Stull Cemetery

Stull, Kansas, is barely a town at all. It’s a scattering of houses, a church and a few farm buildings at a crossroads in the rolling prairie about ten miles west of Lawrence, the home of the University of Kansas. You could drive through it in less than a minute.

On a small hill just outside town is a little cemetery, enclosed by a fence. For more than a century, it was the burial ground for the farm families of the area, the kind of country graveyard you’ll find in every rural county in America.

Then, in the 1970s, someone said it was one of the seven gateways to hell.

The Legend

According to the story, which has been repeated in countless books, websites, songs and television shows, Stull Cemetery is one of seven places on earth where the gates of hell open. Twice a year — on Halloween and on the spring equinox — the devil himself appears there.

The legend often centered on an old stone church that stood in the cemetery. It was a small, roofless ruin, built in the nineteenth century by the area’s German settlers. According to the stories, the church was cursed. Rain, people said, would never fall inside its walls, even though it had no roof. Anyone who threw a bottle against its walls would find that it didn’t break. Some said that the devil appeared in the church, or that a staircase in the ruins led down to hell.

Other legends say that a witch was hanged on a tree in the cemetery in the 1800s, and that a child who was killed by her father’s carelessness is buried there and has transformed into something not human. Another story claims that, when Pope John Paul II flew to Denver in 1993, he ordered his plane to fly around eastern Kansas because he didn’t want to pass over unholy ground.

Where It Came From

Researchers who have traced the legend say it began with an article in the University of Kansas student newspaper, the University Daily Kansan, in November 1974.

The article described rumors among students about strange happenings at the Stull cemetery: that the devil appeared there, that the church was haunted, that people who went there had terrifying experiences. It was the kind of story that spreads quickly on a college campus, especially around Halloween. And it did. Within a few years, students were driving out to Stull on Halloween night by the dozens, then by the hundreds.

There’s no evidence of any of this in the historical record before the 1970s. No witch was ever hanged in Stull. No one has ever documented the devil there. The story about the Pope is a myth; there’s no evidence that he altered his flight path.

The Real Stull

The real history of Stull is much quieter.

German settlers established a farming community in the area in the 1850s. It was originally called Deer Creek. In the late 1890s, it was renamed after its postmaster, Sylvester Stull. The settlers built a church and laid out the cemetery. Many of the graves date to the nineteenth century, marked with German names.

Like any rural community, Stull had its tragedies. According to local history, a young boy died in a field fire in the area, and a man was once found dead hanging from a tree, possibly by his own hand. Those real stories may have provided some of the seeds for the darker legends.

The Trespassers

What followed the legend was very real, and very unpleasant for the people who lived in Stull.

On Halloween nights from the late 1970s onward, crowds of young people descended on the little cemetery. They climbed over the fence, vandalized gravestones, spray-painted graffiti on the old church, drank, partied, and tried to summon the devil. Some knocked over headstones. Some dug at graves. The local residents, many of whom had relatives buried in the cemetery, were horrified.

In 1989, on Halloween, police reportedly counted around five hundred people trying to get into the cemetery. The county sheriff’s office began posting deputies there on Halloween and the spring equinox to arrest trespassers. Signs were put up. The cemetery was closed to the public at night.

In 2002, the old stone church — which had become unstable and dangerous — was demolished. Today there’s very little left to see. The cemetery is still there, and it’s still patrolled.

The Devil in the Details

I’ve included Stull in this book not because I think the devil appears there. I don’t. I’ve included it because it’s a perfect example of how a legend can be born, and how much damage it can do.

A campus rumor printed in a student newspaper in 1974 turned a small country cemetery into a destination for vandals and thrill-seekers for decades. The families of the people buried there had to watch, year after year, as their relatives’ graves were desecrated in the name of a story that someone made up.

If there’s anything frightening at Stull Cemetery, it isn’t a gate to hell. It’s how easily we’ll trample on the real dead for the sake of an imaginary devil.