Hooded Grave Cemetery

History & local legend

Two graves near Catawissa are enclosed by unusual iron hoods, their curved bars forming low roofs over the burial plots. They belong to Sarah Ann Boone and her sister-in-law Asenath Thomas, who both died in June 1852. The original structures included hinged doors at the foot that could be locked; the surviving covers have since been restored.

The hoods invited two very different explanations. In supernatural versions of the story, the women were vampires, witches or other beings the cages were meant to restrain. Tina Butler, who grew up next door and helped her stepfather mow the cemetery, remembered hearing those tales.

Butler understood their purpose in the opposite way: to protect the bodies from animals and grave robbers.