Central City Masonic Cemetery: Nellie Burget’s White Dress

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated September 10, 2026 · How we verify

The Central City Masonic Cemetery sits on a pine and scrub hillside in the old gold country of Colorado, above the twin mining towns of Central City and Black Hawk, and it is one of the few places in the district where the boom era is still legible in plain sight. There is no admission gate, no visitor center, and no interpretive sign explaining who is buried where. What there is: rows of weathered stone, Masonic square and compasses carved into markers, and two ghost stories that visitors have been repeating for decades.

Consecrated on June 24, 1861

The cemetery was established on June 24, 1861, in the middle of the Colorado gold rush, when the gulches below were filling with men chasing ore and the families who followed them. It was set aside as a burying ground for members of the Freemason fraternity, their families, and others connected to the young community. That founding date puts it among the earliest formal institutions in the district, older than most of the buildings still standing in the towns beneath it.

The graves reflect what the boom actually produced. Miners, pioneers, immigrants, children, and a share of figures with genuine Wild West reputations are all here. Mining camps buried people quickly and often, and a cemetery of this age in this kind of country tends to hold a disproportionate number of short lives. The tranquil setting today is a little misleading about the conditions that filled it.

The Girl in the White Dress

The best known of the cemetery’s ghost stories belongs to Nellie Burget. As the legend is told locally, Nellie was a young girl who died in a mining accident, and her figure is reported near her own headstone, wearing a white dress. Visitors who describe the sighting tend to describe it the same way: a small pale figure standing still among the stones, gone when approached.

It is worth being clear about what this is. The account circulates as folklore rather than as documented history, and no verified record of the accident is offered alongside the story. What can be said is that the tale is durable, that it is attached to a specific marker rather than to a vague corner of the grounds, and that people keep repeating it after visiting.

The Mason Still Making His Rounds

The second recurring apparition is that of John Edward Cameron, described in local accounts as a Scottish immigrant and a Freemason. Visitors who claim to have seen him describe a man in full Masonic regalia moving between the tombstones and appearing to inspect them, as though still carrying out the fraternal duty of tending to the graves of brother Masons.

Whatever one makes of the sighting, the shape of the story fits the place. Masonic lodges took responsibility for the burial and remembrance of their members, and a ground like this one existed precisely so that obligation could be met. A ghost who checks the stones is the ghost this cemetery would be expected to produce.

Reading the Evidence Honestly

Nothing at the Central City Masonic Cemetery has been verified as paranormal. The reports here are personal accounts, passed between visitors and repeated in ghost tour patter, not investigations with results. A hillside graveyard at high altitude, with uneven ground, wind through pines, shifting light, and a name attached to nearly every stone, is a place where the mind supplies figures readily. That does not make the accounts dishonest. It does mean they should be read as experiences rather than as findings.

Walking the Grounds Above the Gulch

The cemetery is an open burial ground and can be walked in daylight, which is the right way to see it. Give yourself time to read the markers, because the epitaphs and the birth and death years do more to convey the era than any of the ghost stories do. Treat it as an active cemetery: stay on the paths where they exist, do not lean on or rub the stones, take nothing, and leave before dark unless a permitted tour has taken you in. Central City and Black Hawk are both a short drive away if you want to see what the people buried here were building.

Sources

• Brief History of Crane Hill Masonic Lodge
• Tuckabatcha Masonic Lodge (Library of Congress)
• Helion Lodge website
• "Origins of the building" web page
• Vaughan-Smitherman Museum
• Wikipedia: List of Masonic buildings in the United States

Ghost Tours Nearby

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