after their priest petitioned the British governor for permission. Spanish settlers, yellow fever victims, Confederate militia members, convicts, and mothers all followed. By 1892, when the gates finally closed, roughly a thousand souls had been folded into its soil — many of them without peace.

Among the most dramatic is Bishop Augustin Verot, the Rebel Bishop — a man who defended the Church while defending slavery, whose funeral became one of St. Augustine's most notorious disasters. Sealed in an airtight iron coffin against the Florida heat, the Bishop did not go quietly. The coffin exploded during the procession, scattering mourners and remains alike. What could be gathered was carried to a small white chapel on the grounds — where Father Félix Varela already rested.

Varela was a Cuban priest, philosopher, and freedom fighter who spent his life advocating against slavery and for human dignity before dying in exile in St. Augustine in 1853. His remains were later returned to Cuba, but visitors still report a watchful presence near the chapel — a figure in clerical garb that appears and vanishes among the graves. Whether it is Varela or the Rebel Bishop, no one can say for certain.

Then there is the Lady in White — a woman saved from premature burial when a branch struck her forehead during her own funeral procession and drew blood, revealing she still lived. She survived six more years, but her story didn't end with her. On foggy nights, a pale figure drifts silently among the graves, her face hidden beneath shadow and moss. And in the branches of the ancient live oak near the cemetery gates, some visitors still glimpse a small pale child — James Morgan, five years old, who fell from those same branches in 1877 and was buried in the very spot where he landed. His mother swore she saw him in the tree afterward. Others have too.

A cemetery open three hours a month. Haunted every hour of every day.

Support the show

Support The Grim by buying a cup of our next Grave Grind!
https://buymeacoffee.com/kristinlopes

Find All of The Grim's Social Links At:
https://www.the-grim.com/socialmedia

Join host Kristin as The Grim opens the gate on All Hallows' Eve, crossing into Panteón de Belén — Guadalajara's most haunted cemetery, where Gothic arches, marble crypts, and centuries of legend wait beneath the Mexican sun.

Originally built as part of the Hospital of Belén, a charitable sanctuary established by royal decree in 1751, the grounds were transformed into a burial site in 1848 when cholera swept through Guadalajara and the dead outnumbered the living. Architect Manuel Gómez Ibarra — the same visionary behind Guadalajara's cathedral — designed the cemetery in two realms: one for the wealthy, one for the common soul. Among its notable residents is José Cuervo, founder of the world-famous tequila brand, whose family holds a plot within its walls. But the cemetery's most enduring legacy belongs not to the famous, but to the forgotten — young women buried without surnames, their names erased to protect the reputations of the men who wronged them.

The legends of Panteón de Belén are as layered as its history. A vampire stalked 19th-century Guadalajara, draining animals and stealing newborns until locals hunted it down and buried it beneath a concrete slab — from which a tree now grows, its bark said to bleed dark sap when cut. Victoriana Hurtado, a woman with catalepsy, was buried alive by her own sons before they could inherit her fortune, her hand breaking through the earth and turning to stone. A young boy named Nachito, terrified of the dark in life, had his coffin rise from the ground ten nights in a row until his parents built him a tomb above ground — where visitors still leave toys and candy today. Star-crossed lovers José and Andrea, forbidden from marrying in life, were buried beneath interwoven stone crosses, their union finally sealed in death. A pirate's hidden treasure, a dare gone mad, a night watchman who never existed, and a phantom carriage that stops at the cemetery gates but is never seen — the stories here never end.

During Día de los Muertos, Panteón de Belén transforms entirely. Candlelight dances across gravestones, a monumental altar built by local students holds nearly 1,500 candles, and guided tours bring its restless spirits to life. It is a place where history, legend, and memory are inseparable — where the living and the dead share the same flickering light.

Open only by guided tour, with night photography forbidden, Panteón de Belén remains one of Mexico's most significant heritage sites and most haunted locations. Some say the photography ban protects its restless souls. Others whisper it keeps the vampire from rising once more.

Support the show

Support The Grim by buying a cup of our next Grave Grind!
https://buymeacoffee.com/kristinlopes

Find All of The Grim's Social Links At:
https://www.the-grim.com/socialmedia

It doesn't haunt with spectacle. It broods. And when the last tourist passes through the gate and the city exhales into sleep, the ground stirs once more.

Granary Burying Ground is one of the most visited cemeteries in America — a Freedom Trail landmark, where over 5,000 souls rest beneath crooked elms in the heart of Boston, though barely half that number have a name above ground. Founded in 1660, it holds the architects of the American Revolution and the shadows they left behind.

