Circular Congregational Church Graveyard
Founded around 1681 by Charleston's English Congregationalists, Scots Presbyterians, and French Huguenots, the Circular Congregational Church surrounds the city's oldest burial ground, where surviving markers date to 1695 and weathered slates trace colonial death art from winged skulls to portrait busts. Beneath roughly 500 remaining stones lie far more bodies than markers, hundreds named only in church records, alongside Revolutionary War dead and victims of the fevers that swept the port.
A British cannonball once burst among the graves during a 1780 Sunday service, and the crowded, sunken ground long carried an uneasy reputation. Visitors and ghost-tour groups report phantom footsteps, whispered voices, sudden cold spots, and faded forms, most famously a mourning woman in black and a Confederate soldier keeping watch near dawn, that dissolve when approached.
📍 150 Meeting Street, Charleston, SC 29401, Charleston, SC · Get directions