The Burning Barn Graves at Haunted Leverington Cemetery

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated November 8, 2026 · How we verify

Nine acres on Ridge Avenue in the Roxborough neighborhood hold almost three centuries of Philadelphia burials, and a modest local reputation as the haunted Leverington Cemetery. Established in 1745, this non-denominational ground in Pennsylvania began as a family plot on a farm and survived a mid-century attempt to clear it for a shopping center. Among its graves are seventeen Virginia soldiers who died in one of the uglier small episodes of the American Revolutionary War.

Orientation: Leverington Cemetery at a Glance

Address: 6075 Ridge Avenue, Roxborough, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Size: nine acres. Established: 1745, making it one of the older burial grounds in the city. Status: still open for new burials, though only six took place between 2016 and 2019. Ownership: the Leverington Cemetery Company, run today by Randi Mautz, granddaughter of the man who rescued it. Notable burial: the journalist and writer Richard Harding Davis, who lived from 1864 to 1916.

Wigand Levering’s Farm and the Roxborough Burial Ground

The land was a farm in the 1690s, owned by Wigand Levering, a settler on the tract granted to William Penn in 1681. The cemetery began in the plainest way possible: as a place to bury Levering and his family on their own ground. After 1744 it was known as the Roxborough Burial Ground, and it later came under the Roxborough Baptist Church. That connection was eventually severed, and in 1857 the ground was incorporated as the Leverington Cemetery Company.

One detail matters for anyone trying to research a specific grave here. The original burial records were destroyed by fire in 1966. Transcribed records survive, held by the Roxborough Manayunk Wissahickon Historical Society, but the primary documents are gone.

The Seventeen Virginians Shot Escaping a Burning Barn

The cemetery contains the graves of seventeen soldiers from Virginia killed by British troops in 1777. The account attached to the obelisk raised in their honor is that the men were trapped inside a barn that British troops set alight, and were shot as they tried to escape it. The monument stands over them in the cemetery today.

This is the piece of Leverington’s history that draws the most attention from visitors, and it is worth noting that the deaths are recorded history rather than legend. Whether anything of those men lingers on the site is an entirely separate question, and one the record does not answer.

General Meade and the 1872 Civil War Monument

In 1872 a second monument went up, this one honoring local men who fought in the American Civil War. The dedication ceremony was led by General George Meade, the Union commander best known for Gettysburg, which gives this small neighborhood cemetery a direct connection to one of the most recognizable names of the war.

How a Department Store Nearly Cleared the Ground

By 1947 the cemetery had been abandoned and was in disrepair. The Philadelphia department store Wanamaker’s wanted to buy the land, relocate the bodies and build a shopping center on the site. Richard Lee Entwistle Jr. established the Leverington Cemetery Company and took control of the ground specifically to stop that from happening. Ownership has stayed within the same family ever since, passing down to Entwistle’s granddaughter, Randi Mautz.

Orbs, Apparitions and the WHYY Listing

Leverington’s paranormal reputation is modest in scale but specific in content. In 2013, WHYY-TV named the cemetery among the top six haunted and eerie spots in Northwest Philadelphia, describing it as one of the most actively documented locations for orbs and apparitions in the city.

That phrasing deserves a careful reading. “Actively documented” here means photographed and reported by people who go looking, not verified by any independent process. Orbs in particular are the single most common artifact of flash photography in dusty outdoor conditions, and a cemetery at night supplies dust, insects and moisture in quantity. The apparition reports are testimony, nothing more. Nothing in the documented history of the site, not the burning barn, not the 1966 fire, not the abandonment of the 1940s, constitutes evidence that anything supernatural occurs here.

Visiting the Cemetery on Ridge Avenue

Leverington is a working cemetery, not an attraction. It remains open for new burials, and the people buried here have families who still visit. If you go, go in daylight, treat the monuments as what they are, and understand that the seventeen Virginians under the obelisk and the Civil War dead honored in 1872 are the reason the ground was saved in the first place. Researchers chasing a particular name should start with the Roxborough Manayunk Wissahickon Historical Society rather than the cemetery office, given the loss of the originals.

Address: 6075 Ridge Avenue, Roxborough, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

See Leverington Cemetery for Yourself

Sources

• Leverington Cemetery
• The Official Guide to Philadelphia
• Leverington Cemetery
• Top 6 haunted and eerie spots in Northwest Philly
• Find a Grave
• Wikipedia: Leverington Cemetery

Ghost Tours Nearby

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