Highland Lawn Cemetery is one of the most historic and atmospheric cemeteries in Indiana. Located in Terre Haute, this 139-acre burial ground is known for its rolling hills, winding roads, old mausoleums, historic architecture, and two of the area’s most famous ghost stories: Stiffy Green, the loyal bulldog said to haunt his owner’s mausoleum, and Martin Sheets, the man who was so afraid of being buried alive that he reportedly had a telephone installed in his tomb.
Visitor information:
- Address: 4420 Wabash Ave., Terre Haute, IN 47803. Some historic records list 4520 Wabash Ave.
- Phone: (812) 877-2531
- Website: City of Terre Haute cemetery information
- Cemetery type: Public, city-owned cemetery
- Established: 1884
- Size: About 139 acres
- Notable status: Listed in the National Register of Historic Places collection
Highland Lawn is not just a haunted cemetery. It is also an important piece of Terre Haute history, with more than 50,000 burials since its first interment in 1884. Its landscape, architecture, and funerary art helped earn it recognition for landscape architecture and architecture by the National Park Service.
The History of Highland Lawn Cemetery
Highland Lawn Cemetery was laid out in 1884 after Terre Haute needed additional burial space beyond its older municipal cemetery, Woodlawn. According to the National Register nomination, the city purchased 138 acres east of town along the Old National Road, now U.S. 40, in March 1884. The cemetery was designed by Joseph Earnshaw, a Cincinnati landscape architect, surveyor, and civil engineer.
The cemetery was created in the Romantic Victorian landscape tradition. That means it was not designed as a simple grid of graves. It was meant to feel like a quiet, beautiful landscape of memory. The National Register documentation describes Highland Lawn as a place of gently rolling hills, lakes, curving roads, mausoleums, monuments, sculptures, and obelisks.
The first person buried at Highland Lawn was Samantha McPherson, a 30-year-old woman who died of typhoid fever. She was buried in October 1884, and her story is still often mentioned in local histories of the cemetery.
A Cemetery Built Like a City of the Dead
One reason Highland Lawn has such a strong reputation is its appearance. It does not feel like a flat, ordinary cemetery. Its roads curve through hills, trees, lakes, and old family mausoleums. The National Register nomination calls it an outstanding example of late 19th-century Romantic Victorian landscape design, noting its meandering paths, plantings, open spaces, lakes, and views.
Several historic structures add to the atmosphere:
- The Romanesque Revival entrance gate was constructed in 1894.
- The cemetery chapel was designed by Terre Haute architect Jesse Vrydaugh in 1892.
- A waiting room, later used as cemetery offices, was designed by William Floyd and built in 1910.
- The cemetery includes old mausoleums, funerary sculptures, obelisks, and a Soldiers and Sailors burial area.
The chapel sits on a high crest with a broad view of the surrounding cemetery. The entrance gate, with its limestone towers and arch, gives Highland Lawn the feeling of an old historic estate rather than a modern cemetery.
Notable People Buried at Highland Lawn
Highland Lawn Cemetery is the final resting place of many well-known figures from Indiana history. Hoosier History Live has highlighted several of them, including labor leader and presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, aviation pioneer Ellen Church Marshall, poet Max Ehrmann, and Dr. Allen Pence, a Terre Haute physician and druggist who became involved in the Victorian-era Spiritualist movement.
Some of the most notable burials include:
- Eugene V. Debs, socialist leader and presidential candidate
- Ellen Church Marshall, considered the first airline stewardess
- Max Ehrmann, author of “Desiderata”
- Dr. Allen Pence, physician, druggist, and Spiritualist figure
- Martin Sheets, the businessman tied to one of Highland Lawn’s strangest legends
That mix of political figures, artists, pioneers, local families, and unusual personalities has helped make Highland Lawn one of the most interesting cemeteries in the Midwest.
Why Highland Lawn Cemetery Is Considered Haunted
Highland Lawn is often listed among Indiana’s haunted cemeteries because of two major legends: Stiffy Green and Martin Sheets. Both stories are rooted in real people or real local folklore, but the supernatural details should be understood as reported legends rather than proven events.
The cemetery’s atmosphere helps those stories endure. It has old mausoleums, a historic stone entrance, winding drives, shadowed hills, and a long history of burial. Places like that naturally collect ghost stories over time. Highland Lawn’s stories, however, are more specific than most. They are not just vague claims of “cold spots” or “ghostly figures.” They center on named people, a famous dog statue, a mausoleum telephone, and generations of local retellings.
The Legend of Stiffy Green
The most famous ghost story tied to Highland Lawn Cemetery is the legend of Stiffy Green.
According to local lore, Stiffy Green was a loyal English bulldog connected to John Heinl, a Terre Haute businessman and florist. The story says that after Heinl died, Stiffy refused to leave his owner’s mausoleum. In some versions, the dog stayed there until he died, and his body was preserved and placed inside the tomb. Visitors later claimed they could see Stiffy’s green eyes shining in the darkness.
The Visit Terre Haute tourism site describes Stiffy Green as a devoted bulldog whose glowing green eyes became part of Terre Haute’s spooky local lore. It also notes reports of ghostly wanderings and glowing eyes connected to the mausoleum.
Over time, the Stiffy Green story became one of Terre Haute’s signature legends. People said they heard barking from the mausoleum. Others claimed to see Heinl and the dog walking together, or to smell the scent of Heinl’s pipe near the tomb.
