Loon Lake Cemetery

We use to camp at the campgrounds near by. We hiked out to the cemetery after dark to drink and tell ghost stories. The prairie grass around the cemetery had an unusual amount of ticks in it.

August 2024

Walking to the cemetery isn't the whole experience. The whole camp ground has something lingering in the woods and the water. The story of Mary Jane is real. I've been in a Wiccan ritual to show respect for her and the dead. 1 hour of the ritual. And about 10 mins of conversation with some spirits. Also her house ruins in Jackson by the river also holds some secrets. However the last time I was there The path to the house was blocked by multiple trees that seemed to have been in good health as well as good roots.

To anyone that goes out there to either the cemetery or the house ruins I advise you to please show respect. Never taunt. And always leave a gift. Nothing big. But a good example is a single flower.

September 2021

My father's side of my family is from this area. Yes there's the uben legend of the witch's. I can almost guarantee it's just that. I've been here more times then I can count, both before and after the cemetery was restored. I can understand the stories, considering it's condition before it's restoration. I regularly hunt the land this cemetery is a part of and never and have never experienced or felt anything paranormal.

September 2021

My wife and I walked back to this cemetery its hard walk through prairie grass to some woods to a fence on top of a hill with planted pine trees.I Would not be surprised at all if it is haunted to my eyes the cemetery is on top of another type of grave yard it looks to me the hill its on does not fit the prairie or the farmland around I think the Methodist church put the grave yard on a hill.But the hill is man made by native Americans it rests on top of a Native American burial mound. So it may be haunted by all kinds of spirits. This is my thought on it I took several photos with my full spectrum camera I did get spirits both outside of the grave yard and inside the grave yard.I think this is a case of double desecration. A. The Natives graves were disturbed when the Methodist church started the grave yard on a native burial mound. If that is what I think it is there. Native mounds were disturbed.And Methodists church may or may not have known that it is a mound.

November 2020

Part of me wants to believe this cemetery is home to witches. Part of me thinks its entirely possible the stories told about this place are solely rumors.

I did not sense anything "paranormal" here but there definitely were some things we noticed with the head stones that didn't add up.

What I do know is that I am entirely disappointed in the disrespect that was shown to this cemetary and all who are buried here. Most headstones have been removed/ vandalized.

Overall is a beautiful, discreet cemetery i would love to visit again and again.

September 2020

It's been at least 50 years since I was last at the cemetery. Myself and a friend Ann Robertson used to ride horses up there during the summer. At that time the cemetery had already deteriorated. Alot of the graves were sunken and clothing was pulled out of some of them by rodents. The headstones had been broken and some of them were weathered and very hard to read.. The cemetery was in bad condition at that time. It was very old. Never experienced any type of Haunting and do Not recall seeing anything connecting Mary Jane to it. I believe their were soldiers from civil war buried there but couldn't be positive about that either. But definitely NO HAUNTINGS. we went up there on several occasions on horseback during that summer. It was not spooky but it was very interesting. This was during the summer of 1968 we were both 18 yrs. at that time. Sorry if your looking for a story of hauntings this would not be that kind of experience. Interesting yes but definitely not haunting.

September 2018

Mary Jane Terwillegar was a 17 year-old girl who contracted diphtheria while traveling in Cherokee, and died within four days. Her suffering was awful. Later, some kook named James Sanford Peters had an obsession with blaming witches (just witches in general, nobody specific) for things going wrong with his mill, which was in the area. Somehow this morphed into the myth about Mary Jane and the other unnamed witches in the cemetery.

Megadeth wrote a song about the urban legend, and most idiots didn't bother to research the story at all, but by then the urban legend had resulted in the near-destruction of the cemetery. Congratulations, Megadeth.

Now the cemetery is heavily vandalized. Mary Jane's headstone is missing because it's in a museum, along with a couple of other headstones from the cemetery. It's not there because of anything nefarious.

Don't try to find this cemetery unless you plan to treat it with respect. Pioneers are interred there; people whose trials and tribulations helped form the community you now know. It's not a spooky hot spot, it's a piece of history. Please treat it with the reverence those souls deserve in their final resting place.

September 2017