November 4, 2025 • 15 mins
Step through the haunted gates of Tolomato Cemetery with The Grim as host Kristin explores one of St. Augustine's most historic and ghost-filled burial grounds.
Beneath ancient oaks and Spanish moss rest displaced Guale Indians, Spanish settlers, Menorcan refugees, Cuban priests, and restless souls who never found peace. Once a Franciscan mission site, this cemetery holds over a thousand souls—victims of yellow fever, premature burials, and dark colonial history.
Discover the hauntings:
- The Rebel Bishop Augustin Verot—whose explosive funeral left the dead refusing to rest
- Venerable Félix Varela—Cuban priest and freedom fighter whose spirit lingers
- The Lady in White—saved from premature burial, still wandering the grounds
- Little James Morgan—a child ghost in the branches of his favorite oak
Open to the living only hours each month—but the spirits appear far more often.
📍 Tolomato Cemetery, St. Augustine FL
⚰️ Founded: 1777
👻 Open once a month—haunted every day
Perfect for: St. Augustine tourists, paranormal seekers, Spanish colonial history enthusiasts, ghost hunters
🎧 Descend with The Grim into America's oldest city's most haunted cemetery.
Support The Grim by buying a cup of our next Grave Grind!
https://buymeacoffee.com/kristinlopes
Find All of The Grim's Social Links At:
https://www.the-grim.com/socialmedia
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kristin (00:13):
Grim morning and welcome to the Grim.
I'm your host, Kristin.
On today's episode, we'll beopening the gate and entering
Tolomato Cemetery, located inSt.
Augustine, Florida.
The aroma of coffee mingles inthe air.
The gates stand open.
Step carefully.
It's time to descend into thehauntings of history.
(00:35):
Beneath the sighing oaks of St.
Augustine, where Spanish mossdrips like morning veils, and
they are hums with centuries ofprayer, lies Tolomato Cemetery,
a batch of consecrated groundhaunted by faith, exile, and
endurance, where the souls ofGuale Indians and Spanish
settlers, Menorcans, andgenerations yet unborn murmur
(00:57):
through the shadows of time.
Long before the first whitemarble cross was placed here,
the soil cradled a FranciscanIndian mission, Nuestra Senora
de Guadalupe de Tolamato.
Here the Guale Indians,displaced for their homeland in
Georgia, sought refuge for warand annihilation.
The name Tolamato whispers of ariver and a homeland lost,
(01:20):
where their ancestors once livedbefore being guided south by
the Franciscan fathers in searchof sanctuary.
But sanctuary is fragile.
When the British forces sweptdown from the Carolinas, the
mission was destroyed, itssacred beams charred, its
prayers scattered.
From those ashes, the groundtransformed into a different
(01:40):
kind of refuge, a place not forthe living anymore, but for the
dead.
Today Tolamato is consideredthe oldest planned cemetery in
the United States, a silentwitness to centuries of life,
death, and the ever-shiftinghands of history.
When the British crown claimedSt.
Augustine after the SevenYears' War, Spain's loyal
(02:01):
subjects, priests, soldiers,entire families, fled across the
sea to Cuba.
The graves they left behind,unattended and unprayed for
became ghosts in a city that nolonger belonged to them.
For two decades, the cemeterylay in uneasy slumber beneath
foreign rule, wind and weedsclaiming what empires had cast
(02:21):
aside.
Until 1784, when Spain onceunfurled her banner over
Florida's oldest streets.
In the interlude between,empires, new people had arrived,
the Menorcans, Mediterraneansouls brought here in chains of
labor by a British doctor namedTurnbull.
They had come to Florida toharvest indigo under the burning
sun of New Samura, but crueltyand suffering drove them north
(02:45):
in a desperate flight.
Led by their priest FatherPedro Camps, they sought refuge
in St.
Augustine in 1777 and bound itamong its crumbling walls in
ancient faith.
Father Camps petitioned theBritish governor Pacti Toyon to
bury his dead in the oldCatholic cemetery known as
Tolomato, permission thegovernor granted willingly.