There is an important historical wrinkle, though. Some modern accounts say Stiffy Green may not have been a real taxidermied dog at all, but a cement bulldog statue that once belonged to Heinl. Atlas Obscura notes that the dog figure is now associated with the Vigo County Historical Society Museum, and that the historical society’s interpretation is that Stiffy was made of cement and used as a porch decoration.
That does not make the legend less important. In fact, it may make it more interesting. Stiffy Green shows how folklore grows around a physical object. Whether Stiffy was a real dog, a statue, or a mixture of memory and myth, the story became part of Terre Haute’s identity.
Reported Stiffy Green Encounters
The most common Stiffy Green reports include:
- Glowing green eyes seen inside or near the Heinl mausoleum
- Barking sounds coming from the tomb
- Apparitions of John Heinl and Stiffy walking together
- The smell of pipe smoke near the mausoleum
- Visitors feeling watched near the tomb at night
The strongest available evidence for these stories is not scientific proof, but local folklore, tourism accounts, paranormal listings, and decades of retelling. That matters because cemetery legends often survive not because they can be proven, but because they become attached to a place so strongly that locals continue to pass them down.
The Martin Sheets Mausoleum and the Telephone in the Tomb
The other major legend at Highland Lawn Cemetery is the story of Martin Sheets.
Sheets was a Terre Haute businessman remembered for one deeply unusual fear: he was terrified of being buried alive. According to Hoosier History Live, Sheets wanted a working telephone installed in his mausoleum after his death. The same account says he also had a rocking chair, table, and bottle of whiskey placed in the mausoleum.
Indiana Memory, drawing from the Indiana State University Folklore Archives, describes an oral interview about Martin Sheets, noting that he was buried with a telephone and bottle of whiskey in his mausoleum at Highland Lawn Cemetery.
The folklore version takes the story further. In paranormal retellings, Sheets had a custom casket made with latches on the inside and a phone line connected to the cemetery office. The strangest part of the legend involves his wife. According to the common ghost story, years after Martin Sheets died, his wife was found dead while holding a telephone receiver. When she was later entombed, the phone in the locked mausoleum was supposedly found off the hook.
Like many cemetery legends, that final detail is difficult to prove. Still, the core of the story is tied to real folklore records: Martin Sheets, Highland Lawn Cemetery, a mausoleum, a telephone, and his fear of premature burial.
Why the Martin Sheets Story Feels So Unsettling
The Martin Sheets legend works because it touches on a very old fear. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, fear of being buried alive was not just fiction. Stories of premature burial appeared in newspapers, literature, and medical debates. Safety coffins, bells, tubes, and other escape devices were discussed or patented in different forms over the years.
Sheets’ telephone feels like a modern version of that old fear. Instead of a bell above the grave, he wanted a direct line to the living world. That detail makes the story memorable. A silent phone in a mausoleum is unsettling on its own. Add the tale of a receiver off the hook, and the story becomes one of Indiana’s eeriest cemetery legends.
Is Highland Lawn Cemetery Really Haunted?
There is no verified proof that Highland Lawn Cemetery is haunted. What it does have is a strong combination of documented history, unusual architecture, and long-running local folklore.
The Stiffy Green legend is attached to a real place, a real family mausoleum, and a famous dog figure now associated with Terre Haute history. The Martin Sheets story is supported by folklore archive records showing that his mausoleum telephone story was significant enough to be preserved in Indiana’s folklore collections.
For paranormal readers, that makes Highland Lawn compelling. The cemetery does not rely on generic ghost claims. Its hauntings are tied to stories with names, objects, and specific locations:
- John Heinl and the Stiffy Green legend
- The Heinl mausoleum
- Martin Sheets and the telephone in the mausoleum
- The cemetery’s 19th-century landscape
- More than a century of local storytelling
Whether you see the stories as hauntings, folklore, or a mixture of both, Highland Lawn Cemetery is one of Indiana’s most memorable historic cemeteries.
Visiting Highland Lawn Cemetery Today
Highland Lawn Cemetery is a public cemetery, but it is still an active and respectful burial ground. Anyone visiting should treat it as a place of mourning first and a paranormal location second.
Before visiting, contact the cemetery or City of Terre Haute to confirm access rules, current hours, and any restrictions. The cemetery is large, and many of its most interesting features are historic structures, mausoleums, and monuments that should never be touched, climbed on, or disturbed.
A respectful visit might focus on:
- The historic entrance gate
- The cemetery chapel
- The old mausoleums
- The rolling landscape and lakes
- Notable graves connected to Terre Haute history
- The stories of Stiffy Green and Martin Sheets
Do not try to enter mausoleums, force doors, visit after hours, or disturb graves. The legends are interesting, but the cemetery deserves respect.
Final Thoughts on Highland Lawn Cemetery
Highland Lawn Cemetery is one of those places where history and folklore are almost impossible to separate. Its official history is impressive on its own. It is a carefully designed Victorian cemetery, a National Register historic property, and the resting place of major Indiana figures.
But its ghost stories are what make it unforgettable.
Stiffy Green gives the cemetery a strangely touching legend about loyalty, grief, and the bond between a man and a dog. Martin Sheets adds something darker: a businessman so afraid of being buried alive that he wanted a telephone inside his tomb. Together, these stories make Highland Lawn Cemetery one of the most fascinating haunted cemeteries in Indiana.
Never trespass on property that is not yours without permission. Ghost hunting can be dangerous, so always use caution, follow posted rules, and respect the dead as well as the living.
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