An overgrown historic cemetery tucked away in a corner of Philadelphia is up for sale for $1 million — and is home to some 33,000 deceased tenants.
In addition to corpses, the 26-acre Mount Vernon Cemetery in Northeast Philadelphia is also filled with swarms of ticks, poison ivy, creepy stuffed animals that inexplicably appear at night and ghost hunters looking to connect with the other side, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Purchasing the 168-year-old cemetery would certainly be a renovation deal, but it is unlikely to be sold to a private developer.
The property is under the guardianship of the Philadelphia Community Development Coalition (PCDC) — meaning any sale must be approved by the court and its listing was legally required, according to the Inquirer.
Brandon Zimmerman, volunteer coordinator for Friends of Mount Vernon, said the announcement — which went viral on the popular social media account “Zillow Gone Wild” — caused panic among cemetery supporters.
” They’ve been scared [prospective buyers] “The bodies will be moved and the place will become a Walmart. That’s not going to happen,” Zimmerman told the newspaper.
“There are 33,000 people here and we don’t have accurate maps or records. You’d have to use ground-penetrating radar on 26 acres to find everyone. There are places that are infinitely cheaper and easier to find. If you’re looking for a site for your next distribution center, Mount Vernon is not the place,” he added.
The cemetery opened in 1856, at a time when there was a national movement to have bucolic, park-like spaces to bury the dead rather than crowded cemeteries or plots on private property, according to the cemetery’s website.
No new plots have been sold at the cemetery since 1968.
Decades of neglect have created a wild and truly haunting landscape among the tombstones.
“This vegetation is unprecedented. You can cut the vegetation and two weeks later it’s waist-high,” Zimmerman said. “I describe it as unearthly, it’s unreal.”
Zimmerman said a fellow volunteer once stopped a group of old women at the front gate, thinking the cemetery was “a portal to another plane of existence.”
Stuffed animals have also appeared on graves in the closed cemetery. Foxes are snatching the toys and taking them back to their dens, Zimmerman said.
There is also a man who frequently throws candles over the fence and asks the dead to help him do “pretty obscene things” that “would make you blush,” he said.
Dozens of historical figures are buried in the cemetery, including a family plot that houses generations of the famous Drew and Barrymore acting families. It was also a whites-only burial site.
The PDCD has held guardianship of the property since 2021 after its former owner, Washington DC-based attorney Joseph Dinsmore Murphy, allowed the property to fall into complete disrepair.
The cemetery’s headstones and paths have been largely overgrown with brush, critters and debris for decades.
When no owner could be found to take over the property, the Mount Vernon Cemetery Company (MVCC).
The PCDC said its “hope and expectation” was that the MVCC would be able to raise enough money to approve the judicial transfer of the property — but the nonprofit must first raise $300,000 to operate and maintain the cemetery.
According to the Inquirer, the court would approve the sale of the property to MVCC for just $1.
“We wanted to make sure we had the money to do this before we got the cemetery,” said MVCC Director Thaddeus Squire. “We also don’t want a property we can’t take care of, and taking care of it is all about money.”
However, to date, donors have pledged only $65,000 toward that goal. Squire described it as a “chicken and egg problem.”
“The court needs us to have the money, but nobody wants to give it to us until we have the cemetery,” Squire told the newspaper. “If we can’t raise the money and there’s no buyer, I don’t know what’s going to happen, then we’re in a tough spot.”