(03:06):
And so amid the ruins of themission, the Menorcans laid
their loved ones to rest,beginning Tolomato's long vigil
as a cemetery of the forgottenand faithful alike.
Over the next century, beneaththe shade of Cyprus and Palm,
Tolomato received the dead ofevery creed and tongue that
built St.
Augustine, Spanish, Menorcan,Irish, African, Greek, Italian,
(03:30):
and the drifting Americans whocame south chasing sun or
salvation.
By 1888, fear silenced theburial bells.
Yellow fever tightened its gripon the city, and officials
shuddered the graveyards,convinced that death itself
spread the disease.
It would be 20 years beforescience uncovered the true
culprit, the mosquito.
(03:50):
But by then Tolamato had falleninto an uneasy slumber again,
its gates sealed, and thesilence growing heavier by the
year.
The last burial finally takingplace in 1892.
Within these walls rest roughlya thousand souls, people of
every origin, every devotion,every misfortune.
Convicts and criminals liebeside mothers and martyrs,
(04:14):
their stories tangled in rootsand memory.
And some say the darknesscarried by a few still clings to
the soil, a magnet for spiritswho refuse to leave, feeding on
sorrow and sin.
Among the earliest markedgraves is that of Elizabeth
Forester, a girl only 15 whenshe died in 1798.
Her passing alone was tragicenough, but what came after was
(04:36):
far more sinister.
According to Parish records,she rests within the oldest
marked tomb in Telamato, butlocal historians and
preservationists whisper of adarker footnote.
Not long after she was laid torest, grave robbers pried open
her vault and violated herpeace.
Her body was disturbed, herburial garments stolen, and
(04:57):
greed triumphing over sanctity.
Whether every detail of thatdesecration has revived
truthfully through time or hasgrown teeth in the telling, the
harm itself is undeniable, andElizabeth was not the only
victim.
Tolomato had long endured thecruelties of the living, each
disturbance, another reason forrestless souls to linger, denied
(05:19):
the peace they were oncepromised.
Yet even amid the sorrow, somefigures strove to honor the dead
and shepherd the living, theirfaith and devotion cutting
through the shadows.
Among them was Bishop AugustineVirat, a man who couldn't be
defined by a single era or asingle conscience.
He arrived in Florida when itwas still a wild frontier of
faith, fever, and forgottenpromises.
(05:41):
Appointed the first bishop ofSt.
Augustine in 1870, he set aboutreviving Catholic memory in the
oldest city of America,building churches, founding
schools, and stirring devotionto martyrs both Spanish and
French.
He was known in life as ascholar, a defender of the
church, and a man unafraid toraise his voice in the thunder
(06:02):
of politics.
His writings challenged thedehumanization belief that
African Americans had no souls,yet he also stood before the
Confederacy and declared slaverya legal institution.
To some he was the guardian ofdivine order, to others a
mouthpiece for chains.
The South called him the rebelbishop, and the name stuck like
(06:22):
tar.
When Barat's life ended in thechoking heat of a Florida
summer, the flock prepared afuneral as grand as his
reputation.
An iron coffin was built,airtight and crowned with glass,
so mourners could gaze upontheir bishop's serene repose.
Ice and sawdust line the grave,a fragile defense against
decay.
Yet in Tolamato, nothing sleepsquietly.
(06:46):
As the sun bore down, thesealed coffin became a pressure
chamber.
Gas heat and pride conspired,and the dead rebelled.
Iron buckled, glass shattered,and the mourners standing
collosis were baptized not inholy water, but in the horrors
of a body refusing to behave.
(07:07):
Panic tortured the funeralprocession.
Their remains, or what could begathered, were quickly swept
away to a small white chapel onthe grounds, placed beside
another restless servant of God,Father Felix Varela, the Cuban
priest on a long, uncertain roadto sainthood.
Today only one man lies in thatchapel, but if you ask the
night watchmen of St.