In this episode of The Grim, host Kristin walks the worn slate paths of Granary, tracing the lives of the men and women who built a nation — and the ones history nearly forgot in the process.

John Hancock is here — the man who signed his name so boldly on the Declaration of Independence that King George could read it without his spectacles, a signature so large it became a target on his back. Paul Revere rests beneath a modest stone, the silversmith whose midnight ride became legend, though history quietly notes he never finished the journey. Samuel Adams, the man behind the Sons of Liberty, the Boston Tea Party, and the pamphlets that turned frustration into revolution, lies nearby — a radical who later condemned his own kind when farmers rose up in Shays' Rebellion. And Peter Faneuil, whose slave trade profits built the hall that became the Cradle of Liberty, rests here too — a profound and unsettling irony carved into Boston's cobblestones.

Then there are the names most textbooks skip. Crispus Attucks — of African and Wampanoag descent, likely once enslaved, later a free sailor — was the first to fall in the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, shot twice in the chest, his blood staining the snow red before a war had even begun. James Otis Jr. thundered "taxation without representation is tyranny" in a five-hour courtroom oration that John Adams later called the birth of American independence — then died exactly as he had wished, struck by lightning in 1783. And Samuel Sewall, one of nine judges who condemned nineteen people to hang during the Salem Witch Trials, did something none of the others ever did: he stood before his congregation and publicly repented. He spent the rest of his life atoning — publishing the first anti-slavery tract printed in North America, a document his society largely ignored.

The hauntings here are quiet but persistent. Orbs drift between stones at dusk. James Otis Jr. is said to pace his grave at dawn, his mind still loud with revolution. Paranormal investigators have recorded whispers and electromagnetic spikes near his marker. And beneath it all, the weight of more than 5,000 souls — stacked in layers beneath a city that has built itself over and around them, their stories pressing upward through the soil.

A cemetery that doesn't cry out. It waits. And if you linger long enough, it may remember your name.

Support the show

Support The Grim by buying a cup of our next Grave Grind!
https://buymeacoffee.com/kristinlopes

Find All of The Grim's Social Links At:
https://www.the-grim.com/socialmedia

Shhh… The Haunting Return of Season Two Begins Sept 2.

Are you ready to step beyond the veil… and into the history of hauntings once again?

Support the show

Support The Grim by buying a cup of our next Grave Grind!
https://buymeacoffee.com/kristinlopes

Find All of The Grim's Social Links At:
https://www.the-grim.com/socialmedia

In this eerie season finale of The Grim, we're opening the gate and descending into one of the most iconic and haunted sites located in London England - the crypt beneath St. Paul’s Cathedral. Spanning 30,000 square feet, it is the largest cathedral crypt in Europe and a resting place for Britain’s greatest legends—and, some say, its most restless spirits.

We uncover the story of Admiral Lord Nelson, whose body lies in a black marble tomb originally carved for Cardinal Wolsey, the disgraced advisor to Henry VIII. Wolsey dreamed of sainthood, but died in exile. His tomb lay unused for centuries—until Nelson’s shattered body was brought home from Trafalgar and laid to rest where ambition had failed.

We revisit Winston Churchill’s state funeral, where Queen Elizabeth II broke royal tradition to attend and bowed her head—just once—as his coffin passed beneath the dome. And we walk the stone corridors where visitors report phantom footsteps, sudden chills, and an overwhelming sense of being watched.

And then… just a few steps from these centuries-old tombs… a café. Reopened in 2025, the Crypt Café serves lattes and pastries atop the bones of an empire.

This episode blends dark British history, true ghost stories, St. Paul’s Cathedral trivia, and haunted London travel all in one unforgettable journey below the city.

Support the show

Support The Grim by buying a cup of our next Grave Grind!
https://buymeacoffee.com/kristinlopes

Find All of The Grim's Social Links At:
https://www.the-grim.com/socialmedia

The Grim is opening the gate and entering Friedhof Ohlsdorf, a cemetery unlike any other—a sprawling necropolis located in Hamburg where grief wears a garden’s face and history rests beneath sculpted stone and owl-shadowed trees. Spanning nearly 1,000 acres of winding paths, still ponds, and towering trees, Ohlsdorf is more than a final resting place—it’s a city of the dead, where history, war, and remembrance intertwine.

