In September of 2019, we traveled to Marietta, Ohio, and one of the locations we made a stop at was the legendary Mound Cemetery. This cemetery is not only known for the ancient mound in the middle but also for the paranormal claims of the Revolutionary Area soldiers that still roam the grounds.

We chose to stop at this cemetery as a final spot in Marietta before we headed home to Youngstown. This was after a long day of visiting various haunted locations in Marietta, yet we still decided that we would have to take the stairs to climb to the top of the mound, which is in the middle of the cemetery. The pioneers of Marietta decided to build their cemetery around the ancient mount. We find this to be a fantastic idea because it avoids disturbing the ancient burial ground, unlike what happened in Moundsville, West Virginia.

We produced a video about the location that covers the history of the cemetery and about our visit there. We also discuss various stories and folklore related to the location. You can watch that video here:

Mound Cemetery in Marietta, Ohio, stands at the meeting place of two deep timelines: the ancient earthwork at its heart, built by the Indigenous peoples of the Ohio River Valley, and the young American republic that took root along the Muskingum. The Great Mound itself—often called the Conus—rises like a green, rounded sentinel amid nineteenth-century stones, a reminder that this ground was sacred long before the first pioneer cabin went up. Walk its perimeter at dawn, and you can feel how the town breathes around it, modern streets circling a hill raised by hands that left no written record, only careful geometry and a sense of ceremony.

When the New England settlers of the Ohio Company arrived in the 1780s, they recognized the significance of the earthworks and chose to preserve them, an unusual act of respect in an era more accustomed to clearing and repurposing. They laid out Marietta beside the Muskingum, kept the mound intact, and eventually designated the surrounding land for burials. Over time, Mound Cemetery became known for its remarkable concentration of officers from the American Revolution—a resting place where men who fought at places like Trenton, Yorktown, and Saratoga now lie beneath the frontier sky and sycamore shade.

The headstones encapsulate a poignant national narrative. You discover captains and colonels, surveyors and legislators, and pioneers who helped stitch the Northwest Territory into a new republic. Rain and lichen have worn some graves to a hush, while others bear neat epitaphs. In this quiet grid you sense the frontier hardship that followed the victory—years of river ice, malaria at the bottoms, and the endless work of carving a town from the forest. The mound in the center anchors all of it, a hemispherical compass point at the heart of the cemetery.

Local tradition says the mound was never intended as a common grave but as a ceremonial platform and place of gathering for ancestors of the Shawnee, Delaware, and related peoples who moved through this region over centuries. The builders belonged to an older cultural horizon that archaeologists still debate, but the community memory in Marietta has long held that the earthwork predates European arrival by many generations. That sense of depth infuses the place with a layered reverence: soldiers of a new nation resting beside a monument to civilizations before it.

With that layered history comes layered folklore. After sunset, visitors tell of seeing a pale fog climb the mound even on clear nights, drifting in a slow spiral that keeps to the old earthen ramp. Some claim the mist carries a faint drumming pulse, like a heartbeat through soil. Others say it moves against the slope of the hill as if following a path worn long ago, a quiet procession that begins and ends at no visible door.

Stories about the Revolutionary War dead are gentler, more like returning home than haunting. Caretakers and late-working historians have spoken of a tall figure in a tricorn hat walking the central lane, head slightly bowed, hands clasped behind his back. He does not appear menacing; instead, he seems to be reviewing his surroundings. People share these small signs in low voices during tours and historical walks: footsteps in gravel without a walker, the scrape of a scabbard that no longer exists, and the scent of woodsmoke when there is no fire.

Then there are the dreams. Long-time residents describe sleeping after an evening visit and waking with the certain knowledge of names they had never learned: a lieutenant’s surname, a regiment number, and the year a stone was set. In the morning, they look and discover that the inscription matches. Skeptics chalk it up to subconscious memory, while believers say the soldiers still introduce themselves, grateful to be remembered on the far edge of the frontier they helped open.

The spirits tied to the older earthwork are spoken of differently. You hear less about figures and more about presence—an expectancy under the trees, a sense that your footsteps are being weighed. Some visitors place small tokens at the base of the mound, not in excavation or trespass, but as a courtesy: a feather, a strand of river grass, or a pinch of tobacco. They say the air lightens afterward, and the wind in the leaves softens. Others report hearing a language they cannot place, syllables rising and falling like water, then dissolving as a car door closes or a distant barge horn sounds on the river.

One common thread in both strands of folklore is the respect shown to silence. People who come with loud bravado—cutting across graves, climbing where they should not—often tell of cameras failing, batteries draining, or a sudden cold that drives them back to the gate. Those who come with a measured voice and a slow pace consider the place hospitable. They hear birds settling, see deer stepping between stones, and sometimes catch that extra sensation, as if many eyes from different centuries are politely watching you pass.

During autumn evenings, when the leaves take on the hue of aged parchment, the cemetery takes on the appearance of a living history page. Lantern tours bring out families and students. The names of Revolutionary officers are read aloud, and you sense an answering shift in the air, like attendance taken across time. If you wander alone after the crowd has gone, you might hear a murmured “present” where no mouth moves or feel a tug to pause at a grave you hadn’t noticed by daylight.

There are cautionary tales, too. Teenagers once dared each other to run the mound at midnight; one tripped and broke an ankle. They later swore that something gentle but firm pushed them away from the slope, as if the site itself insisted on respect. Another story tells of a visitor who pocketed a fragment of old stone from the path. She mailed it back a week later with a note about restless nights and cracked picture frames, apologizing for the theft and asking forgiveness. Whether coincidence or conscience, the lesson lingers: carry nothing out that you did not bring in.

In daylight, Mound Cemetery is a classroom without walls: the geometry of Indigenous engineering, the map of a young nation’s westward steps, and the interplay between memory and monument. At night, it becomes a kind of chapel. The mound holds its steady curve; the stones hold their names; the wind carries two languages of reverence at once. You don’t need to believe in ghosts to feel the overlap, but it is beneficial to listen with the part of yourself that honors old promises.

Perhaps that is why the stories endure. The soldiers of the American Revolution remind Marietta of duty and beginnings; the spirits tied to the mound remind it of deeper roots and older roads. Between them, the town finds balance. If you go, do so with patience. Walk the perimeter. Read a name aloud. Leave the ground as you found it. And when you turn back toward the gate, glance once more at the hill. You may feel that delicate acknowledgment—the shared nod of two histories—before you step into the modern street and the river light beyond.