(07:28):
Augustine, or if you ask anytourists who have wandered too
close to the Iron Gate, they'lltell you the bishop might have
never truly moved on.
The man with whom the bishopwas placed beside was Felix
Varela.
Varela was born in 1788 inHavana, Cuba, a land of sun and
shadows, of faith entangled withoppression.
(07:48):
He became a priest, a teacher,a philosopher, a voice for the
silenced.
In a lifetime spent betweencontinents, Varela fought
against slavery, advocated forhuman dignity, and carried the
restless ideals of freedomwherever he wants.
He championed education forall, ministered to the
displaced, and dared to speaktruths that the powerful wish to
(08:11):
stay buried.
Yet even the greatest of livesmust meet the inevitability of
death.
A death in Tolamato Cemeterydoesn't arrive quietly.
In 1853, Varela drew his lastbreath in St.
Augustine.
Weary and seeking relief fromsevere asthma, the city steeped
in moss and memory became theresting place of this exiled
(08:33):
visionary.
Tolemato buried him within theWhite Chapel near the back of
the grounds.
Beneath ancient oaks anddraping moss, he joined
centuries of Gwan Indians,Spanish settlers, Mendicoran
refugees, and restless soulswhose stories had been cut
short.
For nearly six decades, hispresence lingered in the silent
shadows of Tolamato, his idealsechoing through the mist and the
(08:57):
sighs of the graves.
Then long after his body hadlain in the earth, his remains
were exhumed and returned toCuba.
A honte had long been forced toleave in life, yet even in his
absence, Tolemato remembers him.
Visitors claim that in thequiet corners of the chapel,
among the graves of martyrs andmisfits, you can feel his
spirit, a wait, whisper, awatchful presence that bends the
(09:20):
veil between the living and thedead.
Varela's life, his exile, hisintermittent, and his removal
all speak of the fragile linebetween the living and the
departed.
Tolamato holds him still inmemory and in shadow, a reminder
that all those who fight forjustice rarely rest quietly,
even in death.
The Catholic Church hasdeclared Varela venerable,
(09:42):
recognizing his life of heroicvirtue and placing him on the
path towards sainthood.
In Cuba he's honored as asecular hero.
The Order of Felix Varela, oneof the nation's highest cultural
awards, bears his name, givento those whose contributions
advance education, culture, andhuman dignity.
Numerous visitors describesightings of a man in clerical
(10:05):
garb drifting among the graves,especially near the mortuary
chapel.
Some say they appear and vanishas though fulfilling duties
beyond death.
Even though Varela's remainswere later removed to Cuba, it's
believed his soul haunts thegrounds.
A spirit tethered to this site,but no one can be sure if it's
Varela or the rebel bishop whomight be sighted.
(10:26):
In the fevered years of the19th century, fear of a
premature burial gripped St.
Augustine, and no more so thanTolamato Cemetery.
Among the many tales ofrestless spirits, one stands
out.
A young woman, declared deadafter a sudden illness, was
prepared for burial beneath thewhite chapel.
As the procession wound throughthe moss-straped oaks, tragedy
(10:48):
almost struck again.
A low-hanging branch struck herforehead, drawing a ribbon of
blood into her closed eyes.
Those attending gasped, for inthat moment she stirred, her
heart still beating, her breathreturned.
The living had nearly interredher into the cold earth while
life still clung to her.
She survived living six moreyears, but the story didn't die
(11:10):
with her.
On human nights when the fogcreeps low over Tolamato, claims
of the figure in white whodrifts silently among the graves
is retold, her face hiddenbeneath shadow and moss.
They call her the Lady inWhite.
Some say she mourns a childstolen too soon.
Others whisper she's therelentless spirit of Menorkin
(11:31):
mother, still searching for thehome that she was promised but
never given, but no one's sure.
Visitors tell of shapesappearing and vanishing beneath
the oaks.
Their outlines blurred as ifbelonging to another century.
Children's laughter also isheard here, soft and hollow,
drifting through the fog onsummer nights.