Join The Grim as we explore this unforgettable cemetery’s layered past: from the Commonwealth War Graves and mass burial trench from the Hamburg Firestorm, to the graves of Nazi victims, executed resistance fighters, and soldiers lost to history. Discover chilling monuments like the sculpture of Charon crossing the Styx, and visit the Ohlsdorf Cemetery Museum, where Germany’s funeral traditions and wartime grief are preserved in stone and silence.

Along the way, meet some of Ohlsdorf’s most compelling residents: Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, anti-Nazi writer Wolfgang Borchert, and Albert Ballin, the shipping tycoon who revolutionized ocean travel but could not escape the tide of war.

With ghostly stories, war memorials, and forgotten voices echoing beneath the soil, this episode of The Grim invites you to walk the blurred line between beauty and loss. Whether you're drawn by cemetery history, World War remembrance, or stories of the haunted and heroic, Ohlsdorf will stay with you—long after the gates close behind you.

Support the show

Support The Grim by buying a cup of our next Grave Grind!
https://buymeacoffee.com/kristinlopes

Find All of The Grim's Social Links At:
https://www.the-grim.com/socialmedia

The Grim is opening the gate and entering Pine Grove Cemetery located in Truro, it might seem just another quiet New England burial ground—modest in size, overlooked by tourists, and far from the summer crowds drawn to nearby beaches. But appearances deceive. Since its establishment in 1799, this two-acre plot has become a repository for some of Massachusetts' darkest mysteries and most gruesome crimes.

We begin with the haunting tale of the Commerce, a fishing vessel that drifted into Truro harbor one September Sunday in 1844, perfectly intact but eerily empty. Captain Solomon Lombard and his nine crew members had vanished without explanation, only to wash ashore days later along a 30-mile stretch of coastline. These experienced sailors, strong swimmers all, somehow drowned on a calm sea within sight of land. Seven now rest in Pine Grove, their broken headstones still whispering "drowned in Cape Cod Bay" to those who know where to look. What happened to these men in their final moments? The sea has kept this secret for nearly two centuries.

More than a hundred years later, Pine Grove Cemetery became the backdrop for unimaginable horror when the woods behind its granite-posted fence became the hunting ground of Anton "Tony" Costa. Behind his clean-cut appearance and helpful demeanor lurked a monster who lured young women to their deaths. The 1969 discovery of four victims—Patricia Walsh, Marianne Wysocki, Sydney Monzon, and Susan Perry—buried behind the cemetery shocked the Cape Cod community to its core. Costa's connections to other disappearances and deaths across multiple states, combined with his interest in the occult, transformed Pine Grove from a place of peaceful rest to a site of nightmares.

Whether you're fascinated by maritime mysteries, true crime, or the paranormal phenomena reported within Pine Grove's boundaries, this episode unearths the secrets that lie just beneath the surface of this seemingly ordinary place. Listen now and discover why some say the woods beyond the headstones still feel heavy with unresolved tragedy—and why Pine Grove Cemetery continues to be a place where the past refuses to rest in peace.

Support the show

Support The Grim by buying a cup of our next Grave Grind!
https://buymeacoffee.com/kristinlopes

Find All of The Grim's Social Links At:
https://www.the-grim.com/socialmedia

The Grim is opening the gate and entering Georgiana Cemetery located on Merritt Island in Florida. Step away from the tourist crowds at Cape Canaveral and walk with us along a crooked mile, where sunlight filters through Spanish moss and century-old secrets whisper on the salt breeze. Georgiana Cemetery on Merritt Island might not make the Florida travel guides, but beneath its quiet exterior lies a tapestry of tragedy, mystery, and lingering spirits that refuse to be forgotten.

Discover the heartbreaking fate of the Smith sisters—Myrtle, Mary, and Martha—who perished together on June 14, 1916, when a family outing across the Banana River turned deadly during an unexpected storm. Their shared tombstone tells only part of the story, while local legend claims their childish laughter still carries on the wind during stormy evenings, echoing across decades of grief.

We'll unravel the brutal unsolved murder of 19-year-old Ethel Allen, whose mutilated body was discovered in 1934 near the riverbank. The prime suspect vanished without a trace, leaving behind a mystery that haunts Merritt Island to this day. From Ashley's Restaurant, where staff report encounters with a woman in 1930s attire, to the roadside where foggy nights sometimes reveal a young woman searching endlessly for home, Ethel's presence lingers far beyond her modest grave marker.

