Stull, Kansas, is barely a place at all. It is an unincorporated community in Douglas County, about ten miles west of Lawrence, founded in 1857 by Pennsylvania Dutch settlers under the name Deer Creek and renamed in 1899 for a local family. As of 2018, only a handful of structures remained. Its cemetery, chartered in 1867 beside a small stone church, holds the graves of the settlers and their descendants. It is an ordinary rural burial ground, and that is what makes its reputation so strange. For more than fifty years, Stull Cemetery has been famous across America as one of the seven gateways to Hell, a place where the Devil himself is said to appear twice a year.
The legend is specific. A hidden staircase in the ruined church is said to descend into the underworld, opening on Halloween and on the spring equinox. The Devil is said to hold court there. A tall tree that once stood nearby was said to mark the spot, and was cut down in 1998 to discourage visitors. On Halloween 1978, more than 150 people tried to reach the cemetery; in 1988 the number was nearly 500. The television series Supernatural set its apocalyptic finale there. The band Urge Overkill named a 1992 album Stull and put the church and a tombstone on the cover.
None of it is supported by evidence. What is remarkable about Stull is how precisely the legend can be dated — and how clearly it was made, not found.
The Article That Invented It
The modern reputation of Stull Cemetery begins on 5 November 1974, when The University Daily Kansan, the student newspaper of the University of Kansas, published an article by Jain Penner titled “Legend of Devil Haunts Tiny Town.” It claimed the Devil appeared at Stull twice a year, on Halloween and on the spring equinox, and described unexplained incidents at the cemetery. From there, the story accumulated its accessories: the seven gates to Hell, the possessed church ruin, the staircase in its basement that takes weeks to climb back out of, and the claim that Pope John Paul II diverted his plane during a 1990s trip to Colorado to avoid flying over the unholy ground. There is no evidence that last claim ever happened.
Local historian Paul Thomas traced the legend’s popularity to an unusual publishing delay, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry has reported that the reputation can be traced back to a professor at the University of Kansas who made the story up as an urban legend to tell his students. As the story spread, it took on a life of its own until it was printed in the university paper in the 1970s. Most academics, historians and local residents agree the legend has no basis in historical fact and was created and spread by students.
Some details of the legend are built on real grief. A young boy named Oliver Bahnmaier wandered into a field his father was burning and died; from that came the rumour that stepping on Oliver’s tombstone sends you to Hell. A popular version holds that the haunting began with the murder of Stull’s mayor in the 1850s — but Stull was never organised as a town and therefore never had a mayor. The stone church itself was real enough: built in 1867, abandoned in 1922 when the congregation moved into a new wooden building across the road, and slowly falling into ruin until it was demolished on 29 March 2002, officially for safety reasons. The demolition only deepened the mystery.
The Hauntings People Report
Visitors have reported a familiar catalogue of phenomena: a White Lady carrying an infant, a horned figure with glowing red eyes near the church ruins, unexplained lights, cold spots, and the feeling of being watched. Stories of occult rituals and witchcraft among the 19th-century settlers circulate widely. The cemetery has suffered decades of vandalism and desecration, and fewer than 100 gravestones survive.
The problem for every one of these reports is timing. Almost all of them date from after 1974, and most from after the legend was already famous. The hauntings followed the newspaper article, not the other way round. The cemetery’s own history, before the article, contains no recorded haunting at all — only the ordinary tragedies of a 19th-century farming settlement, including the boy who died in a burning field and a man found hanging in a tree. Those are real deaths, and they are sad, but they are not evidence of anything supernatural.
Why Stull Lasts
Stull endures because it is a perfect urban legend. It has a specific place, a specific date, a specific authority (a university newspaper), and a claim dramatic enough to travel: one of seven gateways to Hell, in a cornfield in Kansas. It is close enough to a university town for students to visit, and remote enough that nobody local can easily correct the record. The people who still live near Stull did not ask for any of it, and the county now enforces the site strictly, with fines reported at $500 for trespassing.
There is also a darker undercurrent worth naming. The legend was built, in part, on the graves of real people — settlers, children, a boy who died in a fire — and the vandalism it encouraged has damaged the cemetery itself. The story of a cursed graveyard has, in a practical sense, cursed the graveyard: fewer than 100 stones survive, and the old church is gone. Whatever the Devil is said to do at Stull twice a year, the visitors did far more damage than any ghost.
What Is Documented, and What Is Not
Documented: Stull was founded as Deer Creek in 1857 by Pennsylvania Dutch settlers; the stone Evangelical Emmanuel Church was built in 1867 and a cemetery chartered beside it; the church was abandoned in 1922 and demolished on 29 March 2002; the University Daily Kansan published Jain Penner’s “Legend of Devil Haunts Tiny Town” on 5 November 1974; more than 150 people attempted to visit on Halloween 1978 and nearly 500 in 1988; the site is now strictly enforced against trespassing.
Unverified or disputed: That the Devil appears at Stull on Halloween and the spring equinox; that the cemetery contains one of seven gateways to Hell; that a staircase in the ruined church descends to the underworld; that Pope John Paul II diverted a flight to avoid Stull; that the haunting began with the murder of a mayor (Stull never had one); that Oliver Bahnmaier’s tombstone sends steppers to Hell; all reported apparitions, lights and occult rituals.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stull,_Kansas
https://the-line-up.com/stull-cemetery-gateway-to-hell
https://beyondhaunted.com/kansas/stull-cemetery-kansas-legend
https://indiandefencereview.com/inside-the-eerie-legend-of-stull-cemetery