Some say they're the lostoffspring of colonists still
(11:53):
playing amongst the stones,still seeking attention from the
living who dare walk theirresting place.
Alongside the restless, thiscemetery holds other echoes of
the living and the dead.
Beneath the same oaks lie thesilent graves of young men who
wore the Confederate Grey,members of the St.
Augustine Blues, the localmilitia that swore allegiance to
the South rest here, theirnames weathered, stones softened
(12:16):
by moss and thyme.
Though few markers remainidentifiable, their presence is
recorded, a ghost of reminder ofa divided nation and the lives
it consumed.
Just beyond the cemetery gates,a centuries-old live oak
watches over the graves with itsown grave tail.
It was once the playground ofJames P.
Morgan, a boy of five whoclimbed its Y-shaped branches as
(12:39):
if they were stairs to the sky.
One late November day in 1877,those stairways claimed James.
He lost his grip, fell, andlanded on the consecrated soil
of Tolamato.
His neck snapped.
He tragically died just tendays after his fifth birthday.
His mother, desperate to layhim where his fate had struck
(13:00):
him, secured permission for herson's burial in that very spot.
But grief is a stubborn,restless thing.
She swore she saw James in theyoke, perched where he used to
play, dressed in his white shirtand linen overalls.
At first, her visions weredismissed as a grief of a
mourning mother, but over timeothers came forward with similar
(13:20):
sightings.
Years later, a controversialphotograph circulated, capturing
what some claim is a pale childperched in the crest of the
tree.
Was it a trick of the light, orJames himself, still lingering,
still watching, still tetheredto Tolamato?
In America's oldest city,Tolamato Cemetery continues to
(13:41):
weave history and hauntings intoa single moss-draped tapestry.
Each grave tells a story.
Each shadow hints at a lifeonce lived.
Its gates, however, remainlocked for the living except on
the third Saturday of eachmonth, from 11 a.m.
to 2 p.m., when a guided orself-guided tour is available.
Admission is free, thoughdonations are encouraged to help
(14:04):
preserve this sacred ground.
If you like a touch ofTolamato's haunted charm in your
own world, the Grimm Shopoffers cozy, spooky merch
perfect for chilly nights.
Bring a place of the hot homewith you at www.the-grim.com,
where history and the restlessmeet.
For now, the stories ofTolemato slip back into stone,
(14:25):
and the dead return to theiruneasy rest, yet they're never
silent for long.
Thank you for walking with usthrough the veil into Tolemato
Cemetery, descending once moreinto the hauntings of history.
The gate is sealed, the veil isdrawn, yet death keeps no
calendar, and so we shallreturn, as we always do, on the
(14:48):
grim.
Grim morning and welcome to the Grim.
I'm your host, Kristin.
On today's episode, we'll beopening the gate and entering
Tolomato Cemetery, located inSt.
Augustine, Florida.
The aroma of coffee mingles inthe air.
The gates stand open.
Step carefully.
It's time to descend into thehauntings of history.
(00:35):
Beneath the sighing oaks of St.
Augustine, where Spanish mossdrips like morning veils, and
they are hums with centuries ofprayer, lies Tolomato Cemetery,
a batch of consecrated groundhaunted by faith, exile, and
endurance, where the souls ofGuale Indians and Spanish
settlers, Menorcans, andgenerations yet unborn murmur
(00:57):
through the shadows of time.
Long before the first whitemarble cross was placed here,
the soil cradled a FranciscanIndian mission, Nuestra Senora
de Guadalupe de Tolamato.
Here the Guale Indians,displaced for their homeland in
Georgia, sought refuge for warand annihilation.
The name Tolamato whispers of ariver and a homeland lost,
(01:20):
where their ancestors once livedbefore being guided south by
the Franciscan fathers in searchof sanctuary.
But sanctuary is fragile.
When the British forces sweptdown from the Carolinas, the
mission was destroyed, itssacred beams charred, its
prayers scattered.
