New Haven, Connecticut: Midnight Mary's Grave

Once you're in the cemetery, you can find the Midnight Mary stone on Evergreen Avenue, between Oak and Main.

I grew up in the neighborhood near Midnight Mary's grave, years ago. We would visit and shiver. The thinking was that she had catalepsy and was buried alive. NEVER visited her on Oct 15. Left many flowers, etc. Brought my kids there about 5 years ago. They were freaked.

I attended Southern Connecticut State University and graduated in 1999, having never heard of Mary's Grave until I found your website while planning a road trip from CT to New Orleans. My friend and I drove into the cemetery shortly after midnight and searched for Mary's grave but couldn't find it. It seemed odd that the cemetery was open at night, and we were a bit spooked. We returned the next day, and my friend's oldest daughter found the grave. We placed white flowers and a white candle featuring Our Lady of Guadalupe on the grave. In China, the Feast of the Hungry Ghosts is celebrated in August, so we left some food at the grave.

My Chihuahua (also named Guadalupe) stood on the grave and ate cemetery grass but has not seemed affected by it.

Evergreen Cemetery is the eternal resting place of Mary Hart, aka Midnight Mary. New Haven natives know the story well: Mary had some sort of attack and fainted; her husband assumed she was dead and had her buried immediately. The night of the funeral, her sister woke up at midnight from a nightmare she had about her sister screaming from the grave. She begged to have her sister exhumed. When the casket was opened, Mary's fingers were bloody, her fingernails were ripped off, and she had a petrified expression on her face. The gravestone reads: "At high noon/just from and about to renew her daily work, in her full strength of body and mind/Mary E. Hart/having fallen prostrate/ remained unconscious, until she died at midnight October 15,1872/born December 16,1824." And above those words in big black letters: "The people shall be troubled at midnight and pass away." I went to southern ct state university and heard stories on campus about students who had ventured into the graveyard at midnight. They were found the next morning on her grave with scared looks on their faces. Other students, from Yale and Quinnipiac were supposedly found driven into the fence that surrounds the graveyard.