{"id":2057,"slug":"stepp-cemetery-martinsville-indiana","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Stepp Cemetery is the forest graveyard with the Lady in Black — the pioneer cemetery in Morgan-Monroe State Forest where the legend of the mourning mother took hold. Reuben Stepp bought the land in 1856; the hundred-odd graves run from the 1870s to 2004, the oldest a War of 1812 veteran. The Lady in Black is the legend — the woman whose child died, who had the tree felled to make the chair by the grave, who sits there still with the white wolves.","The chair is the Warlock's Chair — the stump the legend says kills anyone who sits in it within a year. The Crabbites are the rumor — the snake-handling sect that may have used the cemetery, the ritual gatherings claimed for it. John Findley's confession is the counter — the 1966 haunting he admits he faked with friends, the wolf howls and shaking bushes that were teenagers. The cemetery that the Indiana Pioneer Cemeteries Project preserves is the real thing under the legend — the graves that were there before the ghost stories.","The file keeps Stepp Cemetery: the 1856 founding, the Lady in Black legend, the Warlock's Chair, and the admitted hoax.","Stepp Cemetery is the archive's forest file — the pioneer graves with the fabricated haunting."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Stepp Cemetery is the archive's forest file — the legend that admits its hoax.","A cemetery keeps its confession — the file's suggestion being that Stepp's hold is the Findley admission: the 1966 haunting that was teenagers, the Lady in Black built on the real mourning, and the legend that persists after the debunk."]}],"name":"Stepp Cemetery","aliases":[],"type":"CEMETERY","type_label":"Cemetery","cats":["LOCAL_FOLKLORE","VANISHING_HITCHHIKER","HAUNTED_PLACE","HAUNTED_CEMETERY","HISTORIC_CEMETERY"],"groups":["cemeteries","hauntings","legends"],"desc":"Morgan-Monroe forest cemetery with a revenant mother legend.","full_desc":"A cemetery in Bloomington, Indiana, Stepp Cemetery is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Morgan-Monroe forest cemetery with a revenant mother legend. HauntHunt files it with haunted cemeteries, local folklore and vanishing hitchhikers. Ask the file who haunts it and it answers: Lady of the Stump. The dossier holds 1 reported claim, 1 legend and 2 documented facts, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. The site is open to visitors.","address":null,"city":"Bloomington","county":null,"state":"Indiana","postal":null,"region":"Midwest","lat":39.3397,"lon":-86.3886,"coord_kind":"EXACT","status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":"Historic site","research_notes":"New record from encyclopedia/official-source pass; VERIFY task auto-queued for primary-source corroboration.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":70,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0.85,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":1285,"type":"NAMED_GHOST_LEGEND","description":"Legend describes a mother in black who returns to sit on \"the Stump\" beside her child’s grave. The lore gives it a name — Lady of the Stump — which is what turns a report into a resident. Cemeteries keep their stories in the stones; Stepp Cemetery in Bloomington, Indiana has its version filed among them. The claim is neighborhood knowledge — retold locally, verified nowhere. Sources including 'Stepp Cemetery' keep the claim in circulation. Named ghosts are the ones that last — this one has lasted.","evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","evidence_label":"Local folklore","entity":"Lady of the Stump","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Stepp Cemetery","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepp_Cemetery","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"The cemetery dates to the 1800s and sits within the state forest. Stepp Cemetery's history is documented — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath the ghost stories. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. The detail is preserved in 'Stepp Cemetery'. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Stepp Cemetery","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepp_Cemetery","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}},{"description":"The cemetery’s 19th-century burials are documented. A cemetery in Bloomington, Indiana with this much on record gives the file real ground to stand on. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The detail is preserved in 'Stepp Cemetery'. The entry's timeline holds it; the lore holds the rest.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Stepp Cemetery","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepp_Cemetery","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"Legend describes a mother in black who returns to sit on \"the Stump\" beside her child’s grave. Cemeteries keep their stories in the stones; Stepp Cemetery in Bloomington, Indiana has its version filed among them. It circulates as local folklore — the kind communities keep rather than verify. The account appears in 'Stepp Cemetery'. The tale is the site's other archive — oral, embroidered, and outlasting the documents.","earliest":null,"evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","source":{"name":"Stepp Cemetery","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepp_Cemetery","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[{"name":"Lady of the Stump","claimed_identity":"Lady of the Stump","verified":null,"summary":"Legend describes a mother in black who returns to sit on \"the Stump\" beside her child’s grave. The presence goes by Lady of the Stump. Cemeteries keep their stories in the stones; Stepp Cemetery in Bloomington, Indiana has its version filed among them. Named presences persist where anonymous reports fade — the file's name here is Lady of the Stump.","behavior":"Legend describes a mother in black who returns to sit on \"the Stump\" beside her child’s grave.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Stepp Cemetery","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepp_Cemetery","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Public cemetery; generally open during daylight hours. Be respectful of active burials.","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":"Stepp Cemetery","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepp_Cemetery","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":1,"history":2,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":1}}