From those ashes, the groundtransformed into a different
(01:40):
kind of refuge, a place not forthe living anymore, but for the
dead.
Today Tolamato is consideredthe oldest planned cemetery in
the United States, a silentwitness to centuries of life,
death, and the ever-shiftinghands of history.
When the British crown claimedSt.
Augustine after the SevenYears' War, Spain's loyal
(02:01):
subjects, priests, soldiers,entire families, fled across the
sea to Cuba.
The graves they left behind,unattended and unprayed for
became ghosts in a city that nolonger belonged to them.
For two decades, the cemeterylay in uneasy slumber beneath
foreign rule, wind and weedsclaiming what empires had cast
(02:21):
aside.
Until 1784, when Spain onceunfurled her banner over
Florida's oldest streets.
In the interlude between,empires, new people had arrived,
the Menorcans, Mediterraneansouls brought here in chains of
labor by a British doctor namedTurnbull.
They had come to Florida toharvest indigo under the burning
sun of New Samura, but crueltyand suffering drove them north
(02:45):
in a desperate flight.
Led by their priest FatherPedro Camps, they sought refuge
in St.
Augustine in 1777 and bound itamong its crumbling walls in
ancient faith.
Father Camps petitioned theBritish governor Pacti Toyon to
bury his dead in the oldCatholic cemetery known as
Tolomato, permission thegovernor granted willingly.
(03:06):
And so amid the ruins of themission, the Menorcans laid
their loved ones to rest,beginning Tolomato's long vigil
as a cemetery of the forgottenand faithful alike.
Over the next century, beneaththe shade of Cyprus and Palm,
Tolomato received the dead ofevery creed and tongue that
built St.
Augustine, Spanish, Menorcan,Irish, African, Greek, Italian,
(03:30):
and the drifting Americans whocame south chasing sun or
salvation.
By 1888, fear silenced theburial bells.
Yellow fever tightened its gripon the city, and officials
shuddered the graveyards,convinced that death itself
spread the disease.
It would be 20 years beforescience uncovered the true
culprit, the mosquito.
(03:50):
But by then Tolamato had falleninto an uneasy slumber again,
its gates sealed, and thesilence growing heavier by the
year.
The last burial finally takingplace in 1892.
Within these walls rest roughlya thousand souls, people of
every origin, every devotion,every misfortune.
Convicts and criminals liebeside mothers and martyrs,
(04:14):
their stories tangled in rootsand memory.
And some say the darknesscarried by a few still clings to
the soil, a magnet for spiritswho refuse to leave, feeding on
sorrow and sin.
Among the earliest markedgraves is that of Elizabeth
Forester, a girl only 15 whenshe died in 1798.
Her passing alone was tragicenough, but what came after was
(04:36):
far more sinister.
According to Parish records,she rests within the oldest
marked tomb in Telamato, butlocal historians and
preservationists whisper of adarker footnote.
Not long after she was laid torest, grave robbers pried open
her vault and violated herpeace.
Her body was disturbed, herburial garments stolen, and
(04:57):
greed triumphing over sanctity.
Whether every detail of thatdesecration has revived
truthfully through time or hasgrown teeth in the telling, the
harm itself is undeniable, andElizabeth was not the only
victim.
Tolomato had long endured thecruelties of the living, each
disturbance, another reason forrestless souls to linger, denied
(05:19):
the peace they were oncepromised.
Yet even amid the sorrow, somefigures strove to honor the dead
and shepherd the living, theirfaith and devotion cutting
through the shadows.
Among them was Bishop AugustineVirat, a man who couldn't be
defined by a single era or asingle conscience.
He arrived in Florida when itwas still a wild frontier of
faith, fever, and forgottenpromises.
(05:41):
Appointed the first bishop ofSt.
Augustine in 1870, he set aboutreviving Catholic memory in the
oldest city of America,building churches, founding
schools, and stirring devotionto martyrs both Spanish and
French.
He was known in life as ascholar, a defender of the
church, and a man unafraid toraise his voice in the thunder
(06:02):
of politics.
