A visit to God’s Acre
(With three photos in Baseview, FOR PARK, God’s Acre folder)
A four-foot stone wall completely surrounds the peaceful, hallowed grounds of God’s Acre Cemetery, which sits on a hill and back into the woods just across the road from Alexander Campbell’s historic mansion in Bethany, W.Va.
God’s Acre – also known as Campbell Cemetery – is 193 years old and serves as the final resting place for Bethany College founder Alexander Campbell, both of his wives, 13 of his 14 children, and many of their descendants, as well as many former Bethany presidents and professors, and founding members and missionaries of Campbell’s church, the Disciples of Christ. Altogether, God’s Acre holds more than 250 graves and, some say, almost that many spirits.
“You can feel the sort of presence you hear about in ghost stories when you go there,” said Tess Parry, a Bethany College student who has visited the cemetery many times. “It’s a nice place, but it is pretty scary.”
Born in 1788, Campbell, a Scots-Irish immigrant, joined his father, Thomas, a Presbyterian minister, in Western Pennsylvania in 1809. Campbell moved to Brooke County when he married Margaret Brown in 1811.
Campbell was the leading influence in America’s largest indigenous religious movement, known variously as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), churches of Christ, and the Christian Church. An innovative educator, he founded Bethany College in 1840, was a leader in childhood and adolescent education and championed universal female education.
As old and historic as Bethany is, the town, which is less than three miles from the Washington County line, has plenty of ghost stories associated with it. Perhaps no other part of this area is said to be more haunted than God’s Acre.
When a new school year begins at Bethany College, one of the first activities offered to students new and old is the annual telling of ghost stories by Dr. Larry Grimes in the old Campbell Cemetery. Grimes has been a fixture of Bethany College and the community for more than 40 years, and his tales of the supernatural even have the ability to shape how some students perceive both the school and the area.
Bethany student Sarah Smith attended Grimes’ story-telling event last fall, and she said it has affected both her emotions and her interest in Bethany’s history.
“I absolutely believe in the ghost stories of Bethany,” Smith said. “I knew about some of them before I got here, but the ones about the cemetery were all new to me, and I can really imagine them happening.”
Smith also said that even if the specific events Grimes spoke of were exaggerated, she still believed that “there are spirits that you can really feel whenever you go there.”
The most popular part of the cemetery is the mausoleum of Argyle Campbell. Situated on a hill overlooking the rest of God’s Acre and falling under the shadow of ancient trees, the tall, white-grey rectangular tomb with the green copper door is the most foreboding monument in the graveyard. The door of the tomb is inscribed with the words, “Beyond this door is rest,” a sentiment that should put a mind at ease but instead seems to instill a sense of dread, and, underneath this, there is a bullet-hole.
Two of the stories about the Argyle Campbell tomb have to do with groups of boys from the college spending the night in the cemetery, only to wind up being plagued by strange dreams of the tomb they slept beside. One describes a boy dreaming that he is trapped in the tomb and attempting to claw his way out, and when he awakes, his fingers are bloodied as if from struggle.
Another, the story of the bullet hole, claims that a boy who stayed in the cemetery overnight dreamed he was in the tomb being shot at by Campbell’s ghost, and when he and his friends returned to the cemetery, there was the bullet hole, right where it would have been had it pierced the boy’s heart while he was attempting to escape the tomb.
Many believe the reason for the ghost stories lies within the structure of the graveyard itself. While God’s Acre was established in 1820 after the death of Alexander and Margaret Campbell’s infant daughter, Amanda, the stone wall that now encloses the cemetery was not constructed until 1866, after the death of Campbell himself. It is said that because there is no break in the wall – which stands four feet above ground but also extends three feet below – the spirits of those interred in God’s Acre have no way of leaving the cemetery, thus trapping them in their graves and within the walls.
Regardless of whether one believes in the supernatural, the historical value and aesthetic beauty of God’s Acre cannot be denied. The wall, though it seems to scream, “keep out,” somehow manages to draw visitors up a flight of stone steps and into the sanctum sanctorum. An initial look around leaves one feeling both humbled and intrigued, wanting to read each and every gravestone and absorb every piece of history while battling the feeling that the entire place is something private that a visitor perhaps shouldn’t be intruding upon. Even when the rest of Bethany is perfectly warm, God’s Acre Cemetery feels perpetually like it has been touched by an autumn chill.
How to get there: From Washington head west Route 844. Just after crossing the state line, turn left on Route 88. Go five miles and turn left on Route 67, passing through Bethany. Turn right into Campbell Cemetery, just before the Campbell Mansion on the left.