While rockets launch toward distant worlds at nearby Kennedy Space Center, Georgiana Cemetery anchors us to a different kind of mystery—one rooted in human tragedy rather than cosmic exploration. The spirits here don't reach for the stars; they reach for resolution, recognition, and perhaps a moment of connection with those brave enough to listen.

Join us as we close the gate on Georgiana Cemetery, where not everything that reaches for you comes from above, and where some things refuse to stay buried beneath the Florida sand and sunshine. For those fascinated by history's darker corners and the thin veil between worlds, subscribe today and never miss an episode of The Grim.

Support the show

Support The Grim by buying a cup of our next Grave Grind!
https://buymeacoffee.com/kristinlopes

Find All of The Grim's Social Links At:
https://www.the-grim.com/socialmedia

The Grim is opening the gate and entering Old Hill Burying Ground, where time doesn't just slow—it folds back on itself days after the 250th anniversary of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. The weathered stones rising from the modest 1.16 acres in located Concord, Massachusetts don't merely commemorate the dead; they mark the resting places of those who shaped a nation's violent, necessary birth.

The cemetery feels deceptively small until you understand its weight. Nearly 500 gravestones remain, some adorned with winged skulls and soul effigies—Puritan reminders of mortality's constant presence. The oldest visible marker belongs to Joseph Merrim who died in 1677, but countless others lie beneath unmarked earth, their names surrendered to time and weather. What makes this ground hallowed isn't just its age but who rests here: fifteen veterans of the American Revolution who transformed this quiet corner of Massachusetts into the cradle of independence.

Most significant among them is Major John Buttrick, whose command to "Fire, fellow soldiers, for God's sake, fire!" sent the first colonial bullets into British ranks at North Bridge on April 19, 1775. That moment—immortalized as "the shot heard round the world"—changed everything. The soil of this burial ground cradles others who stood firm that pivotal morning: Colonel James Barrett, whose farm was the British target; Captain David Brown, who led Concord's minute company; and Reverend William Emerson, who stoked the fires of resistance from his pulpit. From these gates, you can almost see North Bridge, where blood once mingled with river water and revolution took its first breath.

Some visitors describe a strange hush when walking among these stones—a feeling that the past doesn't rest here but continues to breathe alongside us. Perhaps they're right. When you trace your fingers across these weather-worn epitaphs, you're touching more than slate and memory; you're connecting with the very foundation of American liberty. Subscribe today to join us next time when we open the gate on another hidden historical treasure where the past refuses to remain silent.

Support the show

Support The Grim by buying a cup of our next Grave Grind!
https://buymeacoffee.com/kristinlopes

Find All of The Grim's Social Links At:
https://www.the-grim.com/socialmedia

The Grim is opening the gate deep in the forested mountains of Wakayama Prefecture lies a sacred realm suspended between worlds. Entering Okunoin Cemetery located at Mount Koya isn't merely Japan's most hallowed burial ground—it's a living testament to 1,200 years of unbroken spiritual devotion where the boundary between life and death seems remarkably thin.

The journey begins where modern Japan recedes. After a bullet train and local railway, visitors ascend 800 meters by funicular into what feels like another dimension. Crossing the First Bridge marks your departure from the realm of the living as you enter a two-kilometer path winding beneath towering cedars past over 200,000 graves and memorials.

What makes Okunoin transcendent isn't just its scale but its remarkable intersection of history and belief. Here lies Kukai (Kobo Daishi), the founder of Shingon Buddhism who never "died" but entered eternal meditation in 835 CE. Two lanterns have reportedly burned without pause for 900 years in the Torodo (Hall of Lanterns) before his mausoleum, where monks still bring meals twice daily.

The cemetery reads like a physical timeline of Japanese history. Feudal rivals Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin face each other in eternal standoff. The three great unifiers—Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu—rest among poets like Matsuo Basho. Five-ringed stone towers represent Buddhist cosmology, while Jizō statues wearing red bibs watch over departed children.

Strangely, modernity has crept into this ancient sanctuary. Corporate memorials stand alongside monuments to termites and even a replica Saturn V rocket. Local legends add another layer of mysticism—venomous snakes sealed by Kukai, a well that predicts your death if your reflection is absent, and stone steps that promise rebirth if climbed without falling.

Have you ever wandered among the dead and felt more alive? Subscribe to join us next time as we open another gate on the Grimm and explore history's most fascinating burial grounds.

Support the show

Support The Grim by buying a cup of our next Grave Grind!
https://buymeacoffee.com/kristinlopes

Find All of The Grim's Social Links At:
https://www.the-grim.com/socialmedia