His writings challenged thedehumanization belief that
African Americans had no souls,yet he also stood before the
Confederacy and declared slaverya legal institution.
To some he was the guardian ofdivine order, to others a
mouthpiece for chains.
The South called him the rebelbishop, and the name stuck like
(06:22):
tar.
When Barat's life ended in thechoking heat of a Florida
summer, the flock prepared afuneral as grand as his
reputation.
An iron coffin was built,airtight and crowned with glass,
so mourners could gaze upontheir bishop's serene repose.
Ice and sawdust line the grave,a fragile defense against
decay.
Yet in Tolamato, nothing sleepsquietly.
(06:46):
As the sun bore down, thesealed coffin became a pressure
chamber.
Gas heat and pride conspired,and the dead rebelled.
Iron buckled, glass shattered,and the mourners standing
collosis were baptized not inholy water, but in the horrors
of a body refusing to behave.
(07:07):
Panic tortured the funeralprocession.
Their remains, or what could begathered, were quickly swept
away to a small white chapel onthe grounds, placed beside
another restless servant of God,Father Felix Varela, the Cuban
priest on a long, uncertain roadto sainthood.
Today only one man lies in thatchapel, but if you ask the
night watchmen of St.
(07:28):
Augustine, or if you ask anytourists who have wandered too
close to the Iron Gate, they'lltell you the bishop might have
never truly moved on.
The man with whom the bishopwas placed beside was Felix
Varela.
Varela was born in 1788 inHavana, Cuba, a land of sun and
shadows, of faith entangled withoppression.
(07:48):
He became a priest, a teacher,a philosopher, a voice for the
silenced.
In a lifetime spent betweencontinents, Varela fought
against slavery, advocated forhuman dignity, and carried the
restless ideals of freedomwherever he wants.
He championed education forall, ministered to the
displaced, and dared to speaktruths that the powerful wish to
(08:11):
stay buried.
Yet even the greatest of livesmust meet the inevitability of
death.
A death in Tolamato Cemeterydoesn't arrive quietly.
In 1853, Varela drew his lastbreath in St.
Augustine.
Weary and seeking relief fromsevere asthma, the city steeped
in moss and memory became theresting place of this exiled
(08:33):
visionary.
Tolemato buried him within theWhite Chapel near the back of
the grounds.
Beneath ancient oaks anddraping moss, he joined
centuries of Gwan Indians,Spanish settlers, Mendicoran
refugees, and restless soulswhose stories had been cut
short.
For nearly six decades, hispresence lingered in the silent
shadows of Tolamato, his idealsechoing through the mist and the
(08:57):
sighs of the graves.
Then long after his body hadlain in the earth, his remains
were exhumed and returned toCuba.
A honte had long been forced toleave in life, yet even in his
absence, Tolemato remembers him.
Visitors claim that in thequiet corners of the chapel,
among the graves of martyrs andmisfits, you can feel his
spirit, a wait, whisper, awatchful presence that bends the
(09:20):
veil between the living and thedead.
Varela's life, his exile, hisintermittent, and his removal
all speak of the fragile linebetween the living and the
departed.
Tolamato holds him still inmemory and in shadow, a reminder
that all those who fight forjustice rarely rest quietly,
even in death.
The Catholic Church hasdeclared Varela venerable,
(09:42):
recognizing his life of heroicvirtue and placing him on the
path towards sainthood.
In Cuba he's honored as asecular hero.
The Order of Felix Varela, oneof the nation's highest cultural
awards, bears his name, givento those whose contributions
advance education, culture, andhuman dignity.
Numerous visitors describesightings of a man in clerical
(10:05):
garb drifting among the graves,especially near the mortuary
chapel.
Some say they appear and vanishas though fulfilling duties
beyond death.
Even though Varela's remainswere later removed to Cuba, it's
believed his soul haunts thegrounds.
A spirit tethered to this site,but no one can be sure if it's
Varela or the rebel bishop whomight be sighted.
