Good morning and welcome to the grim. I'm your host, Kristin, on today's episode, we'll be opening the gate and entering stall cemetery. Located install Kansas. So grab your favorite mug cozy up and let's take a dig into history. As someone from the Midwest. Oh, he's used to some pretty boring graveyards growing up. We didn't have any lush, rural gardens or avenues of books. So where we've opened the gate this week, it scenery isn't much different. It doesn't have impressive history.
And if you pass it on the road, You'd most likely keep on driving. So why features stall cemetery at all? It's slower as very impressive. When I first read about style and I was thinking, okay, this isn't episode worthy. Yeah. I found myself intrigued and kept reading about it. Going down a rabbit hole of urban legends. Which listeners I figured would captivate you as much as it captivated me. We'll start off with its biggest one. And the reason I came to stall cemetery, captivated.
The cemetery is just one of two locations in the world. The devil is said to appear on two nights of the year, the other isn't India, just so you know. It's rumored. The devil appears on the last night of the winter or the first night of spring and Halloween. Which leads to the question, why the tumble weed Hamlet of stall Kansas out of the entire world would be chosen as the location for the devil. The urban legends passed down for years.
Say he's there to visit a witch buried within the grounds. The cemetery is also said to been used for gallows, for condemned to which is in the area, hung from an old tree. Folks where an old tree and the graveyard one served as gallows for condemned witches who returned each year as Satan's army. Sadly, the tree was cut down a few years ago and a longer is within, but to add to the oddity of the story. A grave with a name of which it. Resides inside.
Many believe this is where the Lord was born and just a fictitious, spooky tale. But a tale of a woman dressed in white on Halloween has been told learning drivers to their death along the highways edge. Never to be seen again. This has created many to speculate the possibility of a which on the grounds. Or maybe outside its gates. The devil is also said to be alert, to stall, visiting a grave that contains the bones of the child of Satan born from a witch.
The legend is that the child was born with extreme deformities. The boy only lived for a few days and was buried on the grounds. Visitors in the cemetery a few years back claimed to have taken a photograph with a ghost of a werewolf life boy. Peeking out from behind a tree that appears. Which sounds pretty creepy and other worldly. Along with rumors that the town name originally was skull, but covered up by renaming it stall.
Now, before we go into more stories of Hans or legends, isn't important to know a little about the history of stall. Stone was founded around 1857. And originally known as deer Creek. The name either being from someone, actually seeing a deer by a Creek or translated roughly from an indigenous name. Settlers were coming from Pennsylvania, Dutch country in America and Germany to escape German military duty. And for the promise of freedom in America.
In the 1890s, the town's first telephone in switchboard was installed. Then later on a post office in the back of the very same building. The first postmaster of stall. Was in fact Sylvester stole to whom the town was renamed after casting away the rumors of how the town was originally, Nate. The post office was discontinued in 1903 from the towns extremely small size. But the name is stuck. Stall only had 31 residents in 1912.
With one quota describing the town, saying it was quiet and easy sometimes even boring. This was just before automobiles were invented and the trip to larger cities like Topeka or nearby LA Compton. Could take over two to four hours to travel to. Stall was in fact in the middle of nowhere, literally and figuratively, the town then saw a small boom and the hope of a railway cutting through it till around the 1950s. When it, once again became a sleepy city. Stole wasn't without its tragedies.
However, the first was a boy named Oliver brammeier who was wandering into his father's field, who was doing a controlled burn at the time. If you're unfamiliar with a prescribed or controlled burn in farming, this is when the fields are intentionally set on fire to remove unwanted plants and also help the hell of the soil. Oliver tragically passed away, but his death led to the belief that if you stepped on his tombstone, you would go straight to hell.
The other was when a man was found, hanging from a tree after going missing in town. So when did the devil rumors start? In November of 1974, an issue of the student paper, the university daily Kansan from the university of Kansas released an article claiming the devil appeared in the stall twice a year, once on Halloween.
And then again, on the spring Equinox, the article also claimed of haunted by legends of diabolical supernatural happenings in town, leaning to rumors saying the cemetery was one of the seven gates to hell. And then that the nearby. Angelical Emanuel church ruin was possessed by the devil. Get the rumors didn't stop there. It was also claimed in the 1850s, the town's mayor was brutally murdered, stabbed to death by a stable hand in the cemeteries, old stone bar.
This was then later converted into a church. But again, these were just claims and rumors, not facts. Which leads us back to the town's history that refutes these claims because stall wasn't established until 1857. Known back then as deer Creek and didn't have a mayor making it impossible to verify or have any truths in the stabbing urban myth.
Leading to public intrigued though on March 20th, 1978, more than 150 people waited for the devil in the cemetery, hoping to confirm the newspaper's tale, but no appearance was had. Stole, whoever sleeping wasn't done just yet with the Outlander's claims again in 1990. The Pope was rumored to have redirected the flight path of his private plane to avoid flying over the devil's ground of stall. But no evidence supports this rumor at all.
The issue was the popularity of attempting to confirm the claims and rumors led to more rumors and claims. Visits the cemetery by teenagers or university students for a spooky tale had residents, irked and bemused with their urban legends of the town. When others in the past attempted to interview the town residents, they did speak out against the cemeteries vandalism and the McCobb stories, but they did little to try and stop the visitors originally in the cemetery.
The old stone church didn't help matters as well. Being abandoned in 1922, leading to the speculation and curiosity. Midnight visitors saying the decay wouldn't crucifix that was still hung on the wall of the abandoned church was thought to sometimes turn upside down when entering what was left of the building. Witnesses swear, no rain would fall within the roofless church. Making it seem steeped in black magic or the building must be witched.
An urban legend also claimed within is a staircase in the basement. And if you follow it downward, you would eventually reach the entrance to hell. But if you attempt to escape or climb back up, you'll be climbing for weeks upon weeks, but that's only if the devil himself doesn't grab you at first. A tale of two young men claim who were visiting the grounds one night became frightened when a strong wind began blowing out of nowhere. Playing the cemetery.
They ran back to their car, but found it on the other side of the highway facing the opposite direction they had parked it. Another young man then claimed to experience this strong wind, but inside the abandoned church. He was quoted saying the sinister air knocked him to the floor and he wasn't allowed to move for some time. Stoli feel as though, but wait, there's more cemetery tails more than most because there is in fact still more to tell. In 2002, a new oddity was added to the story again.
The old abandoned church was demolished, but no one knows by whom. The property owners didn't authorize the destruction of the old building. Get it. Mysteriously was just gone. One week prior.
It was believed to have been struck by lightning causing the collapse of what had remained of the church perhaps, maybe gone for good, but in a unique way the town finally though, had their fill of visitors and urban legends, putting up a security fence around the grounds with signs saying no trespassing with the town police now regularly patrolling the area. Here at the grim, we don't think we've heard the last of stall cemetery by any means.
And we're sure sooner than later, another urban legend within the grounds will surface. What urban legend do you think next we'll surface install. The grave grind for Saul cemetery is a bit of a unique one with a small town sands coffee shops. Nearby style is scooter's coffee in Lawrence, Kansas. We highly recommend the white hot chocolate. For more honorary grinds in the area, please visit the-grim.com for now. We're closing the gate on stall cemetery. We hope you enjoyed our Daikin history.
Have you did subscribe today and join us next time when we opened the gate. On the grim.