100 Steps Cemetery

There are places all over the world that spawn urban legends. One such place is in the small town of Brazil, Indiana at the 100 Steps Cemetery.

The Cemetery houses headstones that date back to the 1860’s, but that isn’t why the graveyard is known. Inside the cemetery there are one hundred cracked and decaying steps that lead up a hill to an open field.

Legend has it, if you dare to enter the cemetery on a dark, midnight evening and climb up the old steps, counting them as you go, when you reach the top and face the field of stones, an apparition of the first undertaker will appear. Without saying a single word, the ghost will show you a vision of your death and then vanish leaving you alone.

You are then supposed to go back the way you came counting the stone steps, but if you get a different number than what you got going up, you will die as the vision played for you. If you counted the same number then you are safe, it was just a false prophecy.

Mark of the Devil

Another version of the legend goes that if you try and trick the undertaker by walking in the grass next to the stone steps, an invisible force will knock you to the ground. Claims say that they felt a hand shoving them. A large, red hand print could be seen for days on their body. They say that it is the mark of the devil himself.

Body Snatched

There is also a story about the 100 Step Cemetery that was reported in The Indianapolis Journal on November 20, 1892. The tale states that the body of George West’s daughter, who was interred at the cemetery, was taken from her grave.

Mr. West had the body exhumed to move to another location, but was horrified to find that her coffin was upside down in the ground and the body of his daughter was missing.

Nobody is really sure where or how this legend started since there was never more than sixty stone steps leading up to the field. The legend is reported as far back as 1982.

Dusty Davis