User:Kdzyuba/sandbox

Boss Family Cemetery
Walton County, Ga, United States 30052

History
The Boss Family Cemetery has gained an ominous reputation due to Georgia folk legends involving Satan, the occult, and a purported "gateway to Hell". The rumors about the cemetery were popularized by a November 1974 issue of Walton County Community Gazette (no longer in publication), which claimed that the Devil appeared in Boss twice a year, once on Halloween, and once during the spring equinox (Bolden).

People soon said that the cemetery was the location of one of the seven gates to Hell and that the nearby Windsor Universalist Church ruin was "possessed" by the Devil. Others claimed (erroneously) that the legend was engendered by the killing of Boss’s mayor back in the 1850s (of note, Boss was never organized as a town, so never had a mayor). It is also said that during a trip to Colorado in the 1990s, the Pope redirected the flight path of his private plane to avoid flying over the unholy ground of Boss (although there is no evidence that this happened). Most academics, historians, and local residents are in agreement that the legend was spread by not only word of mouth, but by publications and print.

In the years that followed the publication of the Walton County Community Gazette article, the legend persuaded thrill seekers to visit these burial places and unmarked cemeteries, and they would claim that unexplained events such as noises and memory lapses occurred to them leading to further speculation that the town was haunted by witches and the devil. It became a popular activity for youths (especially high school and college students from Loganville and Monroe) to journey to the cemetery on Halloween or the equinox to "see the Devil". Many would jump fences or otherwise sneak their way onto the property. Over the decades, as the number of people making excursions to the cemetery grew, the graveyard started to deteriorate. To combat this, the county's sheriff office patrols the area around the former cemetery, especially on Halloween, and will arrest people for trespassing in the uncharted woodland area those caught inside the property boundary after it is closed could face a maximum fine of $1,000 and up to six months in jail. Eventually, the surrounding property was purchased by a residential builder and developer in the 2000s with most recently by Reliant Homes.

Location

Feature Name:	Adams Cemetery

Category:	Georgia physical, cultural and historic features

Feature Type:	Cultural

Class:	Cemetery

County:	Walton County

Latitude:	33.877520

Longitude:	-83.939220

GNIS ID:	310398

External links[edit]

 * National Cemetery Administration
 * Georgia Cemetery
 * Georgia National Cemetery at Find a Grave
 * U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Georgia National Cemetery

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