{"id":1651,"slug":"college-burial-ground-site-washington-washington-d-c","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["College Burial Ground is the moved — the '1817' that's the parish's first, the '1953 exhumed' that's the campus cleared. The 'slaves buried' is the recorded — the 'upward of sixty' that's the register counted, the 'free Black' that's the Georgetown's third. The 'poor lots' is the divided — the 'paid and free' that's the sections split, the 'segregated' that's the race kept.","The 'Visitation wall' is the beside — the 'convent's slope' that's the site's edge, the 'Welsh epitaph' that's the immigrants' mark. The 'Mount Olivet' is the received — the 'transferred' that's the graves' second, the 'campus grew' that's the reason given. College Ground is the erased — the 'university's lawn' that's the burial's fate, the 'records kept' that's the names saved.","The file keeps the ground: the 60 enslaved, the '53 removal, the segregated lots, and the campus's growth.","College Burial Ground is the archive's D.C. file — the cemetery the university paved over."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["College Burial Ground is the archive's D.C. file — the graves Georgetown moved for lawns.","A campus keeps its dead — the file's suggestion being that the ground's hold is the displaced: the 'sixty enslaved' that's the register's count, the '1953' that's the removal's year, and the 'records' that's the memory left."]}],"name":"College Burial Ground site","aliases":["College Ground","Old Parish Cemetery"],"type":"FORMER_CEMETERY","type_label":"Former Cemetery","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","FOLKLORE","UNEXPLAINED_LIGHTS"],"groups":["cemeteries","dark-history","legends","unexplained"],"desc":"Former Georgetown cemetery associated with a 1939 light-story reference.","full_desc":"College Burial Ground site is a former cemetery in Washington, Washington, D.C.. Former Georgetown cemetery associated with a 1939 light-story reference. Established in 1817; last used by 1900. Graves were removed in 1953 for planned Reiss Science Building construction; archive identifies Mount Olivet in Washington,DC as receiving cemetery. Local lore holds that A 2009 campus article cites a February 1939 Hoya story of luminous witches-head globes over this former burial ground.","address":null,"city":"Washington","county":null,"state":"Washington, D.C.","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":38.904243,"lon":-77.016524,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"DEMOLISHED","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":"Now developed campus land around Reiss Science Building; no cemetery-entry route asserted.","ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":1817,"year_closed":1900,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Discovery or enrichment; earliest report and independent corroboration remain under research. Confidence measures source provenance, not supernatural reality.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":60.6,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":862,"type":"UNEXPLAINED_LIGHTS","description":"A 2009 campus article cites a February 1939 Hoya story of luminous witches-head globes over this former burial ground. The account has been recorded since February 1939 Hoya reference, cited secondhand. College Burial Ground site in Washington, Washington, D. C. carries the report the way old places do — as part of its identity. The account has a collector's pedigree — written down as legend, which is the most honest status it can hold. The report is preserved in sources like 'Six feet under GU'. The lights keep their own schedule; nobody has produced a better explanation.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":"February 1939 Hoya reference, cited secondhand","approx_date":null,"confidence":0.75,"conflict_notes":"Original 1939 issue not yet read. Proposed decomposition-gas explanation is historical speculation, not confirmed science;2022 GW article misassigns story toHoly Rood.","source":{"name":"Six feet under GU","url":"https://georgetownvoice.com/2009/10/29/six-feet-under-gu/","publisher":"The Georgetown Voice","type":"LOCAL_JOURNALISM","authority":3},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"Established in 1817; last used by 1900. Graves were removed in 1953 for planned Reiss Science Building construction; archive identifies Mount Olivet in Washington,DC as receiving cemetery. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. The record appears in 'College Burial Ground and Holy Rood Cemetery Collection,…'. The entry's timeline holds it; the lore holds the rest.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"College Burial Ground and Holy Rood Cemetery Collection, GTA-000144","url":"https://findingaids.library.georgetown.edu/repositories/12/resources/12653","publisher":"Georgetown University Archives","type":"LIBRARY_ARCHIVE","authority":1}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"A 2009 campus article cites a February 1939 Hoya story of luminous witches-head globes over this former burial ground. Reports in the file date to February 1939 Hoya reference, cited secondhand. College Burial Ground site in Washington, Washington, D.C. carries the report the way old places do — as part of its identity. The story is documented as legend — recorded and retold, never verified as fact. The report is preserved in sources like 'Six feet under GU'. The legend does what legends do — it explains the place in a way the records can't.","earliest":"February 1939 Hoya reference, cited secondhand","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Six feet under GU","url":"https://georgetownvoice.com/2009/10/29/six-feet-under-gu/","publisher":"The Georgetown Voice","type":"LOCAL_JOURNALISM","authority":3}}],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"College Burial Ground and Holy Rood Cemetery Collection, GTA-000144","url":"https://findingaids.library.georgetown.edu/repositories/12/resources/12653","publisher":"Georgetown University Archives","type":"LIBRARY_ARCHIVE","authority":1},{"name":"Six feet under GU","url":"https://georgetownvoice.com/2009/10/29/six-feet-under-gu/","publisher":"The Georgetown Voice","type":"LOCAL_JOURNALISM","authority":3}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":1,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":0,"sources":2}}