Stepp Cemetery haunted by ‘the woman in black’

Your car will bounce over the ruts in the narrow dirt trail that winds through a tangle of dark trees.

The lighting is poor, the atmosphere isolated.

No one has been buried here for decades, and the tombstones are small and crumbling. This tiny cemetery would have been long forgotten if not for multiple stories of inexplicable happenings here.

The Stepp Cemetery, off Old State Highway 37 in the Morgan-Monroe State Forest, is one of the most famous haunted sites in Indiana.

Daniel Peretti, a folklorist who taught Indiana folklore at IU, said October is the time of year when the barrier between worlds is thin. It’s a time of year when people honor their mortality and the change from life to death.

The ancient Celts celebrated Samhain at this time of year, Peretti said. They believed it was a time when spirits could return from death through the barrier between worlds.
These apparitions of our terrors and nightmares may be closer than you’d like to think.

In Troy Taylor’s book “Beyond the Grave,” he mentioned a particular tombstone in the cemetery that is said to be haunted, but there is disagreement about to whom it belongs.

Some believe it is the grave of a child; others think it is a railroad worker.
Near this stone is a stump in the shape of a chair. In Taylor’s book, it is haunted by a
woman who sits on the stump, watching those who come into the cemetery.

“You’re not supposed to sit on the stump,” Peretti said. “If you do, you’ll die in a year.”
A YouTube video of this site was posted on Oct. 5.

In a style similar to that of the movie, “The Blair Witch Project,” a group of young people explored the cemetery with flashlights and a video camera.

They found unidentified phenomena on and around the tree stump and grave. The video is titled “ghost at stepp cemetery?...WTF.”

Mark Marimen wrote in his book, “Haunted Indiana,” that it is believed the ghostly woman moved with her husband to Indiana from the East Coast.

After several family tragedies, the woman ventured to the cemetery every night to protect her buried loved ones. People began to avoid the cemetery because they believed the woman was insane.

She was eventually buried at Stepp, and continues to sit and watch.

Peretti said one Bloomington resident had a chilling tale about this specter, usually called “the woman in black” or “the black lady.” Peretti said the woman in black collected metal lids of food cans and rusted knives. She tied them to the bottom of her skirt and spun circles around unsuspecting visitors, cutting them to pieces.

There are other stories that try to explain this phantom.

Included in Taylor’s book is the story of a mother and son who were in a horrible car accident.

The child was killed, and the mother’s hand was severed at the wrist. Her hand was replaced with a silver hook, and she returned to the cemetery, heartbroken, where her son had been buried to watch over him every night.

She still haunts the cemetery, brandishing her hook at anyone who comes near her son’s grave.

Peretti said people also capture orbs, or circular flashes of light, on film at haunted sites and believe they are evidence of a haunting. While this may just be light refraction, Peretti said there isn’t always a clear explanation.

“That’s what adds to the mystery, and the excitement,” Peretti said.