The Good Witch of the Old City Cemetery

Amidst the moss-covered oaks and weathered tombstones in the middle of downtown Tallahassee lies the Old City Cemetery. Established in 1829, it is the final resting place of the city's founders and people of historical note. One grave, however, fascinates some visitors. It's the big, ornate gravestone of Elizabeth "Bessie" Budd-Graham, a young woman who died in 1889 and whose life has been completely eclipsed by one of Tallahassee's most popular ghost legends: the story of the cemetery's resident "white witch."

The Legend of the West-Facing Grave

Bessie Graham was a "white witch," local lore has it, and she used her powers to help the people in her community. When she died, her special status supposedly necessitated an unusual burial. Two pieces of "evidence" are cited by ghost tour guides and local lore.

One is the way her headstone is facing. While the majority of the graves in the cemetery face east, waiting for the resurrection with the rising sun, Bessie's grave is famously turned to the west. It is said this was intentional, isolating her, an outcast in death or a witch looking to the setting sun and the darkness.

Two is the frequency of paranormal activity reports. For decades, visitors have reported strange occurrences near her gravesite. Visitors report abrupt, inexplicable drops in temperature, the unsettling feeling of being watched, and the distinct whisper of a woman's voice when no one is present. Ghost hunters report that equipment, such as cameras and audio recorders, also malfunctions regularly near the grave. Because she's a "good witch," people tend to leave coins, flowers, and trinkets on her grave marker, perhaps seeking a blessing or simply paying respects to her.

The Woman Behind the Myth

However, the record books have a very different, more mundane tale to tell. Elizabeth Budd was born in 1866 to Daniel and Mary Budd. She went on to marry a wealthy local man, John C. Graham, but their marriage was tragically shortened. On October 29, 1889, Bessie died at the age of only 23.

Unlike the myth, the historical records say nothing about her being a witch. Her death was a common tragedy of the era, most probably from an illness like tuberculosis ("consumption"), which claimed many young lives in the 19th century. The ornate, spire-shaped headstone that marks her grave was not a sign of occultism but a sign of her family's wealth and a product of Victorian funeral culture, which favored elaborate and sentimental memorials to the dead.

Unraveling the "Evidence"

History and context easily explain the facts around the witch legend.

The Epitaph: The supposedly cryptic inscription on her gravesite, "Ah, she has gone. A voice from the tomb, a voice from the sky." was no witches' spell. As the late Tallahassee Democrat columnist Gerald Ensley noted, it's a somewhat altered verse from a popular 19th-century sentimental poem by Edgar Allen Poe, a favorite choice for mourning in the era.

The West-Facing Grave: The direction of her grave is also less of a mystery than the legend. According to Ensley's research and cemetery historians, while graves facing east were traditional, they were not a rule written in stone. The facing west of Bessie's grave was simply because that was the way the Graham family plot was laid out, a choice made by her family, and has no historical connection with witchcraft or punishment.

While history's facts have disproved the ghost story bit by bit, the legend of the Witch of the Old City Cemetery remains. Bessie Graham was no witch but a young wife whose life was cut short in tragic circumstances. Yet her memory has been mythologized, ensuring that her story, part history and part folklore, is recounted every time a curious visitor walks through the cemetery gates.