Stull Cemetery in Douglas County, Kansas is private property, posted with No Trespassing signs, and patrolled by sheriff’s deputies every Halloween. The graveyard sits on a hill called Emmanuel Hill next to the remains of a stone church that was mysteriously demolished in March 2002, though the owner of the property says he didn’t authorize it. The town of Stull itself has around twenty residents. None of this would be remarkable except that the cemetery has been identified, in a mythology that dates specifically to a 1974 University of Kansas student newspaper article, as one of seven gateways to hell.
The claims that have accumulated around Stull over the decades include the Devil appearing there twice a year, rain not falling inside the roofless church even during storms, and Pope John Paul II ordering his plane to fly around eastern Kansas to avoid passing over unholy ground. That last one was attributed to Time Magazine, which never ran the story. The town’s original name, some versions claim, was “Skull” — which is false; it was Deer Creek Community until 1899, when the name of the first postmaster stuck. Local residents have consistently denied any knowledge of supernatural activity and have expressed varying degrees of frustration that 500 people showed up to their cemetery on Halloween 1988 and damaged the gravestones.
What’s worth visiting Stull for — legally, from outside the fence — is the sheer scale of belief the place generated from almost nothing. The church is gone. The legend is as large as it has ever been. Adventure travelers looking for a haunted location with a properly documented paper trail will find one here: the trespassing citations, the police logs, the demolished church, the county’s annual Halloween planning. The Devil may not appear, but the humans absolutely do.
Story Source: historyfangirl.com
Address: North 1600 Road & East 250 Road, Stull, Kansas
Accessibility Rating: No Public Access — Private property, active restricted site, or location no longer physically accessible to visitors.
Google Map
What Others Have Experienced
A visitor named Sam W. said that during a stop at the cemetery in 2010, she and her brother ignored the No Trespassing signs and found a large blood splatter near the gate, almost certainly from a deer, but said the place still gave them the heebie jeebies as the sun went down.
— from RoadsideAmerica.com (Sam W., 2015)
A local resident named Annie C., who attends the Stull United Methodist Church across the street, said the gateway-to-hell stories are nonsense and that it’s simply a nice old cemetery, adding that the old church was torn down because it had become unsafe for the kids who kept sneaking in to scare themselves.
— from RoadsideAmerica.com (Annie C., 2012)
A visitor named Kris said it took passing the cemetery five times before finally finding it, and that although nothing odd happened at the gate, the witch’s grave marker, the old foundation, and the rubble of the demolished church were all visible from the entrance, which she described as very creepy and very interesting.
— from RoadsideAmerica.com (Kris, 2010)
A father named Mike Rossi said he’d never heard of the gates of hell growing up nearby until his daughter, a University of Kansas freshman, told him about it during a family weekend visit, so the two made a daytime and a midnight trip to see it; nothing happened, but he noted a photo in the new church showing a tombstone reading ‘Wittich’ standing in front of the old church ruins.
— from RoadsideAmerica.com (Mike Rossi, 2009)
A visitor named Dewey Meadows said the graveyard was securely locked when he finally tracked it down, and that after about ten minutes of taking photos in front of the gate and the church across the street, someone unseen on a neighboring property fired a gun into the air twice, which he took as a none-too-subtle hint to leave.
— from RoadsideAmerica.com (Dewey Meadows, 2009)