(10:26):
In the fevered years of the19th century, fear of a
premature burial gripped St.
Augustine, and no more so thanTolamato Cemetery.
Among the many tales ofrestless spirits, one stands
out.
A young woman, declared deadafter a sudden illness, was
prepared for burial beneath thewhite chapel.
As the procession wound throughthe moss-straped oaks, tragedy
(10:48):
almost struck again.
A low-hanging branch struck herforehead, drawing a ribbon of
blood into her closed eyes.
Those attending gasped, for inthat moment she stirred, her
heart still beating, her breathreturned.
The living had nearly interredher into the cold earth while
life still clung to her.
She survived living six moreyears, but the story didn't die
(11:10):
with her.
On human nights when the fogcreeps low over Tolamato, claims
of the figure in white whodrifts silently among the graves
is retold, her face hiddenbeneath shadow and moss.
They call her the Lady inWhite.
Some say she mourns a childstolen too soon.
Others whisper she's therelentless spirit of Menorkin
(11:31):
mother, still searching for thehome that she was promised but
never given, but no one's sure.
Visitors tell of shapesappearing and vanishing beneath
the oaks.
Their outlines blurred as ifbelonging to another century.
Children's laughter also isheard here, soft and hollow,
drifting through the fog onsummer nights.
Some say they're the lostoffspring of colonists still
(11:53):
playing amongst the stones,still seeking attention from the
living who dare walk theirresting place.
Alongside the restless, thiscemetery holds other echoes of
the living and the dead.
Beneath the same oaks lie thesilent graves of young men who
wore the Confederate Grey,members of the St.
Augustine Blues, the localmilitia that swore allegiance to
the South rest here, theirnames weathered, stones softened
(12:16):
by moss and thyme.
Though few markers remainidentifiable, their presence is
recorded, a ghost of reminder ofa divided nation and the lives
it consumed.
Just beyond the cemetery gates,a centuries-old live oak
watches over the graves with itsown grave tail.
It was once the playground ofJames P.
Morgan, a boy of five whoclimbed its Y-shaped branches as
(12:39):
if they were stairs to the sky.
One late November day in 1877,those stairways claimed James.
He lost his grip, fell, andlanded on the consecrated soil
of Tolamato.
His neck snapped.
He tragically died just tendays after his fifth birthday.
His mother, desperate to layhim where his fate had struck
(13:00):
him, secured permission for herson's burial in that very spot.
But grief is a stubborn,restless thing.
She swore she saw James in theyoke, perched where he used to
play, dressed in his white shirtand linen overalls.
At first, her visions weredismissed as a grief of a
mourning mother, but over timeothers came forward with similar
(13:20):
sightings.
Years later, a controversialphotograph circulated, capturing
what some claim is a pale childperched in the crest of the
tree.
Was it a trick of the light, orJames himself, still lingering,
still watching, still tetheredto Tolamato?
In America's oldest city,Tolamato Cemetery continues to
(13:41):
weave history and hauntings intoa single moss-draped tapestry.
Each grave tells a story.
Each shadow hints at a lifeonce lived.
Its gates, however, remainlocked for the living except on
the third Saturday of eachmonth, from 11 a.m.
to 2 p.m., when a guided orself-guided tour is available.
Admission is free, thoughdonations are encouraged to help
(14:04):
preserve this sacred ground.
If you like a touch ofTolamato's haunted charm in your
own world, the Grimm Shopoffers cozy, spooky merch
perfect for chilly nights.
Bring a place of the hot homewith you at www.the-grim.com,
where history and the restlessmeet.
For now, the stories ofTolemato slip back into stone,
(14:25):
and the dead return to theiruneasy rest, yet they're never
silent for long.
Thank you for walking with usthrough the veil into Tolemato
Cemetery, descending once moreinto the hauntings of history.
The gate is sealed, the veil isdrawn, yet death keeps no
calendar, and so we shallreturn, as we always do, on the
(14:48):
grim.
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