Haunted places guide · Stull, Kansas

Stull Cemetery, Kansas: The Gateway to Hell Legend and the Truth

A tiny cemetery on a rise west of Lawrence is said to be one of the gateways to Hell, where the Devil appears twice a year. The real story is a 1974 student newspaper article, a ruined church and a farming community that has had enough of trespassers.

By The Haunted Rooms Team · Updated November 2026 · How we rate places

3.5/5Haunted Rooms Score

1867Church and cemetery founded

2002Year the church ruin was demolished

Our nearest ghost hunt: Hotel MetropolitanMeet the ghosts

Stull is not really a town. It is a crossroads in the farmland of Douglas County, about 7 miles west of Lawrence and 10 miles east of Topeka, with a church, a few houses and a small cemetery on a rise. It never had a mayor, and its post office lasted only four years. Yet the name is known to horror fans around the world, because the cemetery is said to be one of the seven gateways to Hell.

The legend is easy to trace and hard to kill. It took off in November 1974, when the University of Kansas student newspaper printed a Halloween piece claiming the Devil appears at Stull twice a year. Students did the rest. For decades crowds drove out on Halloween night, the old stone church fell to pieces, gravestones were pushed over and stolen, and the community fenced the cemetery off. This guide sets out what actually happened at Stull, how the stories grew, and what you can and cannot do if you go.

History of Stull and its cemetery

Settlers first appear on territorial maps here in 1857, when the place was called Deer Creek. Most of the early families spoke German; some came from Pennsylvania Dutch country and others had left the German states. The name Stull came later, from Sylvester Stull, the first and only postmaster, who ran a post office from 1899 to 1903 in the back of J. E. Louk’s house. At its peak the settlement had about 50 people, and farming has always been the living here.

In the late 1850s local families organized a congregation that met in homes until 1867, when they built a small stone church, the Evangelical Emmanuel and Deer Creek Mission, later called the Evangelical Emmanuel Church. Sermons were preached in German until 1908. A cemetery was chartered beside it the same year, and Sylvester Stull himself is buried there.

In 1922 the congregation built a new wooden church across the road, which became Stull United Methodist Church, and the stone church was left to the weather. Over the 20th century it lost its roof to a microburst in the 1990s, its eastern wall buckled, and its western wall fell in a windstorm early in 2002. In March 2002 the landowner, John Haase of Lecompton, had the ruin bulldozed after the sheriff’s department told him it was a safety risk. Some residents had hoped to rebuild it; it never happened. The newer church across the road was badly damaged by a fire, thought to be a lightning strike, in July 2022.

Two real tragedies fed the later stories. A boy named Oliver Bahnmaier died in a field fire, and his tombstone became the subject of rumor, and a man who had gone missing was found hanging from a tree. Like any old farm community, Stull has its share of sad deaths. None of them has anything to do with the Devil.

The legends of Stull Cemetery

The Devil's twice-yearly visit

The core legend says the Devil appears at Stull Cemetery twice a year, on Halloween and on the spring equinox. Some versions say he comes to visit the grave of a witch who bore him a child, and that the child, who died, is buried here too. One retelling dates the birth to 1850, which is 17 years before the church and cemetery existed.

This story first appears in print on November 5, 1974, in a University Daily Kansan article by Jain Penner headlined “Legend of Devil Haunts Tiny Town.” Local historian Paul Thomas, co-author of Haunted Lawrence, says the piece was meant as Halloween fiction and was delayed almost a week by a paper shortage, by which time it had taken on a life of its own. Most historians and residents agree the legend was made up and spread by students.

The stairway to Hell

Later tellings add a hidden flight of stone steps near the church, or in a particular family plot, that opens only on Halloween and the spring equinox and leads down to Hell. Accounts never agree on where the steps are. Nobody has ever found them, and there is no evidence they exist.

The hanging tree and the burning church

Our older guide, like many others, said witches were hanged from a gnarled tree in the cemetery in the 1800s and that the tree was later struck by lightning and cut down. Other versions say the church burst into flames by itself. We found no record of any hanging of witches at Stull, and the church ruin was demolished by its owner in 2002, not destroyed by fire. A man was once found hanging from a tree near Stull, which may be where this part of the story comes from.

The Pope who flew around Stull

A popular claim says Pope John Paul II ordered his plane to avoid flying over Stull on the way to Denver in 1993 because it was unholy ground, and that Time magazine reported it. The Pope did visit Denver in 1993, but no such Time article has ever been found and there is no evidence his plane changed course. Snopes rates the whole Stull haunting an urban legend.

Stull in pop culture

The legend’s reach is real. Urge Overkill named a 1992 EP Stull and put the church and a tombstone on the cover. The Cure’s canceled Kansas show is often blamed on Stull, falsely. Most famously, the TV series Supernatural set its season five finale, “Swan Song,” in Stull Cemetery, and creator Eric Kripke said he made the Winchester brothers come from Lawrence because it was close to Stull.

Where to look

• The church foundation: all that is left of the 1867 stone church that stood in the cemetery until March 2002. It is where most of the legends are set.
• The old graves: including Sylvester Stull’s. These are real family graves, some still visited; many were damaged by vandals over the years.
• Stull United Methodist Church: the 1922 church across the road, still the community’s church. It is not part of the legend and is private.
• Mound View Cemetery: just south of town, sometimes called Old Stull Cemetery and wrongly said to be the real Stull Cemetery. It is not where the legend is set.

Visiting Stull Cemetery

There is nothing to visit in the usual sense. The cemetery is small, fenced and locked, and the gate carries No Trespassing signs. A Kansas Reflector writer who went in 2021 found exactly that: a small plot of graves, the foundation of a church that is no longer there, and a locked chain-link fence. You can see it from the public road; you cannot walk among the graves.

Halloween and the spring equinox are the worst times to go. Law enforcement patrols the area on those nights, and anyone caught inside after closing can face up to six months in jail or a $1,000 fine. Residents have said for years that they are tired of the attention. When ghost hunters knocked over a boy’s headstone, his father wept; one resident simply told visitors to go bowling instead and leave the cemetery alone.

If the legend is what draws you, Lawrence is a far better night out. The Eldridge Hotel downtown has its own ghost story and you can book the room that goes with it, and the city’s Oak Hill Cemetery, a public park-like cemetery with a memorial to the victims of Quantrill’s 1863 raid, is open to visitors in daylight.

• Visiting Small rural cemetery behind a locked chain-link fence with No Trespassing signs; view from the road
• Hours and season Locked at night and patrolled, especially on Halloween
• Tickets None
• Ghost hunting No. Ghost hunting here means trespassing, and the sheriff patrols it

Tips for your visit

• Go in daylight, stay on the public road and do not climb or slip under the fence.
• Never go on Halloween or the spring equinox: patrols are heavy and fines are real.
• Do not take anything, leave anything or move any stone. These are family graves.
• Pair the drive with a night at the Eldridge Hotel in Lawrence, about 15 minutes east.
• Read Haunted Lawrence by Paul Thomas for the full story of how the legend grew.

More haunted places nearby

• The Eldridge Hotel: Lawrence’s haunted hotel, about 15 minutes east, with Room 506 and its ghostly founder
• Haunted hotels in Kansas: places you can actually spend the night
• The Sallie House: Atchison’s famous haunted house, which you can book for an overnight investigation
• Haunted places in Kansas

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• Wikipedia: Stull, Kansas
• Kansas Reflector: At two historic Kansas graveyards, the scariest of frights and the deepest of emotions (2021)
• Snopes: Is Stull Cemetery a portal to the netherworld?
• Clio: Stull Cemetery